Getting ready to run Frostmaiden, and I was surprised to see the rules for sled dogs say that each dog can pull 360 lbs. I'm no dog-sled expert, but that sounds like a bit too much for a single dog. Even a mule only carries just over 400lb. Also, the travel times say that a dog sled reduces travel time by 50%, which I estimate to be about 3 miles per hour. A quick Google check suggests dog sleds should be able to go at least 5-6 miles per hour, and even twice that with enough dogs.
Can anyone suggest some realistic speeds and weights for dog sledding, or a justification for the stats given in the adventure module?
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How does a red dragon blow out the candles on its birthday cake?
The justification is that those figures have been picked to balance those elements of the game. The higher weight pull could justify the lower speed and vice versa.
A wolf str is 12. 12 *15 is 180. The 360 pds is over snow and ice. So they are upping the weight carry. I would rule for each additional dog up to six the dog can go an extra hour before an hours rest. So 2 dogs 2 hours of travel. etc. .
edit to add the entry
Dogsleds
An empty sled costs 20 gp, weighs 300 pounds, and has room at the back for one driver. A sled dog (use the wolf stat block in appendix A of the Monster Manual) costs 50 gp and can pull 360 pounds.
Sled dogs must take a short rest after pulling a sled for 1 hour; otherwise, they gain one level of exhaustion.
Edit to add
So a single dog could not pull a single dwarf or tall adventurer. So I a go with multiple dogs in the harness. Bit and Brindle is closest to harness.
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 animals pull the same vehicle, they can add their carrying Capacity together.
As for travel speed. The normal adventurer can travel at 3 mph on foot. So if a dog sled half's that, the sled is moving at 6 mph. Simple math.
Normally yes, but the travel times between towns given in the adventure imply that walking speed is halved, probably accounting for the snow. Using snowshoes brings it back up to normal walking speed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How does a red dragon blow out the candles on its birthday cake?
The 300 lb weight for a dog sled is WAY off. A real dog sled (made of wood, not high-tech carbon fiber) only weights 100 lbs. And that's the basket sled, used for carrying gear. (A racing sled weighs only half as much, probably uses high-tech materials). Perhaps they mean 300 lbs is the weight of the sled PLUS the driver in full gear?
The 300 lb weight for a dog sled is WAY off. A real dog sled (made of wood, not high-tech carbon fiber) only weights 100 lbs. And that's the basket sled, used for carrying gear. (A racing sled weighs only half as much, probably uses high-tech materials). Perhaps they mean 300 lbs is the weight of the sled PLUS the driver in full gear?
That's for a modern dogsled. They've been in use for more than a thousand years, so whatever we think we know we don't.
In any case, the fact that a "sled dog...can pull 360 pounds" is just for the normal Push, Drag, or Lift from the Basic Rules & PHB. In truth, they can actually move a lot more. Just one sled dog can pull up to 900 pounds. Factoring in the weight of the sled, that's 600 pounds of driver, passenger, and supplies.
Getting ready to run Frostmaiden, and I was surprised to see the rules for sled dogs say that each dog can pull 360 lbs. I'm no dog-sled expert, but that sounds like a bit too much for a single dog. Even a mule only carries just over 400lb. Also, the travel times say that a dog sled reduces travel time by 50%, which I estimate to be about 3 miles per hour. A quick Google check suggests dog sleds should be able to go at least 5-6 miles per hour, and even twice that with enough dogs.
Can anyone suggest some realistic speeds and weights for dog sledding, or a justification for the stats given in the adventure module?
The dog sled is incredibly slow. Without a horde of dogs running alongside so you can swap the dogs out every hour and leave the tired ones behind, the dog sled isn't any faster than walking with snowshoes, and radically slower than any dog sled in the written history of dogsleds. The problem is that the dogs need rests so much more often than real world dogs dragging a real world sled. You would be radically better off just spending the same money on draft horses, unless (I haven't read the Frostmaiden rules, just the rules on the sled wolves) there's some rule actually nerfing the horses from plodding through snow, maybe with horse snowshoes.
pg 11 Overland Travel places dogs at 1mph, foot 1/4 mph, foot with snow shoes 1/2mph
Some of the travel times between towns are different because they have established paths. I think this is where some confusion enters the arguments as the dogs cut time, but not necessarily making huge differences in those routes.
pg 11 Overland Travel places dogs at 1mph, foot 1/4 mph, foot with snow shoes 1/2mph
Some of the travel times between towns are different because they have established paths. I think this is where some confusion enters the arguments as the dogs cut time, but not necessarily making huge differences in those routes.
