I'm almost afraid to ask...

If the castle was not merely unmoored, but on wheels or levitated, I'd be starting with no less than a team of six elephants.

Since the question was about how best to approximate a Vardo-style wagon/carriage for an ethnic Gur PC, suggesting two draft horses makes perfect sense as I'd have assumed those were pulled by two draft horses anyway in real life.

For anyone confused by what the heck a Vardo is, remember "ditchwater Sal" the traveling witch in Stardust? Her wagon was one of the several models of Vardo. Think of it as a 19th century equivalent of a truck with a 2-person camper on the bed.

So I'm approximating this as 220gp all in, 50 ea for two draft horses, 100 for the carriage, and 22 gold for storage/cabinetry work (cost of 4 chests) and a water barrel. Affordable after a couple adventures.

Pauper said:

Note that, unless you are using the variant rules for encumbrance in the PH, there is really no penalty for being an encumbered pack animal - there is simply the animal's carrying capacity, which for dragging (which is what a pack animal would be doing with a wagon) is 30 times the animal's Strength score, doubled if the pack animal is Large-sized.

Even then, the animal is not prevented from dragging the wagon, but its speed drops to 5 feet. (Basic Rules, p.60, "Lifting and Carrying")

Edit: I would condone a 'sanity check' ruling by a DM to prevent a player from hitching a horse to a castle that's become unmoored from its foundation and dragging it 10 feet per round (5 feet with move, 5 feet with Dash). It would be the DM's call as to how much weight would trigger this 'sanity check'.
Pauper

Click to expand...

They are still limited to a maximum of 5x their carrying capacity (even when lifting/dragging). The horse mentioned above for example, can lift/push/pull up to 540lbs at its full speed, can physically lift 1080lbs on its back, and can push/pull/drag up to 2700lbs (at a speed of 5 ft).

I don't even think a horse would be able to pull a gatehouse and barbican even if it was on wheels (as I estimate a typical gatehouse to weigh a good 5-10tons)

kalani said:

They are still limited to a maximum of 5x their carrying capacity (even when lifting/dragging).

Click to expand...

Upon reviewing the basic rules, we're both wrong:

"You can push, drag, of lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet." (Basic Rules, p.60, emphasis mine)

So a Draft Horse (large size, Str 18) can drag up to 1,080 pounds, but is reduced to a speed of 5 feet if dragging more than 540 pounds.

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Pauper

I will need to check my books when I get home but I am fairly certain my PHB said you could drag /pull / push 5x limits (but only lift twice that). I may have been misreading it however (it does happen on occasion)

kalani said:

I will need to check my books when I get home but I am fairly certain my PHB said you could drag /pull / push 5x limits (but only lift twice that). I may have been misreading it however (it does happen on occasion)

Click to expand...

You might be thinking of the rule that says if you carry weight in excess of 5x your Strength, you're encumbered -- that's part of the Variant: Encumbrance rule, though, not part of the Lifting and Carrying rule right above it.

The rule hasn't changed, as far as I can tell, since the v0.1 Basic Rules. All I can say is that I misread it too when I first went through it.

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Pauper

That is possible. I looked up the rule, and I stand corrected. You can only carry up to your maximum limit. Above that, you can only push/pull/drag up to twice your limits at a speed of 5ft. Thanks for pointing that out. The weird thing is, I only looked up that rule the other day for a home game as we were buying horses and wagons in preparation for killing a dragon and taking its loot. No idea how I misread it.

So does the estimate of two draft horses to haul a carriage loaded with two adventurers and slightly more gear than they personally can carry still stand, or are we looking at a team of 4 draft horses? Four seems like overkill to me, but not spectacularly so.

Kalani's initial estimate remains accurate: a single draft horse can pull up to 540 pounds before becoming 'encumbered' and having its speed reduced to 5 feet. (I put 'encumbered' in quotes because it's not the same effect as the Variant:Encumbrance rule, especially since the variant rule doesn't deal with pushing/dragging.) An open cart, two adventurers, and all their gear would be pushing the maximum 1080 pound load for a single draft horse.

A vardo-like enclosed wagon and two adventurers would almost certainly weigh more and require the use of two draft horses, moving at 5 feet per move.

I'm not aware of any rule limiting the number of times you can take the Dash action repeatedly (or order a pack animal to do so), but if I were the DM, I'd have you run the risk of killing your horses via exhaustion if you push them hard enough to move at 10 feet per turn during overland travel.

Edit: Out of curiosity I checked the monsters in the v0.1 DM's Basic Rules; the math is identical if you replace the draft horses with griffons, pegasi, sabre-toothed tigers, ogres, or even trolls, all of which are Large creatures with 18 Strength. Giant goats, hippogriffs, and giant boars are slightly worse off, being Large but with only 17 Strength. Your best bet, for an exotic pack animal, would be to try to get ahold of a giant elk -- as a Huge creature with 19 Strength, a single giant elk could likely pull your wagon, though I have no idea how to get such a pack animal legally in Adventurers League.

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Pauper

*sigh*

Y'all need to retake Physics 101. Push/Drag is assuming the object is being drug across a flat surface without the aid of wheels.

To quote from the PHB (pg. 155): "An animal pulling a carriage, cart, chariot, sled, or wagon can move weight up to five times its base carrying capacity, including the weight of the vehicle. If multiple animais pull the same vehicle, they can add their carrying capacity together."

Draft Horse carrying capacity = 540lbs x 5 = 2,700lbs when using a cart.
Carriage weight = 600lbs.

2,700lbs (Draft Horse capacity w/ carriage) - 600lbs for the carriage = 2,100lbs of carrying capacity for ONE Draft horse.

2 Draft horses + Carriage = 4,800lbs. Even assuming 200lbs characters + 200 pounds of gear (an absurd amount) EACH , 12 characters could be carried by 2 draft horses. Change slightly for tack/bridles/etc, but a standard party of 6-7 would easily be carried by 2 draft horses with a carriage/cart/etc.

Hah! I knew I saw something somewhere about being able to push/pull/drag 5x your normal weight.