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So umm, I'm in foolhardy quest to homebrew 2e version of caravan rules for my 2e jade regent conversion x'D One of things I was doing was comparing prices of 1e wagon, 2e wagon and jade regent caravan wagons, but I noticed something odd in 2e gamemastery guide vehicles
Namely that all passenger amounts are uh... Kinda tiny? Like galley has apparently 1 pilot, 20 rowers and 6 passengers? Am I just misunderstanding how large "130 feet long, 20 feet wide, 25 feet high" space is or did real life ships in general have low amount of space for "passengers"?
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So umm, I'm in foolhardy quest to homebrew 2e version of caravan rules for my 2e jade regent conversion x'D One of things I was doing was comparing prices of 1e wagon, 2e wagon and jade regent caravan wagons, but I noticed something odd in 2e gamemastery guide vehicles
Namely that all passenger amounts are uh... Kinda tiny? Like galley has apparently 1 pilot, 20 rowers and 6 passengers? Am I just misunderstanding how large "130 feet long, 20 feet wide, 25 feet high" space is or did real life ships in general have low amount of space for "passengers"?
At 130 feet long and 20 feet wide, I'd not call it a galley but a longboat. And those did not have much cabin space for non-crew, hell, they didn't even have much space FOR crew! I'd probably take the passenger count up to 10-14 if it was 30 or 40 feet wide, but only 4 squares wide? 6 sounds appropriate imo.
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20 rowers is actually not as far off as you might think for the smaller galleys - the earliest Greek galleys where called Triaconters and only had a single bank of 30 oars, (15 a side) with each oar only having a single rower.
The confusion comes in because Galleys ranged from that small size in early Greek naval warfare, to the massive triremes that had 3 banks of 30-50 oars with 1-4 rowers per oar - for game purposes I would say that the default galley is just the small single bank ship, and that Biremes and Triremes deserve their own stat block (and I think this matches how most people picture things, as most people's first exposure to these terms was Age of Empires which portrayed these units this way).
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The passenger numbers for vehicles do come across as low to me. I haven't really investigated the boat situation specifically, but even basic vehicles like a wagon or carriage have their listing say "1 pilot; Passengers 2"
And that sticks out as odd for me because there's all manner of fictional and non-fictional examples of someone sitting next to the driver on a wagon or carriage, and being able to put 6-8 or so people in the back of a wagon or around 4 inside a carriage - plus a rowboat somehow has just as much room for passengers as a wagon does despite being half the width.
So I think that it comes down to some kind of assumed usage of space for the very significant amount of cargo that the vehicles with low passenger counts are supposed to be able to carry. For example, that 2 passenger wagon being pulled by 2 horses so it can haul 200 bulk of cargo, which leaves only room for someone sitting next to the driver and one other passenger.
I think this is is solved by taking Passengers as those with specific spaces set aside for them such as seats or cabins: nothing should stop you from having additional passengers taking up space in the cargo section: just mark off their bulk from the bulk limit of the vehicle and you're done, though maybe mark off an extra bulk or 2 for comfort. ;)
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Yup, I was very dissatisfied with the GMG Vehicle section - since the vehicles seemed rather inadequate for the purposes of being vehicles, as in designed for transporting goods and/or people. The passenger limits are small and capacity is rather vague since it tries to be a general rule instead of being listed out for each vehicle.
Granted, when I made a thread about this over a year ago, I got a lot of pushback for suggesting that something like a carriage should be expected to accommodate an average party as passengers instead of being limited to 2 by default - you know considering it is the one of the few transportation services you can purchase in the CRB and there aren't exactly other suitable land vehicles presented to accomplish that. Didn't think to check the PF1 vehicle stats until you mentioned trying to convert things, but it is amusing to note that PF1 carriages held 5 passengers rather than 2.
And that sticks out as odd for me because there's all manner of fictional and non-fictional examples of someone sitting next to the driver on a wagon or carriage, and being able to put 6-8 or so people in the back of a wagon or around 4 inside a carriage - plus a rowboat somehow has just as much room for passengers as a wagon does despite being half the width.
Wanna make that rowboat example worse? The only capacity guidelines for water vehicles are, "a ship can hold upwards of 1,000 Bulk." So if you want to use graystone's idea of converting unused bulk to extra passengers, then your rowboat could potentially carry somewhere up to 335 halflings on it, compared to the 69 halfling wagon/carriage guntermench mentioned above...
Also, despite taking up a larger space than the wagon/carriage, you should be able to fit about 8 Huge creatures in the cargo of one under that interpretation, with somewhere up to 41 Huge creatures in the capacity of your rowboat.