Armor burden

[rleduc]

I was looking through the Core Book at armor last night – and saw a column for “Burden”. When I tried to find the actual rules for the Burden element I came up with a blank. I did find the usual encumbrance rules but not burden – does anyone know what I have overlooked?

Thanks

[Shaira]

p261: Burden: This describes the awkwardness or relative encumbrance of the armor. The gamemaster may use this value with the optional fatigue system.

... although to be honest if you want encumbrance rules, I'd definitely go with the ENC system.

Cheers,

Sarah

[rleduc]

Thanks.

I guess I had seen the text on page 261 and expected more. So the burden is just a text description of the armor with no mechanical backend? Is it just left to the GM to interpret?

I always just use the old ENC system and am very happy with it, but I am trying to write something that will be “BRP Cannon” and therefore compatible with all the different options. This has lead me to dig through corners of the rules I normally wouldn’t worry about for my own game.

[Shaira]

I am trying to write something that will be “BRP Cannon” and therefore compatible with all the different options.

It's a very good point. Personally I'm taking the tack of writing to cover the more obvious options, then people can cut out what they don't want (so, provide Fatigue Points, Major Wound Scores, and Hit Locations, plus Attack *and* Parry scores, plus ENC, then folk can take their pick). The other option is to provide the bare minimum, ie cater for none of the optional rules, then allow people to add in the extra bits they want.

In case of encumbrance, I don't think there really *are* any "non-optional" encumbrance rules - apart from the loose statement that you can make an Effort roll if your "heavily-laden" character has just accomplished something significant, to see if they're fatigued or not. I think if you want to include some kind of encumbrance system, a version of the fatigue rules with or without ENC is the way to do it.

Cheers!

Sarah

[frogspawner]

You didn't miss anything - it's not there. I dug through those obscure corners of the rules too, before brewing-up my own Encumbrance/Burden/Fatigue system. Which boiled down to the following (hopefully not too different from the RAW, if you can get past my preference for good old imperial Pounds rather than "ENC things"):

Encumbrance Capacity: SIZ x (STR + 10) / 20 (x14 lbs). Over half Encumbers: Movement, Initiative & Dex-based skills are x1/2.

Armour Burden (Light/Moderate/Heavy) can affect physical (generally DEX-based) skills, movement rate and magic spell-casting.

Light: no skill penalty, -1 Move, +10% Magic fumble. Moderate: Skills x1/2, -2 Move, +20% Magic fumble. Heavy: Skills x 1/10, -3 Move, +30% Magic fumble. Listen/Spot skills are Very Difficult (x1/10) in Full/Great Helm; Lock-picking, Shooting Bows and Playing Instruments are impossible in Gauntlets. Anyone not trained to the burden of armour is automatically Encumbered.

Fatigue Exertion (e.g. combat) for a turn requires a CONx5 roll to avoid Fatigue (Movement, Initiative & all skills x1/2) or if already fatigued Exhaustion (x1/10). Recovery from fatigue requires rest for 1 hour; exhaustion 8 hours.

[rleduc]

Thanks to both of you – your comments were very helpful. I think I will ignore “burden” for any armors that I invent.