# Encumberment and Melee

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876>\
**Category:** The Bunker\
**Created:** [June 18, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876 "2017-06-18T06:51:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mvm900](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/mvm900/32/326_2.png) [@mvm900](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/mvm900)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/1 "2017-06-18T06:51:13Z")

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I’m sure this has been talked about before, albeit it’s hard to see because just looking up encumberment has a lot of results, but surely the melee and encumberment system is at least a little heavy handed. Having a plastic jacket on lowers your melee skill by 15%. Like, you know what, sure, I’ll somewhat say that maybe it’s a bit harder to fight with some items on but jeeze. A backpack and a jacket makes -25% and it just seems annoying to need to either take that off or flee because your character is too busy flailing to hit.

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 8:11am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/2 "2017-06-18T08:11:55Z")

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It can look bad on paper, but in actual game you will quickly get enough accuracy to offset that.  
Some items are out of line, but most fitting items are perfectly fine. Not wearing anything or only wearing a t-shirt is still a bad option.

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**Author:** ![TooDAMNMuch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@TooDAMNMuch](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/TooDAMNMuch)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 9:04am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/3 "2017-06-18T09:04:21Z")

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[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:2, topic:13876”]It can look bad on paper, but in actual game you will quickly get enough accuracy to offset that.  
Some items are out of line, but most fitting items are perfectly fine. Not wearing anything or only wearing a t-shirt is still a bad option.[/quote]

to be honest, i’d say most items are pretty far out of line, almost anything with decent storage is 40 encumberment, if not more.

whatever happened to that feature to allow melee characters to drop backpacks and have them still contain the items, anyway?  
that would at least make it less of a pain in the ass to have to drop everything you own first.

also, one thing i’ll say, seriously consider a rapier, it’s a huge difference between missing all the time and not with that one technique.

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 9:34am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/4 "2017-06-18T09:34:28Z")

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> [@TooDAMNMuch](#):
>
> to be honest, i’d say most items are pretty far out of line, almost anything with decent storage is 40 encumberment, if not more.

Vast majority of items doesn’t have 40 encumbrance. Where you’re getting that “most” out of?

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**Author:** ![tarburst98](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/tarburst98/32/1355_2.png) [@tarburst98](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/tarburst98)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 11:57am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/5 "2017-06-18T11:57:02Z")

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maybe they mean in total?

but yeah, accuracy from skill overtakes the negative mod from encumbrance pretty well. as in, at around 5 skill in cutting and melee i could wear a full heavy survivor set with a survivor rucksack and still hit things for my glaive like 80% of the time.

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**Author:** ![mvm900](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/mvm900/32/326_2.png) [@mvm900](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/mvm900)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2017, 3:44pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/6 "2017-06-18T15:44:34Z")

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Yeah I can see that for the most part I guess.

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**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2017, 1:04am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/7 "2017-06-19T01:04:25Z")

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This kind of thing is why most newbie guides focus on the hit bonus for early game weapons - a bat has a +3 to hit, which completely negates up to 39 torso encumbrance!

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**Author:** ![TooDAMNMuch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@TooDAMNMuch](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/TooDAMNMuch)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2017, 7:13am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/8 "2017-06-19T07:13:45Z")

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[http://cdda-trunk.estilofusion.com/bindle](http://cdda-trunk.estilofusion.com/bindle)

you can also suddenly only use one at a time, don’t duffel bags have 40 as well? the item browser site is messing up for me.

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2017, 9:20am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/9 "2017-06-19T09:20:41Z")

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> [@deoxy](#):
>
> This kind of thing is why most newbie guides focus on the hit bonus for early game weapons - a bat has a +3 to hit, which completely negates up to 39 torso encumbrance!

That was the old math, which penalized early characters too much and allowed endgame ones to negate all armor penalties easily.

In new version the encumbrance penalties scale with your to-hit:  
40 torso encumbrance means -40% on to-hit (not rolls directly, but the “pre-final value”), so a 0 skill, 0 dexterity character with a bat will have 3 \* (100-40)% = 1.8 to-hit (no rounding), but a 20 dex, 10 in all skills character with same bat will have (20/4 + 10/2 + 10/3 + 3)\*(100-40)% = (5+5+~3.33+3)\*60%=~9.8  
The “absolute zero” character loses only 1.2 to-hit, while the godly one loses over 6.

This works better than the old math because now you can wear a duffel bag and still hit things despite no skill (just less often), while a kung-fu master will not want to wear one despite being able to reliably hit things with it (just that without it, he hits them nearly always).

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**Author:** ![nick0010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9a28c/32.png) [@nick0010](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/nick0010)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2017, 11:19am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/10 "2017-06-19T11:19:04Z")

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[quote=“TooDAMNMuch, post:8, topic:13876”][http://cdda-trunk.estilofusion.com/bindle](http://cdda-trunk.estilofusion.com/bindle)

you can also suddenly only use one at a time, don’t duffel bags have 40 as well? the item browser site is messing up for me.[/quote]  
[http://cdda-trunk.chezzo.com/](http://cdda-trunk.chezzo.com/) is currently working better (all credit due to chezzo for hosting it.)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2017, 1:19pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/encumberment-and-melee/13876/11 "2017-06-19T13:19:39Z")

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> [@Coolthulhu](#):
>
> [quote=“deoxy, post:7, topic:13876”]This kind of thing is why most newbie guides focus on the hit bonus for early game weapons - a bat has a +3 to hit, which completely negates up to 39 torso encumbrance!

That was the old math, which penalized early characters too much and allowed endgame ones to negate all armor penalties easily.

In new version the encumbrance penalties scale with your to-hit:  
40 torso encumbrance means -40% on to-hit (not rolls directly, but the “pre-final value”), so a 0 skill, 0 dexterity character with a bat will have 3 \* (100-40)% = 1.8 to-hit (no rounding), but a 20 dex, 10 in all skills character with same bat will have (20/4 + 10/2 + 10/3 + 3)\*(100-40)% = (5+5+~3.33+3)\*60%=~9.8  
The “absolute zero” character loses only 1.2 to-hit, while the godly one loses over 6.

This works better than the old math because now you can wear a duffel bag and still hit things despite no skill (just less often), while a kung-fu master will not want to wear one despite being able to reliably hit things with it (just that without it, he hits them nearly always).[/quote]

Oh, hey, that’s a nice change! I missed that somehow…