Horses, and keeping players from having them

[Sorontar]

Speaking from my own experience :
In winter the horses should have spiked shoes. Not even that will always help, I had a clydesdale step on my foot with those and I have nice little scars for it.

And this gentlemen, was a FRIENDLY big lug who looked at my foot apologeticlly with a quizical expression saying "What is he pushing at me for... oh, that smells like it'd hurt..."

Horses are wonderful, albeit all too often dead-dumb animals.

- Obe

** Edited :

Point of this is of course showing how FUN you can have with horses.

- Obe

Have the villains horse drop a load in the path of the heroes, always a winner when the wizzie gets it on the hem of his robe

[Oberoten]

Or the ever present horse-slobber "Don't worry it just means he LIKES you."

- Obe

[TFWoods3]

Are there more detailed rules in 3.5 for horse care than in 4E? I also haven't seen much in the way of horse gear on the item lists. It would be nice to have

[Griogre]

3.x had bit & bridals, saddles (pack, riding, war), saddle bags, and barding. For 4E, Adventures Vault has barding and the rest of the gear other than the war saddle (because of it's special rules in 3.x) was a few gold each. Feed was like a silver a day and weighted 10 pounds for a days worth.

[Phystus]

Well, I don't know what's in 4.0, but in 3.5 the one paragraph in the DMG boils down to "have the party hire some commoner to deal with it".

There are some rules in the movement section of the PHB about forced movement, hustling for extended periods, and such. There's also some mention of feed in the equipment section.

My house rule since AD&D days has been 20 minutes of care (removing saddles, grooming, feeding, etc.) daily per horse. I'd originally proposed 15, but several members of the party who were more horse-savvy than I objected that it was too short. Someone in the party (usually one of the rangers, or the druid until she went into semi-retirement) would usually mention horse care as they made camp, or stables when they got to town, so I didn't have to push the issue much.

~P

[TFWoods3]

It just seems to me that horses could make outdoor encounters far more unpredictable and harder to manage. Planning out an encounter on a specific map could end up having them moving off the edge of the map in just one move at horse rate of speed. Suddenly I have to decide, does the enemy also have mounts or not? Should i factor in chances of the horses getting hit in combat? Now I have to track horse health? and on and on...

[Oberoten]

Well personally when dealing with mounts I'd go this route :

* Of coures the mounts can be hit, targeted and slain on both sides. Make it it's own challenge for both players and npcs. A shriek and hooves flailing everywhere as the massive warhorse goes down might put a crimp in even the toughest knight's day.

* Bigger maps for outdoors encounters. Might even let the players or the NPCs set up ambushes and do other nice little tactical maneuvers.

* If horses become comon, so will countermeasures. That is the truth of all warfare. When pistols made armour obsolete, the longsword (made to punch through armour) became replaced by the rapier in it's many forms. Measure begets countermeasure. Sure, not everyone can afford the effort or money to have countermeasures for everything. But a group who is defending an area won't NOT take something like cavalery into the calculation.

[Lithl]

Or the ever present horse-slobber "Don't worry it just means he LIKES you."

Since when do horses slobber? I've held a horse's tongue in my hand while still in the horse's mouth and is wasn't slobbery.

And since one of the players in my group lives with about 8 horses or, so, we could never get away with such breaks in logic as this!


Hmm, I suppose I should change my stance, though. I have seen horses slobber while eating Bois D'Arc fruit. Which could be due to Bois D'Arc fruit being sufficiently poisonous to induce vomiting...

[Oberoten]

It all depends on the horse. Very affectionate ones will happily slobber all over you (and so will the ones with bad teeth)

- Obe

[Sigurd]

Has anyone seen good rules for rider damage in a horse fall? Its a problem with D&D levels making superhero characters. I bet that with a couple of levels horse fall is barely an inconvenience.

Its not for nothing knights were called 'the horse butchers guild'.