Cool mounts 2 - simple solutions?

[RangerWickett]

I earlier posted a thread asking for ideas on how to make mounts - namely horses - still be viable at higher levels. I'm looking not to change rules, but rather add new things to buy. Additive house rules, rather than revisionist ones.

The simplest solution seems to be to add extra hit dice to the horses. Any suggestions what a valid price would be for, say, a 5 HD heavy warhorse vs. a 4 HD one?

I'm worried first about getting up to 5 HD so your horses don't automatically panic when exposed to dragonfear. Next, I'm concerned that while, say, 600 gp for 1 extra hit die might be fair at low levels, 60,000 gp for 100 hit dice would be overpowered even at 20th level.

And what about where these horses come from? Should there be a feat and Handle Animal rank requirement to train horses above their natural hit dice? How would it work?

Suggestions?

 

[hong]

I would say that rather than just adding a fixed number of HD, treat the warhorse as a cohort and give it class levels. This lets the horse keep up with the PCs, rather than just delaying the point where it becomes fireball fodder. It's also more balanced compared to classes that automatically get their own pets (paladin, ranger, druid).

 

[RangerWickett]

But would a feat be the way to balance that? Like prereq: Mounted Combat, 9 ranks in Ride, and you get to add bonuses to one mount of your choice? Or to any mount you hop onto? What happens if you hop onto a griffon? Does it get better?

If you don't need a feat, and horses just gain XP, well, what happens when the horse dies? Do you have to start with a normal 0th level horse and train it by putting it in danger a lot? Or do horses always adjust to match their rider?

 

[hong]

Treating the horse as a cohort means you have a special mount. Like Shadowfax, or Silver, or whatnot. Any other horse is still just a horse. If your mount dies, you have to get another one, via the usual rules for replacing cohorts.

One thing with this approach is that a cohort mount is not only more survivable, but also has much better damage output than a regular horse (think of paladin+warhorse). This might not be exactly what you were after.

 

[RangerWickett]

I like the idea. It's easy to do. I'm just curious where these super horses are coming from. I can understand getting one at, say, 6th level and then having it get better with time. You adventure until you're 17th level. But then it dies. No worries, you can find another 9/12/15/whatever hit-die horse.

But where was that horse when you were 6th level? You could've used a 15-HD horse back then.

 

[hong]

Hey mang, where do any 15th level NPCs come from?










The answer, of course, is when two 14th level NPCs love each other very very much....

 

[Enchelion Derabdur]

Personally, I tend to treat a mount and rider as a discrete entity... This can throw a wrench into some rules, but overall eases the burden on me as DM... Rational is that anyone sufficiently powerful and accustomed to riding an animal (Not just a rented steed, but a companion through multiple adventures) can restrain and calm the animal into doing things it isn't accustomed to.

This does start to get a little Ad Hoc in terms of application, but I prefer it that way in my campaigns.

 

[Jack Simth]

Poof!

The horse is now treated as an attended object.

Alternately, the price of an advanced horse scales in the same way most things in D&D do: by the square of the improvement.

Your base Heavy Warhorse costs 400 gp.

A 1 HD improvment might cost 1000 gp extra.
A 2 HD improvement might cost 4,000 gp extra.
A 3 HD improvement might cost 9,000 gp extra.
...
A 16 HD improvment (to 20 HD) might cost 256,000 gp extra.
...
A 100 HD improvement might cost 10,000,000 extra.

 

[borble]

or start as in the first post and add 100 gp to evry increase

 

[Quartz]

I like the idea of giving horses class levels, but more simply you could have Saddles of Heroism, which raise the HD of the mounted beast to the number of ranks in the rider's Ride skill. The one does not preclude the other, though.