War mounts and Stable charges

[Talyn]

Taking a step away from the game I was thinking about war horses and their upkeep which is nothing. You spend a solid 500k for a really useful 'item' or companion that helps you in combat and generally just moving around. When stabling any horse of any kind it's only 15 riln. If a horse is defeated you are unable to retrieve that mount for 24 hours. To me that seems like a rather steep method, but with nothing to upkeep the cost of the creature for it's usefulness I can understand it.

My thoughts on this though is what if there was a cost for healing the animal. We go to infirmaries slap on some unguent and call it a day within five minutes so if we have this stuff for our own bodies why couldn't we add it to animals? Instead of a 24 hour cool down a player could choose to wait a period of time if they so deemed it for free OR pay a hefty sum to heal their animal in shorter time. A horse is much larger then us so the amount of unguent needed would probably be greater so I was thinking just for example 10,000 to shorten the time. I imagine instant retrieval after death might be to gamey but was a thought. It would add a riln sink to owning a horse as well though most owners try not to lose their steed if they can.

[Rias]

I'd love to have more go into mount ownership in general, both for care/maintenance and just for general interaction with your mount buddy. One day I'll have that mount-rider bond system I've always dreamed of. And varying mount attitudes.
Mountitudes!

Hmmmm, I do like the idea of paying to expedite mount recovery after near-death experiences. To-doed!

[Talyn]

Hmm, now that would be fun. Mount-rider bond system. It would also be a pain if they become near death as I imagine it would hurt the bond. That would be pretty neat actually and would give a reason to rebond with your mount after a while. I would suspect Druids might have an easier time with this for being spooky druids.

[Talyn]

Of course now, this is getting me into wanting to think of horse care. We have horseshoes but can't shoe them. It would be neat to have either a metalsmith or someone be able to shoe a horse, possibly someone with animal husbandry. After a period of time maybe a week or so the hooves of your horse will need to be maintained, get horse pliers and a rasps, and hoof picks would be cool, make it a process to work on cleaning the animals hooves. It's really not hard to work on a horse but if you don't know what you're doing you can harm the animal, so leaving it to someone with animal husbandry might be the route to go with it. Not sure if you'll implement the beast getting upset and kicking. That does happen from time to time with inexperienced people, someone who knows what they're doing will be less likely to get hurt.

Mechanic wise:
Unshoe the horse (If there are shoes on it)

clean hoof must have a horse pick

shape hoof must have a rasp chisel

then if you want you can shoe horse again with horseshoes and nails.

Granted that's a very basic thought on hoof care there's more of a process but for a game I think that's all that would really be needed.

[Talyn]

Gonna bump this post up, however, I do actually have a suggestion for Warhorses and using them. Right now Trample and horse kick both goes off the round time of the Horse, but charge requires the users RT. So you can trample, and immediately charge a target which can be quite destructive. I was thinking of some ways that might help balance this out.

Charge - While you get extra damage for charging not to mention Dreadnought charges. I see a charge much like a night charging a target with a lance and it took a lot of practice to actually be well and even then they say that difficult to truly hit your mark. It's exhausting (with a lance), and when you're galloping you're bouncing around. To mimic this I was thinking to add a minimum of 10 balance, higher balance is alright but at least require 10, I would say 5 but all warriors can get a standard of 5 balance permanent. It should spend the balance to use

Trample - This is a great crowd control ability as it does quite a bit of damage but also knock the enemy down. I would require this to have at least 5 balance, and spends the balance.

Horse kick is fine.

With that said I also think that with charging it you are riding at full force to strike a target. This is kind of a strange thought but maybe it does some weapon durability hits more then striking armor as is but at the same time not sure how much I like that idea. really I feel adding round time plus balance to those two abilities will help balanced out a few things. Not fully but it's a start.