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I've had that issue. Haven't really thought of a suitable fix, yet.

In Ophid's Grasslands there are huge horses that look like Clydesdales.

But that's just me talking.

Could switch it to Forced March since they will have to walk every where with heavy gear.

Switch it to horsemanship: exotic and find something in the monsters & animals.

My problem with Forced March (or even Horsemanship: Exotic) is that both are fairly major downgrades from Horsemanship: Palladin; even if you made it H:E, and gave them an appropriate mount, then you're looking at a major upgrade in power, since the exotic mounts who could carry them are usually pretty powerful.

I think that, for the most part, the easiest solution is that they don't have knights/palladins as listed; they'd instead have a variant class that did not focus on the use of horsemanship or the lance. Knights can pretty easily be folded into Soldiers or Nobles. Palladins are a bit more difficult; I'd be inclined to replace their WP Lance and Horsemanship skills with simply 2 other skill selections from their normal list... they're not so overwhelming that the loss of those abilities would cripple the classes, especially not the Palladin, nor in light of the background skills.

MT-NME wrote:

Shawn Merrow wrote:Could switch it to Forced March since they will have to walk every where with heavy gear.

Excelent suggestion, however does this negate WP Lance? Or can a lance be used while *not* on a horse?
If not, then perhaps change lance to polearm. With either skill I could see adding some extra bonuses to represent their specialized training.

Switching from Lance to Polearm sounds like a good idea to me.

Alternately you could just have those creatures that can't ride be proficent with a chariot.

I would create a horse breed for them, as I already suggested.

Otherwise, I would swap Lance for Pole-arm and make it special somehow; either start a level 2 W.P. or develop a special schedule for the PC.

It did not take me long to create a large sized riding horse. So to round out my suggestion I will use some maths.

I don't have Monsters & Animals to use game stats, so...

1 hand is 4 inches.

Let's use 15 hands for average riding horse size. Let's say an average rider of this horse is 6 feet (18 hands) tall. That is a 1.125 ratio.
rider_size / horse_size = 1.125

So let's say the average rider of the large riding horse is 9 feet (27 hands) tall. If we use the ratio we get 24 hands tall horse. That's quite a big larger than the largest draft horse.

If a riding horse weights 850 - 1200 pounds then we get 56.667 - 80 pounds/hand. For a 24 hands tall horse that's 1360 - 1920 pounds; may as well do 1400 - 2000, which seems about right to me.

Just use any ratio you like such as 1.61803399 the golden ratio.

Clever use of math to conceal arbitrariness.

Don't forget though if you increase the size of the Mount, you increase the size of the up keep of the mount. Where will said character find accommodations for a larger mount, some smaller inns might not even have a barn big enough for the beast, plus keeping it fed. It would be a great way to keep the characters money pouch empty . Oh, and find a blacksmith that can shoe something that much larger than a horse. The character will probably want to learn to do it themselves

As I recall...

A typical horse needs 1 pound of grains / 100 pounds of body, a bit of salt, and several gallons of water every day. They have really small stomaches relatively speaking so they have to eat a bit several times a day for to make this work. Also they can't vomit so don't stuff them.

I used a calculator

Here's how I've dealt with the problem in the past. It goes like this: Horsemanship skills are different for different races. The skills are all written based on their use by human / elven sized characters. Larger races have learned through the generations to use larger animals the way smaller races use horses. For instance, a human looking at a Rhino is not going to see a prospective mount (unless they have issues we won't address here), but a Troll? Well, that Rhino is either lunch, or it's going to help him hunt it! It's all a matter of perspective. A human knight or palladin might look at a Rhino (or elephant, or something else) as a wild animal that has little or no tactical use, but an Ogre or Troll of the same occupation is going to see a trainable mount with some awesome combat applications. The Horsemanships skills work the same way for all races, the animals they are used on differ. It's just a matter of perspective!

