.: Help for encumbrance

Encumbrance is how heavily you are loaded down. It is measured by the
weight of everything you carry, not by how many objects you have. A pack
full of feathers and a pack holding one anvil are not the same burden, even
though the anvil is a single item.

How much you can carry before it tells on you is governed by your
Strength. Like every stat on Gaius, Strength grows through use, so a
carrying limit that pinches today will loosen as you train.

━━━ What It Costs You ━━━

Weight raises the price of everything physical you do. Travelling costs
more stamina. So does every swing you throw, and so does every dodge,
parry, or block you put up to turn a blow aside. Breaking off to flee
costs more too, so a heavy pack is hardest on you at the moment you most
want to be gone. A laden fighter tires faster than a light one doing
exactly the same things.

Acts of will are untouched. Steeling your mind against a spell or standing
firm against a taunt draws on Conviction, and no amount of baggage makes
either of those harder.

━━━ The Shape of the Penalty ━━━

The cost does not wait until you are overloaded. It begins as soon as you
pick anything up, but the climb is gentle across most of the range, so a pack
is barely felt and you should not have to think about it. As you approach
the limit of what you can carry, the price climbs sharply, and the last
stretch before your limit costs far more than the whole comfortable range
below it. Past your limit it stops rising and simply stays punishing.

The practical upshot: carrying a little is close to free, carrying a lot is
close to crippling, and there is no gentle middle ground near the top. Walk
into a fight loaded to your limit and you will feel it in the first few
rounds.

━━━ Reading Your Load ━━━

Your inventory and status both show your current burden as a word rather
than a number: light, moderate, heavy, overburdened, or crushed. You can
also put the {enc} token in your prompt to keep it in front of you at all
times. See help set prompt.

If you are heavier than you want to be, sell or store what you are not
using, or find a backpack or component bag, which lighten what they hold.
Skill helps too: the more practised you are, the less each action takes out
of you, which offsets some of what the weight adds.

See Also:

  help stamina, help inventory, help status, help set prompt