Would you prefer to have your hands full of stuff ?

The thing is, if it doesn't provide any real bonus whatsoever, why make it an item? At that point it might as well just be something you roleplay.

Without a backpack I definitely would ask how my players carry their stuff ifvit is too much.

But what's the point of tracking the backpack mechanically? It doesn't provide any mechanical bonus, and it's a common enough thing that you can easily just roleplay it without rolling for an acquisition. I don't see the point.

In general, rolling for common things often makes not much sense.

Maybe it makes sense to give larger bonus than +30 on such things, which indirectly might lead to auto-successes, like +40 or even +50

This is one area where I thought D&D handled very well. Build a chart based upon a strength range.

Example 1:

An arbite with a toughness of 45 is carrying 50kg without being slowed. He chases a criminal into a debris ridden part of town making his terrain difficult. The criminal carrying nothing tears off into the debris traveling as fast as he can. A second arbite arrives to help the first but he has has a toughness of 60 and is also carrying a heavy load of equipment (50kg) The first arbite travels at top speed but fatigues out and decides to rest. The second arbite on the other hand it much "tougher" and is able to push on harder and farther than his first companion.

The same could be said for force marching.

Example 2:

An arbite with a strength of 45 lifts a drop down door weighing enough to be considered his max lift. He also has a toughness of 45 and can only hold the door open for a few seconds. His companion whom has a strength of 45 also attempts to lift the door but his toughness is a 60 and therefore can hold the door open for 6 seconds due to his ability to resist fatigue and the pain from the max weight on his muscles.

The numbers are just for example but those with higher toughness scores should be able to perform strenuous activity for longer periods of time than those with lower scores.

I'm fine with strength being the only driver - as said, Toughness already lets you cope with fatigue from over-exerting yourself, and as your personal damage reduction it's an important enough stat anyway.

By comparison, aside from chainsword-wielding nutters, there's virtually no reason to want to up your strength score aside from carrying capacity. The aim of the rules should always be to avoid an obvious 'dump stat'.

I'd agree that the item weights are probably the thing that most needs looking at. I can believe 1Kg each for astertes grenades; in Brotherhood of the Snake we see a normal human given one and trying to throw it would have looked more like shot putting than bowling. For a 'normal' grenade, 1/2 Kg at most would be fine.

Equally, robes could still be argued to be 'fairly thick clothing' at half their current weight.

Might be worth having a quick parse through the book to see any other weights people think are out of whack.

The medicae kit is another possibility - depending on how comprehensive you think it's going to be. Taking contemporary examples (st john's ambulance first aid kits), the heaviest (supposed to be designed to include heavy trauma and major bleeding) is 2.5 Kg. A military combat casualty response kit is about 2Kg.

That an acolyte whose primary function is not be that of a doctor to be wandering around with a 3Kg bag of medicae supplies by default is not something to be ignored when talking about carrying capacity.

And....cut out the medicae kit, halve the weight of the robes to get normal-ish clothing not may-as-well-be-body-armour and you save 5 Kg - or, to put that into perspective, half the man's load. Which is a far more realistic load for a civilian to be wandering around with on a day-to-day basis.

Just looking through the list of general weapons and wargear:

Lasgun/autogun: weight is about right loaded at 4 Kg. Personally I would explicitely say a full solid round clip or a charge pack weights 0.5 Kg, just for reference.

Pistols: Something berretta-ish is more like 1 Kg than 2. The autopistol is more UZ1/MAC-10/MP5 than 'pistol', and the handcannon should be big, but laspistols and stub revolvers should be lighter.

Shotgun: a pump-action shotgun is 3-4 Kg depending on if it's loaded. 5Kg is a bit much.

Sniper Rifle: If it's essentially meant to be a barratt this is about right at 12Kg.

Heavy Stubber/Autocannon: Depends on what you see these as being. as an M60 and M2 respectively, weights are pretty good at 30Kg/40Kg

Grenades: 0.5 Kg, see above

Sword: I've used 'normal' longswords in historical re-enactments. Seriously, 3 Kg is about right for a bloody claymore . I don't know what this thing is meant to be.

Keep in mind that the used materials not necessarily need to be like the ones used today.

I lot of technology and knowledge got lost through the dark millenia.

It could even be heretical now to use light materials for guns, weakening the omnissiahs blessed instruments !

Low end's too low, high end's too high.

The average human with 25 strength is encumbered at 10kg [22lbs] and his maximum lift/push is 44lbs. They gave that bonus to the IG background because the soldiers under this curve would not only be encumbered, but outright crumple under their own weight from the kit.

At the same time, a 'heavy' with IG background and Sb 44 can lug around 120kg before even feeling it.

0 4kg

1 8kg

2 16kg

3 24kg

4 32kg

5 48kg

6 72kg

7 150kg

8 300kg

9 600kg

10 1200kg

This means an Sb 2 Guardsman background can lug 48kg before penalties; probably pretty appropriate for the higher end of humanity [which they are, compared to PDF].

Flak: 12kg

Knife: 1kg

2 Frags, 1 Smoke: 3kg

Lasgun, with a couple of spare charge packs: 4kg + ammo, +2kg for a melee upgrade - most lasguns can bayonet after all

Backpack is somehow 0kg, while combat vest is 2kg

Clothing is 2kg

Ration packs have no listed weight but are probably 1kg each... we can probably just round off your basic kit to the 15kg being held in your combat vest and all.

