Heavy horse / light horse fluff - just curious.


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


I understand the RAW distinction between light and heavy horses and combat trained vs not, etc...

Im just curious about the fluff in Ultimate Equipment about light and heavy horses:
"
Heavy Horse: These horses are often used as portage animals, pulling significant loads across great distances.
Heavy Horse (Combat Trained): Heavy warhorses are bred and trained for war. They are often are outfitted with heavy barding, but fight just as fiercely even without the armor.
Light Horse: These horses can be ridden, but often serve as porters or carriage horses.
Light Horse (Combat Trained): These light warhorses are bred for war and are favored by fast and light cavalry, scouts, and daredevil knights.
"

So why are light horse favorable for light cavalry, scouts, daredevil knights, etc? They aren't more dextrous, they don't have more endurance, they actually just have less of anything. The only good thing about them is they are cheap. Is the reason why they are for "daredevil knights" because they are weaker and therefore more of a risk?

do some horse enthusiasts/people well informed about horses incorporate some assumed house rules about why light horses are superior is someways to heavy's?


I believe in earlier editions (e.g. D&D 3.5) light horses were faster (60' vs. 50' movement speed). Apparently the fluff hasn't caught up to the crunch yet.

Sovereign Court

Per the bestiary, heavy horses are horses with the advanced template. However it is indeed true that in older editions lighter horses had some advantages over their larger brethren.

Speed was obvious. One of the biggies that wasn't so obvious was care and maintenance.. heavy horses couldn't survive just on grazing. You had to actually tote around food for them, to boot.


Oh so part of the fluff has been carried over from D&D, interesting. Has anyone played them different than RAW then?

Sovereign Court

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Snow_Tiger wrote:
Oh so part of the fluff has been carried over from D&D, interesting. Has anyone played them different than RAW then?

I think it's less "fluff carrying over" than a proactive decision to streamline horses for pathfinder. No need to balance pros and cons; one is just simply better than the other now.


The old rule seems like a good rule.


It's probably just a cost difference.

300 gold a horse is pretty hard to field an army with.

Especially considering some will die.

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