Jousting or Mounted combat...

[Spinflight]

Been having a play around with the idea of a primarily mounted character with the FG client...

However the rules themselves seem a little bit... lacking. Far as I can tell mounted combat is barely mentioned, but a character's Offensive Bonus should be a percentage based upon his riding skill. So first question is can this be positive and does it require a roll? Or is it merely a 40 base riding equals a 40% OB multiplier?

The Warhorse description does mention, "The rider may also attack during a charge attack if a successful riding maneuver is made. For partial successful riding maneuvers, allow an attack with a percentage (from the maneuver table) of the normal OB."

Riding Manouvres however, in the FG client, seem to take into account the armour encumberance, which makes little sense to me. Same with jousting, which I'd have thought would take account of skill with a spear or a lance, but doesn't. RC3 also gives a +1 bonus per 10' / sec for thrusting weapons. So a 2 foot tall Pech mounted on a Wardog, Warg style, at Dash speed (550) would get a +55 bonus with a Lance?

So... Trying to piece this together. Dude on horseback with 40 riding brings his mount to dash speed, which is a hard riding roll. Say he rolls 110 with bonusses. He then attacks a scrote who isn't wielding a spear, which is basically pointing said charger at said scrote. He has an OB with his spear / lance of 50. But is that resolved to 50 x 40% + 55, or 50 x 110% + 55.... Or should it indeed be using the Jousting skill? If not how does the jousting skill factor in? Would he also get an initiative bonus as per the speed chart, 6-02, or is that and the DB bonus just for the animal?

Might it make a lot of sense to have a separate token in the client for a mounted PC, which makes some sense of the above? The armour encumberance is likely just a bug but difficult to make any sense of the mechanics otherwise..

[Grimbold11]

You're quite right - this is poorly covered! As a long-time player/GM, this is the way I've seen it handled two different ways by various people. First method - since attacking takes a minimum of 50% action, a character needs a minimum riding skill of 50 to even be able to attack and even then it is at -50. If a character gets their riding skill to 100, they can attack with no penalty.

Second method is similar to a moving maneuver - a character rolls on the moving maneuver chart using their riding skill and the result tells them what percentage of their offensive bonus they can use that turn. A walking pace is easy, a jog is light, and so on up the difficulty columns. But it takes 20% action to control your horse so you are always attacking at -20. I prefer this method because otherwise characters have to be around 10th level to fight on horseback.

Related to both of these rules (and this is probably a popular house rule), I've seen several people use the "for every foot of distance covered, your OB increases by +1". It makes a skilled knight on a horse a beast with a lance! Of course it also makes flying beasts that swoop in for a landing or giants that rush forward to bash things terribly dangerous. <- which they should be!!

[alloowishus]

I made a little house rule regarding jousting, since it is a skill similar to targetting, I treat it similar to ambush, i.e. it adjusts your critical based on your rank if you sucessfully make the roll.