Vehicle rules clarifications

[Endless Bunny]

What about the crew?

Each vehicle has a listed crew requirement but nowhere does it say what happens to a vehicle if it lacks the required crew; nor does it say if the crew needs to do anything particular on their turn in order to keep the vessel moving.

At the moment, my way of interpreting the rules is this:
Outside of combat (i.e. in exploration or downtime mode) a vehicle can't move unless it has a full crew.
In combat, a vehicle only needs a pilot to act, plus any creatures rowing or pulling it (these creatures act only as part of the vehicle's actions; without these creatures, similarly, a vehicle can't move in combat). The remaining crew can therefore spend their actions in combat however they please, since combat is only a momentary distraction from the normal operations of a vehicle.

If anyone else interprets the rules differently or could help clarify, that would be great.

[Nifty Butterfinger]

Sorry it has taken me so long to respond to this - :)

I have been doing some comparisons between PF1E and PF2E since my home game is moving into a phase where the PCs have the option to be travelling by water a bit and I need to expand the number and types of waterborne craft available.

I would suggest that having too few crew or pullers [horses and the like] not completely stop all movement of the vehicles. Many of the ships can move by wind power and their movement speed is such that even a drastic reduction has some benefit.

Maybe if the crew compliment is less than needed but not significantly so, apply a -2 penalty to Piloting checks but the speed is unaffected. a more drastic reduction [say 3/4 or 1/2 of the required crew or pullers] reduces the speed by 1/2 and adds another -2 to the penalty to a total of -4 to the Piloting check.

If the crew are drastically reduced [say down to 1/4 that needed] the Speed drops to 5 feet and the Piloting check is reduced by another -4 for a total of -8.

I know it is not possible to have 1/4 of a required 2 Large Creatures like that for the Wagon, so in those cases once the last horse stops [is killed, teleports away, whatever] then the wagon would be stuck in place unless gravity or some other force was enacted on it.