Topic: Armor penalties, weapons skill and martial arts skills

[Jengada]

(Away from home, no books available, question seems worth sharing in any case)
Simple question first: do RM2 armor maneuver penalties apply to weapon skills in combat?
Do they apply to martial arts skills?
I've never applied them, but I could have always been wrong.

The motivation for asking, in case anyone has thoughts on the specifics, is a new player wants a paladin in rigid leather (9) who uses a staff and  martial arts sweeping as his two primary attacks.

[Majyk]

We took the penalties for Melee Attacks from the MMP, if there was anything left after applying the (N)PC’s ST bonus to mitigate it(can never give a positive bonus).

Missile Weapon Penalty, nor Quickness Penalty, could not be reduced(besides taking any Magic Bonii and reducing all numbers across the board, only).

[Hurin]

I never applied the armor maneuver penalties to weapon skills; I was under the impression that the penalties were just to moving maneuvers. Character Law (red band), p. 46, section 3.4, 'Maneuvering in Armor Skills', says that the armor penalty 'modifies Moving Maneuver rolls attempted while wearing that armor type.' So it seems to apply only to moving maneuvers.

Encumbrance penalties (i.e. dead weight), on the other hand, we applied to everything. But I can't see that spelled out explicitly in Character Law or Arms Law.

[Jengada]

I never applied the armor maneuver penalties to weapon skills; I was under the impression that the penalties were just to moving maneuvers. Character Law (red band), p. 46, section 3.4, 'Maneuvering in Armor Skills', says that the armor penalty 'modifies Moving Maneuver rolls attempted while wearing that armor type.' So it seems to apply only to moving maneuvers.

This is what I remember, too.

[Spectre771]

I am also in the same camp as Hurin.  The armour penalty was for performing MM, that which was outside the realm of your OB/DB skills.  The missile penalty stays as well. 

There is a good selection of armours and spells that "...protects as AT ## but encumbers as AT ##..." and such.

Encumbrance is just dead weight that must be carried around by the PC and that's unavoidable and will impact exhaustion points.  The Minimum MM Penalty cannot be avoided (unless magically) but we never applied to OB/DB, including Martial Arts.  It was assumed that the PC learned how to fight in those styles by training while wearing that armour.  It wouldn't make much sense to train without the armour, then to put it on and go into battle and expect to succeed.

[Jengada]

Thanks for the confirmations on my recollection. The part that made me start questioning was when I started thinking of someone in plate armor trying to do sweeps (a hypothetical). They should be badly impeded. Encumbrance will do that, I've just never bothered to figure how badly.

[Malim]

The QU pen can be negated with ST.
But the negative movement you get is subtracted from movement skills though such as Stalking, climbing etc.
We also us the QU pen as a initiative penalty, that cant be negated by ST.