The travel times between towns contradict themselves in multiple places, but those times are also for roads, not for overland travel. If you use the overland map to force all travel distances to be correct, you can backsolve for the implied speed on roads, and then solve from there for missing buffs, like mounts. None of this solves the crippling rules dogsleds are saddled with - you're much better off riding axe beaks, so you can use the normal mount rules and actually go faster.
pg 11 Overland Travel places dogs at 1mph, foot 1/4 mph, foot with snow shoes 1/2mph
Some of the travel times between towns are different because they have established paths. I think this is where some confusion enters the arguments as the dogs cut time, but not necessarily making huge differences in those routes.
The travel times between towns contradict themselves in multiple places, but those times are also for roads, not for overland travel. If you use the overland map to force all travel distances to be correct, you can backsolve for the implied speed on roads, and then solve from there for missing buffs, like mounts. None of this solves the crippling rules dogsleds are saddled with - you're much better off riding axe beaks, so you can use the normal mount rules and actually go faster.
That's...not necessarily true. The normal traveling rules from the PHB were obviously thrown out the window, and no pace is given for the axe beak as a mount. If you're assuming a single axe beak can travel 24 miles in a day, at a medium pace, then I think you're doing it wrong. Never mind a ranger with Natural Explorer (Arctic) to remove penalties for difficult terrain. It's only 20 miles of open tundra between Lonelywood and the Sea of Moving Ice. An axe beak getting you there in less than a day both trivializes the journey and negates part of a class feature.
As for the travel times between the various Ten-Towns, they are consistent with those presented in Legacy of the Crystal Shard. In fact, the included DM screen even goes so far as to break down how much of those distances are on roads, paths, or are trackless. And it includes the Dwarven Valley as a possible destination and junction in one's travels. The only new route in Rime of the Frostmaiden is the 8 hour trek between Caer-Dineval and Good Mead.
I don't think we'd even be having this conversation if not for Chapter 4.
And it's expressly possible to intercept the Chardalyn Dragon in Lonelywood. So, let's work backwards to get there.
Lonelywood requires arriving between 26.5 hours and 28.5 hours into the dragon's flight path. And it's nine hours by road, with Vellynne Harpell's sled dogs, from Dougan's Hole. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, they can make the trip without breaking for a rest every hour. That's a likely point of exhaustion for each, and they're spent. Fortunately, if you can repel the dragon, every town has animals you can mount up with. Unfortunately, there's probably a Long Rest in there somewhere. So now we're looking at 17 hours. Which means getting back to Dougan's Hole from Sunblight in ten hours or less. Doable, if each additional dog adds 1 mph before needing a rest. We'd even have time to spare, which means it's possible to intercept the dragon even earlier.
And that's going to be essential to stopping the dragon before it leaves Ten-Towns. It has an average of 147 hit points, and the towns prior to Bryn Shander will only whittle it down 45 hit points. That's 102 hit points to account for, which means four fights. The final showdown will still likely be in Bryn Shander, which means the dragon needs to be intercepted in three other locations. Or they arrive at the 11th hour after the dragon has lost another 35 hit points, with 67 remaining. So it's possible to beat the dragon in as little as three fights, with third being in Bryn Shander.
And, before I forget, Vellynne Harpell's sled dogs will need an hour to rest after arriving at Sunblight. This gives the party an hour to investigate, find the dragon's flight plan, and possibly even clear the dungeon. But none of this is obvious from how the chapters are written. It really does take a while to pull it all together.
EDIT: a spoiler tag was recommended, so it's been added.
That's...not necessarily true. The normal traveling rules from the PHB were obviously thrown out the window, and no pace is given for the axe beak as a mount.
All mounts employ the same travel pace. There's no need for axe beak specific rules.
If you're assuming a single axe beak can travel 24 miles in a day, at a medium pace, then I think you're doing it wrong.
I am not. I am assuming it can sustain 8 hours of movement and 1 of those 8 hours happens at double the standard pace, as per the mounted pace rules. In essence, an axe beak is going to act like a dog sled, but without the mandatory rest periods that render dog sleds the same pace as just walking.
Never mind a ranger with Natural Explorer (Arctic) to remove penalties for difficult terrain. It's only 20 miles of open tundra between Lonelywood and the Sea of Moving Ice. An axe beak getting you there in less than a day both trivializes the journey and negates part of a class feature.
I'm assuming this is coming from your assumption about how I was handling axe beaks. That assumption was incorrect, so your conclusions from it are incorrect.
As for the travel times between the various Ten-Towns, they are consistent with those presented in Legacy of the Crystal Shard.
