TravelTimes/HorseTravel
Rules
Horses have a dramatically different physiology than we do. This comes from different evolutionary choices and domestication. When it comes to traveling, there are three main differences:
1.) Horses are fast runners. They are naturally a prey animal, so they evolved for fast movement to get away from predators. Most predators are also fast runners, designed to catch fast moving prey. This means that horses, like most prey animals, are inferior to humans when it comes to endurance running. On the other hand, they are tremendously quicker over the short haul. Humans top out about 22-24 MPH. Horses can easily achieve 40+ MPH in a sprint. For anyone who's interested, there is footage of Jesse Owens outrunning a horse, til about 10 yards. Then the horse gets it's legs under it and blows him away. But horses are fast runners, rather than endurance runners.
2.) Like most prey animals, horses can run themselves to death. If frightened or directed, they will keep a pace that will kill them. This means that the rider must be cognizant of this and allow for it. If not, he or she may be stranded out in th middle of nowhere without a mount. This means that you can push a mount, but you must allow it to rest afterwards. There are endurance races that are "100 milers". Horse and rider will do 50 miles a day. Afterwards, they rest the mount for quite some time.
3.) Horses are much more terrain sensitive than humans. A horse can do 30 miles per day in grasslands, but only 5-8 miles in mountainous terrain.
Here are my rules for horse travel:
A horse's walking speed is [ (Sta+End) / 2 ] +2 MPH. A horse may travel for 4 hours before making the Sta+End roll, as above. The differences are:
a.) The ST can assign a difficulty penalty for terrain. When the horse has starts to fatigue (see above), he will suffer a -2 penalty per hour. When this reaches above the horses Stamina + Endurance, the horse will suffer Lethal damage instead of Bashing.
b.) The horse must rest for at least double the time ridden, and eat. You can alleviate this problem with replacements. A human is a heavy burden for a horse to carry. By switching out the horse you are riding, you can up to double the time before a horse fatigues. A Russian Cossack named Mikhail Vasilievitch Aseev made over 65 miles per day with this technique. For two horses, fatigue will start at 6 hours, for 3 horses 8 hours. Realise that the second horse must be carrying very little for this to work.
c.) If you are a cruel and heartless bastard, you can get incredible times out of horses if you are willing to ride the horse to death. There was a fellow who bet that he could ride from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Independence, Missouri in eight days. He did over a 100 miles per day, and killed 3 horses and two mules in the process. I think the guy was an asshole, to put it bluntly. But there are plenty of valid reasons in myth and fiction to ask all of a mount. There are also plenty of villians willing to put their own needs first. You'll need to do a Ride check, and probably a Conviction roll.
I am now posting the travel speeds for horses and horse riding. I have finished my research, such as it is. I am not claiming to be an kind of authority on horses, horse breeding, equine physiology or psychology. I do know that I now know more about horses than I ever expected to. Most of this is drawn from the Complete Horse Book, and the Encylopedia of Horses, and Horse: A History. I also used http://www.endurance.net for trail riding and endurance racing. Another great help was http://www.thelongridersguild.com, which deals exclusively with riding for over a 1000 miles.
Summaries
Here are sample Horse riding speeds based on a 6 hour day. If you wish to change things see rules above. These are not perfect, but they work pretty well for those who do not wish to do the math.
OK, for those who want a simple shortcut for how many miles per day for their party:
- Mounted on regular horse: 21 miles /day
- Mounted on warhorse: 27 miles / day
- Mounted on Marukan swift: 30 miles /day
- Mounted on Marukan scout: 36 miles / day
- Mounted on Marukan scout w/2 replacements: 72 miles /day
Horse Alteration
Here is an addendum to my riding rules. I realised that all the horses listed in the book do not have Endurance ratings. So I have changed it. Below you will find my altered horse stats:
Type: Str/Dex/Sta Ath/End Walking Speed Maximum Speed Regular Horse: 4/2/3 3/0 3.5 MPH 50 yards/turn War Horse: 6/2/5 4/1 5 MPH 54 yards/turn Marukan Rider: 4/2/3 3/1 4 MPH 50 yards/turn Marukan Dray: 6/2/4 3/1 4.5 MPH 50 yards/turn Marukan Swift: 4/4/4 5/2 5 MPH 66 yards/turn Marukan Battler: 6/3/5 4/2 5.5 MPH 58 yards/turn Marukan Scout: 4/2/5 3/4 6.5 MPH 50 yards/turn Marukan Finest: 6/4/5 5/4 6.5 MPH 66 yards/turn
For maxiumum speed I used [(Dex+Ath) X 4] + 30 yards / turn. For MPH multiply the score by .681.
I changed the Marukan Swift stats, because I believe that a racing horse should go faster than a war horse.
For those who are interested in what I think the different Marukan breeds equivalents are:
The Marukan Rider is most like the Lippanzer. The Marukan Dray is either a Hackney, Clydesdale or Morgan. The Marukan Swift is closest to the Thoroughbred, and also the Arab. The Marukan Battler is a Percheron or Fresian. The Marukan Scout could be either a Quarter Horse, Cleveland Bay, or Tennessee Walking Horse. The Marukan Finest is the usual ideal "Fantasy Horse" that is found so often in Fantasy stories. These are all IMHO, of course. Let me know what you all think.
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