Advancing mundane mounts

[jcache]

Hey all. Hope this isn't a repost, but searching keeps turning up a ton of stuff on similar class features.

Are there any rules for the advancement of regular, non-druid, non-paladin mounts?

I mean, can a fighter of any wealth level somehow get an extra good regular horse with say, a few more hp so mid and late game AoEs don't kill it all the time?

Really all I want is a mundane horse/riding dog that's a bit haler and heartier, not a class feature/.75 of a pc magical companion...

[Snow_Tiger]

Make alliance with awakened horse, or take leadership. Otherwise, no. But there are feats and such tha will allow you allows your 4 or so level dip in cavalier (quite significant) to stack with levels in other classes I think. Possibly also exists with ranger

[jcache]

I'm not super invested in it, mechanically. It just kind of bothers me the player to think how many fictional horses and donkeys I've gotten killed, lol.

[Snow_Tiger]

I'm confused do u fight on horseback or get frequently ambushed? Generally unless you are built around horses, when entering a dungeon and/or trying to stealth, going on foot is better. If you get ambushed, your scout isn't doing his job

[jcache]

We play in the outdoors a lot. So woods, dunes, plains, that kind of thing. Gm's homebrew setting is very much inspired by the mongoliad, if you've ever read that. Lots of long voyages, man vs nature stuff, etc

Not as much tomb-raiding.

[Lessah]

Technically, with a bit of squinting, there are really no reason a horse couldn't use the Retraining Rules. The most basic would be 'retrain hp dice' to gain more health. If your GM is really generous - you might get away with retraining the horses racial HD into Fighter or perhaps Warrior levels.

Alternative 2, even more flimsily supported, are the Downtime Rules for Earning Exp. Again there is nothing technically stopping the horse to employ those rules (but I would suggest accompanying the horse!) to earn some nice horse exp.

My suggestion would be to show your gm those alternatives and see what he thinks (the first one is probably most balanced, since it both cost gold and doesn't raise the power of the horse too much).

Good luck!