Hello!

Is anyone else having issues with players maxing out their encumbrance threshold with any items they can find? It seems that a character with a backpack, load bearing gear or whatever the military front pack is, a utility belt, then armor attachments is a bit much.

How do you mitigate this? Do you restrict it to one item? Do you start enforcing body location "slots" that can't have more then one item?

What really bugs me is when this stuff is used and the character just has a really big gun. So how exactly does a backpack help you carry a gun?

Same way a backpack helps you carry anything. I think you're mixing encumbrance and cumbersome in how you look at it. Encumbrance is just about hauling stuff, cumbersome is wielding it.

Personally I don't bother with the number crunching and just use common sense. The encumbrance and monetary systems in the game are buggered and I don't bother with them.

Nope I am not mixing them up. The gun in the backpack was just a poorly worded example.

example

Character has an encumbrance of 7

Character has two items with an encumbrance of 4

Character buys a utility belt adding 1 to his encumbrance threshold so he doesn't go over his encumbrance threshold.

How does adding a belt make it easy to carry two heavy items?

It allows you to distribute the weight on your hips, and frees your hands for use. Encumbrance isn't just weight.

8 tennis balls are a pain in the *** to hold, unless you have a shopping bag, or 2 tennis ball cans. They aren't heavy without the bag, but you can't clap or pick your nose properly.

Just treat them exactly as if they looked like Patsy up there.

This is a tabletop RPG, not a computer MMO, so the GM can modify encounters and NPC behavior on the player's looking ridiculous.... and usually should...

Think about it...

• You walk into a lot of places looking like that, they'll make you leave the pack outside; as they don't' want you shoplifting, or knocking anything over.
• In combat? Try running around with a huge pack on. Adding Setbacks, making terrain difficult, or requiring a check to do something is perfectly reasonable.
• Likewise, moving through terrain in general. Need to make a Coordination check to cross something, or as part of some overland movement... yeah, setback.
• They add to your target profile. Wearing a huge pack and trying to be sneaky? Good luck. Walking around town with one? You stick out. Trying to hide with one means hiding behind something a lot bigger.
• And speaking of targets.... You can have some real fun.... Two Triumph and you can destroy a piece of equipment the target has. Might be fun to destroy that pack and have all it's contents go falling out onto the ground.

I mean make no mistake, there's a time and place to walk around with a huge honking frame pack. The sources almost tell you what it is. Running a military campaign? Need to drop outside the AO and take the heel-toe express 5 days in through the bush? Yeah, you'll probably need all that load-bearing gear to carry all the food, water, survival gear, weapons, ammo, and mission equipment needed. And you can hike in, and drop the pack and some of that gear when it's time to start shooting, and pick it up on the way out.

But yeah, if the players are smugglers just walking around... treat them like they should be treated.