Encumbered stacking with armor penalty?

[Farabor]

So, in PF1 (And 3.5/3.0), you took the worse of the two penalties from your encumbrance and your armor. So far, it seems like in PF2, they combine. Is this the case/supposed to be the case? Is a fighter in full plate who is also encumbered moving at the speed of a snail?

[Fuzzypaws]

It looks like they are cumulative. The encumbrance penalty is actually phrased as increasing your armor check penalty by 2, or giving you a penalty of 2 if you don't currently have an armor check penalty. As such, it seems both rules as written and rules as intended imply that the speed reduction from being encumbered also stacks with that from heavy armor.

I'd be far more okay with this if heavy armor only reduced speed by 5 and encumbrance only reduced speed by 5. This is something that should happen anyway because heavy armor is way too punitive as it currently stands. With both speed penalties sitting at 10, it's brutal.

[Farabor]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

It looks like they are cumulative. The encumbrance penalty is actually phrased as increasing your armor check penalty by 2, or giving you a penalty of 2 if you don't currently have an armor check penalty. As such, it seems both rules as written and rules as intended imply that the speed reduction from being encumbered also stacks with that from heavy armor.

I'd be far more okay with this if heavy armor only reduced speed by 5 and encumbrance only reduced speed by 5. This is something that should happen anyway because heavy armor is way too punitive as it currently stands. With both speed penalties sitting at 10, it's brutal.

Agreed, that's how I read RAW...but yeah, what with full plate being 4 bulk, even a max strength fighter has to be careful with carrying extra stuff to avoid being at a crawl

[Zamfield]

Yeah my elf archer is boggled that a lightweight weapon like a longbow is the same bulk as hide armor. The playtest ideas of encumbrance seem way out of wack from reality. And they certainly don’t enable any of the cool armored characters from fantasy stories I’ve ever read or watched.

[Megistone]

The longbow is probably as tall as your elf. Lightweight? Maybe; surely NOT very easy to carry around.

[Fuzzypaws]

Re the bulk of the armor specifically, note that the listed bulk of armor is only when it's being worn, and the number goes up if it's instead being carted around in a pack.

Maybe it'd be more intuitive if they did it the other way around; list the true bulk of the armor on the table, and have its bulk be halved / reduced by 1 when worn.