| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Okay, I did do a search for this, but didn't find a succinct and reliable answer.
The Core Rulebook says that max overland speed of a "cart or wagon" is 16 miles per day. However, the UC, says that many of the vehicles have a "maximum speed" of "twice the speed of the pulling creature." If a wagon is being pulled by a horse or team of horses, that evenly distributes the load weight, shouldn't that vehicle be able to travel the same distance in a day as the load-bearing animals can travel?
Example: Two heavy horses in a team carrying no more than 1200 distributed pounds, should be able to travel 28 miles a day? Should they not?
So what's the consensus? Wagons and carts can only travel 16 miles a day? Or they can travel as far as their pulling mounts could travel when taking into account total payload?
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Going by what is stated in this post alone, I think it's a matter of two kinds of speed. Overland speed, I believe, is a sustained average distance traveled over a day (long term). This is meant to account for and project the time it would take to travel great distances given a mode of transportation.
After looking into the rulings for vehicles in UC, however, it appears that what is stated is a matter of speed, acceleration, etc. in the context of being in combat (short term). Such rules are meant for tense, high-action moments of vehicular conflict, chases, etc.
So, in your example, the two heavy horses would be able to pull a cart 16 miles per day, but when in combat, refer to the UC vehicle rules for distance travelled per round.
I have no problem with the UC being a strictly "for combat" set of rules. My problem comes when the numbers seem arbitrarily pulled out of the air, and I want a specific mechanical answer. I'd love for an official stat block for a vehicle to represent its truest mechanical self.
The overland movement rules say a character with 30 ft of base speed can walk 24 miles in an 8 hour day. Yet a horse drawn wagon can only travel 16 miles in an 8 hour day...? So a character can walk farther in a day than they could if they were riding a horse-drawn wagon?
Basically, yes. Because said horse-drawn wagon is also carrying around a ton of other goods too, without any additional loss of speed. The advantage of drawn transportation isn't how fast it is to move, but that it can transport a lot more goods per person (our wagon only takes 1 driver, 1 horse, and 1 wagon to move a ton - man alone, even if we assume they're all Str 16 powerhouses, it would take more than 13 people to carry the same amount at the same speed as the horse and wagon).
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Because the rate is a mean or average, it also has to allow for travel through areas where somebody on foot can take paths that a wagon has to loop around, as well as rest periods for the draft beasts, yoking/unyoking, muddy conditions, and so forth. I couldn't say for certain that the distance figures for wagons were or were not "pulled out of the air," but odds are good that a determined web search can pull up travel times. Just make sure it's single-cart times. Wagon trains and army supply lines are embarrassingly slow.Well, I'm just gonna take another post to say that it isn't just Wagon Carts on overland movement. Horses and Ponies both are odd on the same movement chart for similarly unlisted reasons.
But more on topic is: What if I want a Drow Riding Gecko drawn Wagon?
What is my overland speed then?
Is it faster because Riding Geckos don't have a given Overland speed (and doesn't suffer the same unlisted penalties)?
Is it slower because Riding Geckos have a slower land speed?
Is it faster because Riding Geckos have a Str Score one point higher than Heavy horses?Sure there may be a solid reason for overland speeds to be different, but without rules telling us How they are determined, or at least a brief description of Why they are different, the overland movement table is confusing and inconsistent.
There is a old wester with John Wayne that reply very well to your problem with the horses overland speed:
"If we are cavalry, why we are walking so much?""To stay cavalry."
(paraphrased from the translated version)
A quick Internet search get me this:
"Marcus Junkelmann quotes the US Col. William B. Hazen who said that when a mixed force of cavalry and infantry goes on a march, for the first 3 days it's the cavalry that easily outdistances the footsoldiers. However, from the 4th day both reach camp together and from the 7th day it's the infantry that even needs to slow down to make it possible for the cavalry to reach camp before nightfall."
Horses are way more delicate than men.
I'm not going to make an argument based on RAW but in the real world good distance for a team with a loaded wagon would be 8 - 10 miles per day. That's over roads in good repair and no steep grades.
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I appreciate everybody giving real world applications for how slow a wagon train or mounted unit can effectively travel over great distances. At the very least it helps to ease my mind about where the numbers may have been coming from. Unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that there seems to be a rather inconsistent set of mechanical values attached with mount/vehicle travel. I'd like to point out at this point that the UC, in addressing vehicles, lists separately the in combat (meaning grid map) speeds of water vehicles, and the miles per hour, and miles per day numbers. This is not the case with land based vehicles, which would lead one to believe that the speed listed for land based vehicles is their true speed, in combat or out.
Perhaps it is something that should be addressed in a new thread with a clearly worded FAQ question. Perhaps something like: "What is the overland travel speed of a Medium Wagon carrying 1,000 lbs of cargo, being pulled by a team of two heavy horses, and being driven by a character with an overall bonus of +7 in their Profession: driver skill?"
If we get something like that FAQ'd and the devs come in and say "Sixteen miles a day." At least I'll have a definitive answer.
Personally I don't worry too much about what the rules say in these matters. I (or my GM) makes a determination based on what we think is right, we talk it over at the table to get a consensus and go with that. By all means get the rule clarified but the question is so dependent on other variables it make it hard for anyone to make a definitive ruling. Off the top of my head;
Condition of the wagon
Skill of the driver
Condition of the team
Road maintenance
Grade of the road
Weather conditions
Lighting
Traffic
Pit stops
Encounters