Wow, I hadn't checked in for a couple of days, and... Fieari, you've given this TONS of thought. I commend you. That said, one thing still nags at me--and should for anyone planning to use cavalry.
A regular ol' horse is described in the PHB as reluctant to go into combat--in fact, controlling one in combat requires a DC
20 Ride check--which no support unit is likely to get except on a 16 or higher. A warhorse is trained for combat, and requires no Ride check to control in combat.
Would the following definitions be suitable/acceptable?
Horse: Cost, 75 gp light, 200 gp heavy. Will stay away from battle.
Combat Horse: Cost, 150 gp light, 400 gp heavy. Will go into battle, but will not attack, and will leave combat immediately if rider lost.
Warhorse: Cost, 9 pts light, 16 pts, heavy. Will go into battle and attack with its rider, and will continue fighting even if its rider is lost.
Also, you said NPCs receive standard array--I assume you meant standard NPC array, right?
One last... well, call it a suggestion. Can I recommend that gear not be purchased "by level"? The basis for this suggestion: both gear lists are balanced with each other. (1 CR of NPC gear is worth the same as 1 CR of PC gear, to two significant figures at least). May I suggest instead the rule:
A characters' gear adds an amount to his CR equal to (cube root of gear value)/23.2.
A 1st-level NPC would normally come with 25 gp in gear. If you instead start him with nothing, that calculation means he still drops to CR 0.5416, as per the original instrcutions.
This means that a PC with 99,000 in gear is not paying the same CR penalty as one with 65,000 in gear, and fits with your rule in the rules-block indicating that we can calculate fractional CR for our CR baseline.
OK... that was longer than I'd wanted, but those are my thoughts. Obviously, I need to recalculate my army based on all of these changes, but I was rather expecting that anyway.
