Carry Capacity

Carrying capacity determines how much a character’s equipment slows him down. Encumbrance comes in two parts: encumbrance by armor and encumbrance by total weight.

Encumbrance by Weight: While armor that is too heavy for a character may slow them down, if your character carries too much they can also be slowed. The total weight of all the character’s items, including armor, weapons, and gear. Compare this total to the character’s Strength on Table: Carrying Capacity. Depending on the character’s carrying capacity, he or she may be carrying a light, medium, or heavy load. Like armor, a character’s load affects his movement speed, as well as cause him to take additional penalties to attack rolls and strength/dexterity based skill checks.Table: Encumbrance Effects. A medium or heavy load is similar to being 2 or 4 below the strength rating requirement of armor. In addition a character at their heavy load is treated as similar to a character wearing heavy armor, in which they do not receive their dexterity bonus to their AC; similar to armor this is not the same as being denied their dexterity.

Lifting and Dragging: A character can lift as much as his maximum load over his head. A character’s maximum load is the highest amount of weight listed for a character’s Strength in the heavy load column of Table: Carrying Capacity.

A character can lift as much as double his maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).

A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them by half or more.

Bigger and Smaller Creatures: The figures on Table: Carrying Capacity are for Medium bipedal creatures. A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category, as follows: Large ×2, Huge ×4, Gargantuan ×8, Colossal ×16. A smaller creature can carry less weight depending on its size category, as follows: Small ×3/4, Tiny ×1/2, Diminutive ×1/4, Fine ×1/8.

Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads than bipeds can. Multiply the values corresponding to the creature’s Strength score by 2, this value is additive with size multiplifers (example: large creature would be a x3 not double the value twice)

Strength Formulas: If you would like to calculate the carry capacity yourself here is the formula, but its recommended that most players simply refer to the table regarding carrying capacity. This generally makes strength a tiered based system, but tries to demonstrate how monstrously strong something becomes as they continue to stray from the average strength score of 10.

Calculations for Medium Load is always ⅔ of heavy load, and Light Load is ⅓ of heavy load.

If Strength score is less than 11: Strength Score * 10

If Strength score is 11 to 14: (Strength Score * 10) + ((Strength Score - 10) * 5))

If Strength score is 15 to 29: Carry Capacity Heavy Load of Strength Score -5 multiplied by 2. (ie 20 strength is the 10 strength value x 2)

If Strength score is 30 or above:  Carry Capacity Heavy Load of Strength Score -10 multiplied by 4. (ie 30 strength is the 20 strength value x 4).

Table: Carrying Capacity Example Ranges Above 29: Adjustments for Medium and Heavy Load