Encumbrance and armour

[Koval]

I'm in the process of porting my character profiles over onto V2 economy sheets, and being as I had to look up whether Knockback was one tenth or one fifth of a character's Strength in the back of the LRB, I found myself on the same page as the Encumbrance rules.

So I thought "okay, what weighs what" and took a look.

I then noticed that each point of armour weighs 5, apparently without any consideration given to things like full suits, mixed armour across locations, or the fact that some characters wear armour as part of their job description. Reading the rules as they were written gives us the following scenario.

Using my Imperial Guard character, Trooper Kass, as an example (purely because his armour is the same everywhere), the 3 points of flak armour he has on every location would therefore clock up 120 points of weight (8 locations, with AV 3, multiplied by 5). Kass has Strength 56, so he's fourteen points over. I naturally find it a bit bizarre that Kass is so seriously over his Encumbrance just from putting on standard Guard issue flak armour, but that's apparently how the rules were written.

Kass has a plasma gun as well, so I can understand that weighing him down, but even losing most of his gear, I'm apparently looking at a character that's already on -2 Speed just from adding a laspistol going by how the rules are written. Fully equipped (which amounts to his plasma gun, his laspistol, a knife, and spare ammunition for his guns), Kass is extremely lucky that you can't go lower than Speed 1, because otherwise he'd probably be on Speed -1 or -2.

"But does he need those things?"
I won't go into too many details right now, but in short, yes -- he's Guard, hence the armour, and the Inquisitor that drafted him into a cell did so precisely because he distinguished himself by, err, missing with his plasma gun. Basically, Trooper Kass wouldn't be Trooper Kass without both of those things.

So how do we get around this strange scenario where standard flak armour weighs more than a lascannon?

[Holiad]

Basically, ignore the encumbrance section, which as you have just demonsatrated is very poorly written, to the point of not being practical to use in a game. Remember that flak armour is the lightest available-carapace is pretty much unwearable. Also, only weapons and armour have weight values, leaving a vast array of equipment uncovered.  At the very least, I would disregard the armour values and treat the rest more as a general guideline of how much equipment a character can carry than a hard and fast rule-its generally pretty easy to spot if a character is overequipped.

[Quickdraw McGraw]

Honestly, the weight 5 per 1 level of armor is total rubbish!  I've been using the S+T/50 for the weight.  This seem more accurate to me.  But it's still not perfect.  I personally believe armor should follow a quality factor too.  I mean just because armor is light doesn't mean it's not bulky. Or just because it's carapace doesn't mean it has to be unwearable.

A great example of this is from Deadliest warrior 3rd season when they pitted Joan of Arc vs. William the Conqueror.  I don't of course believe everything here but I found it very interesting that they measured (with computers) the movement ranges of the historical actors wearing William's mesh armor (conclusion- cumbersome) and Joan's carapace (which offered far superior movement, protection and she was 2/3rds his weight).
     
Common day bullet-proof vest are 15-30 lbs ( the later includes ceramic plates and may protect the groin to) depending on the quality and areas protected.  There is even a new armor in it's experimental phase that uses Kevlar soaked with a Shear-thickening fluid.  This liquid body armor has as much stopping power as 14 layers of Kevlar with only 4 layers.  It generally takes 20-40 layers to stop a bullet.  That's means this new armor can be made with roughly about 10 layers of the STF stuff. That's got to be much lighter!   

josh

[MarcoSkoll]

As Holiad says, I find the encumbrance rules are mostly ignored.

But if you want to use them...

...I posted this about two years back:

- Weight per point of armour is normally ((Strength + Toughness) / 50). Why this? Well, bigger people are going to need bigger armour, and a sliding cost stops you completely pricing out weaker characters on reasonable armour. Don't round the weight value off until after multiplying it up for the total.
- Reloads are normally one fifth of the weapon's weight.
- Close combat weapons weigh their maximum damage, not including things like force weapon bonuses (seeing what RobSkib said, this is clearly a fairly popular way to work out the weight).
- Most assorted odds and ends, unless obviously more or less, are 5 Wt.
- The weight of bionics (and any "natural armour" on them) is ignored, but they offer no S bonus for Encumbrance.

