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he noble steed charges the gallant knight's enemies, scattering them like flies. The ancient nag pitifully drags the merchants
wagon on to yet another town. The ominous black stallion in his bone armor swiftly carries the Deathdealer to his next victim.
Horses can (and should!) play a substantial role in fantasy roleplaying campaigns. In fact, that's what Don't Eat Them's all about. Horses are currently given the shaft: a few monster entries, prices lists, and carrying capacities. The rules should allow horses to develop and grow as characters in their own right. Let alone the roleplaying aspects of this: a 15th level fighter or 21st level wizard should have a steed to match.
To accomplish this, the character experience system is normalized, and horses (and other mounts) are allowed to take levels in classes. In addition, a new character class, the Warmount, is provided.
Note that applying levels to horses removes us from the realm of any trademark licenses, and restricts this article to be released only under the Open Gaming Licence
Two systems are provided for providing one's mount with experience. This choice is up to a game master, but should be applied consistently across the campaign.
Training: Every two months of training (under a competant trainer and training regime) grants a horse 1000 experience points. A successful Handle Animal check against DC of 15 plus the animal's current character level must be made to successfully train the animal. No retry is allowed. Some indication of how many such trainers are available in typical towns. Research how long a warhorse trained before it was considered competant to enter battle.
Experience: At the GM's option, horses may gain experience points through adventuring, just as heroes do. Keep in mind that this effectively creates an additional NPC travelling with the party. Horses should only get experience for directly participating in events and tasks. An animal-intelligence creature should not get a share of story rewards that require unreasonable understanding, for example. Use your better judgement.
According to the System Reference Document, a heavy warhorse costs twice that of a heavy horse. Also, a light warhorse costs twice that of a light horse. One can postulate, then, that the first level of training doubles the value of a horse.
Beyond that is yet to be determined. Logarithmic? Linear? Does the value of a horse become meaningless at some point? Or does the value taper off?
Horses, being prey animals, are not particularly keen on unusual, surprising, or dangerous seeming situations. Battle, unfortunately, is all of these.
Most horses have a Spooks Special Quality.
Some types of creatures, such as horses, are inherently skittish, and do not like unusual situations. If such a creature is a mount, then if such an event occurs, the creature may try to bolt, or otherwise disobey the rider.
This special quality is associated with a DC, which is the DC of a Ride check that the rider must beat to maintain control of a horse if something that might spook the horse occurs. This DC is breed-specific. As normal, if the Ride check fails, the character can do nothing else that round.
Levels of training reduce the DC. Each character level reduces this DC by 20. Typical breeds have a DC of 10 to 30, and so after a couple of levels of training, the beast will no longer spook.
A circumstance modifier of -4 to +4 can be applied to the roll, depending on how scary, noisy, or unusual the event in question is.
