I know nothing about horses

[Pbartender]

Take two light horses, and one medium-sized rider with basic equipment (laets' say a total carrying weight between 150 and 450 pounds -- most adventurers -- which is medium encumbrance for a light horse).

A light horse with light encumbrance can walk 6 miles per hour for 8 hours.

A light horse with medium encumbrance can walk 4 miles per hour for 8 hours, or hustle at up to 8 miles per hour.

Now remember, the rules for overland movement say...

HUSTLE

A character can hustle for 1 hour without a problem. Hustling for a second hour in between sleep cycles deals 1 point of nonlethal damage, and each additional hour deals twice the damage taken during the previous hour of hustling. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from hustling becomes fatigued.

A fatigued character can’t run or charge and takes a penalty of -2 to Strength and Dexterity. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue.

So, here's how the remount works...

The unecumbered horse walks at 6 miles per hour, while the encumbered horse hustles at 6 miles per hour. That way, you end up moving at 1.5 times the base movement rate, but you spread the non-lethal damage for hustling over two or more horses. That allows you to go a little bit faster for much longer periods of time.

Without the remount, you could travel 32 miles in 8 hours without tiring the horse... Or 40 miles in 5 hours, and end up with a fatigued horse with 15 points of non-lethal damage (4 more, and he falls unconscious) that would take 5 hours to recover.

With a remount, you can travel 48 miles in 8 hours -- switching horses every hour -- and end up with two fatigued horses with 6 or 7 points of non-lethal damage each (it's 10 points altogether, some can be recovered during the hours horse walks), which recovers in 2 or 3 hours.

 

[Gundark]

Pbartender sounds like he has the crunch down. I grew up on a farm and rode horses considerably (however since moving to town it's been a while). However I'm not sure if this would speed up anything much. You have one horse that is laden and one that isn't. You can still only travel as fast as the laden horse. The fact that you have a fresh one wouldn't impact that much. And in reality the "fresh" horse is still travelling with the party and so isn't going to be all that rested when they switch loads. What I might say is that they could keep going longer before the horses needed a rest, not necessarily faster. However this is my logic and not what the rules say. In the end you need to ask yourself is it really important in game terms.

 

[mmadsen]

So...if the party acquired 2 horses each, one for riding, and one as an unladen "spare" (a spare mare, if you will - sorry, awful horse humor), would that actually speed up their overland progress by switching horses as they travel? Or is the extra weight of a rider and gear negligible compared to the horse's fatigue from overland movement alone?

For steppe nomads like the Mongols, this was standard operating procedure. A rider would lead a number of horses (ponies, really) and would switch out steeds on a regular basis.

A medieval knights would ride a palfrey (or, in D&D terms, a light horse) and save his destrier (heavy warhorse) or courser (light warhorse) for battle.

 

[Treebore]

It really only speeds you up in it decreases rest stops. Overland speed will probably not be significantly change, unless you do something like the pony express did, with remounts every few miles (I don't remember the average distance between the express stops) and the riders could really push the horses in between the stops.

So basically, in real life, it would allow you to fit in an extra hour or two of distance in a given day, since you didn't have to rest your horses nearly so much. It isn't exactly easy on the rider either, BTW.

Do we have any enduro horse racers on the boards? Relay what the hundred+ mile race is like for the rider? Let alone the 40? Plus tell how tough it is on the horse too. I only became familiar with it when my daughter was considering getting into it.

 

[Mark CMG]

If you know nothing about horses, and most people don't, I recommend reading Horse Sense, from the Pyramid archives.

From the Bronze age through to the early Middle Ages, the ox was the preferred beast of burden on the farm. There is evidence to suggest that the Romans made use of farm horses, but the ox was far more prevalent. With the rediscovery of the horseshoe (originally invented by the Celts and adopted by the Romans) in Europe during the early Middle Ages, the horse became far more useful on the farm because the iron shoe prevented the soft, wet earth from damaging the horse's hooves. Other inventions such as the horse collar, tandem harnessing, and the heavy mold-board plough (see LT77) increased the efficiency of farm horses.

That doesn't seem correct. It's my understanding that horseshoes are meant to protect hooves from hard surfaces and that it is the horse collar, specifically, that allowed for more widespread use of horses as beasts of burden, given that previous harnessing techniques interferred with a horse's ability to breath.

 

[Elf Witch]

As a former horse owner most of the rules I have seen in game books dealing with their speed, amount of food needed "whatever" to be totally off.

As others have said you won't speed up changing horses you can only move as fast as the laden horse but you won't have to stop as often to rest the horses.

What I am wondering where are you carring the grain to feed these horses? Do they have a pack mule? Because if you are carring enough food to feed them then the second horse won't be unencumbered.

When I DM I don't sweat all this unless they are in an area like a frozen tundra or desert.

The pony express worked because they had relays where they got fresh horses they rode those ponies hard and fast and at certain stops traded them for a fresh one.

 

[Gundark]

As a former horse owner most of the rules I have seen in game books dealing with their speed, amount of food needed "whatever" to be totally off.

As others have said you won't speed up changing horses you can only move as fast as the laden horse but you won't have to stop as often to rest the horses.

What I am wondering where are you carring the grain to feed these horses? Do they have a pack mule? Because if you are carring enough food to feed them then the second horse won't be unencumbered.
.

QFT. I was thinking this very same thing. I've gone on lots of pack trips with horses. I'm wondering what type of D&D we're playing here? If it's european then changing horses every so often might actually increase the time traveled . Your switching saddles, tack and gear, if you're bringing a pack horse (you gotta eat and pack your stuff if the trip is long) then than takes time to switch around as you have to make sure that both sides of the pack is balanced, etc (following the model the OP is talking about every party member would need 3 horses). Times that by the number of people in the party and that's time consuming (again what is the character's xp with horses and the equipment that goes with them?). We watch movies like Lord of the rings and think that adventurers can just hop on the horse and take off riding for days....um no. doing what the OP described allows you to go longer between rests, it doesn't speed up the time.

 

[Dirigible]

Not directly related to your question, but this is the most important bit of equine lore I can think of:

http://www.recipecottage.com/variety-meats/horsemeat-pie.html

I'm going to the special hell, aren't I?

 

[mmadsen]

What I am wondering where are you carring the grain to feed these horses? Do they have a pack mule? Because if you are carring enough food to feed them then the second horse won't be unencumbered.

I don't believe the horses would be fed grain; they would graze. As I understand it, the Mongols of the steppes did not have access to cultivated grains until they took over Persia, etc., and I'm not sure to what degree medieval European horses were fed grain; I think it was only a fraction of their diet.

Grass-fed horses can't work as hard for as long as grain-fed horses; this might explain the advantage of switching them out often.