Galley vs Sailing Ship speed+ questions about travel times.

[Kalmageddon]

According to this (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/exploration-movement#TOC-Table:-Mounts-and-Vehicles), a Sailing Ship can only travel 48 miles a day. The Galley, whilst having the same listed maximum speed of 180 ft, can travel double that speed, at 96 miles per day. Why?
I figured it might be an assumption based on the fact that a Galley can row when the wind isn't good, but I don't see how that should make it travel faster, at most it should make travel times a bit more reliable.

How is travel time via ship calculated in Pathfinder? Is it just random or is it based on something? Because from what I can see, travel time is never based on the maximum speed, nor is it based on the average speed... For example, a Sailing ship has an "average" speed of 90 ft, equal to more or less 10 miles/hour, which means 240 miles per day, a long way off the 2 miles per hour/48 miles per day given in the site.
What's up with that?

[Psyren]

You might have better luck (and potentially even designer rationale) asking on the Paizo boards - this is a pretty niche area of the rules.

[VoxRationis]

Part of it is that after AD&D, the concept of accuracy with ships just kind of dropped off a cliff. My AD&D books have a lot of description of different historical ship types, their relative seaworthiness, and their speeds. But apparently the differences between a cog, carrack, caravel, and galleon are too pedantic for the modern D&D game, so we're left with a frustratingly generic "sailing ship" replacing them all.
But yeah, the thing you pointed out is just about the opposite of what it should be; a galley should have a higher maximum speed but a comparable or lower daily movement rate. Do your sources refer to how long they assume the crews to be working per day?

[Yanisa]

Part of it is that after AD&D, the concept of accuracy with ships just kind of dropped off a cliff. My AD&D books have a lot of description of different historical ship types, their relative seaworthiness, and their speeds. But apparently the differences between a cog, carrack, caravel, and galleon are too pedantic for the modern D&D game, so we're left with a frustratingly generic "sailing ship" replacing them all.
But yeah, the thing you pointed out is just about the opposite of what it should be; a galley should have a higher maximum speed but a comparable or lower daily movement rate. Do your sources refer to how long they assume the crews to be working per day?

I found this (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/exploration-movement#TOC-Overland-Movement)

Characters covering long distances cross-country use overland movement. Overland movement is measured in miles per hour or miles per day. A day represents 8 hours of actual travel time. For rowed watercraft, a day represents 10 hours of rowing. For a sailing ship, it represents 24 hours.

Also ships got update in Skulls and Shackle and have vastly different states compared to Ultimate Combat. Check out Sailing Ship (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/vehicles/water-vehicles/sailing-ship) and Galley (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/vehicles/water-vehicles/galley) to see and compare versions. Not sure what is realistic though.

[VoxRationis]

Holy crap—"40 Large direct-fire siege weapons" on the broadside of a galley? You can't put anything larger than a swivel gun on those positions*, for both reasons of low stability along that axis and the fact that you need to put the oarsmen there.








*Unless you use a galleass, but that's a different vessel entirely and is not nearly as fast or maneuverable as a regular galley.

[Kalmageddon]

Holy crap—"40 Large direct-fire siege weapons" on the broadside of a galley? You can't put anything larger than a swivel gun on those positions*, for both reasons of low stability along that axis and the fact that you need to put the oarsmen there.








*Unless you use a galleass, but that's a different vessel entirely and is not nearly as fast or maneuverable as a regular galley.

Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense, to the point where I think I'll just homebrew everything and call it a day.
It's honestly not that hard to look up historical sources and go from there.

[The Evil DM]

I have yet to find good published sea travel rules and homerule it all off historical sources. Mostly because the published material is really trying to avoid dealing with wind conditions, currents by just averaging them into system which creates some funny results.