Basic encumbrance is twice strength. Go over that, and I'll take a yard off your sprinting speed for every 20 points or part of 20 points.
Heavy encumbrance is three times strength. Every point over that is applied as an Initiative penalty (although not normally to awareness tests) as it slows you, your reactions and generally gets in the way. You also lose half that (rounding up) in WS.

However, while it has its virtues, I think these days I'd swap the (S+T)/50 per AV per location equation for something approximating Dark Heresy's quality rules:

3 points for "poor" armour.
2 points for "common" armour.
1.5 points for "good" armour.
1 points for "best" armour.

That maths does make a flak vest (chest + abdomen) about the same as a handgun. Obviously, a modern flak vest is heavier than a handgun, but the armour in the Imperium benefits from unobtanium such as Armaplas and Plasteel - canonically, it's considerably lighter than any modern armour. Also bearing in mind that armour is fairly low profile and designed to fit the body, spreading the weight - it probably will encumber less than an equivalent weight of weapons.

This puts a guardsman's basic kit at a little over their basic Encumbrance:
~50 for common armour
~30 for lasgun
~15 for sidearm
~5 for bayonet
~10 for a grenade or two
~20 for some reloads
A few odds and ends...
And the backpack can get dumped in an actual fight (which seems accurate enough, based on the models).

For a total of a bit over 120. As I'd consider an average-ish in-service guardsman to be about S55, that about works, putting them a bit over basic Enc - probably taking their sprint speed back to 8 or 9 yards.

I may review the whole thing at some point, but the basic/heavy encumbrance is always an idea I liked, so I'm posting it anyway.

[Koval]

Consensus seems to be "treat the Encumbrance rules in the LRB as garbage" so that's what I will do.

Marco, I'll give your system a better look once I'm home from work.

[Kaludram]

My two cents:

Having worn the US Army's combat tactical body armor (helmet and all) I can say these things about "standard issue" modern armor:

-On first wear or untrained it is definitely bulky and "encumbering" so to speak
-Once you train with it, a Soldier can easily move well and fight unencumbered
-Walking is easy.  Running is difficult.  Everything in between is challenging but doable.
-A well-trained Soldier know how to use the form fit of body armor to make his auxiliary gear (commo, ammo, first aid, etc) less cumbersome by distributing the weight on his body armor which is already designed to distribute the weight of itself and any attached gear over the entire torso.

So here is what I would assert as applicability:

-For an "untrained" individual, I would absolutely use the LRB encumbrance rules.  I would apply them wholeheartedly and ruthlessly to any character who wouldn't be reasonably expected to have received formal training on the use of a specific type of armor.  This cuts down on munchkinism.  If a player can demonstrate why his character would be "trained," I'm willing to hear it out, but gangers with carapace armor or mutants with full-body flak are pretty rare.  There's a reason why the Imperial Guard issues full flak to their Soldiers: it's a good balance between cost-effective and combat-effective.
-For trained individuals, not only do I reduce the encumbrance contribution of realistic armor, I would reduce the applicable weight of other realistic equipment distributed on the armor except when computing running and sprinting scores--because these types of movements are encumbered by total weight regardless of distribution.
-The GM is always right.

[Cortez]

Wearing Carapace armour in Necromunda reduced your initiative to 1 I think so I'd agree with the untrained having a higher penalty than the trained (add to that the fact that the armour probably isn't tailored for them as it would be for an inquisitor or suchlike). However they would still get used to the armour fairly quickly especially if you wear it all the time.

[MarcoSkoll]

Training is a fair point - but seeing as it's assumed that Inquisitor characters are trained (or at least sufficiently experienced) in using their weapons, I think the same reasonably applies to armour.
A ganger might not have formal training, but even if he's got hive sludge for brains, he'll probably work out the bigger kinks pretty quickly. After all, all that armour training that instructors might be passing on had to be worked out by someone at some point.

But I guess if you want to take into account training, it can be fitted in pretty easily to what I posted - double the Enc of armour the user hasn't been trained in.

