If they can lift the egg it's carried equipment and covered by hide from animals. If they can't then they have no business trying to steal it.
Medium size covers a lot - from elves to ponies - but that certainly sounds possible.
It might be worth pointing out the difficulties in hatching and raising a Roc. Eggs need to be kept warm, as well as intact. Keep them at room temperature or below and all you've got is omlette ingredients.
Once they've stolen it, do they have:
1) a cart or similar to transport it safely
2) straw/blankets for insulation and padding
3) some warming pans/hot water bottles to maintain temperature
And that's just to get it to hatch. A Roc is going to take years to reach maturity. Have they arranged a barn or aviary to keep and raise it? Where are they getting enough meat for a medium/large/huge/gargantuan carnivore? Who is mad enough to care for this partly-tamed beast while they're off adventuring?
Personally I love the idea, and that they're trying to pull it off. But even Fantasy has harsh realities!
I dont see a single person carrying it, but maybe 2 in conjunction. Even if one person could technically carry the weight, eggs dont have handles or anything so I doubt one person could carry it. Do 2 people carrying 1 item count as "carried equipment"?
Enlarge person.
Oh, I am not worried about the realities of raising it as it will be an animal companion and according to the rules:
Rocs taken as animal companions by druids or rangers are typically newly hatched birds—a baby roc is the size of a person and ready for flight and hunting within minutes of hatching. Unfortunately for druids seeking animal companions of legendary size, an animal companion roc is limited to Large size—still large enough for a Medium druid or ranger to use the flying beast as a mount.As for Enlarge, that only lasts 4 minutes at their current level (and I think they only have it available on a wand that casts it at 1st level anyway). 40 minutes for hide from animal should be sufficient, but I doubt 1 minute of enlarge will be.
Well, the fighter with a strength of 20 could [probably] carry a roc egg as a heavy load if she had a way to grip it, and it's fairly easy to rig up a web/net to carry objects that are roughly egg-shaped. So the hide from animals spell would still work.
In Whispering Nickel Idols, Garret (the private investigator) carries a roc egg in his pocket. One was even used as a sling stone.
While that's not exactly Pathfinder cannon (which says the eggs are man-sized), it made for a fun story.
I don't think an egg weighs any more than a creature of flesh and bone. After all, it's basically a bit of calcium (same as bone) surrounding some liquid and a little flesh and bone inside. So flesh and bone and liquid, just like a human body. Which means a man-sized roc's egg should weigh roughly the same as a man-sized human.
Therefore, anybody who can lift and carry a man should be able to lift and carry a roc's egg, but it would be harder to drape the egg over your shoulder in a traditional fireman's carry position, so it might weigh the same but be considerably more awkward.
I think the real problem is safe transport. If that egg even cracks, it will probably never hatch. Bouncing it along in a wagon might not be good for it. Rolling it along on the ground would never work. Actually carrying it in your arms might be safest, but every time you put it down to rest, eat, fight, or whatever, you have to worry about cracking it. I can't think of any rules to cover such a thing, but I might make some up on the spot to turn the adventure into an ongoing challenge.
Then, for fun, I'd have them encounter a nest of egg-eating oviraptors on their way back to town...
The best way to transport it would be for them to use the 1st level sor/wiz spell floating disk.
at caster level 4, that is a max load of 400 lbs and it lasts for 4 hours. plenty of weight allowance for the egg with padding and insulation to keep it warm. plus there should be no worries about the egg being jostled over rough terrain.
the only major worry would be if the terrain was really steep, which I imagine is likely being its a roc nest probably high up a mountain. in that case I would likely try to use 2nd level sor/wiz spell levitate. where needed.
but the 4 minute duration could lead to problems depending on the distance needed to travel up or down.
-AND MILLIONS!
In Whispering Nickel Idols, Garret (the private investigator) carries a roc egg in his pocket. One was even used as a sling stone.
While that's not exactly Pathfinder cannon (which says the eggs are man-sized), it made for a fun story.
I don't think an egg weighs any more than a creature of flesh and bone. After all, it's basically a bit of calcium (same as bone) surrounding some liquid and a little flesh and bone inside. So flesh and bone and liquid, just like a human body. Which means a man-sized roc's egg should weigh roughly the same as a man-sized human.
And a pony-sized egg would weigh roughly the same as a pony, which is about 300 kg, or 700 pounds. Remember that ponies are also, in Pathfinder terms, "man-sized" (Medium).
No, ponies are not "man-sized".
Nothing in the description says the roc's egg is "medium", which would let each GM decide on a wide band of sizes within the bounds of medium.
In fact, the description says "man-sized". Assuming that "man-sized" means "pony-sized" because they both happen to be Medium is a huge non-sequitur, just like assuming that "man-sized" means "Storm Giant-sized" because they're both humanoids.
So no, the roc's egg is "man-sized".
Now, it's true, there are a few men who actually do weigh 700 pounds. Those are fairly rare. There are some men who weigh 75 pounds. Those are fairly rare too. I would assume that "man-sized" probably means "average man-sized" but I suppose there is nothing explicitly stating that.
Still, when someone says "man-sized", nobody ever thinks of Verne Troyer or Andre the Giant. They probably think of average, which is also probably what the author meant.
Something that big retains heat a long time; you won't need to keep it warmed constantly the way you would a chicken egg. Toss it about too much and you get scrambled egg of course.
Eggs resist damage from outside better than pecks from inside (not a coincidence) and hardness 5 seems reasonable.
My question is just how big and heavy would this thing be and what would it take to move it? It is born a medium size creature, so I am imagining an egg large enough to contain a human. Assuming they are curled up in that egg a bit, I am guessing it should be something like 3 or 4 feet tall and maybe 200-300 lbs? Does that sound about right?
Look up contortionist. People take up about 2 cubic feet of volume*, so can fit in amazingly small suitcases.
Another safe passage method is the old bag of holding. Just take a break every 5 minutes to open it on the way back down from the mountain. When at the bottom, leave the bag open on the back of the wagon.
/cevah
Edit: *People float just a little about the surface of water, so they displace about the same weight of water. Two cubic feet of water weighs about 130#.
I don't think the egg would count as part of the roc inside it. In turn, I don't think touching the egg would count as touching an animal.