Quote from: estar;944936I also have some specific effects for weapons that relates to mounted combat. Here is a general list of what I use.

• War hammers get +1 to hit versus plate armor
  
• Maces get +1 to hit versus chainmail and Gelatinous creatures (or any flexible armor)
  
• Blackjacks can force targets to make a saving throw or fall unconscious if you roll high enough.
  
• Small Dagger give advantage to hiding them on one's person.
  
• Glaives can attack can attack a target up to five feet away and get a free attack against anybody entering their range for the first time. I opted to do this in lieu of messing around with initiative.
  
• Pikes can attack up to ten feet away and operate like a Glaive. They only be used as a quarterstaff if the target within five feet.
  
• Halberds have three ways of attack (pick one per round). You can use the blade like a Glaive, the spike like a pike. And the hook to knock a target prone or to dismount a mounted warrior. Either only take effect if the target fails a saving throw after a successful to-hit roll.
  

I don't have any double damage if set versus a mounted charge. Not sure why I omitted that maybe I thought the free attack when target comes into reach was sufficient. Anyway I wanted the type of weapons to have some flavor but not to the point where I am asking the referee to look up section 16.2.3.

Do you have a document compiling all your rules? I love this stuff!

I thought OSR-style tended towards simplicity. A lot of these rules are giving me a headache. I always liked the simple rule from 2e Castles guide that a mounted lance did double damage. For jousts if hit make a Dex check or get knocked off the horse.

Quote from: quozl;944959Do you have a document compiling all your rules? I love this stuff!

Still working on it but here are some links for

Combat Rules
Equipment (note that I am still working on the hireling section).

Remember I don't think this is a better version of classic D&D. It just how I run classic D&D. Just use whatever works for you. It how most folks run their campaign anyway. While the combined rules will form a complete RPG. The individual sections (like combat and equipment here) can be swapped in for the Swords & Wizardry equivalents.

Quote from: Xúc xắc;944746I'm looking for something between the two extremes of "your outdoor movement rate is higher now, but everything else is the same" and "your mount is an entire second character with its own stats, skills, personality, hopes, and dreams for you to track". What is your favorite way to represent mounted warriors that shows the advantage of a mount and adds a bit of depth without a lot of extra stuff to track?

A couple of quick things about Horses and Polearms here, especially Pikes, and Longspears.

Horses are actually very, very, good at dodging natural obstacles even while at a full gallop. The best practical example of this I can give is based on first hand experiences in riding a cutting horse. When I was a teen, I worked summers with my grandfather on a cattle ranch in the highlands of Wyoming. I spent alot of time riding, about as much as I could. There were more than five thousand head of cattle on this ranch, and we would periodically rotate them from mountain pasture to mountain pasture to maintain the pastures. While moving the cattle we often had to move them through rough terrain and heavy forests, and of course the cattle did not always want to stay together, and we would have to round them up.

A cutting horse is especially trained to run down a bull, cow, or calf. When the cow runs of through the forest, the cowboy gets to round them up. While this doesn't usually involve roping them, sometimes it was necessary to rope the lone standout, and let the horse literally drag the cow back to the rest of the herd, where it would then automagically fall in line, ...and follow the rest of the herd.

Now chasing these cattle involved galloping through dense forest with heavy underbrush. The horse was smart enough to know what bushes it could run through, but would expertly dodge low hanging and jutting branches (But often not extend that benefit FOR THE RIDER). Let's just say more than once I was knocked off my horse, or almost knocked out as the horse was running after a cow and I was brushed up against a tree or branch, or got hit by a low hanging branch as the horse ducked under but dragged me right through the low hanging branch, or was brushed up against a tree.

Now the same is true of spear, or pike walls. A horse will charge right up to a wall of spears or pikes, but generally won't ride right through them, but will stop (throwing the rider), or turn or veer away at the last moment. They have a good sense about that and as a general rule just won't try to ride through a planted set of spears or pikes (that looks alot like a forest to them). In mounted combat Horses were trained to charge right through spear and pike walls, but once the first rank of horses were pierced and started bleeding, and the other horses could smell that blood, then they would get all skittish and reluctant again, and would not be wanting to try to go through a spear wall.

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A real example of this is Napoleons cavalry at Waterloo, where he charged the English Infantry. The English responded by fixing bayonets, and forming squares. Now French Cavalry would ride right up to the squares, but would not overrun the squares, and the English found that they could maintain their battle formation integrity and protect their unit from a full on Cavalry Charge. As long as the square remained unbroken, then the French could not rout or overrun the Infantry. This cost Napoleon his Empire in 1815.

