Mounts...

[Triff]

How long is the longest a mount have survived in your campaigns?

In our group, they die rather fast, making the players reluctant to buy one unless absolutely neccessary (now we have a boat instead, works much better!).

RQ3 prices for a riding horse is pretty high (3000p).

And warhorses, how do you use those? Battle-wise.

SGL.

[TRose]

Last game I was in our mounts lasted long time. That was mostly because none of us was any good at mounted combat and tended to dismount before we got into a fight. Even though some of us had warhorses we tended to hand our horses off to a servant and then fight on foot. Guess we were a bunch of Dragoons.

[soltakss]

Our Rhino Rider has gone through a few mounts, but he has had to sell a few after some broos messed about with them.

His current war-rhino has lasted for about 3 seasons so far, or perhaps a little longer.

The other PCs have the same cavalry bison and cavalry zebra that they bought as soon as they could afford them, so they have lasted probably one and a half years.

They rarely risk their mounts in combat, preferring to use missile weapons and spells at range. When they do charge in, the rhino goes first with a hefty Protection spell and goes in at speed, so there's rarely much left to attack it. The bison goes in next to mop up, followed not very closely by the zebra.

They normally heal their beasts immediately, to save buying a new one. I play that Praxians can use Heal without any penalty on their mounts, so Healing works really well (not halved for the different species).

Of course, they don't take beasts into caves or into danger areas, being the most risk-averse party I've ever played/GMed with.

In past campaigns, I never bothered to buy a war mount, or even a cavalry mount, because they probably wouldn't last the scenario, so I had a succession of identikit horses rolling off a conveyer belt.

We had a unicorn rider whose mount lasted a very, very long time. We also had a morokanth whose war slug lasted a while, but it was only brought out for special occasions. Trog's Triceratops (Trixie, I think) lasted a long while as well, but that's because he bolted bronze plates to its hide and it was probably more intelligent than he was.

We used a wagon in Dorastor, but the mounts kept getting scared and running away, until the Death Lord bought a number of draft bison and performed a ritual on them that made them stronger, untiring and pretty immune to fear-based spells, but they made Humakti a bit uneasy and could cross rivers underwater. They lasted a while until a PC Humakti noticed that they never ate and never got tired and had blank expressions on their faces .....

[Trifletraxor]

We used a wagon in Dorastor, but the mounts kept getting scared and running away, until the Death Lord bought a number of draft bison and performed a ritual on them that made them stronger, untiring and pretty immune to fear-based spells, but they made Humakti a bit uneasy and could cross rivers underwater. They lasted a while until a PC Humakti noticed that they never ate and never got tired and had blank expressions on their faces .....

Hehehe, that's rich!

SGL.

[Nightshade]

During our RQ days, the serious mounts did reasonably well; I saw warhorses that outsurvived their owners. The tendency to invest in at least a little barding didn't hurt.

[TRose]

While on the subjects of mounts. How do most of you handle shooting at mounted targets. To simplify thing I tended to add size of mount and rider together to determine size penalty and then any hit that was the result of size modifier hit the mount. The rider could of course try to parry the blow

[Joseph Paul]

While on the subjects of mounts. How do most of you handle shooting at mounted targets. To simplify thing I tended to add size of mount and rider together to determine size penalty and then any hit that was the result of size modifier hit the mount. The rider could of course try to parry the blow

Hmm. SIZ as mass (how heavy something is) increases as an exponential function. At least in some iterations of BRP. You are warned to not just add two SIZs together but instead convert them to true weights add the weights and refigure the SIZ from that.

I wonder if SIZ as area follows a different progression?

[Nightshade]

While on the subjects of mounts. How do most of you handle shooting at mounted targets. To simplify thing I tended to add size of mount and rider together to determine size penalty and then any hit that was the result of size modifier hit the mount. The rider could of course try to parry the blow

I don't recall anyone every aiming at a mount+rider as a gestalt, so it never came up. If it did, I'd probably just have used the firing-into-groups rule from RQ3 (which, however, didn't really address the size bonus for shooting at large targets; I don't think there's an easy solution to combining the two, since as noted, size is not really linear as a comparison of many monster's Size values to a human's will show).

[Atgxtg]

Hmm. SIZ as mass (how heavy something is) increases as an exponential function. At least in some iterations of BRP. You are warned to not just add two SIZs together but instead convert them to true weights add the weights and refigure the SIZ from that.

I wonder if SIZ as area follows a different progression?

THe progesion throughout most of the SIZ charts in RQ3 stuff was x2 mass = +8- SIZ. It doesn't hold up for very small SIZes (below 8) or above 100, but works fine for 99% of what we use SIZ for. I used to find that helpful for handing Resistance Table rolls when mutiple characters contributed to a task.

As for mounts in RQ, few player actually seemed to bother getting their ride skill high enough so that they could use the mounts. The few who did, went out of thier way to armor up or protect thier mount somehow. One Rune Lord had his allied spirirt in his mount, and it usually came out of fights better off than the PCs. Few things are nastier in RQ that a big creature that gets it's combat skills up over 50%. A few points of Ironhoof can catch people by surprise.

[Rurik]

We used a wagon in Dorastor, but the mounts kept getting scared and running away, until the Death Lord bought a number of draft bison and performed a ritual on them that made them stronger, untiring and pretty immune to fear-based spells, but they made Humakti a bit uneasy and could cross rivers underwater. They lasted a while until a PC Humakti noticed that they never ate and never got tired and had blank expressions on their faces .....

I'm stealing this. I don't know when or where, but consider it nabbed.

[Atgxtg]

I'm stealing this. I don't know when or where, but consider it nabbed.

Rurik,

You'd love Warpworld. One thing that can happen there is that animals and condemned prisoners can be used to power enchantments. So things like zombie rowers and draft animals were around.

[Kloster]

Last game I was in our mounts lasted long time. That was mostly because none of us was any good at mounted combat and tended to dismount before we got into a fight. Even though some of us had warhorses we tended to hand our horses off to a servant and then fight on foot. Guess we were a bunch of Dragoons.

Ditto.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Lord Twig]

We had a Zorak Zoran with a riding prey mantis for a while. We left it with the horses outside while we investigated a cave and were down there longer than expected. When we finally came out we found the mantis got hungry and ate the sorcerer's horse. The sorcerer was upset, but Mr. Zorak Zoran just laughed at him.

Every night after that the sorcerer would cast a high powered Palsy on the Mantis when it was his turn at watch. Eventually he hit the head and incapacitated it. A little work with a Damage Boosted sword and the mantis ceased to be a threat to future horses.

The Chalana Arroy had to step in after that to cool things down. The Hero Quest we were on required a diverse group, so we knew in advance that there might be some inter-party troubles.

[Kloster]

We had a Zorak Zoran with a riding prey mantis for a while. We left it with the horses outside while we investigated a cave and were down there longer than expected. When we finally came out we found the mantis got hungry and ate the sorcerer's horse. The sorcerer was upset, but Mr. Zorak Zoran just laughed at him.

Every night after that the sorcerer would cast a high powered Palsy on the Mantis when it was his turn at watch. Eventually he hit the head and incapacitated it. A little work with a Damage Boosted sword and the mantis ceased to be a threat to future horses.

...

I like this one.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster