"I wanna lift that gate."
"Ok, what's your St mod?"
"10."
"Light mnv, add Stx3."
I get your point, yammahoper, but I have difficulties to believe that lifting a gate is a light maneuver. That's hardly a fireplace trap!
And the chest : Extremely hard? That's one hell of a chest.
What I understand by your examples is that you apply maneuver modifiers subjectively. If the hobbit would have tried to lift the gate, his mod would have been higher, is that it? That's totally justified. But I am looking for some way to apply mod objectively. Let's say the gate is a hard maneuver. Then I say it stays that way even if it is a hobbit that wants to lift that gate. But even for the warrior, this maneuver has just a 20% chance to succeed. But he's strong!
Using the encumbrance system is a good idea, but it doesn't tell you what is the maximum weight our tiny hobbit can lift, but what penalties he will suffer if he takes that chest on his poor back and tries to drag it under the gate. Also, I have to guest the weight of everything. Like that gate. How much should it weight. No, I looking for a way to abstract the hard facts and use the maneuver mod to represent the possible weight of an object. Finally, the encumbrance system could always work with strength feats, but what about reasoning or other stats?
I've thought about using, let's say, six time the bonus, but that's not so good with most characters since they probably have 0 bonus in most stats. Another way to get past this problem could be to use the moving maneuver chart and using the result of the roll to generate a final % chance. So our warrior rolls 56, adds his +30 and compares his 86 to the HARD column of the table : 60% Not bad at all. With the same roll, the hobbit would have a 20% chance. Hard. He can still make it, but it'll take a bit of luck to make that roll.
Any thoughts?
By the way, thanks for your input yammahoper!