In D&D I would give a mounted Horseman attacking +2 to hit infantry if they are doing a ride by attack, and +4 if charging (Which if hit, the footmen is automatically knocked prone and receives trampling damage from the horse. Anything over 20 is a crit that delivers x3 damage as there is nothing quite like a half-ton to full ton Heavy Warhorse forcefully stomping on your innards and spinal cord, eh?)

Groups of Spearmen and Pikeman negate this bonus as the horses will generally not approach close enough (willingly) for the mounted riders to be able to successfully make an attack. If the Horses are specifically trained to charge Spearmen, then the Pikes and Longspears have reach, and automatically get a first attack against the charging horse and/or rider (or you can roll for initiative vs. THE HORSE, as the horse has to get the rider into range first so the rider can attack).

Quote from: Voros;945007I thought OSR-style tended towards simplicity. A lot of these rules are giving me a headache. I always liked the simple rule from 2e Castles guide that a mounted lance did double damage. For jousts if hit make a Dex check or get knocked off the horse.

The OSR tends toward author's preference. Now I realize that author bias is in nearly every RPG products. But most RPG products are a result of a company effort. Most OSR products are the result of a singular author's vision.  And mine are no different.

What my rules are is a codification of everything I been doing since 2009. Some of them stems from how I ran AD&D 1st edition in the early 80s notably the basic structure of the combat round. Because of that there are more details because those reflect the rulings I made.

For example I always granted a bonus to hit when fighting from horseback. Later I settled on a +2 bonus, then when I found I liked advantage and disadvantage from 5e, I changed it to an advantaged roll two years ago.

Are there some rules that are more or less "designed" and haven't been developed through actual play? Sure, there is a handful of rules I added because I played other fantasy RPGs and either they wrote about that specific topic or it came up when I refereed those games. For example I wrote about the mount attack options because while it never came up in a campaign using these rules. It did come up in a D&D 5e campaign I ran. So I figured I would come up with how I would rule it if it did come up.

It a juggling act between being concise, being too detailed, and what to cover and what not to cover. Individual authors come down differently. I feel that the overall complexity of my take on classic D&D is not as detailed as AD&D but it is more detailed than Core OD&D, or B/X.

Quote from: Xanther;944958The drawback is you are a big target that is not very nimble, you should get a defensive (e.g. AC) penalty

I wouldn't bother with my campaign. D20 makes distinction based on size and it become yet one more modifier to keep track of when you design a monster. Granted size is baked in once figure out the monster's stats.

However classic D&D generally abstracts the concept of size and how easy or tough they are to hit. I assume it is baked into the horses' base AC. Also for me, the dex bonus to AC is not just agility, it natural skill combined with normal weapon skill. So it function just as well on horseback as it does on the ground.

Having said that, classic D&D wouldn't break if you make a ruling that AC is reduced for being on horseback. Especially if you view, as many other referees do, that the AC is a function of agility as well as resistance to damage.

Quote from: Xanther;944958and using missile weapons from horseback is much, much harder unless you (and the horse) have trained in it.

I assume the training by default. It a distinction that classic D&D doesn't make. The assumption in my opinion is that fighting men are proficient in all forms of fighting. Now having said that, I think a classic D&D campaign would run fine if that distinction was important to the referee and he added some rules. Certainly AD&D does in the form of weapon proficiency.

Quote from: Cave Bear;944749I have a question for those of you who track rations.
Do you track food and water for your mount as well? How does that work out?

I mentioned that in the Food & Encumbrance thread. Personally I just track it on a weekly basis. Got enough for a week? Yes? Good. Go fourth.

My house rule for remounts in ACKS:

QuoteRemounts - if the party has two mounts per character (including henchmen/hirelings), they may move at double the long-distance movement rates shown. This is double the speed of the slowest mount in the group. If the party has three mounts per character, they may move at 2.5 times long-distance rates. If the party has four or more mounts per character, they may move at triple the long-distance rates.

To reflect the much faster overland speeds of nomadic/steppe peoples in history. A man with only one horse isn't a cavalryman, he's just one accident away from being an infantryman.

Obviously, my favorite are the mounted rules in Arrows of Indra.  Mind you, those are somewhat attuned to the setting. There's rules not just for horseback but also for war-carriages, and stuff like firing arrows while on horseback or on a carriage.