You know those medieval crankshafts turned by yoked oxen? Well, I had the idea of doing that in 3.5 DnD, only with Dire Bear Skeletons, as they have 31 strength as a large, not overly rare, creature. As skeletons, they would never tire and could turn the crankshaft forever. The first thing I needed to find was the amount of force the bears could exert, which was in pounds dragged/pushed. The 3.5 rules state that a creature can push 5 times what they can carry for a maximum load, and move at the speed for being at their maximum load. For a dire bear, 31 strength means it can carry 1840 pounds as a maximum load, but that is if it was a medium biped. As a large quadruped, a dire bear can actually carry 5520 pounds (3 times) what a medium biped can, so a dire bear can push or drag 27600 pounds, or 13.8 tons, or 12519.15 kg, at 300ft per minute. Which is insane. At this point, I asked Amatoxin to help me translate pounds dragged into force used to turn the crankshaft. Assuming gravity is the same as reality, and the approximate friction coefficient is .75, one bear skeleton gives 92015.7525 newtons of force, or 92 kN. So the force provided by each bear is 92 kN, and as I was thinking of using a double stacked crankshaft with 4 bears at each level, there's 8 bears total for 736 kN of force. Amatoxin guessed that the loss of energy to friction and heat in the gearbox would not inhibit end function (an early 20th century steam train had a tractive effort of 130kN). Anybody here have the schooling to give more exact numbers, or thoughts concerning the bear skeleton engine? What should I use it for first?
A living dire bear is about 12 feet long and weighs up to 4 tons, but pushing 13.8 tons is crazy, especially at a pace of 300ft per minute. The skeletons obviously weigh a lot less than 4 tons, although the game doesn't give me a ballpark of how much the skeletal structure of a dire bear weighs.
You want to calculate physics on a magical construct using material that would shatter instantly under such stress?
Well everything would at least be steel, and many other components would have to be adamantium, especially the gearbox, which would have crazy amounts of stress. The 3.5 rules don't give me any information regarding physics pressures, which is a serious downside in this situation :p
