2 of my party lack the strength to wear all-metal armour without being heavy load/overloaded. _However_, if I give them just leather armor, while they are no longer overloaded they appear more vulnerable.

Would people consider that sometimes overloading them is the least worse of the two options?

P.

Yes, sometimes I guess it's worth it to overload them.
But before you do that, consider that upper body armour is more important than leg armour. And shields and weapons also add to the encumbrance. Since shields are only really useful against missile attack, you can usually do without.

Ah, that's interesting to know! And completely counter intuitive. :) Thanks,

P.

How can you remove a shield? After equipping mine, I can't UN-equip it, because it is no longer in the Equipment list.

Apologies for bumping someone's topic, but making a separate topic seemed like a waste.

You mean listed in the "equipped items" box under the stats, but not in the equipment list?
That sounds like a bug.
Does the encumbrance indicate your character really has the shield equipped?

It certainly seems to. I guess it could be a bug, I'll see about trying to sell it off, maybe that will fix it. (Why bother discarding if I can sell it for a small profit? :P) I'll follow up with this once I try it.

Without a shield you don't just lack its bonus, but have a penalty. This means that small shields are useful for melee just to eliminate that penalty. Larger shields add a lot more missile defense, but only a little bit of melee defense.

For that reason if a character is using a one-handed weapon I always give them a small shield.

According to the clue book, the combat system directs hits exactly 50/50 to vitals/legs, so vitals armor is not more important than leg armor. It is not recommended to have characters so weak they can't wear decent armor. IIRC, there are potions one can use to buff strength, though. It's been years since I practiced Darklands alchemy, so don't hold me to that.

In later combats, you're going to run into plate-armored knights with penetrating hammers. They will make mincemeat of your lightly-armored guys, so keep the latter away from them. For fighting thugs and whatnot, cuirboli is fine.

-- Mal