So, last week's session in a game I'm playing in ended with the party split on board a marauder class corvette, us having killed or knocked out the shipboard security, and the marauder starting to fall apart thanks to an explosion we rigged to go off (when we originally made our plan, we thought the explosion would happen earlier, as a distraction, and that the ship would be landed). There were three "Fingers of the Hand" [Lieutenants in a Cult, the Leader of which has a 25,000 credit bounty on his head] on board the ship, which we have incapacitated (the GM narrated that they were clinging to life despite each having been "killed"), two of which were armed with disrupter rifles, which we will probably want to try to sell. Our freighter is parked on the far side of the ship, and we don't know how long till the ship is going to fall apart (escape pods may be in order). We have one party member on the ship, who is capable of flying it, but is no pilot by any stretch of the imagination. The rest of the party is a custom cybernetics (medical/repair) droid with limited ability to carry things, a human smuggler with 3 brawn, a human bounty hunter with 3 brawn (me) and a trandoshan marauder with 4 brawn.

TLDR We have 3 decently strong people needing to carry/support 3 incapacitated prisoners and a couple captured weapons.

Since it will probably come up tonight, my question is this: how far can a person exceed his encumbrance threshold by if he isn't actually trying to perform as normal with it--for instance dragging a body rather than trying throw it over the shoulder and run with it. Would you require an athletics check for it, and if so, how would you determine difficulty. Would you impose setback dice, and if so, how many? Or is 4 an absolute cap on how far you can exceed your threshold by under any circumstances? How much of a speed penalty would you impose on somebody so encumbered?

My thinking is the max you can "push or drag" in d&d terms is one difficulty dice for every time beyond the first exceed your encumbrance threshold (i.e. up to x2=easy, x3 average, x4 hard, x5 daunting, etc.) though this may be overly generous. Movement in terms of speed takes twice as many maneuvers/twice as long narratively.Thoughts?

CRB p.152 answers most of this for you. But to bullet it point it for you:

- Suggested guideline for living beings is they have encumbrance value equal to 5+Brawn (so if you need to carry a guy who is Brawn 3, they are worth enc.8)

- A character's Encumbrance Threshold is 5+Brawn and each point they exceed this by adds 1 Setback to their Brawn and Agility related checks

- Once Encumbrance exceeds Encumbrance Threshold (ET) by an amount equal to the character's Brawn they no longer receive a free maneuver per turn.

So let's say a Brawn 3 character is trying to carry an incapacitated Brawn 2 prisoner. Their ET is 8 and the prisoner is Enc.7 to carry. If the Brawn 3 character has no other gear, then there's no issue, but he/she most likely has their own gear on at the time so that adds and once their total carried Enc. hits 9+ (exceeds ET) they start taking Setback dice. Once carried Enc. for this character reached 11 (Enc. exceeds ET by amount equal to or higher than base Brawn), the character stops getting a free maneuver... so moving with their gear and the carried prisoner will cost them 2 Strain each turn just to get a move.

If the give up their action for a maneuver would they still suffer 2 strain?

CRB p.152 answers most of this for you. But to bullet it point it for you:

- Suggested guideline for living beings is they have encumbrance value equal to 5+Brawn (so if you need to carry a guy who is Brawn 3, they are worth enc.8)

- A character's Encumbrance Threshold is 5+Brawn and each point they exceed this by adds 1 Setback to their Brawn and Agility related checks

- Once Encumbrance exceeds Encumbrance Threshold (ET) by an amount equal to the character's Brawn they no longer receive a free maneuver per turn.

So let's say a Brawn 3 character is trying to carry an incapacitated Brawn 2 prisoner. Their ET is 8 and the prisoner is Enc.7 to carry. If the Brawn 3 character has no other gear, then there's no issue, but he/she most likely has their own gear on at the time so that adds and once their total carried Enc. hits 9+ (exceeds ET) they start taking Setback dice. Once carried Enc. for this character reached 11 (Enc. exceeds ET by amount equal to or higher than base Brawn), the character stops getting a free maneuver... so moving with their gear and the carried prisoner will cost them 2 Strain each turn just to get a move.

I understand page 152 perfectly. My question is about what happens if you exceed your encumbrance threshold by more than 4. For instance, if your character with 8 encumbrance threshold has 8 encumbrance worth of gear and wants to try to move an enc 7 body as well.

And as far as not getting a free maneuver, you can always use your action to get a maneuver without taking strain.

If they're just making their way from point A to point B I'd simply handwave it. Unless you want to force them to drop some gear (as in, they got their hands on something you feel will unbalance the campaign) then there's no reason to make them sweat. Of course, you could always throw in a couple of encounters where they have to perform some kind of physical feat while dragging their comrades behind them, just for fun. In that case we're talking about lost manoeuvres and setback dice from encumbrance.

I would do the same were it not for the fact that we are under a tight time frame. The GM said that warning klaxons are blaring basically saying that ship destruction is imminent.

I'd do a Resilience check with penalties for those who are over their encumbrance. Successes could reduce the time it takes to get to safety, while failure would mean that the characters would feel they weren't going to make it. Of course, they could then have the option of dropping something to speed themselves up. Threat and advantage might deal with strain being taken or recovered, Triumph might result in the character giving a helping hand to an ally (reduce their failures) and Despair could mean a critical injury after they've made it to safety; a result of pushing too hard.

If there were no time restrictions, there would be no need to work out the mechanics and yes you would just handwave it.

Given restrictions of time were presented, hence this discussion.

I understand page 152 perfectly. My question is about what happens if you exceed your encumbrance threshold by more than 4. For instance, if your character with 8 encumbrance threshold has 8 encumbrance worth of gear and wants to try to move an enc 7 body as well.

And as far as not getting a free maneuver, you can always use your action to get a maneuver without taking strain.

Yes, you could always give up your action for a maneuver.

In your example, a character with ET 8 with 8 Enc. worth of gear trying to carry an Enc. 7 body would be exceeding their ET by 7 and therefore suffer 7 Setback to their Agility and Brawn based checks for the duration, also they would be over their ET by an amount equal or greater than their Brawn characteristic so they would lose their free maneuver.

If you wanted to make it "you have X number of turns to get out and it takes Y number of maneuvers to get to safety" then this would be the way to work it out.

If you want to just handwave it, then have them make Athletics checks with Setback based on how much they exceed their ET... and the number of successes is how far they get with the check. Depending on their time frame they get anywahere from 1-3 checks. Those who can't make it back to their ship will have to opt for escape pods or drop some of their loot to reduce the setback to make it off the deathtrap. And perhaps upgrade the difficulty once to represent losing the free maneuver if they are way over their ET.

On second thought, Athletics is what I was looking for. Liloki's got it.

The lack of a hard cap, RAW, does present the problem of someone being able to take on an infinite amount of encumbrance, as long as they can avoid having to make any rolls and are willing to move only once per round...

I'm pretty certain that having an infinite amount of encumbrance in one person's location like that is what causes black holes to form.

I would just do some athletics checks, give some setback dice on the check if they are over encumbered. If there is a time limit i would just figure out how many check should succeed to make it to the ship. If they fail they could take some strain and of course not make progress.

With the amount of stuff people can carry I usually take into consideration how they are carrying it. If it would make sense in real life then I probably let it go.

With this system I've found that if i try to handle a situation that starts requiring a lot of math then I probably need to rethink my way of doing it. Its best to just do what makes sense and is fun.