Fantasy Travel Question

[Zane_Marlowe]

So I"m reading the Fantasy Hero travel table on page 333, and it's telling me that riding a mount is no faster than walking on foot. Travel values for walking and running (slow, and fast) are equal between the two modes. Now aside from the clear distinction in carrying capacity, doesn't it seem just obvious that horses will take you farther faster than if you're just on foot? Is there a rationale here I"m not getting?

[Lightning91]

I don't understand....

In my FH on p.333, the riding horse is 0.5 KPH faster on easy and typical ground (note: walking on typical ground is 4.5 according to the errata, vice 5.5).

The two values are the same on rough ground, and you can't ride on very rough ground.

This seems appropriate to me.

[EvilDrPuma]

Whose END would you rather burn all day: the horse's, or your own? I promise, if there are Long Term END rules on the table, you're going to go for the horse, which will typically have more END and more REC than a Heroic character.

[Kristopher]

I've seen several references stating that a messenger on foot will cover 20 to 25 miles a day, while a messenger on horseback will cover 40 to 50 miles per day.

[Spence]

I've seen several references stating that a messenger on foot will cover 20 to 25 miles a day, while a messenger on horseback will cover 40 to 50 miles per day.

Can cover.

If you don't want to founder the horse you won't really make too much more distance in a day, though riding will allow yu to outdistance those on foot since you can "rest" the horse a little by dismounting and walking. The main advantage to cavalry as a scouting force was they were great sprinters compared to men on foot, and the ride/walk/ride allowed more sustained travel giving more distance.

In order to get the 40 to 50 miles a day, you either trailed a string of remounts and released each horse as it became blown carrying you, or you used remounts from pre-established outposts, post houses or pony-express stations for example.

While an unencumbered horse will easily outrun or outwalk a man, once you pile on 300-500 pounds of rider, tack and gear, it will lose a lot of its natural advantage, and wear down fairly quickly if you insist on pushing the pace.

[Curufea]

I don't know how well researched the travel stats are in the rulebook. So I recommend doing your own reference work on this.

[Spence]

I don't know how well researched the travel stats are in the rulebook. So I recommend doing your own reference work on this.

Sound advice.

I took a look at the chart to refresh myself. It only has average KPH for casual travel which isn't too much different for walking. It has been a while since I did any serious riding, but when I was younger, especially when I was still at home and in school, my cousins and I spent our summers riding out to camp, fish and so on for days at a time. There wasn't much difference in "how fast", but there was a major difference in how much we could carry and how long we could do it. We could go further in a day mostly because we completely stopped to rest far less frequently, and for less time per stop till we made it to our camp site.

Of course we were never in a hurry either.

[Midas]

So I"m reading the Fantasy Hero travel table on page 333, and it's telling me that riding a mount is no faster than walking on foot. Travel values for walking and running (slow, and fast) are equal between the two modes. Now aside from the clear distinction in carrying capacity, doesn't it seem just obvious that horses will take you farther faster than if you're just on foot? Is there a rationale here I"m not getting?

As I understand it, a marching horse can't forage, so you either have to carry grain in saddle bags (one day's worth space wise?), depend on a packhorse/mule/ox, or travel one day and feed, water, and rest the horse the next.

So yeah, as long as you can trade horses, you can go faster, but if you are travelling for distance, you won't make much more time.

Just my guess,
Midas

[Markdoc]

Again, while I'm a bit dubious on the actual distances cited, I'll chime in with the rest - while horses can outpace men on foot in the short term, when it comes to sustained day to day travel, historically it seems they are not a great deal faster in good going and actually slower in rough going.

The exceptions to this are 1) if you are prepared to blow out your horse with a couple of days rough travel or 2) you have a string of horses, so each one can be lightly loaded and you can switch mounts - in which case you should be able to roughly double what a man on foot can do.

The biggest determinant of travel speed is actually food. A person on foot carrying his stuff, who can expect to have acomodation and food provided (ie: travelling along a road with plenty of inns) will do double or triple the distance per day of a person who has to forage and find a place to sleep, all things considered - if foraging is poor, probably more.

cheers, Mark

[Curufea]

It should be noted though that official messengers did (in some cultures) have way stations where they could change horses.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Wow! You guys are on top of this one! So to gather the threads together, the rationale seems to be something like: "you'll spend more time traveling, and spend more endurance (which the horse has in abundance) traveling faster on a mount than you would on foot; where horses are faster is just in the short periods of time, e.g., in combat." This seems perfectly legitimate given the reasons discussed so far.

I actually just looked up the Horse's running speed and endurance in the bestiary. They have a 40 END and a total running speed of 13", so what I may do is just rewrite the table (which is listed an optional alternative to calculating all the distances as they scale up) and scale accordingly. I'll post here again when I've got it done.

Thanks for the feedback!

[stewart]

in my FH game, i simply worked it this way:

man (walking or running) and horse (walking): 20 ish miles per day.

a horse running can go 40 ish in one day, but it is exhusted by the end of it.

a char can push a horse to go 40 miles for 2 days (which gives the character teh ability to cover 80 miles in two days when walking it would take 4) but this destroys the poor horse (it goes lame after).

i don't know how exactly accurate that is, but it is an easy mechanic for everyone to remember. you have your normal miles per day (20), which you can double once (to 40) but then your horse NEEDS to recover, and you can double it again (for 80) but you loose your horse.

and of course, you make the characters unburden their horse the faster they want to travel.

: )

[Zane_Marlowe]

Well, considerations about encumbrance are already built into the travel table, and are probably fine as built, but the question I had arose from what happens when an unencumbered rider on an otherwise unencumbered riding horse tries to get an average speed out of that horse in the course of a single traveling day. Given their naturally different speeds, I thought the table wasn't quite right, and am now working on a revision that seems reasonable given those differences.

So now I've been playing around with these speeds in Excel, and I'm finding that for an 8 hour travel day at conventional combat speeds (SPD + Running) you get the following: human = 35.71 miles, horse = 116.06 miles. That seems as wildly unrealistic as the text suggests, so assuming that average speed is less than combat speed, I tinker to get the following: human adjusted movement 4" = 23.81 miles, horse adjusted movement 7" = 62.50 miles.

Does 20-25 miles per day for humans and 50-60 miles per day for horses in relatively normal travel conditions sound unreasonable? Seems roughly okay to me, but I'm curious to know what further discussion reveals.

[keithcurtis]

Two minutes of research shows that the suggestions in FH are not too bad. The definitive work that most authors seem to quote is "Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army."
I would guess that 20 miles a day is sustained travel with a fully packed traveling horse. For shorter distances, and less heavily encumbered, you could travel much farther.

Keith "On a road, take a bicycle" Curtis

[Midas]

For shorter distances...you could travel much farther.

Y'know, in context that honestly makes sense.
Midas