I've got a player who is playing a mounted knight in my upcoming swords and sorcery campaign. While a very enthusiastic and cooperative player, he's not the best when it comes to remembering system rules. And I don't really like the vehicle combat rules in Genesys very much myself, especially not for mounted combat. So I wrote up a simplified version of mounted combat that should work fine for fighting from horseback in most cases. Let me know what you think. If you like it, feel free to use it. If you see any glaring errors, please let me know.

Simplified Mounted Combat

While on a mount, your character is treated as one Silhouette larger than normal.

Attackers may target either your character or your mount.

Attacking while mounted increases difficulty of combat checks by one. In addition, other modifiers may apply:

While engaged with a target, you may choose to attack with either your own weapon, or with your mount (if it possesses an attack).

While mounted, you have increased speed and mobility. You may move between Medium and Short range as an incidental, and between Medium and Long range as one maneuver. Moving between Long and Extreme range requires two maneuvers.

Mounted Combat Talents:

Let’s Ride
Tier: 1
Activation: Active (Incidental)
Ranked: No
Once per round during your character's turn, your character can use this talent to mount or dismount from a vehicle or animal, or move from one position in a vehicle to another (such as from the cockpit to a gun turret) as an incidental. In addition, if your character suffers a short-range fall (see page 112) from a vehicle or animal, they suffer no damage and land on their feet.

Mounted Combatant
Tier: 2
Activation: Active (Maneuver)
Ranked: No
While mounted, your character may take this maneuver to decrease the difficulty of the next combat check they make during the same turn by one.

Overrun
Tier: 2
Activation: Active (Incidental)
Ranked: No
While mounted, your character may spend 2 Strain to grant the Knockdown quality to the next melee combat check they make during the same turn against a target with a smaller Silhouette.

Ride-By Attack
Tier: 3
Activation: Active (Incidental)
Ranked: No
After making a melee combat check while mounted, your character can move from engaged to short range of the target as an incidental.

Mount and Blade
Tier: 3
Activation: Active (Action)
Ranked: No
While mounted and engaged with a target, you may make a melee combat check at +1 Difficulty. If you succeed, you may use 2 Advantage or Triumph to hit with an attack from your mount, as well (if it has an attack). If both attacks hit, you may use additional Advantage or Triumph to activate qualities from either attack. Each hit deals its base damage, +1 damage per uncancelled success. This action may not be combined with Two-Weapon Combat.

Mount and Blade (Improved)
Tier: 4
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No
Your character must have purchased the Mount and Blade talent to benefit from this talent. When you use the Mount and Blade action, you do not take an additional +1 Difficulty on the attack.

Full Tilt
Tier: 4
Activation: Active (Maneuver)
Ranked: No
While mounted, your character may make a Hard Riding check against a non-engaged ground target within Medium range. If successful, they engage the target as an incidental. The next melee attack against this target during the same turn adds your mount's Brawn score to the damage of one hit of the attack. You cannot use this maneuver if your mount cannot move or engage the target.

Defensive Riding
Tier: 4
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes
While mounted, you increase your and your mount's defense by one per rank of Defensive Riding.

Just a note on a quick scan - Defensive Riding is IMHO too powerful. At the same rank is:

• Defensive talent (Tier 4) = +1 to both melee and ranged defense.

Defensive Riding is granting up to 5 Defense. Also keep in mind the system caps defense at 4.

I think you could get away with this:

Defensive Riding (Tier 4 / Passive): When mounted, your character and their mount gains +1 to both melee and ranged defense. This talent stacks with the Defensive talent.

I intend to observe the defense cap. The talent doesn't allow an exception to that. The main benefit is to give your mount additional defense. I'm not sure what you mean that it is granting up to 5 Defense.

21 minutes ago, Direach said:

I intend to observe the defense cap. The talent doesn't allow an exception to that. The main benefit is to give your mount additional defense. I'm not sure what you mean that it is granting up to 5 Defense.

Sorry about that. I actually misspoke with "5". I was thinking skill ranks and spoke without thinking it through.

In this case, it actually grants up to 2 Defense since its Rank 4 and can be bought again once (Tier 5 cap). However, you don't say which defense so I am assuming you meant Melee and Ranged, which technically makes it slightly better than Defensive but not enough to warrant a change as its more limited to only when mounted. So yeah, my bad. Sorry.

