r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/LivingInABarrel • 3d ago
Game Mastering A Knight who doesn't want a horse?
I have a player who wants to play as a Knight in a WFRP 4th ed campaign, they want the nobility, the martial brotherhood... but they don't want a horse.
They don't like having so many skills devoted to horse care and combat, they feel a horse is pretty useless when much of our adventures take place in towns, cities, ruins, boats etc (likely, Enemy Within) and they have a strong suspicion that even if they did try to use a horse, it'd likely die very quickly.
But as a Knight he seems saddled (hah) with having one, it's even tied to his career skill (Melee - Cavalry). I can't find any options for a Foot Knight style career, the closest I have been able to find is Greatsword and that's not a knight, but a soldier. 'Foot Knights' haven't really been a thing in Warhammer since Fantasy Battle's 3rd edition, I think...
Are you a GM who've had players using mounts, or a player who've used a mount or been in a party with someone who has? If so, what's been your experiences with having one? Is it so bad? Do you have any tips for dealing with the drawbacks my player is worried about?
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u/lFriendlyFire 2d ago
No knight has no skills with horses. It makes no sense that a noble would not be trained with it. He wants to min max in a way that goes completely against the setting, it’s like playing a wood elf that has no experience being in a forest
If I were you, I’d say that if he wants to play a noble knight who has no horse skills, it would be better to not play a knight at all and look for some other class. Either that or reassure that you will make his horse useful and won’t kill him
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u/Heroboys13 2d ago
What he is looking at just sounds like a soldier. Most officers in the empire are nobles and it usually takes noble blood to become one. Knights are tied to their cavalry in the setting. How can you fully enjoy martial brotherhood if you are walking everywhere and your fellow knights are riding.
Also doesn’t riding horse count your attack as the horse’s size? Aren’t they all considered large creatures? That would make him do double damage right?
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u/IMxTHExMANIAC 1d ago
Not double damage, just gives him the “damaging” quality to any weapon he uses. To do double damage, his mount would need to be two steps larger than the enemy he’s facing. On top of that, weapons he uses also have the Impact weapon quality.
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 2d ago
Just tell them to get the bare minimum advances in horse skills and use their horse as extra storage space.
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u/Doom1974 2d ago
If he wants the nobility of being a Knight he kind of needs the horse, having the horse and being mounted showed you were noble as you could afford a horse. He could go without one as they aren't required but other knights will look down on him as a poor backwoods noble. He also only needs 5 ranks in the horse skills, once at level 2 he can look at using some of those for his ranking up skills
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u/RandomNumber-5624 2d ago
Ugh. He sounds like he’s seeking to optimise the career skills and talents to min/max his characters impact. That sounds exhausting to GM for.
The point of all the careers is that they’ve all got some crappy skills in there. None are Perception, Charm, two Melee skills you want, one decent ranged ability, Stealth (any), language of the campaign bad guys and a relevant lore.
Everyone gets a “lore (torture)” or a “perform (fife)”.
The best option is to add two other vaguely relevant skills (eg something like Lore (heraldry) and melee (parrying)) into the first career level and then letting him choose to advance 8 of them. I tend to add one good one and one situational skill.
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u/LivingInABarrel 1d ago
I think the player's had frustrating experiences with mounted combat in other systems like D&D, and isn't one for mounted combat in general, even if they do like paladins and such.
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u/OkMention9988 2d ago
Or, he realizes that he's going to sink a not insignificant amount of xp into something that he'll not be able to use.
It's always nice to have the GM lean into the characters, and give them things to let them shine. Hard to do that for a knight when they're slogging through the shit ladden sewers of Altdorf.
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u/RandomNumber-5624 2d ago
All the careers have something that's sub-optimal but flavourful about them. If you want to just have a grab bag of skills and talents, then it's easiest to just drop the career system all together and let anyone pick anything - I'm not stopping you.
The bigger issue may be the player carrying a D&D style belief that knight is more powerful than rat catcher - which is 100% untrue when you're slogging through the shit ladden sewers of Altdorf. And also fairly important for the theme and tone of the game.
