Each piece of armor has an encumbrance rating, usually in the range of 0.0 to 4.0. If you sum up all of the encumbrances of the items worn by a character, then you get that character's encumbrance (EC).

Some talents, such as the weapon talents and rogue talents, are affected negatively by encumbrance. The talent's effective encumbrance (EEC) shows how much that penalty is. This value is subtracted from the character's talent prowess prior to calculating a talent test.

For example, with the pick pocket talent, EEC = 2 x EC. So if the character's EC is 3, then 6 (= 2 x 3) is subtracted from the character's talent prowess prior to calculating the talent test.

For the weapon talents, the EEC is calculated as the EC minus a constant. For example, for the axes and maces talent, EEC = EC - 4. However, the EEC is always greater than or equal to 0, so if the character's EC is less than the constant, then the EEC is 0 rather than a negative number. For example, with the axes and maces talent and an EC of 3, the EEC is 0 rather than -1.