No worries, it was derived from Defensive Driving, and I thought later that that might be a bad idea since this simplified option does not involve vehicle defense at all. But when I thought about it more, I realized that a) you're spending a lot of XP for defense at Tier 4 b) you've probably already hit the cap c) you're mainly doing it for extra protection for your mount. I'm trying to decide whether to keep it or not, but I do like an option to protect your mount via talents rather than only through (very very expensive) plate barding.

1 hour ago, Direach said:

No worries, it was derived from Defensive Driving, and I thought later that that might be a bad idea since this simplified option does not involve vehicle defense at all. But when I thought about it more, I realized that a) you're spending a lot of XP for defense at Tier 4 b) you've probably already hit the cap c) you're mainly doing it for extra protection for your mount. I'm trying to decide whether to keep it or not, but I do like an option to protect your mount via talents rather than only through (very very expensive) plate barding.

Then a simplified solution may be that for the cost of Tier 4, you get something like:

(Passive / Not Ranked) "When mounted, your mount shares your Defense ratings."

/OR/

(Passive / Not Ranked) "When mounted, your character and mount shares you Defense ratings, each gaining the highest of Melee or Ranged defense from the two."

I think I'm just going to scrap it until I can figure out what feels like a cleaner solution. Tier 4 and 5 talents are at a premium, and I don't foresee the only player I have who will possibly invest in this spending talents on more defense for his horse.

9 hours ago, Direach said:

I think I'm just going to scrap it until I can figure out what feels like a cleaner solution. Tier 4 and 5 talents are at a premium, and I don't foresee the only player I have who will possibly invest in this spending talents on more defense for his horse.

Agreed on the Talent, but then again a lot of the Talents could have the same thing said about them. Then again the easiest solution is simply to give the mount barding. Use the same stats as typical chain and plate. Maybe give it 1 added defense and soak if you feel it needs to be better.

On 1/7/2018 at 1:27 AM, Khaalis said:

Sorry about that. I actually misspoke with "5". I was thinking skill ranks and spoke without thinking it through.

In this case, it actually grants up to 2 Defense since its Rank 4 and can be bought again once (Tier 5 cap). However, you don't say which defense so I am assuming you meant Melee and Ranged, which technically makes it slightly better than Defensive but not enough to warrant a change as its more limited to only when mounted. So yeah, my bad. Sorry.

You can actually buy a ranked talent multiple times at tier 5.

On 1/6/2018 at 0:12 PM, Direach said:

Simplified Mounted Combat

While on a mount, your character is treated as one Silhouette larger than normal.

Attackers may target either your character or your mount.

Attacking while mounted increases difficulty of combat checks by one. In addition, other modifiers may apply:

Riding Skill Level	Mounted Combat Modifier
No Riding skill	2 Setback
Riding (career skill, no ranks)	1 Setback
Riding skill 1	No modifier
Riding skill 2-3	1 Boost
Ridiing skill 4-5	2 Boost

While engaged with a target, you may choose to attack with either your own weapon, or with your mount (if it possesses an attack).

While mounted, you have increased speed and mobility. You may move between Medium and Short range as an incidental, and between Medium and Long range as one maneuver. Moving between Long and Extreme range requires two maneuvers.

• Just treat silhouette equal to the mount. If ever questioned, a mount needs to be at least twice the size of a rider (so most mounts are sil 2; a sil 0 character can ride a sil 1 mount).
• The modification to the attack difficulty is unnecessary. Even the full rules from Stay on Target/Savage Spirits don't put such restrictions or changes on combat checks, so I don't think it needs to be done here.
• There are not any rules in the game that add setback and boost dice based on having or not having skill ranks. Skill is answered by difficulty. Boost and setback are environmental, situational, and ability modifiers.
• How are you attacking with mount weapons? The full mounted rules meant you would use a Survival check, so here would be Riding or Survival to use your mount's weapons?
• Moving as an incidental = No. That messes with all kinds of things in combat. Just reduce the required movement maneuvers by 1, to a minimum of 1.

2 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

• Just treat silhouette equal to the mount. If ever questioned, a mount needs to be at least twice the size of a rider (so most mounts are sil 2; a sil 0 character can ride a sil 1 mount).
• The modification to the attack difficulty is unnecessary. Even the full rules from Stay on Target/Savage Spirits don't put such restrictions or changes on combat checks, so I don't think it needs to be done here.
• There are not any rules in the game that add setback and boost dice based on having or not having skill ranks. Skill is answered by difficulty. Boost and setback are environmental, situational, and ability modifiers.
• How are you attacking with mount weapons? The full mounted rules meant you would use a Survival check, so here would be Riding or Survival to use your mount's weapons?
• Moving as an incidental = No. That messes with all kinds of things in combat. Just reduce the required movement maneuvers by 1, to a minimum of 1.

