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Okay, my character is wondering if he can pull a cart or wagon by himself.
So, first, how does the carry capacity work with regards to vehicles, like wagons or carts?
CRB says a cart is 200lbs (empty). I can lift/drag that with a 20 strength, no problem, but doesn't the cart lessen the load somehow? That is the point of a cart as opposed to a backpack, right?
Furthermore, what is the carry capacity of the cart itself? I mean, space issue, sure, but is there some method of determining the max load of a cart or wagon or other tool/vehicle of this nature?
Is this covered in the rules somewhere?
From the extra Vehicle Rules
A creature can pull a number of vehicle squares equal to the number of squares in the creature’s space to a top speed equal to twice the creature’s speed. It can accelerate its space in vehicle squares up to its speed. For instance, a single horse takes up 4 squares, and can pull a 4-square cart 100 feet each round with an acceleration of 50 feet.
The rules on this page are mostly focused on driving and controlling vehicles in and out of combat, that quote was the closest thing i could find to loading rules.
There wasn't really any mention of load limits or the vehicle lessening the load for the creature pulling it, which makes sense. A vehicle is only better than carrying something yourself after you get it moving, it still takes a roughly equivalent amount of energy to get it started.
I'd say as long as the total weight of the vehicle is within your drag load and the space requirements are met you can move it.
Well favorable conditions can double the drag limit, using a cart sounds favorable to me, and maybe get one with good wheels and axles and call it a masterwork cart for a boost to that.
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Hmm...I suppose drag is 5x max load. Would you still apply the light/medium/heavy load modifiers to encumbrance?
If an empty cart is 200lbs, then a medium character with 10 strength can pull the cart (drag) the cart as medium load, with an additional 130lbs of gear on the cart or an additional 26lbs on their person (66lbs medium load x5 is 330lbs of drag. So if the cart is 200lbs, then the PC has 130lbs of drag remaining, or 26lbs of normal carry weight...right?).
Or are penalties for dragging determined differently?
Oh, yeah the encumbrance rules do say you can double the drag limit in favorable conditions. I'd probably count a properly loaded and balanced cart on a good road as favorable.
The penalties for dragging go by the same rules, so you'd be using the heavy load speed penalties for a cart that was loaded with an amount that you couldn't carry yourself (otherwise just take it off the cart?). Or you could use the alternate vehicle rules I quoted already to determine your speed, but they are alternate rules.
It all comes down to friction coefficients. On level ground pushing something with a coefficient of 1 is as much work as lifting it. That would suggest that the in game friction coefficient is 0.2 (this is very low, wood on brick is 0.6 for example). Wheels work by having lubricated axle bearings with very low friction coefficients, 0.1 being typical for the available materials in a medieval scenario.
So if we took 0.2 as the friction coefficient of the ground and 0.1 as the coefficient of the wheel and axle then you can drag 5 times your maximum lifting capacity and push 10 times as much in a cart. But to me it feels wrong that you can only wheel twice as much as you can drag.
If the coefficient for dragging was 0.5 instead of 0.2 then you could drag twice what you could lift and wheel 5 times more than you could drag.
Taking the best of both scenarios and justifying it by saying more muscles plus body mass can be used to drag and that explains why you can drag 5 times more than you could lift with a friction coefficient of 0.5 then you could wheel 25 times more than you could carry on a level surface.
Of course going uphill is a different story and you have to effectively lift the mass