Encumbrance

To improve realism in combat so that folks are not running around in plate-mail firing a bow from horseback with ease a system for setting up encumbrance has been added. This is a dynamically scaling penalty to certain skills based upon how weighed down your character is restricting his freedom of movement. The option itself is on by default, but may be turned off by visiting the Mod Options page and unchecking the "Enable Encumbrance Penalties" checkbox.

In order to determine one's encumbrance the sum total of all equipment, including weapons in all four slots, is tallied. This does not include any items in the character's inventory beyond what shows in the equipment section of the inventory interface. This also does not include the character's mount. This total weight value will be referred to below as WEIGHT.

Next the character's Strength and Agility attributes are acquired and reduced in half. The remaining value for each is the bonus applied towards ignoring encumbrance for specific skills. Below I will refer to these as STR and AGI.

It should be noted that the final penalty is always rounded down to a whole number and will never reduce a skill to a negative value.

$$Weight Penalty = -(WEIGHT - STR -15)%$$

In addition moving around in heavier armor slows you down a little bit. Using the above formula, a weight of 35 and a strength value of 20 would yield a -0% with no other beneficial factors in play. This penalty is limited between -0 to -25%.

$$Agility Factor = [(AGI - 10)*1]%$$

Increasing your agility attribute above 10 will improve your base movement speed and there is no cap on this effect. This allows a high agility character to overcome speed penalties due to armor weight.

The penalties based on encumbrance may be lessened by the following effects:
 * The Endurance ability lowers overall weight by 1 for every 3 points of Strength.
 * The Indomitable ability improves a troop's strength by a factor of 3 for the purpose of encumbrance.
 * The Nimble ability improves a troop's agility by a factor of 3 for the purpose of encumbrance.
 * The Agile Rider ability negates a troop from suffering penalties to the Riding skill.
 * The Graceful Rider ability negates a troop from suffering penalties to the Horse Archery skill.
 * The Savage Bash ability negates a troop from suffering penalties to the Shield Skill.

Within the Auto-Loot System settings page for each companion is a drop-down menu option labeled "Restrict to:" with the following options; Light Armor, Medium Armor, No Armor Restriction. By setting this option the companion will attempt to restrict themselves from using armor that is heavy enough to move them into gaining encumbrance penalties. A light armor setting should generally avoid any encumbrance issues while a medium setting will incur only minimal encumbrance penalties.