Mounted speed

Djalan Pride

New Member
i cannot for the life of me find out how much quicker a 4-legged animal can move in combat. any knowledge of page numbers or house rules would be appriciated.
 
Uuuuh... I'm sorry I couldn't find it, but here's what I found:


- Dash = dex+6 / tick... yeah a character with dex 4 runs faster than a horse...


But the main thing about mounted combat is not speed I think, but height, and fatigue.
 
that begs the question, does the rider suffer the dv penalty if the mount takes a dash action?


and another thing, on a dash action, do you only move the increased speed value for the tick or 3 tics?
 
uh... if you only have the standard horse it's 60% running speed... the upgraded pony is 100% running speed... oh wait that's World of Warcraft.


On pg.163 it gives cavalry movement in long ticks.


you have average travel time on pg.264


your stats for your mount is found on pg.348


now by doing the math found on pg.264 and pg.348 you can sum that a horse goes (stamina x2mph). But searching the book I found nothing about how fast per regular/short tick a steed moves.


Movement per tick is your best guess, but I get the feeling horses should probably have their dex doubled for movement since I think it's a little rough if someone with dex 4 would run faster than a 4 legged mount trained for speed... But that's just me and my personal rules for such.


From what I found on pg.154 where it talks about mounted combat, to dash you would need to make a control roll, but there is nothing stating one way or the other if there would be a penalty to your DV or not. I don't imagine it would because you get the +1DV from being on the horse in the first place. But that's up to a storyteller.
 
Well I wanted to say that the beasts traits were "kinda" accurate...


Dex 3 is like normal for a regular horse, regular mortal have Dex2, the big difference between the horse and the man is the stamina... they can run far longer than men.


For your questions :

does the rider suffer the dv penalty if the mount takes a dash action?
As he has to hang on to his mount... I'd say yes.
on a dash action, do you only move the increased speed value for the tick or 3 tics?
The rule says : you move dex+6 yards/ tick, therefore if it's a speed 3 action, you run (dex+6)x3 yards.
There is a rule for exhaustion in case of strenuous activity, but no rule about exhaustion due to sudden burst of activity (like dashing)... seems like one can move (p.145: dex yards/ tick) up to Stam+Res+specialty hours.


If you want a housrule, just considering Stam+Res+specialty minutes for the purpose of knowing how long a beastie can dash, the system still being Dex+6 yards/tick...


I'd go with this formula: (stam+res+specialty) x10 ticks. (yeah the Tyrant Lizard will ALWAYS catch up with you ! :D )


This way it will balance itself, fast beasties with a low resistance will momentarily escape slower predators or catch slower preys, while strong and balanced runners will be equals.


(as a sidenote regular mortals have the following: dex 2 stam 2, athletics 2 and no Resistance 1, soldiers/bandits/pirates have Resistance 1)
 
As have been said, it's mostly a question of better fatigue, plus you are sitting higher.


Unless you have a good horse (familiar) you will have to control it while dashing, or make a flurry.


It's really simple, if the rider is not all that good, he can't ride and do combat at the same time - if he is he can flurry and do both.


You move the increased speed for all three ticks, that is why it's a speed 3 action while a normal move is not (I will not start a debate about when and how many normal move actions you can take).
 
Well Moving don't cost a thing... it's poorly written, but it should be like this:


"whatever the speed of her action is (except for dash) a character can move up to Dexterity yards in a single action."
 
StarHawk said:
uh... if you only have the standard horse it's 60% running speed... the upgraded pony is 100% running speed... oh wait that's World of Warcraft.
On pg.163 it gives cavalry movement in long ticks.


you have average travel time on pg.264


your stats for your mount is found on pg.348


now by doing the math found on pg.264 and pg.348 you can sum that a horse goes (stamina x2mph). But searching the book I found nothing about how fast per regular/short tick a steed moves.


Movement per tick is your best guess, but I get the feeling horses should probably have their dex doubled for movement since I think it's a little rough if someone with dex 4 would run faster than a 4 legged mount trained for speed... But that's just me and my personal rules for such.


From what I found on pg.154 where it talks about mounted combat, to dash you would need to make a control roll, but there is nothing stating one way or the other if there would be a penalty to your DV or not. I don't imagine it would because you get the +1DV from being on the horse in the first place. But that's up to a storyteller.
keep in mind over a short distance a man(or woman) can outrun a horse (more legs to sort out), but over long distances a horse can get into a gallop and easily outrun most things on two legs
 
Actually in the rules it says if your Ride is higher than the control rating you don't have to take Ride actions to control the horse. So the horse could dash and you would have no penalty as per rules. Makes somewhat sense, because you have trained away what ever penalty there would have been, Native Americans could ride a galloping horse holding on with only their legs and fire bows accurately. At least that is what I learned in school.
 
