I am new to the game starting a character off and was wanting to add an underbarrel flamer to my weapon which adds cumbersome +1, the weapon itself has an encumbrance of 3. So would that make it a 4 encumbrance? Or 3 enc +1 cumb?

"Cumbersome" is an item quality that dictates how high your Brawn has to be to wield the weapon without penalty. So "Cumbersome +1" means your weapon will now be one Cumbersome rating higher. (E.g., if your weapon was Cumbersome 2, it's now Cumbersome 3.) It doesn't affect the encumbrance of the weapon at all.

Interesting question, though: What happens when you add +1 Cumbersome to a weapon that doesn't have the Cumbersome quality? Does it mean the weapon now has "Cumbersome 1"? That would be a relatively pointless quality, since you can't have a Brawn lower than 1 unless you're a potted plant, maybe. So would it give the weapon Cumbersome 2, meaning that all weapons have an understood Cumbersome 1 rating by default?

2 hours ago, SavageBob said:

Interesting question, though: What happens when you add +1 Cumbersome to a weapon that doesn't have the Cumbersome quality? Does it mean the weapon now has "Cumbersome 1"? That would be a relatively pointless quality, since you can't have a Brawn lower than 1 unless you're a potted plant, maybe. So would it give the weapon Cumbersome 2, meaning that all weapons have an understood Cumbersome 1 rating by default?

No, but you could probably houserule something like that.

2 hours ago, SavageBob said:

Interesting question, though: What happens when you add +1 Cumbersome to a weapon that doesn't have the Cumbersome quality? Does it mean the weapon now has "Cumbersome 1"? That would be a relatively pointless quality, since you can't have a Brawn lower than 1 unless you're a potted plant, maybe. So would it give the weapon Cumbersome 2, meaning that all weapons have an understood Cumbersome 1 rating by default?

Honestly, this was my assumption. But since I'm AFB, I didn't want to bring it up without being able to look at the books first.

No, just like encumbrance values, cumbersome is culmitive. So if using/ carrying another item or piece of gear with a cumbersome rating the total sum of the cumbersome is what the character needs to be able to handle.

I.e. if you add that to a flamethrower to a rifle(+1 cumbersome), but the character is carrying something else with a cumbersome rating of 1, then the total cumbersome value for the character is 2.

2 hours ago, CaptainRaspberry said:

Honestly, this was my assumption. But since I'm AFB, I didn't want to bring it up without being able to look at the books first.

You'll see a lot of forward-looking rules like this in the books. A rule that, normally makes little sense, but works when coupled with another book (or not, in the case where something changed).

The Under Barrel Flame projector, when mounted on a normal everyday blaster rifle, gives it a Cumbersome 1 rating... which as Bob points out, isn't going to matter to anyone except perhaps an immobilized Revwien.

But... the flamer can be mounted onto any rifle-sized weapon, and there's a lot of those, including a number of which have a Cumbersome rating already.

3 minutes ago, Randy G said:

No, just like encumbrance values, cumbersome is culmitive. So if using/ carrying another item or piece of gear with a cumbersome rating the total sum of the cumbersome is what the character needs to be able to handle.

I.e. if you add that to a flamethrower to a rifle(+1 cumbersome), but the character is carrying something else with a cumbersome rating of 1, then the total cumbersome value for the character is 2.

I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure they clarified that Cumbersome is not cumulative. The catalyst being the Ryyk Blades in DC, which have a Cumbersome of 3, meaning you couldn't dual wield a pair without penalty unless you had a Brawn of 6...

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

You'll I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure they clarified that Cumbersome is not cumulative. The catalyst being the Ryyk Blades in DC, which have a Cumbersome of 3, meaning you couldn't dual wield a pair without penalty unless you had a Brawn of 6...

Ok, I missed that. Took me a while to find that answer. Not culmitive, but each item individually carries a penalty should they have a cumbersome over the character's Brawn. And those penalties do stack.

So if a character with brawn 2 were to TWC the Ryyk blades, 1 difficulty increase for each blade plus the difficulty increase for dual- welding. Ouch!

You are all super helpful thank you