Do items/effects that increase the amount you can carry (such as the Gauntlets of Ogre Power) effect what encumbrance level you are at (i.e. letting a fighter move at full speed in plate), or just your maximum carry capacity?
High strength only affects the maximum carry capacity so I would assume that the same is true for the gauntlets.
Strength in ACKS affects the maximum capacity (p. 48, second to last paragraph). Gauntlets of ogre power allow the character “to transport an extra 10 stone.” Since it doesn’t say, “…without encumbrance”, I would assume that is just to the maximum. Giant strength doesn’t say anything, but I would probably double all carry capacities for that one.
ACKS errs on the heroic farmer side of encumbrance, so the lack of any measurable difference between characters isn’t really that big a deal. (It is a bit amusing that 23 stone is almost exactly the weight of the half-strength shield carry.)
Thomas's answer is, of course, correct.
Thomas, I didn't understand what you meant by "heroic farmer" encumbrance and "amost exactly the weight of the half-strength shield carry".
Heroic Farmer: You could also call it hardened soldier. Anything that lets an academic student of arcane forces haul 5 stone for an hour, take a ten minute break, and then be right back at it again. I grew up around farmers in East Texas, so when I think about the people who can do that, those are the sinewy, gritty, tough bastards I think of. ACKS pretty much assumes everyone can do that. It’s no mean feat.
Shield Carry: I think it’s usually called Farmer’s Walk, now. The Hussafel Stone in Iceland was an event in the World’s Strongest Man competition back in the early 90s—200 feet with a 341-pound (34-stone) rock—and got enough press that similar competitions rose up.
The “half-strength” stone (Hálfsterkur) was 228 lbs, or almost exactly 23 stone, which is the maximum an ACKS character can haul.
That’s what I was figuring, though I was hoping I was wrong. I’m a bit too used to Pathfinder/3.5 letting characters carry the entire phb equipment section and 3 splat-books worth of gear.
I almost wished STR modified each category. For example, if you have a +1 modifier, you can carry up to 6 stone before dropping to 90/30 (instead of the normal 5 stone) and up to 8 stone before dropping to 60/20 and up to 11 stone before dropping to 30/10.
I was talking about a magic item that grants OGRE STRENGTH using MAGIC, so I thought there might be an exception.
I house ruled my campaign so that it works like this.
The only thing that reaching your encumbrance threshold does is reduce your movement rate. So allowing the STR adjustment to increase each threshold is to allow you to run faster, primarily run faster in armor.
If, e.g, an 18 STR gives you a +3 to carrying capacity at every level, then a fighter can wear plate armor and move 120' per round pretty easily. Since I wanted fighters to move slower in heavy armor than thieves in light armor, I explicitly didn't allow STR to adjust encumbrance. This makes magical armor (which doesn't penalize encumbrance) a very prized commodity.
If you allow STR to adjust encumbrance, you can very rapidly find yourself in a situation where strong characters move faster than high dex characters...
Right, strength should affect how encumbered you can become, that should always remain the same.
Not to mention, personally, the encumbrance rules as is are right where I like them, complexity-wise, which is nice and easy. Making everyone different just makes it more clumsy, IMO.
Erm, that’s what I meant to write…