I thought the total weight was pooled together, not seperated individually like in Baldur's Gate.

I think it does both. It does total for party and, from a combat standpoint, it does for individuals. When you have encumbrance turned on, I believe it works this way and can affect movement for the party both in and out of combat, but doesn't affect party movement when it is turned off. I have it turned off, but it will still stop my party from moving if I go over the party pool limits of encumbrance.

Right. I got full plate for Harrim, and a chain shirt for Linzi... Oops. Too heavy for them. Valerie doesn't really have enough strength to handle the tower shield + armor and weapons.
How many NPCs have inadequate strength?
==> not as much damage, fine I can work with that
==> overencumbered and gets slowed + gimped in combat, game breaker
==> Party encumbrance affected by low strength NPCs, Strength becomes the prime attribute for all classes.
==> can't use good armor and weapons when they are available, feels like what the OP said about trolling

Not that this fixes some of those problems, but I went after some of the magical belts to help in some of the statistic shortcomings of the companions. I think almost all of them have some kind of belt or another to help with strength, constitution and dexterity problems. That, and I turned off the encumbrance node. It has affected me only when the entire party is over its encumbrance limit.

That being said, it does need to be reworked somehow, though I'm not sure what would work if people want to play with encumbrance affects.

Thanks Jim.

No magic belts at Oleg's but when I get back to this game, I'll keep my eyes open. B-)

No problem! There's a couple I think that were at Oleg's, but more at the vendor in your capital. I also found a couple here and there via adventuring.

Hey guys, I just noticed something. You can see character's personal weight limit between the weapon set area and the belt items part. I hope this helps.

I play Pathfinder/D&D 3rd as player and GM. The encumbrance stuff is pretty close to the PnP versions.

Players frequently have to choose what they take and what they have to leave behind. That seems to be true in a lot of RPGs (and CRPGs) where the enemy's gear is there to be picked over. In this game, I quickly started leaving behind a lot of the non-magic armor, took most weapons and other stuff. Same as in other games, weight vs value determines what to take.

The 10 pound weight for camping supplies doesn't bother me. It is a simplification so players don't have to worry about the tents, bedrolls, pots and pans, food, water, etc.

BUT -
A couple of things that are different from PnP make it a little rougher.
No option for mounts or pack animals. (though I think my druid's animal companion is adding to the shared stash capacity) My players headed out with riding and pack horses as soon as they could afford them when I ran this PnP version. They did complain about how often the horses were targeted by predators at night.
Owlcat simplified the small size versus medium size gear rules. In PnP version, gear sized for small characters (like Linzi) weighs half what it weighs sized for medium characters. Weapons sized for small characters do less damage. They have implemented the weapon damage by just reducing the damage of weapons used by small characters. Give Linzi a short sword and it does 1-4 damage. Give it to Valerie and it does 1-6. They didn't do the same thing for the weight of items. That chainshirt in small size would only weigh 12 lbs, instead of 25 for a medium character.
They could fix that by applying a weight adjustment for weapons and armor used by small characters.

The belts for strength, dexterity and constitution showed up in Oleg's inventory eventually. I think shortly after I found one while adventuring. The same with the head bands for intelligence, wisdom and charisma.

I did dial back the difficulty some after a couple of brutal encounters. I usually play CRPGs at normal or easy modes. Lousy hand-eye coordination and reflexes. I would have preferred a true turn-based combat system. But I am getting better at it and have experimented with the pause options. Almost there.

As for the encounter difficulty, I think someone screwed up the calculation on challenge rating and hopefully they find and fix that.

I kickstartered this game and I am satisfied with the game so far. Owlcat has been good about communicating with the backers over the last year and are continuing to do so now. I never expect a game this complex to be perfect out of the gate and I think this one has done better than most. Issues I have encountered have not been game breakers, and I have yet to install any of the patches. I may do so tonight.

Excellent point (and it relates to the OP).
Yes, I like that encumbrance is implemented, I really do. But this is a video game, and so we want to have fun. Now I'll give some room that sometimes we play video games which pretty much just smack us in the face, and they're super-difficult. I don't think that the Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale / Neverwinter Nights series is mostly based on impossible missions. It's more story-driven, and increasingly character-driven (with romances and squabbles and similar flavor). But that's where we have difficulty settings for this game. We can enjoy the story with a total Role Playing build (bard, rogue, sage), then go for *Hard Mode* with a total Munchkin min-max build...

So basically, I just want all encumbrance issues to be an option.