Shattered Kingdoms

Basically, why does equipment weigh so damn much? I can pick up an average piece of equipment and see that it weighs 8 lbs.

This could be for a pair of gloves.

When was the last time that any of us wore an 8 lb pair of gloves? It gets worse when we're talking about a silk shirt too. Or even something made out of energy or flame which is intangible and shouldn't have weight at all.

Why is every piece of equipment made for Heracles?

The second part of this has to deal with armor and it's types (note that this would probably require a massive overhaul of the way that armor works, just like with weapons years ago).

There's not much incentive for builders to use some materials at all, and the protective value and type of armor that something is is based completely off of material. Armor also works differently on SK then it does on a game such as D&D.

What should constitute something that is heavy armor? When someone thinks of heavy armor they think of a guy who does jousting that wears a full suit of plate armor. Obviously those that wear light armor would have lighter forms of armor that allow more mobility, and finally there are those that are just reduced to wearing armor that is nothing more than clothing.

I would suggest making several different types of armor that provide different amounts of protection for a body part based on the type of armor that they fall under. The different types of armor would provide protection from the various types of damage that can be dealt (slash/pierce/bludgeon, let's face it, bludgeon is way more awesome than bash).

A suit of platemail would protect greatly against piercing and slashing damage, but would leave the wearer vulnerable to bludgeoning attacks, just as an example.

The material would just suggest how durable the piece of armor is. Obviously a suit of platemail made out of tanso steel is going to wear out slower than a suit of platemail made out of steel. But the main protective ability of the armor comes from what it was crafted to be, not the material it is made out of.

Weight means nothing in SK. A strong character can carry what 200 pounds? They can carry this all night and day for hundres of miles and never gain any strength. Can anyone here that can lift 200 pounds carry it and walk for more then 10 miles?

Maybe you should get off of your fat [REDACTED] and exercise.

Are you suggesting that you can lift and carry 200 lbs for 10 miles?

200 lbs is steep for anybody. But that 200 lbs on a character is generally distributed amongst many different things, first being their overweighted equipment that they wear which probably weighs about 100 lbs on it's own. And then you have the contents of their containers, which they may have multiples of. So that's just 100 lbs they carry on their back.

I can't quite recall how much the packs for the military weigh, Salak probably knows, but I don't think it is even that much.

But you do bring up the point I'm trying to illustrate. We can only get fatigue through giant strength and haste, and not by carrying around equipment that just weighs far too much for what it is made out of and such. I'm not advocating that we get fatigue from it; that would be stupid. But I am saying that the weight that equipment bears now is just ridiculous.

The Air Force doesn't have you carry much. I think the most you carry is 40-50 lbs of gear back from clothing issue when you first get through training.

The Army regularly trained at my tech school base (Sheppard AFB) with about 40lbs of gear.

The marines trained with more.

Mountain climbers are known to carry even more, if it's needed for their climb. I think I've heard of 70lb set-ups.

Two hundred pounds would break 99.9% of men.

Hate to break this to you but if you are carrying 200 pounds with a character (or yourself for that matter) no matter how you distribute it is still is 200 pounds.

Backpacks themselves should weigh a lot because the amount of crap people put into them.

However SK is not real so reality should not be compared to it.

This thread is just Cyra crying cause he wants to horde more stuff.

Not really, he's just stating that things are almost totally out of proportion, which is true. I can't really say it's one of SK's worst faults, though, since even though a pair of gloves does wear 8 pounds, some characters can carry 300-400 pounds of things constantly without much difficulty.

I think that equipment is more blown out of proportion than carrying capacity though, and trying to stay under the 1/2 mobility capacity limit is extremely hard (take it from an old elf rogue). I'd like for things to weigh less, but it isn't that big a deal to me.

I agree that weights should be far less then they are. I've thought this for a long time. I mean, I went out to get some webbed shocker scales for Galvan I think and I was stunned when a scale of pure energy weighed like 40 pounds.

Forty pounds of energy? If it were that heavy my chest plate would be extending about 1000 miles in front of and behind me. I couldn't imagine how much energy it would take weight 40 pounds. All the weights are stupid.