What I Learnt From Last Night's Session

[+5 Keyboard!]

A always tell my players, "You want a horse? Sure, you can have one. But you should probably know that about 80% of the critters out in the wilds find them deeeeeeeelicious."

 

[Warren Okuma]

A always tell my players, "You want a horse? Sure, you can have one. But you should probably know that about 80% of the critters out in the wilds find them deeeeeeeelicious."

Cool. XP bait.

 

[William drake]

Horses die really easily!

I am running the players through the Dungeon adventure "Racing the Snake". The party were guarding a merchant's daughter from a Yuan-Ti assasin and his kobold minions (in reality the PC's are just providing a decoy).

The "daughter" was hidden in a carriage drawn by 2 horses and the PC's were also all riding horses. 2 Fireballs later and the carriage is a flaming wreck and the 2 horses drawing the carriage are also dead.

The kobold that cast the Fireballs tries to escape. One PC shoot down his horse, slowing his escape, and the Sorcerer PC Fireballs the kobold to death. Shortly after, the Yuan-Ti and another kobold attack the party at range with longbows. The Yuan-Ti is on a chariot drawn by 2 light warhorses and kobold has another light warhorse.

After a few rounds of combat, the Yuan-Ti and kobold decide to drop back a bit. No way says the party. A few arrows later and the kobold's horse it taken out from under him. After many more rounds of battle, the Yuan-Ti and kobold try to escape together on the chariot. A Fireball and a couple more arrows later and 1 of the horses is killed, effectively immobilising the chariot.

Eventually the Yuan-Ti escaped on the back of the remaining light warhorse, healing it as he fled. However the Yuan-Ti was really only able to escape because the PC's let him (they don't want to kill him, otherwise their decoy ruse will be discovered). If they had wanted to, they could have shot the horse out from underneath him too.

After last night's session I can't see horses playing a very big part in the campaign from here on in. They seem way too easy to kill. They have low AC's (unless you give them really good barding) and their hit points aren't enough to help them when someone drops a couple of Fireballs at their feet.

Has anyone else had this experience? Has it resulted in fewer PC's riding horses in your game? Have you changed the rules to make horses less of a target?

Olaf the Stout

I mean, their horses....what can you do; sorry your players think better than those in the movies who simply neve shoot out the tire, or clip the mount in the knee.

On the other hand, you dont want a stream of dead horses in your game. SO, why not make it harder to them, isn't there an extra diff for spead, and the trained rider. Give the mount sheilds that way the can protect their horses from long ranged attacks, and a little bit of padding, or armor on a mount goes a long way. Also, keep in mind where they're hitting the horse. If its in the backside, the beast should beable to go pretty ok, if in the neck or face, or chest, you might have some issues: think back to leather or armor for mounts. If in the legs, it should be very hard to do this from long range.

I mean, ancient people dominated the world: the hun, because they were so nasty on horseback. If it was simply "kill the mount, kill the army" we'd never have known them.

Also, you might want to slip in a fighting horse: mount trained to rear and buck in combat.

 

[S'mon]

In a game with area-effect artillery spells, horses are going to do about as well as they do against artillery IRL... I don't see a problem, really. If you run a high magic game, horses are pretty well obsolete.