Heavy Encumbrance

Heavy Encumbrance is a level of Encumbrance mentioned on B17 under Encumbrance and Move.
It is worse than Medium Encumbrance and less than Extra-Heavy Encumbrance.
==as an Aftermath==
The Real Armor limitation introduced on S79 that:
:the armor’s weight should count at least as Heavy encumbrance for the wearer
The Temporary Disadvantages of effective encumbrance are normally worth more than this. For example "Dodge -3" is effectively -3 to Basic Speed, which is worth 20 points per level. If subtracting the 5/level of Basic Move 3, 60-15=45 points. So it would be a -45% Temporary Disadvantage to be -3 to dodge but not -3 to Basic Move.
That's only the most notable aspect. Move being reduced to 40% can't easily be quantified since the value depends on what someone's original move is, which is why it is ignored. That's one reason it could simply make more sense to have Encumbrance inflict a static penalty to Basic Speed (with resulting move loss) rather than a % base loss to move. This would at least be easier to represent via linear Temporary Disadvantage limitations.
The reason the RA limitations is -5% is understood by reading this in context of the Exoskeleta section whcih began on S78:
:if it’s shut down in a fight he’s burdened by it
This shows that this is actually not intended as an "in-use" penalty but rather an "after use" penalty. This resembles how the value of limitations are halved when modified to work with Aftermath rules.
The only difference here is that unlike Aftermath (penalties last for length of use or 10 minutes, whichever is more) it instead lasts "until armor is removed".
S78's notes for Costumes and Armor use the -10% Gadget limitation of Can Be Stolen. B117's must be forcefully removed never gives rules for how to resolve this. In Low-Tech armors have varying Don times (half the time is needed to remove) and there are rules for getting assistance from allies to speed up donning or removing armor.
There don't seem to be rules for allies adding/removing armor without assistance of the wearer, or for the wearer/assistants fighting with different intentions (to move it to "on" or "off" state).
It's possible that might be approached via Technical Grappling rules by giving armor grip ST on the wearer, and treating armor as a Must Be Wielded weapon if defining it as a character, which gives it Controls that people could use to make it do a grapple (ie fastening straps, or putting helmet on a head)
T119's whole is there doesn't seem to be impact of the ST of a wielder aside from using ST-based thrust on ST-Based attacks represented by Innate Attack. There isn't an apparent "ST required" where sub-ST wielders would suffer skill penalties using the weapon.
That's a concept which could be important for representing the forcible donning/removal of armor that is heavy which light people would have difficult doing Proxy Fighting with.
One easy way to represent don times is to divide armor into parts. This is more realistic too, since it would give each component of armor it's own separate HP and DR which could ablate independently.
Each part as a character or ally thus could allow a collective group of armor to be represented as an Ally Group. You could consider it Summonable and need to spend a different maneuver getting each piece of it. Like the video of Tony Stark or Montgomery Burns suiting up.
As to make some parts harder to don than others, one could add Takes Extra Time to Summonable Ally to make additional Concentrate maneuvers required. There doesn't seem to be a way to convert concentrates to readies though, which is necessary when it's a physical rather than mental action.
PU8p17 defines Requires Ready (actual a SERIES) as -10 compared to -15 for Requires Concentrate so that could be a guideline.
Normally this would reflect "I need to use readies or concentrates to maintain my allies" if taken on the root trait, so if it is made a Limited Enhancement then perhaps it only applies to the context of using that enhancement: "I need a series of readies or concentrates to SUMMON the allies, but not to keep them here"
If used to reverse engineer the concentrate requirement of Summonable, it might be seen a representing "requires ready instead of concentrate" as a +5% enhancement.
Category:Rules