By: Jared Biti
With this article, I am going to talk about various vehicles that your player’s characters, NPCs, and possibly monsters may and can use. For this particular article, we are going to specifically use a classic medieval fantasy setting and the limitations that come with that.
To start with, we talk about mounts/animals. Of course, several of the mounts covered can also pull wagons and carts, but to start with, we are going to talk about just the animals themselves and the saddle/saddle bags that can come with them. For this, I will be referencing the “Mounts and Vehicles” chapter on pg 155 of the Player’s Handbook (PHB) for D&D 5e 2014.
The options in the PHB are as follows: Camel, Donkey/Mule, Elephant, Horse(draft), Horse(Riding), Mastiff, Pony, and Warhorse. Out of those, obviously, the 3 types of horse are going to be the most commonly used by an adventuring party. A donkey or mule could also be a good option for a cheap pack animal. I am not going to go into detail about what the cost, speed, and carrying capacity are for each of these animals, but I may reference certain numbers from the PHB as they are needed in the conversation about what these animals can do and detailing how the PHB handles things such as wagons and barding, armor for animals.
Of the four types mentioned above, the cheapest cost is a donkey/mule. It has carrying capacity just under the Horse(riding) and matches the speed of the Horse(draft), but sells for 8 gold instead of the 75 gold for the Horse(riding) and 50 gold for the Horse(draft). The Warhorse has the high speed of 60 feet, matching that of the Horse(riding), and the carrying capacity of the Horse(draft), making the Warhorse and the Horse(draft) the highest weight carriers of the four. The downside is the 400 gold price tag for the Warhorse.
So for your typical adventuring party that just needs a pack animal, the donkey/mule is the best option; however, if they want a decent riding animal, I would recommend the Horse(draft) simply for the weight capacity. Only go for the Horse(riding) if you really need the speed, or the Warhorse if you need the speed and plan on weighing it down with barding. A note on barding before we look at saddles. Barding can be any armor that can be purchased for a character, but it will cost four times as much and weigh twice as much. You have to figure that weight into the weight capacity of your chosen mount.
Speaking of accounting for weight on the animal, we come to saddles. Now my understanding is that a saddle is necessary for riding or putting packs/luggage on the animals. So if you just need to carry things, the pack saddle is perfect. It is cheap at 5 gold and weighs the least of the saddles, at 15 pounds. I assume this type of saddle is not meant for actually riding the animal, so for that you would get the riding saddle at 10 gold and weighing 25 pounds. With the weight capacity of the donkey/mule being 420 lbs, that leaves you 405 lbs or 395 lbs with the pack and riding saddle, respectively, for luggage and, in the case of the riding saddle, the rider.
I take it from the way things are worded that while the pack saddle does not accommodate a rider, the riding saddle does not accommodate much luggage besides the rider and what they are directly carrying. To handle that, there are saddlebags which cost a mere 4 gold and weigh 8 lbs. As a DM/GM I would rule that you do not need more than 1 saddlebag to haul gear besides the rider. To combine all that, then, you have a donkey/mule with a pack saddle that can carry 405 lbs of gear but no rider, or can carry 387 lbs of combined weight of gear and rider. For the increased cost of a Horse(draft) those numbers go up to 525 lbs of gear with the pack saddle and 507 lbs of combined gear and rider weight.
This is just for a basic idea of what an adventuring party could use for slightly faster travel if they are riding, or as pack animals for all that loot they are hauling out of the dungeon.
The other more exotic animals and their associated saddles and such can be fun options, and if you need something not listed to fit the location of your adventure, I would probably just use the cost, speed, and weight capacity of one of the listed animals that is close to your homebrew animal. The speed can also be derived from the speed of the animal, if you are using a monster NPC stat-block as a foundation for said exotic animal.
Now, if the roads are good and the path is clear, I would recommend this next set of options for hauling gear, loot, and riders: vehicles.
Vehicles here refer to wagons, carts, carriages, and the like. For the purpose of an adventuring party hauling gear, I would say the Cart is a good option at an affordable 15 gold. It only weighs 200 lbs. Now, as before with barding and saddles, we have to factor the weight of the vehicle against the carry capacity of the animal. However, being a Cart or Wagon, it is on wheels, so according to the PHB, the animal’s weight capacity is actually 5 times that of its base. So the donkey/mule pulling a Cart or Wagon has a capacity of 2100 lbs. We take off the 200 lbs for the cart and have 1900 lbs left for cargo and riders. There is a Cart and a Wagon. The Wagon is listed as 35 gold and 400 lbs. So my assumption here is that the Cart has 2 wheels/one axle and the Wagon has 4 wheels/2 axles. The only real difference then is the volume of what can be on it. This would have to be a DM/GM call, as it is not defined in the PHB or the DMG as far as I can find.
Of course, you can also homebrew more complex wagons and carts to fit your needs. Such as a large battle wagon or a mobile merchant shop wagon. I would just recommend you document what you decide works for your table, players, and your world so that you can remember what you did should it need to be recalled or you want to expand it into a series of similar wagons or carts.
Lastly, there is the subject of Waterborne Vehicles. The specifics on these in the PHB are pretty loose. It only lists the cost and the speed of said vessels. I do wish that it would give more specifics, such as the surface area or the weight capacity in the same language as, say, a bag of holding, but alas it does not. So that will be up to the DM/GM and the table to come to an appropriate decision of size and capacity of said vehicles. You will likely have to adjust the costs and create crew requirements for the larger vessels depending on what you determine. What I would do if I had need of one is I would use Google and look for similarly sized vessels in the real historical world and what their sizes, rounded to 5-foot squares, crew needs, and weight capacities were, and use that as a basis of data for my own. Again, documenting it so that I can keep the metrics consistent in my world.
That is all I have at this time on vehicles in a fantasy medieval world. Thank you for reading, and hope this gives direction and ideas for your adventuring party’s needs for transport. Game on!
About the Author
Jared “Martel” B has been GMing and playing in several TTRPG’s since late 2013. Enjoys the challenge of bringing his players worlds and stories straight from his mind in the moment that it happens. He is one of the Founders of RPGCounterpoint, happy husband to an active historian wife, and father to two puppers and a toddler!
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