Complexity of Subset Sum where the size of the subset is specified I know it should be easy but I'm trying to determine the complexity of the following variant of Subset Sum.

Given a subset $S$ of positive integers and integers $k&gt;0$ and $N&gt;0$, is there a subset $T\subset S$ such that $|T|=k$ and the members of $T$ sum to $N$ ?

All of the formulations of subset sum that I've seen don't specify $k$ so I'm wondering if this problem can be solved in polynomial time. If $k$ is fixed for all instances, then I know that the problem is in P and solvable by brute force in $O(n^k)$ time. However, I'm allowing $k$ to vary from instance to instance.
There are $\binom{n}{k}$ $k$-subsets of an $n$ set, and $\binom{n}{k} = n (n - 1) \dotsm (n - k + 1) / k!$, which is $O(n^k)$, as you observe. The brute force complexity is a bit more (need to add up the numbers too and check), but that is ballpark.
This is polynomial for any fixed $k$, but not polynomial in $n$ if e.g. $k = n / 2$ (that is the Partition problem, known NP-complete).