Encumberance and Movement


Rules Questions


I'm not sure how Medium armor and Medium load affect movement of a character whose movement speed is 30 feet.

Carrying Capacity paragraph on p.169 states:
When wearing armor, use the worst figure (from armor or from load) for each category.

But the thing is - medium armor sets your speed at 20 feet and medium load sets your speed at 15 (if base is 20), so I'm not sure that qualifies as a penalty.

The question is, whether the character with medium armor and in medium load is 20 or 15 feet?

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

20ft.

Medium load and medium armour are equivalents. The encumberance rule is to make sure that the rogue is moving slowly when he's trying to carry out the entire royal treasury on his back (unless he's a dwarf, obviously).

So you really have three categoeis of movement: Light, Medium and Heavy. If either your armour or your load is in a heavier category, you use that category, so a Medium load will slow down a Light armoured character, but won't affect Medium and Heavy armoured characters as they're already slowed (Fighters provide an exception to this with their Armour Training benefit, but we're talking about the general case).

Scarab Sages

+1

Think of the encumbrance rules like the bonus modifier rules: they overlap instead of stack, and the creature takes the worst of the two.

One reason why I like using a computerized tool in-game is to track the PC's Strength score! Nothing is more fun than a PC losing 5 points of Strength and then when they go to move across the room telling them that they're under a Heavy load now and will have to shrug out of their backpack and leave it behind if they want to move! And it's particularly fun when they're backpack is a haversack and only weighs 5 pounds -- what they really need to drop is the stuff not in the bag. ;)

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