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u/OkMention9988 2d ago
That's a whole separate issue.
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u/Commercial-Act2813 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not really
The skillset of the knight career is what makes it a knight.
It’s going to feel out of place and suboptimal in certain situations. That’s the point. It’s supposed to be like that.
“Yes, but my horse is useless” well tough, you’re a knight.
In the same way a ratcatcher’s small, but vicious dog will feel useless in a jousting tournament. (Well, only if you don’t want to get disqualified)
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u/Ikeriro90 2d ago
I've had players who have mounts but don't use them in combat, a mount is still useful for travelling inside towns and for carrying gear. A horse is a symbol of status mostly, if he isn't using it, he can pay some peasant boy to care for it. You can be permissive and allow them to not take a horse and instead get weapons and armor of a higher quality to compensate
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u/millersixteenth 2d ago
They could hire a patsy to walk along behind them with two coconut halves....(couldn't resist).
Seriously I'd force them to acquire all the animal care and handling skills anyway. If they choose to stable their horse most of the time, fine.
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u/Sad_Mathematician735 1d ago
I came to say just this, create a new knightly order, The Knights that say “Ni”.
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u/Immediate_Gain_9480 2d ago edited 2d ago
A knight without is... not really a knight. Historically they even had 3. A riding horse a warhorse and a charger. It was a core part of their battlefield role and identity as warriors. In many European languages the word for knight and rider are similar if not the same. Even Chivalry comes from the French word of Chevalier which comes from the Latin cavalry.
BUT you could make up a order of knights that for some reason made vow gave up their use of horses and do some homebrew. Or he could just get the horse and stable it 99% of the time.
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u/Icy_Sector3183 1d ago
This is a common issue in RPGs, players don't trust their mounts/ships/castles/Death Stars to be as durable as their characters. It's another attack vector enemies can use to defeat them that bypasses their personal defences.
The solution... I dunno. The simplest is to just declare these assets impervious to negative effects, though it makes sense to make an exception for narrative purposes: A favoured mount could be unaffected by damage etc on the battlefield, but their capture could be the seed for an adventure.
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u/TimeLordVampire Purple Hand 2d ago
Is there a particular Order the player wants to be part of?
Horses are strongly tied to the culture of knights. If a knight can't look after their horse, they are a poor knight indeed. I would encourage the player to have a horse, but only invest lightly in the animal skills. Replace Melee (cavalry) with Melee (Two handed) or (Basic). Perhaps this could be part of the character's backstory.
Once the knight progresses beyond a squire, perhaps they could have a squire who just looks after the horse. Or even wave this and have a follower stableboy from the start.
I did have a squire in one of my short campaigns, and it was fun to have the moments in combat and out of combat where that player was powerful and had fun RP moments a la Geralt and Roach.
If they don't want this I would recommend the Greatsword or Warrior Priest careers.
For running the Enemy Within, you'll find there are a few careers that don't really "fit" into a life on the road, and the GM has to work with the player to make them fit. It can be useful to establish a base of operations before TEW, such as Altdorf or Ubersreik. Perhaps design some quick side quests, missions from the PC knightly order that can be dropped in between quests such as in Bogenhafen and Weisburg.
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u/LivingInABarrel 1d ago
> Is there a particular Order the player wants to be part of?
They are starting without an Order, but we are heading into TEW, so the Knights Panther are an eventual possibility.
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u/tishimself1107 2d ago
Recent old world bretonnia has knights on foot saying that in certain times necessity and sense means they will move and fight on foot. I assume Empire knight orders would do the same.
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u/BaronVonTrinkzuviel 2d ago
I played a character with a mount through TEW. A few thoughts in no particular order...
I wouldn't say opportunities for mounted action come up all the time in TEW, but maybe more often than you'd think.
Good GMing should be able and willing to adapt the source material to suit the party comp to some extent. Some encounters will need a particular set-up but others could easily be quite flexible if need be.
Being on a trained mount offers a major advantage in combat, so when the chance does come up it will make you feel mighty indeed. The fact it won't happen all the time will make it that much sweeter when it does.