That's why I threw in my houserule about dashing and stamina ^^


In the end... don't mess with a Tyrant Lizard (3 dex, 12 stam, Res 4) :D
 
magnificentmomo said:
Actually in the rules it says if your Ride is higher than the control rating you don't have to take Ride actions to control the horse. So the horse could dash and you would have no penalty as per rules. Makes somewhat sense, because you have trained away what ever penalty there would have been, Native Americans could ride a galloping horse holding on with only their legs and fire bows accurately. At least that is what I learned in school.
... and you would get a penalty from running with your own legs but not from riding a horse... you can't be serious about that.
 
magnificentmomo said:
Actually in the rules it says if your Ride is higher than the control rating you don't have to take Ride actions to control the horse. So the horse could dash and you would have no penalty as per rules. Makes somewhat sense, because you have trained away what ever penalty there would have been, Native Americans could ride a galloping horse holding on with only their legs and fire bows accurately. At least that is what I learned in school.
if this is in reply to my post then I'm not talking about controling the horse, I'm talking about the horse itself.


horse and man both from standing start, the man will outpace the horse but the horse will catch up and overtake.


someone with low ride would make this worse, I'll admit because they would have to spur the horse into movement before it started, widening the lead the man would have, higher ride would lessen this (or negate it)


but of course it's all cinematic anyway, so if you want your horse galloping from a standing start go for it
 
Smeggedoff said:
horse and man both from standing start, the man will outpace the horse but the horse will catch up and overtake.
Actually no, a regular mortal has a dex of 2 only elite warriors have a dex of 3, so Horse's faster than man in Exalted.
 
well yeah, I'm not saying I could outrun a horse even over a short distance.


y'know what? I'm just gonna go stand over here now and pretend I contributed, just trying to provide a possible explanation for the difference in travelling times on a horse and the comparitiveley slow tick by tick mounted movement
 
But the Gazelle's Pace Affliction says you run as fast as a horse and it gives you a bonus of 4 to your Dexterity for calculating movement during combat, 4 to your Strength for purposes of jumping distances and 2 dice for competitive running.


So, there must be some sort of bonus for a four legged critter.


Cheetah's Pace gives you a +6 Dex, +6 Str and +3 dice for competition.
 
different bits of different books were written by different people, the guy who wrote that may have just thought 2hmm, horses go fast" when he wrote that without looking at the mounted combat rules (plus it's magic), there may have been an intended bonus for things with more than 2 legs (like the balance bonus for extra pairs of legs in D&D 3.5) but it was just overlooked becuase more important rules were getting sorted out


who can say? not me, that's fer sure. House rule it if you feel that strongly
 
Smeggedoff said:
well yeah, I'm not saying I could outrun a horse even over a short distance.
y'know what? I'm just gonna go stand over here now and pretend I contributed, just trying to provide a possible explanation for the difference in travelling times on a horse and the comparitiveley slow tick by tick mounted movement
Oh, I didn't mean to be rude... sorry.


I was just stating the traits in the books.


I agree with you about the "possible explanation for the difference in travelling times on a horse and the comparitiveley slow tick by tick mounted movement", horses can run longer than men, I just pointed out they also ran faster :)


I think the galloping from standing start, as well as running from standing start for mortals, is represented by the fact that the action of Dash is Speed 3 (you have to initiate the running, and you can't stop it without a moment of pause).
 
But the Gazelle's Pace Affliction says you run as fast as a horse and it gives you a bonus of 4 to your Dexterity for calculating movement during combat, 4 to your Strength for purposes of jumping distances and 2 dice for competitive running.
So, there must be some sort of bonus for a four legged critter.


Cheetah's Pace gives you a +6 Dex, +6 Str and +3 dice for competition.
Well you can run faster than a horse with those... I see no problem with that (except the text written)


Maybe horses have a specific bonus to running I'm not aware of (wouldn't surprise me).
 
that's a good point, I'm just going to go with "it was overlooked" and cobble something together if one of my players ever needs to outrun somethings with more/less legs than he is currently using at that time.


alternitively if you see it as a gap in the rules you could submit it to the official forums/wike (I forget which) I hear they're actually answering questions these days
 
in response to humans being faster than a horse from a stand still start, have you ever seen a horse race on the tv? they open those gates and those horses are flying almost immediately...


and i vaguely remember learning somewhere that two legged animals have a much better running stamina than any four legged animals. something to do with the significantly reduced energy comsumption for the movement of only two legs, over a long period. but that's all real world stuff, i care not for that.


Ker'ion,


thank you so much for the wyld taint rules. exactly what i was looking for.


cheers
 
Wow... so a wyld mutant (based on the regular mortal, dex 2) with the gazelle's pace is considered having a dex 6 for movement :shock:


Hmmm there's a true hole in the rules about the movement of beasties.
 
How does that mutation translate to long-distance running, though? It uses Stamina instead. There should be some bonus.


(Before anyone says "cheetahs are sprinters", I'll point out that gazelles, which the lesser mutation is named for, are the world's fastest long-distance runners.)
 

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