Barding rules?

jh

As "Wind" is essentially the hit points of a horse in WFRP barding could add +1 Wind for light barding and +2 for heavy barding.

Another simple option could be that light barding adds 1 defence or soak (for the character on the horse), and both 1 defence and 1 soak for heavy barding. This might be more in line with fantasy battles, where barding improves armour save.

If you want some drawback to barding, it could slow a barded horse down due to the additional weight, heavy barding could negate "Swift". In the battles game barding slows the figure, so this might be in line with that.

And obviously barding should be quite expensive, as a lot of material is needed to cover a horse in barding.

It's tricky as heck to make Barding that works both thematically and mathematically. Wind is both the hit points of the horse, but also the fatigue/stress of the horse, so if Barding adds to Wind, it actually makes the horse slightly faster as well as harder to kill.

There's also the complication that any attack against the horse does exactly 1 Wind of damage, with no rolls and no damage variance. It doesn't matter if you're a snotling with a basic attack or a slayer with a rune axe and reckless cleave, you'll still do exactly 1 Wind. 1 Attack = 1 Damage. Not much room for Barding in that equation. On a related (and somewhat whiny) note, this is the same root cause as the problem where I can never get social encounters to really work well. Nearly every card that has "Influence the target" just does it once. If you had more degrees of Influence and a "social soak", then being especially good at it (having the right actions, talents, or stats) would matter more, and just getting the NPC alone to gang-up on them with Fellowship spam would be a much less viable tactic. *grumble*

So with that in mind, I'm mildly in favor of "barding = +1 defense for the mounted character" -- as k7e9 said -- but I'd put a hefty price-tag on heavy barding if it's going to increase Soak as well. Focusing on soak is a little too good as is, and providing one more way to pump it up higher is somewhat dangerous. Thankfully the Book of Grudges says that Ironbreakers (and dwarves in general) can't ride horses.

I agree that adding wind would make the horse faster in a sense. But removing "swift" would make it slower in reality.

But the suggestion with defence/soak is the one most in line with how barding works in fantasy battles, and problably the easiest way to handle it.

I was also thinking a herfty price tag. Something like 1 gold for light barding and 10 for heavy.

I agree that adding wind would make the horse faster in a sense. But removing "swift" would make it slower in reality.

Yes, if you do both (add +1 Wind, _and_ remove Swift), it would result in a slower horse. Your earlier post suggested "If you want some drawback to barding, it could" eliminate swift. So it read to me like you were making two proposals: with or without the removal of Swift.

More to the point, the removal of Swift is itself problematic. Without swift, it becomes too easy for a man to outrun a horse. A war horse has Wind 6, so it can make a maximum of 8 manoeuvres in a single turn (1 normal, 1 from swift, and 1 per wind), more than that and it risks dying on the spot. An above-average human with Toughness 4 can also move 8 manoeuvres in a single turn (1 normal, plus one per fatigue up to a maximum of 7 fatigue because you're not allowed to run yourself unconscious). The human's dice pool is heavily penalized at that point, but the horse is nearly dead so it mostly evens out. (And weirdly, those black dice the human earned won't matter if he at this point chooses to attack the horse to make his escape. He'll hit automatically for 1 Wind of "damage" and most likely kill the horse.)

That's already stretching believability and feels somewhat buggy. In the real world, the typical horse gallops around 30 mph (and racing horses can break 55 mph). The world record for a human doing the 100m dash works out to about 23 mph. So an average horse gallops a good 40% faster than the fastest living person can sprint.

I have no figures on how barding would affect those real world horse speeds. I'm sure it slows them down, but I don't know know to what extent. My gut tells me the horse should win the race, but I'd be willing to accept that a barded horse breaks even with a physically fit unencumbered human. Take Swift off the Horse's stats, and anyone in better than average physical form can run away from a horse. With swift, the human ties on round 1, and then slowly falls behind in following rounds of the race/chase. Without swift, the Tou4 human is faster on the first round and the horse can never catch up.

The problem here lies in the default rules, not your proposal. The game just doesn't make horses fast enough. Especially when coupled with all the ridiculous ride checks (and the consequences of failing them), horses are a huge liability in this system.

At my own table, I let each Wind count as 2 moves so being on horseback actually makes you meaningfully faster. With that house-rule in place, your "+1 Wind, - Swift" would actually probably work at my game. I just don't think it would work well with the RAW.

The issue with horses' speed may come from that the manoeuvre system is thought for small moves, not longer runs.

I'd add some action cards for horses and mounts like "fast run" and "gallop" which would give additional movement without a cost - but the cost of the action itself, which prevents from doing something else, which I find is quite realistic.

This would also open the door for additional actions for riders : "cavalery charge" or "quick retreat", taking advantage or replacing the mount's action. For instance a "cavalery charge" card could provide the same movement than the "gallop" card, but need a manoeuvre too (in order to have a greater "time-cost"), the check in the end would only be used for the final impact blow (not negating the move itself).

This would remain the barding rulles difficult to write. The horses are written with very simplified rules, with only 2 characteristics, where some details would be really necessary in other situations. My intuition would be to improve the defense of the rider rather than the Wind, because I have really some difficulties with the Wind covering both health and speed of the horse.

Just a general aside:

As all of the stupid ride checks to enter combat seem, well, stupid, I've decided that I'm only going to make PCs make the rolls in the following circumstances:

1. Regular horse entering combat where they would obviously be scared. Warhorses don't need to make this check to charge orcs, humans, or minor beastmen.

2. All horses if there is fear/terror or something majorly scary/unnatural. Example: giants, daemons (all of them except imps), Wargor, Chaos Dragon, etc.

jh