Vehicles, range, fatigue

[Stormcrow]

Unpowered vehicles rowed or pulled by beings have Range F, which means the FP of the rowers or pullers and their provisions limit range.

Is there anywhere in the rules that FP costs for rowing or pulling? How many men do I really need to keep my 30-oar longship moving up the river without halting? How far will my wagon drawn by two horses really go before resting?

"Rowing is kind of like hiking" is an unsatisfying answer.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Unpowered vehicles rowed or pulled by beings have Range F, which means the FP of the rowers or pullers and their provisions limit range.

Is there anywhere in the rules that FP costs for rowing or pulling? How many men do I really need to keep my 30-oar longship moving up the river without halting? How far will my wagon drawn by two horses really go before resting?

"Rowing is kind of like hiking" is an unsatisfying answer.

Rowing at a slow speed you'd use for long distance travel is like hiking. Rowing flat-out, as you would in a triērēs vs triērēs battle is like running or sprinting.

Now, what's lacking are detailed rules for speed vs FP consumption. The best we get is that ~75% of top speed is like hiking, and thus can be continued until the sleep rules take the rowers out of action, and that top speed uses FP like running does and thus costs 1FP per failed HT roll (presumably you could substitute Boating (Unpowered) for HT), rolling once per minute.

This is actually pretty good for professional oarsmen - they'll have HT/Boating at 12 or so, and even with the normal 10FP can spend 7FP before speed drops to 1/2, and thus will be rowing at top speed for nearly 30 minutes, on average. I'd consider ruling that FP is spent as sprinting (i.e. four times as fast), or make some more detailed rules that allow for 'hiking', 'running', and 'sprinting' speeds.

[Ulzgoroth]

I'll add that what Rupert is saying is on Campaigns p463

[Stormcrow]

Ah, okay, the rule I was looking for is in the section on Cruising Speed. Thanks.

[Taneli]

Speaking of rowed watercraft with multiple rowers, when you have less than a full compliment, how much would you reduce the speeds that the vessel can achieve?

I mean, you could just call it that with 50% of rowers you can achieve no more than 50% of the top speed, but does anyone have a better idea? It's been too long since I last rowed a boat with multiple rowing positions to remember how it was affected.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Taneli

Speaking of rowed watercraft with multiple rowers, when you have less than a full compliment, how much would you reduce the speeds that the vessel can achieve?

At constant speed, thrust from rowers is equal to drag. And drag is proportional to velocity squared. So if you halve the number of rowers, you divide speed by sqrt(2).