See what actually happens is that, when a character is over-encumbered by 10 points, they are immobilized and the GM must pass them a note that says "You are too over-encumbered to move." Then they have to drop all those rat meats and watermelons that they picked up.

What if they had some kind of companion who could go back to town and sell all their junk items and bring back the money?

When carrying someone, remember that any gear on them adds to the Enc of the guy/gal you're lifting.

Also, don't carry, drag them of you must.

oh yeah of course, the person though is just a small women who was taken by slavers and sold to a hutt casino on Nar shadaa. She was non-compliment and so was being chemically "re-educated". They've broken into the facility (something that's bound to cause trouble down the line) found her and engaged in a firefight with the guards. So she's only 6 enc (5+1brawn). He just insisted on taking several weapons with him (don't ask me why this player just wants to play Rambo).

But Rambo didn't run around with tons of weapons on him...

Ok yeah I'm right on that. Page 200 of the core says:

"A character may perform one free manuever on his turn. He may also perform a second manuever by voluntarily suffering two points of strain."

Now if you stop reading there you'd be right but it goes on to say:

"(Characters may also perform a second manuever through a particularly successful skill check, or by other means listed elsewhere.)"

The important word there is "also" showing an alternative to suffering 2 strain. One of those alternatives is converting an action as shown on page 203 under "exchange an action for a manuever".

Darkbunnylord, while you are reading that correctly, the rules for an encumbered character change it somewhat. On page 152, it states that if a character is encumbered by an amount equal to or greater than his Brawn rating, he no longer gets a free manuever; okay so far it jibes with what you quoted, but the next sentence is the important one (emphasis mine): "The character can still perform up to two maneuvers, but each maneuver costs two strain."

Ok yeah I'm right on that. Page 200 of the core says:

"A character may perform one free manuever on his turn. He may also perform a second manuever by voluntarily suffering two points of strain."

Now if you stop reading there you'd be right but it goes on to say:

"(Characters may also perform a second manuever through a particularly successful skill check, or by other means listed elsewhere.)"

The important word there is "also" showing an alternative to suffering 2 strain. One of those alternatives is converting an action as shown on page 203 under "exchange an action for a manuever".

Darkbunnylord, while you are reading that correctly, the rules for an encumbered character change it somewhat. On page 152, it states that if a character is encumbered by an amount equal to or greater than his Brawn rating, he no longer gets a free manuever; okay so far it jibes with what you quoted, but the next sentence is the important one (emphasis mine): "The character can still perform up to two maneuvers, but each maneuver costs two strain."

Isn't encumberance in this game broken? In core rulebook it says that character can carry 5+his Brawn, but this character has blaster rifle, which in intself in beyond his limits: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/44/d7/44d744b1-5ba3-4919-9550-04b818cdc53a/ch-1_lores.pdf

Isn't encumberance in this game broken? In core rulebook it says that character can carry 5+his Brawn, but this character has blaster rifle, which in intself in beyond his limits: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/44/d7/44d744b1-5ba3-4919-9550-04b818cdc53a/ch-1_lores.pdf

Blaster Rifles are 4 Encumbrance. You can't hit "too heavy just to carry" with just a gun and 1 Brawn unless you go up into heavier weapons like the Light Repeating Blaster (for the Core at least). But even then, you're entering into the Cumbersome selection of weapons.

Left up to GM I guess-- but no free manuever hurts! I don't know why your PCs are packing that much but action gone makes sense lol

This is why everyone has backpacks and utility belts.

The rules say you get 1 setback for every point above max encumbrance. So if you have a capacity of 10 and carry 15 you would have 5 setback to all agility and strength rolls. You could carry 30 over and in this scenario would have 20 setback. So you will fail at everything at crazy levels hence a max carrimg capacity. Unless you are really lucky and roll well.

Isn't encumberance in this game broken? In core rulebook it says that character can carry 5+his Brawn, but this character has blaster rifle, which in intself in beyond his limits: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/44/d7/44d744b1-5ba3-4919-9550-04b818cdc53a/ch-1_lores.pdf

Like Lathrop alluded to, CH-1's encumbrance threshold is 7 (5+2). A blaster rifle has an encumbrance of 4. His other equipment doesn't have any significant encumbrance, and can be integrated on his chassis or carried loosely somewhere without penalty. He is not over-encumbered at all.

When carrying someone, remember that any gear on them adds to the Enc of the guy/gal you're lifting.

