I want to make it clear that I actually hate the Burly ability as listed. Even from a cinematic standpoint it's a little nonsensical even if only limiting to what you wield alone. Yep, that guy can now wield a heavy blaster rifle like it's nothing but a knife...the knife however is still the same though...yeah he's weird like that. The whole thing needs a quick rewrite. It's just that I am a rule lawyer at heart and, in my humble opinion, RAW is extremely clear cut here.

Well, a Heavy Blaster Rifle is actually 9 encumbrance, so that would still take up a good amount of a character's encumbrance but sure, the talent could reduce a regular ol' blaster rifle down to 1 encumbrance, which is the same as knife.

I don't think it needs a rewrite in that regard. It just makes it so that the character is so strong and bulky that a rifle can be handled with the same ease as a knife. The knife still takes up some physical space...it doesn't become a "0 encumbrance" item, because that would reduce its effective encumbrance to 1/10th or 1/20th of its original encumbrance (because rules).

Since encumbrance is an abstract number based on weight, mass, volume, and shape, a minimum of 1 sounds like a good place to stop for me. The knife is still the same in that it's the lowest possible encumbrance rating for a small weapon.

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapon's Cumbersome quality and Encumbrance rating by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

The use of an apostrophe in a singular form has nothing to do with the number of weapons it can affect, it just means that it is referring to EACH weapon's Cumbersome quality and Encumbrance rating. As I did just there. It would actually be improper to say "...any weapons'..." and would make no sense language-wise.

bull.

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapons' Cumbersome qualities and Encumbrance ratings by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

You'll note that to make it plural requires plural versions of "qualities" and "ratings" too, and the sentence would make perfect sense written that way. Of course, it is not written that way.

bull.

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapons' Cumbersome qualities and Encumbrance ratings by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

You'll note that to make it plural requires plural versions of "qualities" and "ratings" too, and the sentence would make perfect sense written that way. Of course, it is not written that way.

I'm sorry but you're wrong.

Let's compare 3 options...

Option 1 (RAW):

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapon 's Cumbersome quality and Encumbrance rating by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

Any is preceding a non-count noun. It's use tells us that there are many possibilities. A character may carry one weapon, or 10. Any is used to refer to all possibilities without applying a value.

Weapons do not share ownership of qualities or [values], so weapon is left singular.

Weapons do not have multiple instances of qualities or [values] so they too are left singular.

Option 2 (small change):

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapons' Cumbersome quality and Encumbrance rating by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

The change here is that weapon has been made plural. We have just taken a non-count noun and tried to apply a value to it by forcing it to only refer to multiple instances of weapons. In order to make this sentence correct, we'd need to change "any" to "all" OR "any" to "a" and make weapon singular again.

Option 3 (your post):

"The character reduces any wielded or carried weapons' Cumbersome qualities and Encumbrance ratings by a number equal to ranks in Burly to a minimum of 1."

Now in this version that you came up with, not only do we still have the problem of trying to apply a value to a non-count noun, but you've also caused many more by pluralizing quality and rating.

Again, the problems are caused by the word "any." When using any, the sentence after ownership is always treated as referring to only one of the possible options. By the use of the words "qualities" and "ratings" you have now stated that every weapon has multiple instances of such and that all are lowered. We know this to be false as weapons have only one Cumbersome quality (if any) and only one Encumbrance [value].

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So there we have it. I've made my points. If you still disagree then that's okay. To each their own. I will not be continuing discussions about the rulings unless something new is brought to the table as going in circles doesn't help anything but pad egos.

If you'd like to continue, I'll gladly discuss grammar with you in the form of PMs if you'd like to continue. However, I don't think continuing discussions of or lessons on the proper use of English are something that belong on the forums.