My sorcerer just picked up dragon form.
As a large dragon, her bulk limits double. Furthermore, 1 Bulk is now treated as Light Bulk and Light Bulk is treated as Negligible Bulk. She has 10 Strength and a lifting belt, so she can carry 6 Bulk without penalty, or 11 Maximum Bulk. As a dragon, this is 12 and 22, respectively.
Since Medium creatures are only 6 Bulk, does this mean that I can carry 200 Medium creatures without penalty?
12 * 10 = 120 Light Bulk; 120 Light Bulk / 6 Light Bulk passengers = 20 passengers
Assuming a GM wouldn't allow such absurdity as 20 passengers, could the dragon sorcerer carry an equivalent amount of gear, assuming proper bags/straps/etc. to distribute the weight and make it possible?
You are extrapolating too far. Large creatures only treat items of 1 bulk as light bulk. Items, or people, of 6 bulk are still 6 bulk
You sure?
What about the items that THEY the riders carry? Say I pick up a 6 Bulk passenger who is carrying 6 Bulk of gear. Am I now carrying 6 Bulk, 6 Bulk and 6 Light Bulk, or 12 Bulk?
You are extrapolating too far. Large creatures only treat items of 1 bulk as light bulk. Items, or people, of 6 bulk are still 6 bulkYou sure?
What about the items that THEY the riders carry? Say I pick up a 6 Bulk passenger who is carrying 6 Bulk of gear. Am I now carrying 6 Bulk, 6 Bulk and 6 Light Bulk, or 12 Bulk?
The answer to that evades us, displaying one of the flaws in the wibbly-wobbly world of Bulk. What is the Bulk of a medium creature seems unconnected to how much Bulk they carry, at least judging from some earlier conclusions. It's almost like they become a bag of stuff.
Part of this makes sense because the weight's consolidated and it'd frankly be impossible for most PCs to move an armored ally, which would make dire circumstances even direr. But yeah, for us correlating Bulk more strongly with weight, it's counterintuitive, when it's really another language. All that guesstimating leads to contradictory results depending on approach! *groan*From Petrified we learn a statue is double the Bulk of the creature, with "typically" 12 for medium and 6 for small, therefore 6 & 3 respectively...with no reference to what they're carrying or whether they're armored, etc. Awkward accounting at best, with the petite Elf Mage weighing as much as the bulky armored Champion. But that's the answer for smoother game play I guess, though if a creature were carrying more Bulk than that I'd feel obliged to make them weigh at least as much as they carried.
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I would probably upscale the rules for tiny-sized Sprites riding medium-sized Humanoids.
You handwave the Bulk, but each of you only has two Actions available during a round.
It's solidly an "Ambiguous Rule", but this solution avoids turning Pathfinder into Mathfinder.
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From a GM's perspective: 6 bulk for a medium creature is a narrative device to simplify the question of moving allies during the heat of the moment.
"How many people can I carry at once?" Is a different question and has a different answer. I'm not sure what that should be, but would likely come down to whatever is narratively satisfying.
You are carrying the full bulk of your passenger and the contents of their pockets. If you redistributed all of their belongings onto your person, you could recalculate the bulk, but their 6 bulk backpack filled with 1 bulk items is still 6 bulk to you because the backpack is what you're carrying. It's all on CR 295 under Bulk Conversions for Different Sizes
Are backpacks not limited to just four Bulk?
Bulk is an abstraction, intended to simplify the bookkeeping for human sized characters carrying all their gear and the kitchen sink around.
It is not intended to represent the carrying capacity of mounts, and even less of flying mounts. Put simply, the math doesn't work.
I agree with Baarogue - a large-sized flying mount should be expected to carry no lore than a large-sized horse - one rider with their gear, perhaps in emergencies a second rider at half speed. If both riders are wearing heavy armor with a ton of stuff (like a typical adventurer) I'd say no to a second rider.
The best solution is to simply handwave mount carrying capacity, since the system is not designed to support such math games.