Points to consider if you homerule ships. A galley, like a trireme would hold approximately 170 rowers. They are designed long and slender. Experiments building copies of historical ships have shown that 170 rowers (made up of 20th century researchers) could get these boats to 11 knots fairly consistently. The problem is sustaining that speed. Their sustained speed was much lower because a the crew had to be able to rest on a rotating basis. There was no room for spare crew. But 11 knots with many tons behind it at the battering ram was a lot of momentum.

The way sailing ships move often requires the ship to zig zag across its line of travel. The only time this is not true is when the wind is blowing within a 10 degree or so arc on either side of the desired line of travel. This need to cut back and forth across the line of travel reduces the ships net speed towards objective, but its actual linear speed might be much higher at various points of the journey.

The reason sailing ships win over rowed ships is less crew = more cargo. Or in the case of war ships, more weapons. The trireme couldn't spend weeks on end at sea because it required too much cargo to feed 170 rowers plus the handful of marines (usually no more than 20.)

For the note about heavy weapons above.

No triremes had 40 heavy weapons as noted above. They at most might have had a single light catapult. They fought through ramming.

[VoxRationis]

I think the "galley" they're referring to is a medieval form, which were usually larger and had multiple rowers per oar. A trireme isn't quite applicable there.

The 2e PHB and DMG have good references to medieval ship types, but yeah, if you're like me, you would just spend a lot of time looking at Wikipedia, a couple of history books on the topic, etc., and write down stats in a less gamist but more realistic sense.

[Yahzi]

Another interesting fact about triremes is that they don't sink. They're made of wood, with hardly any cargo. The ram mounted in the front might be layered in metal (or it might not be), but the rest of the ship basically turns into a raft once you've smashed it up. Of course being on a raft is a death sentence for a mundane sailor, and the enemy can just sail around picking guys off one by one. But that's in the real world. In D&D, where one high-level fighter can defeat an entire ship full of nobodies, there's a lot more room for heroics.

[Elkad]

The problem with sailing distances is that it's never set. A ship might make 120 miles today, and 10 miles tomorrow, on the same course.
If you have earth-like weather patterns, you may sail straight east 1000 miles, but if you want to go back west, you go north 1000 miles to get out of the prevailing winds, then east in different winds, then back south, because it's faster than trying to go straight into the wind.

Bigger ships are faster. Better sailing skill checks are faster. Currents are can add (or subtract) dozens of miles a day. Ship design is a huge factor in managing winds. And we haven't even added magic yet.

With perfect wind, a ship is going to cover the (square root of it's length at the waterline) *1.34 knots every hour. Ship design only changes that maximum speed a tiny bit. What it does change is what wind conditions (direction and speed) you can do it in. Note that with the right ship and the right wind direction, it's quite likely you'll be going faster than the wind.

Iceboats demonstrate the extremes of this, managing to sail over the ice at 3x wind speed, and have broken 150mph, as they aren't limited by water drag.

[VoxRationis]

Another interesting fact about triremes is that they don't sink. They're made of wood, with hardly any cargo. The ram mounted in the front might be layered in metal (or it might not be), but the rest of the ship basically turns into a raft once you've smashed it up. Of course being on a raft is a death sentence for a mundane sailor, and the enemy can just sail around picking guys off one by one. But that's in the real world. In D&D, where one high-level fighter can defeat an entire ship full of nobodies, there's a lot more room for heroics.

Persian Wars-era triremes, at least. Roman-era triremes were somewhat heavier; I'm not sure if they could float when broken. Especially with a corvus on the bow as well as a ram. The Romans lost whole fleets to the poor seaworthiness of the corvus.

[Kalmageddon]

Apparently, it's not the "miles per day" figure that is off, indeed by doing some research it seems like it's a good approximation of how much a ship can cover in a day when the wind isn't all that good, with more favourable currents or winds I'd say you could increase the distance by x2 or x3 times.
What is off is the "tactical" speed given in the core books, making even the biggest ships act like speedboats, which should be in no way achievable except by magic. The alternative stat block is more reasonable, but not by much. I'm guessing the increased speed is there to make ship combat more dynamic and cinematic.