They're not consistent with themselves. The travel time from Town A to Town B may be listed as a different number from the travel time from Town B to Town A, for example. I don't have LCS, so I can't compare the two modules for consistency, but I can compare Frostmaiden to itself.
In fact, the included DM screen even goes so far as to break down how much of those distances are on roads, paths, or are trackless. And it includes the Dwarven Valley as a possible destination and junction in one's travels. The only new route in Rime of the Frostmaiden is the 8 hour trek between Caer-Dineval and Good Mead.
The trek between Caer Dineval and Good Mead is indeed one of the listed trek times that conflicts with other trek times, and can't possibly be true at the same time as all of the other trek times at once.
Everything below the quote above in your post badly needs to be spoiler-tagged. Please spoiler tag it.
Was it really necessary to break two paragraphs into sentence-by-sentence replies? I don't think so.
In the PHB, the rules for operating a mount aren't significantly different than those for walking on foot. The only noteworthy change is that a mount can travel at double a fast pace (8 miles) for 1 hour. The book is also silent on whether or not the mount can keep moving after such a gallop. And perhaps they're intended to, but the same passage also talks about swapping out mounts to cover large distances in a single day. And those rules, themselves, are inconsistent since 8 hours at 4 mph is 32 miles and not the 30 prescribed in the PHB. So any effort to definitively state how those rules work and whether or not they're applicable to Icewind Dale is foolhardy at best. Especially when none of the mounts in the PHB are included in Icewind Dale. Or the fact that the Overland Travel table on page 11 makes no mention of axe beaks; only dogsleds and on foot (both with and without snowshowes). It's practically its own setting book; behaving under its own set of rules. I sincerely doubt the intent was to allow an axe beak to travel up to 34 miles across the tundra in a given day; which is up to 136 times faster than on-foot travel. And I get that this is frustrating, but that's the reality.
If that's the ruling you wish to employ, that's on you. But I wouldn't presume that to be the expressed rules; the only way it can be interpreted. It just doesn't make any sense.
As for the distances between the Ten-Towns, the only inconsistent one is between Bremen and Targos, which is 2-3 hours depending on which town section you're reading. It was 2 hours in Legacy of the Crystal Shard, but back then there was still a path connecting them. So the 3 hours given (in the Targos section) for no trail seems the most appropriate. Everything else is consistent, including the trek between Caer-Dineval and Good Mead. We just didn't have a distance before. At least, not without going out past 3rd edition. I know this map exists, but I can't figure out what book its from.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why you think the 8.5 hours between them can't possibly be true. You're going to have to show your homework on that one.
You know what? I'm just going to go ahead and say the entire way you handle mounts for this setting is wrong. As in the math simply doesn't check out. If I made an improper assumption before, it's because you weren't clear on giving accurate information before.
Adventure League guidance was a dog sled of any number of dogs was one hour on and one hour rest. We will agreed was bogus. My group got around by getting a polar bear to pull their sled. With the bear you do have to worry about food. And I made them feed fresh food occasionally than goodberrys. If I was homebrewing I would rule a six dogs could pull for six hours then a short rest.
For the rescue sled at beginning of Chapter 4. Zombie Icewind kobolds never tired.
For travel times between cities, I found a chart which matched the travel times between the two towns next to each other. Justin Alexanderr I think was the creator.
Where are you getting that AL guidance from? Because I have the latest versions of all the PDFs for the season and none of them mention the dogs at all.
Facebook Adventure League site and Discord Adventure League. But if you don't have access to those. OOPS. Also my players follow the same sites, and are good enough to post any updates to our local facebook page.
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Getting ready to run Frostmaiden, and I was surprised to see the rules for sled dogs say that each dog can pull 360 lbs. I'm no dog-sled expert, but that sounds like a bit too much for a single dog. Even a mule only carries just over 400lb. Also, the travel times say that a dog sled reduces travel time by 50%, which I estimate to be about 3 miles per hour. A quick Google check suggests dog sleds should be able to go at least 5-6 miles per hour, and even twice that with enough dogs.
Can anyone suggest some realistic speeds and weights for dog sledding, or a justification for the stats given in the adventure module?
How does a red dragon blow out the candles on its birthday cake?
The justification is that those figures have been picked to balance those elements of the game. The higher weight pull could justify the lower speed and vice versa.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
dog sled contest. https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/training/tricks_games_sports/competitive-canine-weight-pull/
A wolf str is 12. 12 *15 is 180. The 360 pds is over snow and ice. So they are upping the weight carry. I would rule for each additional dog up to six the dog can go an extra hour before an hours rest. So 2 dogs 2 hours of travel. etc. .
edit to add the entry
Dogsleds
An empty sled costs 20 gp, weighs 300 pounds, and has room at the back for one driver. A sled dog (use the wolf stat block in appendix A of the Monster Manual) costs 50 gp and can pull 360 pounds.
