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I have a couple questions about Heavy War Horses. I apologize in advance if they have been asked before. I understand that a Heavy War Horse is a regular horse with the Advanced template. I was applying this and I ran into a couple issues.
1. The stat block for the horse says that unless it is trained for war, its hoof attacks are treated as secondary attacks. Which leads me to believe that a heavy war horse should have its hoof attacks as primary attacks since it is trained for war. However the table on page 302 of the Bestiary stats that hoof attacks are always secondary. So which is it? Using that table it seems that a war horse would have a primary bite attack and 2 secondary hoof attacks, which really makes no sense at all to me.
2. Horses have no proficiency in armor. Making them war horses, heavy or not, doesn't seem to give them armor proficiency. The Cavalier's mount write-up leads me to believe that you need your mount to have this in order to put barding of any kind on it, otherwise it suffers a penalty on all of its attack rolls. I just don't understand how you could ever get this for a normal mount since, unless it's an animal companion, it doesn't gain more HD and therefore doesn't gain more feats. It seems impossible therefore for a fighter to have a horse with barding on it that would still be able to attack in any reliable way. Is this the intent?
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1. The stat block for the horse says that unless it is trained for war, its hoof attacks are treated as secondary attacks.
I think this is meant to be an off-hand comment that normal horses don't make bite attacks - there is also probably some late-game editing flaws going on here. Regardless, a war-trained horse has a primary bite and two secondary hoof attacks.
2. Horses have no proficiency in armor. Making them war horses, heavy or not, doesn't seem to give them armor proficiency ... Is this the intent?
You surmise correctly that the basic war-trained horse would not have any armor proficiency (though as a GM call, it would not be unreasonable to give war-trained mounts Light Armor Proficiency as a bonus feat). The only way (in the Bestiary) for a horse to get another feat: advance its hit dice (again, a not-unreasonable call for a war-trained mount).
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A heavy horse can also just be a heavy work horse.
As for armour proficiency, you can invest in armour that has no ACP and the horse will not suffer any special penalties. MW studded leather is pretty good and you can enchant it to upgrade it as well.
You could also ask for a DM ruling on allowing armour proficiency feats to be taken if the mount has extra HD.
1. The stat block for the horse says that unless it is trained for war, its hoof attacks are treated as secondary attacks. Which leads me to believe that a heavy war horse should have its hoof attacks as primary attacks since it is trained for war. However the table on page 302 of the Bestiary stats that hoof attacks are always secondary. So which is it? Using that table it seems that a war horse would have a primary bite attack and 2 secondary hoof attacks, which really makes no sense at all to me.
By default, a creatue with only one type of natural attack treats that attack as primary. Because horse has the "docile" extraordinary ability it treats its hooves as secondary even when they would be normally be primary attacks.
If you train the horse for combat. It loses the default "docile" ability and would treat its hooves as the default for having a single type of natural attack (primary.)
So a Light Horse trained for combat would have two primary hooves attacks.
If you advance the horse to a heavy horse. It retains the default attacks. Bite primary, and hooves secondary irregardless of if it is trained for war or not.
Agree....
...except for the last bit there about "bite primary, and hooves secondary..." This is based, like the earlier post, on the universal application of the vaunted "table on page 302". This table is a guideline for building creatures. The individual creature entry always trumps such a table. It makes no sense for a light horse to have hooves primary and a heavy horse to have hooves secondary.
Now, the unfortunate thing is that the Horse entry states that heavy horses "gains a bite attack that inflicts 1d4 damage, and its hoof damage increases to 1d6", but it does not specify if it is secondary or primary. However, you'll note that the increased hoof damage now coincides with "the table on page 302" for a large hoof/tentacle/wing, but the bite damage is 1d4 instead of 1d8 like the table.
Thing is, even if you don't subscribe to my logic you must admit the discrepancies prove that the table is not absolute.
1. The stat block for the horse says that unless it is trained for war, its hoof attacks are treated as secondary attacks.I think this is meant to be an off-hand comment that normal horses don't make bite attacks - there is also probably some late-game editing flaws going on here. Regardless, a war-trained horse has a primary bite and two secondary hoof attacks.
2. Horses have no proficiency in armor. Making them war horses, heavy or not, doesn't seem to give them armor proficiency ... Is this the intent?You surmise correctly that the basic war-trained horse would not have any armor proficiency (though as a GM call, it would not be unreasonable to give war-trained mounts Light Armor Proficiency as a bonus feat). The only way (in the Bestiary) for a horse to get another feat: advance its hit dice (again, a not-unreasonable call for a war-trained mount).
Bestiary page 307 Creature Types, Animal, Traits: "Proficient in no armor unless trained for war."
This is unfortunately vague, but in this case it would be appropriate to assume that they are then proficient in all armor types when trained for war. Like a warrior.
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I'm not so sure that the Heavy War Horse is just a horse with a template added. The heavy warhorses of the Middle Ages no longer exists today. But they were uniquely bred for war, and were larger and stronger than a regular horse. Today's draft horses are not exactly direct descendants of the war horse, though they probably looked somewhat similar.
Personally I would assume that the war horse is a specially bred horse raised for war, and a regular horse is just that, regular.
Hmmm... Well, Can'tFindthePath is correct about p. 307... it does say "Proficient in no armor unless trained for war." what it doesn't say is how proficient. While I agree with him that its tempting to say ALL armor types, because no GM likes to give bad news to his players, there is a precident for limiting it to Light Armor. Cavalier and Samurair mounts start with Light Armor Proficiency. If anyone would want and use a horse with Heavy Armor you would think it would be a cavalier.
The "safe route" would be to limit it to Light Armor Proficiency. Heavy War Horses with more HD and better Armor Proficiencies would be treated as Exotic Beasts in all probability and fetch MUCh high prices than what is listed in the Core Rulebook (assuming they existed at all).
I don't think being trained for war grants an animal Armor Proficiency. According to the Handle Animal skill page it does not
Despite some stat blocks I've seen online, it seems correct that a heavy warhorse should have a primary bite and two secondary hoof attacks. It seems a little odd that light warhorses are more proficient with their hooves than heavy warhorses are, but the heavy warhorse should still do a little better in most combats (3 attacks vs 2, potentially higher total damage, higher AC and HP)
I think some designers such as maybe James Jacobs have said that it might not be unreasonable to swap out a standard horse feat for armor proficiency. I'd expect many DMs to resist this, especially if players try to use it as a precedent for swapping in other feats (like Power Attack). I suppose that DMs willing to allow exotic mounts such as those from Animal Archive might be open to allowing higher HD horses as well though.
Interesting. I never even considered barding as armor in this sense. I would rule that a heavy war horse is in fact trained in wearing all types of armor. I think it was more likely so obvious that it is an oversight rather than a planned outcome.
YMMV