Although likely not in total...if you've actually got the time to count out encumbrance values and figure out if the guy being carried put your PC over one limit or another, it would help to treat most of his gear as "efficiently stowed" or somesuch, so that you're not counting the full encumbrance value of all his gear.

I still haven't figured out how a +5 ENC Backpack a PC is wearing helps them hand-carry an ENC 7 repeater, or wear a 2 ENC jetpack... that's some pocket universe-wormhole physics there.

I still haven't figured out how a +5 ENC Backpack a PC is wearing helps them hand-carry an ENC 7 repeater, or wear a 2 ENC jetpack... that's some pocket universe-wormhole physics there.

Attachments on the side of the pack to take the load of the gun and distribute it better on your body. Jetpack + backpack... depends on how you envision the pack. Maybe the backpack isn't that big or isn't really a backpack, but just a pack of some sort, like the jetpack attaches to the same frame that the pouches are attached to.

It just helps simplify character maintenance. It doesn't improve the game any if you have to keep track of where all of your equipment is stored and count encumbrance differently depending on where it is (pack, belt, hand, whatever). Most characters would be carrying around a lot more than their big gun, so you can just assume that all of the appropriate items are in the pack, or any other abstract reasoning like Kallabecca suggested. If you get into a situation where your packs are acting more like magical mass reducers (that is, you just have your heavy gun that you always carry and only a stimpack or two would be stored), then just don't wear a pack, or just use a utility belt.

I understand that most of this game has a narrative focus, so it is simple enough to just let the GM handle it with a bit of common sense, but I believe the rules already have a basis to cover this:

Pg 152 lays out the rules for Encumbrance, the basics of which have essentially already been covered in this thread.

The part that I think was overlooked was the "Lifting and Carrying Excessive Encumbrance" section. This section is written with a perspective of lifting items that are over your threshold by themselves (lifting an encumbrance 10 rock when your encumbrance theshold is 7, for instance) and basically simply states that you must make an Athletics check. The relevant sentence is "The difficulty is Simple if the object's Encumbrance value is less than or equal to the character's encumbrance threshold." This means that 9.9999 times out of you won't need to make the Athletics check, because it would be a simple check which the GM would just give you an auto-success on.

So, to take from above, if you have a Brawn of 1, and therefore an Encumbrance Threshold of 6, and you pick up an Encumbrance 4 Blaster Rifle, you wouldn't really need to worry, as it would be a Simple (no difficulty dice) check.

However, Pg 17 covers Difficulty levels of checks, and has these relevant sentences for Simple checks: "If circumstances make the outcome uncertain, then a simple task may require a roll. This is generally only the case if one or more Setback dice are introduced, such as Setback dice added from injuries, the environment, or opposition."

Since we know that being encumbered is adding setback dice to all Brawn and Agility checks, and Athletics is a Brawn skill, the rules support forcing the character to make an Athletics check to pickup/carry things that are even under their Threshold, at Simple difficulty, to represent how even though it normally wouldn't be hard to carry, this situation is making it harder than normal.

To continue from above:

The character is carrying 23 encumbrance, which is over their 15 encoumbrance threshold. This results in 8 setback dice to all Brawn and Agility checks.

The character is carrying a person of encumbrance value 6, which is under their encumbrance threshold, so a simple difficulty Athletics check could be called for.

Normally the GM would not even ask for the check, as it wouldn't add anything to the game. In this case, however, with 8 setback dice in play, the GM can aks the player to roll. Assuming the character has say, 1 rank in Athletics, their dice pool would be 2 Ability and 1 Proficiency (3 Brawn + 1 Athletics) + 8 Setback and 0 Difficulty (Encumbrance and Simple Difficulty). The Character still has a decent chance at success, but there is also a real chance of failure, and pretty decent chance the outcome will be success with threat. So, can the character do it? Sure, but not necessarily easily or without consequences.

Finally, as to some of the comments on how there is no upper limit on what you can lift, maybe I'm reading the book wrong, but same section on lifting and carrying on Pg 152 seems to cover it. Same check as I talk about before, but now we're extending to lifting things over your threshold: "Add 1 to the difficulty for every point over, up to a maximum additional encumbrance of 4 and difficulty of Daunting."

I read that as stating you can not lift items that have an encumbrance value of your threshold +5 or greater, as it states maximum additional encumbrance of 4. So if your threshold is 7, the max single encumbrance value you can lift is 11, and that is with a Daunting Athletics check. You can still carry like 6x encumbrance value 2 items, for a total encumbrance of 12, putting you at 5 over your threshold, but you couldn't lift a single 1x item of encumbrance value 12 - it is simply too much too handle.