Sled dogs must take a short rest after pulling a sled for 1 hour; otherwise, they gain one level of exhaustion.
Edit to add
So a single dog could not pull a single dwarf or tall adventurer. So I a go with multiple dogs in the harness. Bit and Brindle is closest to harness.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
True. And they are pulling after all, not carrying. "You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity".
I also like the "one hour per dog" idea.
How does a red dragon blow out the candles on its birthday cake?
FWIW, I have homebrewed that a harness costs twice a bit and bridle, 4gp. A harness is required for all carts, wagons and the like in my game.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
As for travel speed. The normal adventurer can travel at 3 mph on foot. So if a dog sled half's that, the sled is moving at 6 mph. Simple math.
Normally yes, but the travel times between towns given in the adventure imply that walking speed is halved, probably accounting for the snow. Using snowshoes brings it back up to normal walking speed.
How does a red dragon blow out the candles on its birthday cake?
I think the book did not want to come out and out say it. But it looks like snow and ice is being treated as difficult terrain outside of combat.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
The 300 lb weight for a dog sled is WAY off. A real dog sled (made of wood, not high-tech carbon fiber) only weights 100 lbs. And that's the basket sled, used for carrying gear. (A racing sled weighs only half as much, probably uses high-tech materials). Perhaps they mean 300 lbs is the weight of the sled PLUS the driver in full gear?
That's for a modern dogsled. They've been in use for more than a thousand years, so whatever we think we know we don't.
In any case, the fact that a "sled dog...can pull 360 pounds" is just for the normal Push, Drag, or Lift from the Basic Rules & PHB. In truth, they can actually move a lot more. Just one sled dog can pull up to 900 pounds. Factoring in the weight of the sled, that's 600 pounds of driver, passenger, and supplies.
Not too shabby.
The dog sled is incredibly slow. Without a horde of dogs running alongside so you can swap the dogs out every hour and leave the tired ones behind, the dog sled isn't any faster than walking with snowshoes, and radically slower than any dog sled in the written history of dogsleds. The problem is that the dogs need rests so much more often than real world dogs dragging a real world sled. You would be radically better off just spending the same money on draft horses, unless (I haven't read the Frostmaiden rules, just the rules on the sled wolves) there's some rule actually nerfing the horses from plodding through snow, maybe with horse snowshoes.
pg 11 Overland Travel places dogs at 1mph, foot 1/4 mph, foot with snow shoes 1/2mph
Some of the travel times between towns are different because they have established paths. I think this is where some confusion enters the arguments as the dogs cut time, but not necessarily making huge differences in those routes.
The travel times between towns contradict themselves in multiple places, but those times are also for roads, not for overland travel. If you use the overland map to force all travel distances to be correct, you can backsolve for the implied speed on roads, and then solve from there for missing buffs, like mounts. None of this solves the crippling rules dogsleds are saddled with - you're much better off riding axe beaks, so you can use the normal mount rules and actually go faster.
That's...not necessarily true. The normal traveling rules from the PHB were obviously thrown out the window, and no pace is given for the axe beak as a mount. If you're assuming a single axe beak can travel 24 miles in a day, at a medium pace, then I think you're doing it wrong. Never mind a ranger with Natural Explorer (Arctic) to remove penalties for difficult terrain. It's only 20 miles of open tundra between Lonelywood and the Sea of Moving Ice. An axe beak getting you there in less than a day both trivializes the journey and negates part of a class feature.
As for the travel times between the various Ten-Towns, they are consistent with those presented in Legacy of the Crystal Shard. In fact, the included DM screen even goes so far as to break down how much of those distances are on roads, paths, or are trackless. And it includes the Dwarven Valley as a possible destination and junction in one's travels. The only new route in Rime of the Frostmaiden is the 8 hour trek between Caer-Dineval and Good Mead.
I don't think we'd even be having this conversation if not for Chapter 4.
And it's expressly possible to intercept the Chardalyn Dragon in Lonelywood. So, let's work backwards to get there.
Lonelywood requires arriving between 26.5 hours and 28.5 hours into the dragon's flight path. And it's nine hours by road, with Vellynne Harpell's sled dogs, from Dougan's Hole. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, they can make the trip without breaking for a rest every hour. That's a likely point of exhaustion for each, and they're spent. Fortunately, if you can repel the dragon, every town has animals you can mount up with. Unfortunately, there's probably a Long Rest in there somewhere. So now we're looking at 17 hours. Which means getting back to Dougan's Hole from Sunblight in ten hours or less. Doable, if each additional dog adds 1 mph before needing a rest. We'd even have time to spare, which means it's possible to intercept the dragon even earlier.