We'd be looking at around 39kg for a basic lasgun user, but if equally loaded out a plasmagun wielder in the team could still be encumbered, so he'll need to travel light.

Could be ok in that way

That looks a lot better than the current table to me. Low-Str chars are still have to consider what to carry but have a little breathing room.

From 7 onwards it still scales too fast though.

Let it rather be:

7: 100kg

8: 150kg

9: 250kg

10: 400kg

11: 650kg

12: 1000kg

--> the table should be enhanced to 12 steps, as this could be needed for a maxed out IG:

Starting stat 45+10*5 = 95 --> 2 steps higher due to IG --> 11

If he gets any other bonus on top, having 12 steps is save.

Also, regarding the robes, of course they're heavy! Look at that armour rating! Joking aside, though, I think that the robes with their current armor value should be fairly heavy and are meant to represent any kind of armoured clothing. I imagine normal clothes would weigh significantly less and have no armour value. Maybe to differentiate it would help to call them "combat robes" or something similar.

Shield robes would be the most canon fitting thing to label them with.

For the extended table: rather than Sb, Sb + half Tb instead of full, could help fix things up again?

I am against including toughness - it is already an too important stat.

From a balance point of view, strength is a good choice and not too odd.

From 7 onwards it still scales too fast though.

Let it rather be:

7: 100kg

8: 150kg

9: 250kg

10: 400kg

11: 650kg

12: 1000kg

--> the table should be enhanced to 12 steps, as this could be needed for a maxed out IG:

Starting stat 45+10*5 = 95 --> 2 steps higher due to IG --> 11

If he gets any other bonus on top, having 12 steps is save.

Concur. I like the idea of the table topping out at a metric tonne. This isn't, after all, a strongman competition, this is standard carrying capacity. Even for someone augmetic-ed up, casually sauntering around with more than a tonne of wargear slung about your person strains credibility a bit...

I don't know that I disagree, but keep in mind that with a Sb of 12 we could reasonably assume we are dealing with a Space Marine in TDA levels of strength. Should they be sauntering around with a metric tonne of wargear? Probably.

Anytime you get that far along the attributes you are presumably off into the somewhat fantastic "goes to 11" end of 40k. It's not that I find more than a tonne or even one tonne realistic so much as I hesitate to hold a fundamentally over the top setting to realism, especially when discussing bizarre extremes like Sb 12.

In fairness, I'm of the "why worry about carrying capacity school." What about just having a system which worries about large bulk items - you have X slots for large items dependent upon your Strength bonus. An item's number of X slots could be a function of weight and bulk. It might still allow for players to carry 800 tiny, heavy items but at that point you're dealing with a social issue (someone trying to game the system) rather than a mechanics issue.

In fairness, I'm of the "why worry about carrying capacity school." What about just having a system which worries about large bulk items - you have X slots for large items dependent upon your Strength bonus. An item's number of X slots could be a function of weight and bulk. It might still allow for players to carry 800 tiny, heavy items but at that point you're dealing with a social issue (someone trying to game the system) rather than a mechanics issue.

I tried using carrying capacity in my last game, after never having used it (in any game system) before. I was pleasantly surprised.

All of a sudden, my players are much more invested in their gear. They make sacrifices some places (Guard Flak is no longer the default armour in the group - something that wouldn't happen with a "slot system") and try to optimise. Before that, they were always tempted to carry an arsenal that they could realistically fit on their body, but would be comical to look at.

Weird scaling aside, I really, really like these rules. They're not as convoluted in practice as they first appear and they enforce some very meaningful choices.

Hmm... Now I want to track carrying capacities. You bastard! :-)

I have the same experience - it makes players think much more about what is important and they have to think more about whats needed in the mission.

They also try to combine their efforts better as a team - if one carries a medpack, two others dont have to carry one either.

I likewise have found that tracking it closely is less hassle than expected and results in players caring more about their gear and making interesting choices. I would actually recommend it.

I think if you find tracking it abhorrent, you could try making little equipment cards listing the item on one side and weight on another. Then when someone picks something up you can physically hand it to them. Gives a tactile feel and it's also fun to literally pull out your Bolter (you can write weapon and item stats on these too! Storing them is probably as simple as a little note card case with some divider inserts.

Tracking doesn't have to be too tedious. Check it once in a while, or if there's a massive change to their gear.

You don't really need to worry about a single extra grenade so readily that you have to watch it like a hawk, even if they were at the limit where it would tip half of them into encumbered. If they've been running around like this all day, you could say they're semi-acclimated, at least until the next big change or audit.

Stuff like swapping out your hellgun for a plasmagun, or getting a heavy weapon, that's just blatantly obvious. If you know he's got somewhere around 30kg of stuff, and picks up another 30kg, everyone can see the scribe's about to have a back problem.

If it turns out he was a bit over the limit, have the encumbrance penalty stick around even once lighter for the session - he forced it for a couple of days and now his body's rebelling.

If you do find out that your occasionals have resulted in people purposefully going several kg over the limit figuring they'll toss the consumables before you check again? Punishment time. They've developped a bad back - carrying capacity down by one Sb equivalence, you'll check more often, and they're probably gonna need addictive painkillers to avoid a level of permanent fatigue.