Carry Capacity

**Carry Capacity** is determined by a character's or creature's Strength score. The load applies an **Encumbrance**.
Encumbrance rules determine how much a character’s armor and equipment slow him or her down. Encumbrance comes in two parts: encumbrance by armor and encumbrance by **bulk**.

**Bulk** is a stat given to nearly every item in the world. It is an alternative for weight and volume of the item and the ability for a human to handle it. Think about the difference between a 6 foot ball and a full ammo can. Both have a bulk of 10. The ball, while light, is both massive and not designed to be handled. The full ammo can is heavy, but a person can pick it up by the handles and move it with relative ease.

## Encumbrance by Armor

A character’s armor applies penalties to her maximum Dexterity bonus, armor check penalty to skills (sometimes double), movement speed(s), and attacks. Unless your character is weak or carrying a lot of gear, that’s all you need to know. The extra gear your character carries won’t slow him or her down any more than the armor already does. Do not stack the penalties with other bulk.

## Weight

If you want to determine whether your character’s gear is heavy enough to slow him or her down more than the armor already does, total the weight of all the character’s items, including armor, weapons, and gear. Compare this total to the character’s Strength on Table: Carrying Capacity. Depending on how the weight compares to the character’s carrying capacity, he or she may be carrying a light, medium, or heavy load. Like armor, a character’s load affects his or her maximum Dexterity bonus to AC, carries a check penalty (which works like an armor check penalty), reduces the character’s speed, and affects how fast the character can run, as shown on Table: Carrying Loads. A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that are restricted by armor. Carrying a light load does not encumber a character.

If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties.

## Lifting and Dragging

A character can lift as much as his or her maximum load over his or her head.

A character can lift as much as double his or her maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).

A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his or her maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them to one-half or less.

## Bigger and Smaller Creatures

The figures on the Carrying Capacity Table are for Medium bipedal creatures. A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category. Quadrupeds (or more legs) can carry heavier loads than bipedal creatures can. Multiply the value corresponding to the creature’s Strength score from the Carrying Capacity Table by the appropriate modifier.

## Tremendous Strength

For Strength scores not shown on Table: Carrying Capacity, find the Strength score between 20 and 29 that has the same number in the "ones" digit as the creature’s Strength score does and multiply the numbers in that for by 4 for every ten points the creature’s strength is above the score for that row.