Intelligent Horse - Looking for Ideas

[Charlie Brooks]

At the request of the rest of the group, one of the PCs in my campaign recently bought a horse for overland travel. She initially didn't want to buy it, but now she's become very attached to the steed. However, we're at 13th level, so area attacks tend to be a huge danger to the poor thing.

Because the player is so attached to her horse and the damage is only going to get higher, I'm thinking of revealing that the horse is actually an intelligent creature with class levels. I'm thinking maybe it was awakened by a druid or is a polymorphed pegasus or unicorn. However, that still leaves me with the need to explain how such a creature wound up on the market for only 75 gold pieces. Obviously it was hiding its true nature, and has now grown close enough to the PC to reveal itself.

Any suggestions for a cool backstory that I can give to this horse for my next session? I'm sure the player will get a kick from the revelation.

[Humphrey Boggard]

Charlie Brooks wrote:

At the request of the rest of the group, one of the PCs in my campaign recently bought a horse for overland travel. She initially didn't want to buy it, but now she's become very attached to the steed. However, we're at 13th level, so area attacks tend to be a huge danger to the poor thing.

Because the player is so attached to her horse and the damage is only going to get higher, I'm thinking of revealing that the horse is actually an intelligent creature with class levels. I'm thinking maybe it was awakened by a druid or is a polymorphed pegasus or unicorn. However, that still leaves me with the need to explain how such a creature wound up on the market for only 75 gold pieces. Obviously it was hiding its true nature, and has now grown close enough to the PC to reveal itself.

Any suggestions for a cool backstory that I can give to this horse for my next session? I'm sure the player will get a kick from the revelation.

Maybe the horse belonged to a Cavalier that unfortunately died. Ask the PC to take the leadership feat and keep scaling the horse just like a Cavalier mount. Use one of the stat increases to increase the horse's INT to 3. You'd even have a cool adventure hook with the PCs finding out about the horse's former owner and the plight of the family he or she left behind.

edit: Arguably the actual cost of a Cavalier mount should be two feats (using boon companion as a comparison) but I'll suggest leadership since you were already looking at solutions having her be an awakened animal.

[Lord Foul II]

Get freaky with the templates, perhapse the horse is fey touched or you could apply the "mythic" "advanced" or mighty" templates, or it could be an animal lord under a curse not allowing it to shapeshift

You could then grant it ranger or Druid levels

It could be under a bestow curse spell that lowers inelegance

It could have belonged to someone of Plot Significance and was stolen just before you bought it, and that Plot Significant person may come after the party, thinking them to be the thieves

[Velcro Zipper]

There's always the classic "transmogrified by a curse" trope. The horse might be a moderate-level hero transformed by a curse or a jealous bishop. Perhaps the horse has to gain his true form back in stages and the owner finally does some innocuous thing that restores his power of speech or some heretofore unseen skill?

For instance, what if one day she offers her horse a pomegranate instead of an apple and the taste of the pomegranate is the catalyst that restores his tongue. The seemingly ordinary horse act could then be explained by saying that, until the moment he ate the pomegranate, that's all he was.

You could then drop clues or situations into the campaign that restore more of his humanity as their adventures progress. Maybe replacing his bridle with a crown of wildflowers or allowing him to run unshod upon the marble floor of a cathedral restore more of his memories and skills in little doses. As the horse regains more of his human memories and abilities, let the player discover that finally breaking the curse will result in the man within the beast forgetting his life as a horse including everything he knows about the PC and her allies. She'll have to decide if she wants to set him free in exchange for losing her loyal equine friend forever.

Actually, forget I wrote all that, I'm taking the idea back to use myself :p

[Morgen]

I'd have it be worth much more then 75 gold pieces and have a small encounter or adventure come into play where the people who were actually shorted on the transaction come looking for it.

[Ermehtar]

The horse could be a long-lost scion of a race of talking, thinking horses. Captured in his youth when he strayed too far from their secret glens, he's pretended his whole life to be as mute and non-intelligent as the average horse (please note, any horse lovers, that I don't think horses are stupid, just not human-level intelligence). Now, with the special bond he feels with his new master, he might reveal his capabilities, either to save her life or something, or to try to make his way back home at long last.

[Ciaran Barnes]

Give it racial hit dice. It's just become a magnificent horse, not some supernatural creature. Oh and allow it to take favored class: animal.

[Mythic Meepo]

The horse is actually an eidolon whose summoner wanted it to evolve into a perfect duplicate of a horse. Unfortunately, it succeeded beyond all expectations, becoming an ordinary, free-willed horse. Only now, many years later, is the horse starting to remember that it used to be an eidolon.