Hey all. I wanted to make a Talent that increases an individual's carrying capacity. I am being conservative with the bonus as carrying too much > means selling too much > means too much money for the party. Additionally, I think it should increase the encumbrance bonus of items like a backpack or utility belt, versus a flat bonus. This means that there is an item quality element to consider as well. For example, a well-made leather bag could be used with the bonus, but a hastily made roll of recently skinned hide would not. This was created from a flat bonus I gave a named porter NPC in Realms of Terrinoth to make them feel like they were carrying sufficiently amounts to get paid without making Brawn high enough to question why they weren't fighting in the first place.

• Tier 1: Workhorse
• Ranked: No
• Increase the encumbrance bonus of one bag, belt, or similar carrying item when used by 2. The item must be of average or higher quality to benefit from this.

Alternatively, if that proves to be too broken in practice...

• Tier 1: Workhorse
• Ranked: Yes
• Increase the encumbrance bonus of one bag, belt, or similar carrying item when used by 1. Each additional rank allows Workhorse to affect one additional carrying item. The item must be of average or higher quality to benefit from this.

I would like some feed back on this. Thanks for your time.

As a point of comparison, SotB has a tier 1 talent called Big Guns that changes your encumbrance calculation to 10+Br instead of 5+Br and reduces the Cumbersome rating of all weapons carried by 1 (to a minimum of 3). Unranked.

So a small +2 to one item seems woefully under-performing, IMO.

Good to know. I'm thinking a general talent, so Tier 1 seems a bit busted to me. Everyone takes the 10+Brawn talent and now they no longer have to worry about looting limits. I could see the same bonus, but at a Tier 2 Talent.

If you want to ignore Big Guns, have your talent add +1 or +2 to all capacity items instead of just 1. So a backpack, belt, and messenger bag being carried increases your ET by 6. That sounds good for a non-ranked tier 1 to me.

Sounds solid. Thanks for the input!

6 hours ago, c__beck said:

SotB  has a tier 1 talent called Big Guns...

Tier 2 (SotB 47). To be fair SotB also has several other stacking sources of increased Encumbrance Threshold. So the Talent is hardly a necessity. I get the impression they were trying to trivialize Encumbrance in that setting, at least compared to how relatively harsh they are in the GCRB and RoT.

For example: A Character with the Big Guns talent, and wearing Load-Bearing Gear, a Modular Backpack, and a Utility Belt together increase your Encumbrance Threshold to 20 + Brawn! In addition, an Exosuit and Cyberlimb can increase that a little further (by increasing your Brawn to up to 7).

8 hours ago, HaphazardNinja said:

I wanted    to make a Talent that increases an individual's carrying  capacity. I am being conservative with the bonus...

I suggest a T1 Ranked talent that simply raises your 'Threshold by +2 per rank. If I wanted to restrict it, I would require they be wearing a Backpack (or similar item) to benefit from the talent. However, 75 XP for +10 to your Encumbrance Threshold is more than expensive enough to discourage such a talent from being an "automatic pick".

In my opinion, multiplying the benefits of the Talent by the number of 'containers' worn is a bad idea; because it'll be a nightmare to balance it. The relative value of such a talent is entirely dependant upon how many containers you can equip at once, and how good they are individually. For example: the GCRB and RoT both only include one container (adding +4 Enc), meanwhile while SotB includes several containers (adding up to +10 Enc in total).

I definitely think that any talent should be a straight bonus to your encumbrance threshold, rather than a bonus to containers, as Cantriped pointed out.

+2 Ranked as a tier 1 seems reasonable.

+5 as a tier 2 seems better to me.

The first is something I can see a lot of characters taking one rank of when they have a 3rd, 4th, or 5th tier 1 slot they need to fill, whereas the latter looks like something somebody who cares about encumbrance might take, but most other characters would pass by.