Mounted Combat and armour and shield speed penalty

[Berhagen]

I tried finding this; however do the speed penalties of a tower (or fortress) shields and heavy armor worn by a rider also impact the speed of a mount?

[Sagiam]

Not at all.

[Jared Walter 356]

Not directly, as the mount isn't wearing the armor. If the bulk of the rider and his armor is too high, then the mount would suffer speed penalties from bulk, but this should be quite rare.

[YuriP]

Yes mounts is only affect by their own armor (Barding) penalties. The rider is just "a carried thing" apart what it is wearing and count only to the mount's bulk.

[Inspector Jee]

YuriP wrote:

Yes mounts is only affect by their own armor (Barding) penalties. The rider is just "a carried thing" apart what it is wearing and count only to the mount's bulk.

Yep.

Side Note: It's worth remembering that calculating the bulk-carried of a Large Mount (like a Horse) is funky. For a Large Creature, a single medium/small item of 1 Bulk becomes L Bulk. Two medium/small Items of 1 Bulk therefore become LL Bulk. So far, so good.

But a single medium/small Item of 2 Bulk? That's still 2 Bulk. The Item itself has to have exactly a bulk of 1 (or L for converting to N) for that Large+ conversion to apply. If not, no conversion - it weighs what it says it does.

I understand there is some disagreement on this interpretation but IMO it's the only one that both follows the RAW and also doesn't result in Horses being able to carry 45 suits of plate (see example in the PS).

- Jee

P.S. So using the above interpretation and given that a Riding Horse can carry 18 Bulk before becoming encumbered: The rider is usually 6 and the things that rider is carrying that weigh more than 1 Bulk by themselves are usually Armor, big weapons, some Tools and kits, ladders, etc. So a Fighter wearing full plate with a big 2-Hander and a snare kit is gonna put your Horse at 14/18 Bulk, before the "1 -> L" Bulk conversions come into play (and those are unlikely to get you over 10L bulk unless this guy is crazy-strong, so you can usually ignore all items that are <=1 Bulk that this guy is carrying, in this calculus). That leaves the horse with enough Bulk for carrying an unused tower shield or a suit of heavy armor or ... I dunno, 2 ladders. But not enough for a Alchemy Lab or a Grand Piano (tho, interestingly, if the Horse was carrying nothing else it could - in fact - barely carry said Grand Piano without being encumbered). So all of this seems sound to me.

Contrastingly, if you go with with the straight 1 Bulk -> L Bulk conversion regardless of "weight-item relationship discreteness" (in other words just add them up and divide by 10), a Riding Horse can carry no less than eleven Grand Pianos. You see the problem.