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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6692133" data-attributes="member: 1165">I don't think any version of D&D covers this rule well. In part because rules for horses are even more unrealistic than rules for people. This is to address the opening post, where using horses and mules were part of the scenario.I recall reading about a battle in Ancient China, about 1800 years ago. The enemy stood between Cao Cao's forces and a grove. Cao Cao's troops were thirsty, too. Cao Cao told his troops that the grove contained peaches, and his guys got fired up and beat the enemy. I don't know if they actually found any peaches. Since Cao Cao survived for several more decades, probably! People can be motivated more easily than horses, as they can picture the future.Horses can run far faster than humans, but their walking speed isn't that much faster. Horses in the versions of D&D I'm familiar with (2e to 4e) always have a much higher walking speed than a human. In 4e, a horse moves at speed 10, compared to an unarmored human's 6. Traveling by horseback, overland, is more than 1.5 times faster in that edition. I don't think this is realistic.* In 3e, not only does the horse have a similar speed ratio, but it has a high Con score and the Endurance feat by default, so it'll take longer than a human to get tired, which I don't think is realistic either. The horse will only walk a bit faster than a human and actually has less walking endurance. The human needs to get off (and possibly onto another horse) at certain times. A person might starve himself or herself for a bit if they need to push fast for a time, but the horse will balk at such treatment. I've read that you could move really fast if you took a lot of horses per person, but modern-day unfamiliarity with horses, but horrible rules complexity, means no version of D&D could model that effectively.*In my game, I've set horses to speed 7... but gave them a special trait that lets them run and charge at horse speed. It doesn't really deal with the endurance issue, though.</blockquote>

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