[Koval]

Training is a fair point - but seeing as it's assumed that Inquisitor characters are trained (or at least sufficiently experienced) in using their weapons, I think the same reasonably applies to armour.
A ganger might not have formal training, but even if he's got hive sludge for brains, he'll probably work out the bigger kinks pretty quickly. After all, all that armour training that instructors might be passing on had to be worked out by someone at some point.

But I guess if you want to take into account training, it can be fitted in pretty easily to what I posted - double the Enc of armour the user hasn't been trained in.

Basically, this. On such a note I prefer the (S+T)/50 version as it's just simpler than faffing around with armour qualities (which could be represented quite easily by "+1 to Encumbrance per point of armour" or a fixed modifier).

My two cents:

Going back to Trooper Kass since he's the example character in my OP, he's an ex-Guardsman* so he knows the ins and outs of his armour and his plasma gun** quite well, even if neither piece of kit is the same as what he was initially issued***. I'd say his time in the PDF before being fed upwards into a Guard regiment gives him a good enough alibi.

So rather than being barely able to do anything, Kass now sprints only eight yards per action under Marco's revision -- which makes perfect sense as he's neither especially strong nor especially tough (his Strength is one point over his plasma gun's Encumbrance rating, for example), but should still be able to actually do things.


*I imagine that being collared by an Inquisitor and inducted into an acolyte cell is one of very few legitimate reasons for why you can be an ex-Guardsman, up there with "your unit was given custodianship of this planet" and "you died".
**To pre-empt the question of why he has a plasma gun while being functionally a private or lance corporal, "pass", although he's hardly green if he made it into the Guard.
***He's formerly of the Elysian Drop Troops, but his original plasma gun broke and his armour's since been replaced as well -- hence why his 28mm model bears no resemblance to an Elysian Drop Trooper...

[MarcoSkoll]

I imagine that being collared by an Inquisitor and inducted into an acolyte cell is one of very few legitimate reasons for why you can be an ex-Guardsman, up there with "your unit was given custodianship of this planet" and "you died".

As dystopian as the Imperium is, I've never really favoured the idea that the Guard is until death.

I tend to prefer the idea that Guard regiments tend to be dissolved at the end of a campaign or if they've suffered enough casualties and the generals aren't desperate enough to merge them into another regiment - which is something of a desperation measure, as different training, equipment, dialect, regimental organisation, rank structure, etc would make this a total mess.

When dissolved, the remaining troops get sent home and may mostly retire, although will likely get mixed into reserve forces like the PDF, become Drill Abbots* or get roped into some other role in the name of He-on-Terra. They might be ex-guardsmen, but their service to the Emperor is obviously not over...
*This, I think, is a good canonical source that Guardsmen can retire - Drill Abbots are mainly ex-guardsmen.

I'd add that some individuals might also be discharged for being injured but not useful enough to be worth the bionics to get them back up to a functional fighting condition.

[Koval]

I was being flippant with the "you died" option.

[Gilleon]

I will probably irritate Marco no end by mentioning this... in the Abnett short story "Missing in action", Eisenhorn encounters retired Guardsmen on Sameter who were returned to their homeworld a little worse for wear. So canonically guard can retire.

With regard to the encumberance discussion, I agree that training has the largest affect on how a character handles encumbrance, so i use background justification along with a certain amount of common sense.

[Koval]

So canonically guard can retire.

Oh, I know (Christian Dunn's audiodrama Malediction has a retired Guardsman as one of the main characters, and then we have various regiments who colonise worlds, and the Brimlock in Imperial Glory who are a combination of the above and "we just want to go home"); it's just that the "ex-Guardsman" thing tends to raise eyebrows when Kass left the Guard at 23.

We're getting a bit off-topic, though. :X

[Dolnikan]

As for retirement, I've always seen it as something that would only be done when there is too little left of a regiment to keep them on as a viable fighting unit. Or of course when they are no longer needed. They would of course not be shipped anywhere, shipping is a resource that can be spent in a much better way. They will probably be left on whatever planet their last mission was, so don't get send to an especially unpleasant place as a guardsman.

About encumbrance, we usually play without it, mostly because it indeed makes no sense. On occasion we have given characers a movement penalty when they were really carrying too much stuff, mostly when they were carrying something they picked up. We assume that a reasonable character would not carry enough to really slow him or her down significantly.