Trappings are important in the Empire - you're expected to look the part. A knight without a horse is like a ratcatcher without a dog, or a wizard without a staff and pointy hat - barely recognisable! Expect sarky comments from the peasants and barely-concealed scorn from the nobles if you're traipsing through the mud with the rest of us, especially if you're trying to walk around in all that heavy armour.
That said, I'd be sympathetic if he really just doesn't want a horse. Maybe his highly-trained and very valuable warhorse has been stolen - there's his adventuring motivation and hook opportunity right away. Or maybe his doom is something about falling off a horse, so he never rides one in an attempt to cheat fate...
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u/Dedrick555 2d ago
I mean the whole point of the career system is to style it towards a specific thing - and Knights use mounts. If he doesn't want a horse, don't make him get one. If he's gonna throw a fit about the skills and talents, just change the income skill to something else and tell him to just put XP elsewhere besides the horse-related skills
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u/Mandarga 2d ago
You could make it funny by proposing some swaps in skills and talents for stuff that don’t relate to horses, and give him a secret that he’s scared of horses, and that’s why he doesn’t want one, while the character will never admit it in public.
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u/Over_Track9195 2d ago
In a place with as many knightly orders as the empire, where commoners and nobility can be knights. That some orders might focus on fighting on foot. I mean it’s the empire not bretonnia, knights are not social class, they are more like warrior clubs. That is if I understand knights in the empire
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u/Horsescholong 1d ago
Most knights are nobles and a few orders recruit from VERY PROMISING soldiers and warrior priests
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u/Over_Track9195 1d ago
That is true in lore and in life. But the game rules as I understand them always assumes your a commoner unless you have the noble career or the noble blood trait. I can easily be wrong about this though
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u/Horsescholong 1d ago
You can come from a noble background and not have the Noble Blood talent, that's why it can be gotten when making the character as part of the random talents youv'e rolled, The talent represents that you wield authority and exude a noble-like aura.
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u/Over_Track9195 13h ago
I had to look it up but it actually says in the talent noble blood: you are born into nobility or have been elevated to that status. It’s not noble like, but if your character has it they are a noble. And you’re right that you don’t have to take it in noble career path but it’s one of two careers that give it. So I think an argument could be made that the knight career as written is a commoner by default. Though I think knights should have an option for it at some point but rules as written they don’t.
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u/everydaydefenders 47m ago
"Knight" in the setting is a title. Not what you literally are.
Have him pick a different class and let him narratively be a knight.
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u/RenningerJP 2d ago
I'm pretty sure there's one knight in up in arms book without a horse isn't there?
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u/Horsescholong 1d ago
There is not a knight without a horse, there is knight without an order though
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u/RenningerJP 1d ago
I thought it corrected this after posting it. I tried to edit to say op could make their own order and just replace the horse stuff. It would probably just be easier to use a different career though and just give them noble blooded talent.
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u/Horsescholong 1d ago
Apparently the edit ended up posting the original and the edit as 2 separate messages, as i've seen it before this one.
The career that most closelt resembles knight (or any specialization) is Guard, since you get various weapon specializations and fairly good armour, with the best of the best being the Hammerer if the PC was a dwarf.
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u/Commercial-Act2813 1d ago
He does not have to have a horse, but if he wants to be a knight, he has to realise those skills are very much a part of being a knight.
You start out as a squire, a servant of a knight. It involves taking care of your master’s horse and armour.
For a knight those are vital skills as both of those things can save your life on the battlefield.
Obviously a knight does not ride his horse everywhere, it’s perfectly fine to not have a horse while adventuring.
At that point they basically are a footknight.
BUT:
It seems your player only want’s practical/usefull skills (minmaxing much😋), but it does not work that way. Some skills (and trappings) are there to give flavour to the character.
Every career has skills that are somewhat useless/highly situational, but often it’s those skills that define the career in the first place.
A knight is a highly skilled, honour bound, noble warrior that rides a horse. If he doesn’t like that, then go with the soldier career like others have said.