Well, I agree with Mark in merging them with a soldier. You can give them the other Palladin skills but they just don't ride horses. Quite frankly, horseback combat rarely comes into play in an RPG as it is. Also, humans developed these skills because the horses were there. In order for a larger race to develop this, there would have to be a pre-existing animal for them to domesticate. They wouldn't just see humans using mounts and decide to look for a large beast that they could use. They'd probably just laugh at the puny humans and their need to use animals. Plus, a lot of larger creatures are a bit more feral than humans and might look at many of the suitable steeds as a food souce.

-Vek
"Would a troll scream until he was rhino?"

In our campaign a great deal of the combat is from a mounted position. We have a Titan Palladin that rides a Mammoth and a our Cyclops sorceress rides a Dragondactyl which can carry nearly any giant. More mounted combat gives out team tactical advantages we have needed to avoid being swarmed by the hordes of undead and monstrous foes we have gone up against. Our Necromancer usually raises a small army out of the bodies of fallen foes and allies which act as buffer zone to protect our support personnel.

Give them Paladin Horsemanship, and let them use only that exotic mount, or conversely, they can be shrunk down in size to fit a more normal mount and yet retain all their normal attribute bonuses. Or simply supersize the horse permanently (and expensively) and then fit it with barding and whatnot. Or it's a special breed of animal used only by that race, and none other. There are plenty of options, you just need to be imaginative.

i say if you dont want to go with another equivelent animal to a horse for a troll sized palladin, i then say trade palladin horse skill for Force March & running skills(got the long endurance from forched march & increased speed from running. trade lance for apolearm but this polearm retias all the bonuses for the lance skill.

I prefer to think of Wolven as between 6-7 feet tall, which solves that problem nicely. Also, specialised breeding of miniature Dire Bears for endurance and proper back support. These "Midi Bears" form the backbone of their Cavalry units.
Yeah that's right, Wolven aren't just the roman empire, they are they roman empire with Bear Cavalry.

For smaller than human Kinights/Palladins keep the Horsemanship Knight or palladin and give them a smaller animal. Ponies work quite well as mounts for dwarves and ,while a little ignoble, Donkeys and Mules could work too. With a little modification to the saddle, mostly in shortening the stirrup straps and lengthening the reins, a Dwarf could ride a regular sized horse as well. He'd just need a little assisstance getting mounted up, perhaps a small rope ladder attached to the back of the saddle.
Larger than human Knight/Palladins are a different story as most horses are too small for them, especially a Troll. Rather than make a shorter char, find a larger mount. I've alwayd personally reccomended the Melech from M&A for Trolls and Ogres. Yes it would require a switch to Horsemanship Exotic, which can be considered a step down, but considering the added benefits an exotic mount could provide (ie enhanced attack capability, flight, magical powers etc.) the trade off seems worth it to me. Or you could just take a standard horse of some kind and put it on steroids, buffing up the size, strength, HP, SDC and other stats to suit your giant-sized rider.

I a game I ran many moons ago that had a troll in the party, I made up a mount based on the Kaiila of Gor. Basically a huge riding cat. In stead of the size mentioned in those novels, I just upped it until I felt it would be a good size for a troll to ride. I can't see something like a troll riding a 'normal' horse, no matter how huge. But something exotic, like a cat, now that I can see them riding.

Going the other way, I had a clan of Halflings in a AD&D game that had bred miniature horses (no, not ponies), which were known across the land as being great steeds for the littler folk. And a Dwarven clan that had mountain ponies that could be ridden, but were often used in tunnels, being bred for such tasks.

The tallest horse on record was around 7'3" tall at the withers (22.2 1/5 hands). Most breeds "top out" at around 6'7" or so. If we take these real world stats as a guide, I suppose we could see a breed of massive horse bred in the North. This could be seen with the Kingdom of Heavea assisting in breeding for these behemoths. I kind of picture a Clydesdale or Shire type, massively muscled and intimidating. Riding a "worm blooded" horse that large, or even being in kicking distance, chills me blood. I mean the hooves would be at least the size of my head ...