Carrying Capacity

All creatures have a certain limit to their ability to carry objects, and this is known as their carrying capacity.

Carrying Capacity
A character's carrying capacity is determined by their Strength score, as detailed below.

Carrying capacity is also influenced by other aspects of a character, namely the creature's size and whether or not the character is bipedal or quadrupedal.

Bipedal: A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category, as follows: Large ×2, Huge ×4, Gargantuan ×8, Colossal ×16. A smaller creature can carry less weight depending on its size category, as follows: Small ×¾, Tiny ×½, Diminutive ×¼, Fine ×1/8.

Quadrupedal: Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads than characters can. Instead of the multipliers given above, multiply the value corresponding to the creature’s Strength score from Table: Carrying Capacity by the appropriate modifier, as follows: Fine ×¼, Diminutive ×½, Tiny ×¾, Small ×1, Medium ×1½, Large ×3, Huge ×6, Gargantuan ×12, Colossal ×24.

Encumbrance by Armor
A character’s armor defines his or her maximum Dexterity bonus to AC, armor check penalty, speed, and running speed. 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.

If your character is weak or carrying a lot of gear, however, then you’ll need to calculate encumbrance by weight. Doing so is most important when your character is trying to carry some heavy object.

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 above. 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. 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.

Encumbrance by Loads
Carrying a heavier load will impede a character. Light loads don't over encumber a character, but medium and heavy loads will.

Medium: A character carrying a medium load has their maximum Dexterity bonus to AC capped at +3. Furthermore, they receive a 1/3rd penalty to their speed, rounded down (so, a creature with a 15 in Dexterity that is carrying a medium load would have a speed of 30 feet, rather than 45 feet).

Heavy: A character carrying a heavy load has his or her maximum Dexterity bonus to AC capped at +1. More, their speed is reduced by one-half, rounded down (so, that creature with a 15 in Dexterity would, when carrying a heavy load, have a speed of only 22 feet, rather than 45 feet).