1) I'll consider that.
2) I like it this way, I'm going to keep it. It's intrinsically harder to fight from atop a mount. There are talents that mitigate this, same as for two weapon fighting.
3) Again, I prefer it this way. It rewards a character for investing in Riding, and makes it hard for a complete novice to be as good as a trained cavalry fighter.
4) A mount attack uses the mount's attack, it's Brawl + whatever weapon it is (hooves, horns, etc).
5) I prefer it this way. There's no other way to reflect that a mounted opponent can move around faster than someone on foot. A charging horse is going to cover 40 yards (Medium to engaged) far faster than a running human.

3 minutes ago, Direach said:

3) Again, I prefer it this way. It rewards a character for investing in Riding, and makes it hard for a complete novice to be as good as a trained cavalry fighter.

No skill works like this RAW. The incentive to raise skill ranks is to pass more checks and to generate more advantage/triumph. Rolling either means the player is rolling just enough to succeed, or succeeding with threat; no triumphs, no excess of advantages. Setback and boost are in the realm of environmental modifiers, equipment, and talents.

I understand. I am choosing to do this anyway for my game. Fighting from a mount is a combination of Melee and Riding that the rules don't really account for, this is how I am accounting for it. The situational modifier for your combat roll is based on "I'm on top of a 2000 lb animal that I am trying to steer close enough to hit that guy over there."

I get that you don't like it, and would not do it this way.

It's more a matter of offering a set of rules that go contrary to RAI to the community . Having a scaling set of modifiers that add setback/boost runs contrary to what the core rules actually show and do; you might do something like that, and others might as well, but Genesys doesn't. Getting comments that this isn't RAW/RAI is par for the course.

Hence why I described this as simplified mounted combat. I'm doing this to accommodate one player who isn't really great with memorizing rules. But a table of simple modifiers, he can deal with.

Mounted combat, regardless of Genesys or any other rules set, is complicated, and the current vehicle rules don't reflect that complexity well at all. If you are not skilled at riding a horse, you are going to be a lot worse at hitting people while riding one. If you have trained extensively in riding a horse, especially in combat, then you will be better at hitting people while riding. That is the nature of these setback and boost modifiers. If it helps, think of your mount as either hindering you in combat, or assisting you, based on how well you can ride.

22 minutes ago, Direach said:

If you have trained extensively in riding a horse, especially in combat, then you will be better at hitting people while riding. That is the nature of these setback and boost modifiers. If it helps, think of your mount as either hindering you in combat, or assisting you, based on how well you can ride.

Then that's the realm of talents (that add boost or remove setback from combat checks while mounted), or another skill (that covers mounted fighting).

Riding and fighting are two separate things. You ask your average professional horse jockey and they will probably tell you that, no, they aren't exceptionally good at fighting the Mongol hordes atop their horses. Because as is here, a 14-year-old student who joined the equestrian club has the training required to reliably fight on horseback, in which case, no.

And this doesn't make it more complex. Adding another skill, or, even easier, a couple of talents, serves the purpose you are going for and also adheres closer to RAI, which makes it more convenient to others who stumble across these rules.

I mean, the other big problem is movement. The reason I strongly suggest not making that level of movement an incidental has nothing to do with realism and everything to do with balance. The ability to move as an incidental is a major unbalancing element on the game. Movement is either going to be utterly irrelevant (if both combatants are mounted) or utterly unfair (if mounted are fighting infantry).

Let's agree to disagree then, because I am not changing my mind, or my game, because you don't like it, or disagree with my thought process, or think it breaks a ruleset that is made to be malleable and adaptable. This option will make things easier for me and my players, and hopefully will help others too. If not, I hope they find something else that suits them better.

15 hours ago, Deimos119 said:

You can actually buy a ranked talent multiple times at tier 5.

Then this is an issue. Too many points of Defense. It needs to be un-ranked and give a flat bonus to defense.

6 hours ago, Khaalis said:

Then this is an issue. Too many points of Defense. It needs to be un-ranked and give a flat bonus to defense.

Defense does cap at 4 from all sources though. So not a big issue, personally I think there are better talents to spend xp on then multiole ranks of defense increasing talents.