And that's going to be essential to stopping the dragon before it leaves Ten-Towns. It has an average of 147 hit points, and the towns prior to Bryn Shander will only whittle it down 45 hit points. That's 102 hit points to account for, which means four fights. The final showdown will still likely be in Bryn Shander, which means the dragon needs to be intercepted in three other locations. Or they arrive at the 11th hour after the dragon has lost another 35 hit points, with 67 remaining. So it's possible to beat the dragon in as little as three fights, with third being in Bryn Shander.
And, before I forget, Vellynne Harpell's sled dogs will need an hour to rest after arriving at Sunblight. This gives the party an hour to investigate, find the dragon's flight plan, and possibly even clear the dungeon. But none of this is obvious from how the chapters are written. It really does take a while to pull it all together.
EDIT: a spoiler tag was recommended, so it's been added.
I'm assuming this is coming from your assumption about how I was handling axe beaks. That assumption was incorrect, so your conclusions from it are incorrect.
They're not consistent with themselves. The travel time from Town A to Town B may be listed as a different number from the travel time from Town B to Town A, for example. I don't have LCS, so I can't compare the two modules for consistency, but I can compare Frostmaiden to itself.
The trek between Caer Dineval and Good Mead is indeed one of the listed trek times that conflicts with other trek times, and can't possibly be true at the same time as all of the other trek times at once.
Everything below the quote above in your post badly needs to be spoiler-tagged. Please spoiler tag it.
Was it really necessary to break two paragraphs into sentence-by-sentence replies? I don't think so.
In the PHB, the rules for operating a mount aren't significantly different than those for walking on foot. The only noteworthy change is that a mount can travel at double a fast pace (8 miles) for 1 hour. The book is also silent on whether or not the mount can keep moving after such a gallop. And perhaps they're intended to, but the same passage also talks about swapping out mounts to cover large distances in a single day. And those rules, themselves, are inconsistent since 8 hours at 4 mph is 32 miles and not the 30 prescribed in the PHB. So any effort to definitively state how those rules work and whether or not they're applicable to Icewind Dale is foolhardy at best. Especially when none of the mounts in the PHB are included in Icewind Dale. Or the fact that the Overland Travel table on page 11 makes no mention of axe beaks; only dogsleds and on foot (both with and without snowshowes). It's practically its own setting book; behaving under its own set of rules. I sincerely doubt the intent was to allow an axe beak to travel up to 34 miles across the tundra in a given day; which is up to 136 times faster than on-foot travel. And I get that this is frustrating, but that's the reality.
If that's the ruling you wish to employ, that's on you. But I wouldn't presume that to be the expressed rules; the only way it can be interpreted. It just doesn't make any sense.
As for the distances between the Ten-Towns, the only inconsistent one is between Bremen and Targos, which is 2-3 hours depending on which town section you're reading. It was 2 hours in Legacy of the Crystal Shard, but back then there was still a path connecting them. So the 3 hours given (in the Targos section) for no trail seems the most appropriate. Everything else is consistent, including the trek between Caer-Dineval and Good Mead. We just didn't have a distance before. At least, not without going out past 3rd edition. I know this map exists, but I can't figure out what book its from.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why you think the 8.5 hours between them can't possibly be true. You're going to have to show your homework on that one.
You know what? I'm just going to go ahead and say the entire way you handle mounts for this setting is wrong. As in the math simply doesn't check out. If I made an improper assumption before, it's because you weren't clear on giving accurate information before.
Adventure League guidance was a dog sled of any number of dogs was one hour on and one hour rest. We will agreed was bogus. My group got around by getting a polar bear to pull their sled. With the bear you do have to worry about food. And I made them feed fresh food occasionally than goodberrys. If I was homebrewing I would rule a six dogs could pull for six hours then a short rest.
For the rescue sled at beginning of Chapter 4. Zombie Icewind kobolds never tired.
For travel times between cities, I found a chart which matched the travel times between the two towns next to each other. Justin Alexanderr I think was the creator.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Where are you getting that AL guidance from? Because I have the latest versions of all the PDFs for the season and none of them mention the dogs at all.
Facebook Adventure League site and Discord Adventure League. But if you don't have access to those. OOPS. Also my players follow the same sites, and are good enough to post any updates to our local facebook page.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.