"Advantage to Mounted Warrior against hits." Topic

Many rule sets grant bonus to mounted figures, for example as a +1 armor or such. I'm not sure I understand the rationale; especially against missile fire, a man on a horse is a larger target, and unless the horse is armored, a mounted soldier can more easily be brought down by wounding the horse. While war horses would be "tougher" than a man, it still wouldn't be predictable that they would behave well when, let's say, struck by an arrow. Any toughts?

Well against archery I am pretty much with you but in HTH cavarly does seem to have a measurable advantage historically speaking. Now obviously this isn't the case when the footmen have pikes and what not so a blanket +1 or any other bonus may not be appropriate but still they do need some kind of bonuses in certain situations.

It's a game.
All sorts of silly +1 factors get added in those games in love with +1 factors.
There is no crying need that they be rational.

In skirmish games I make mounted easier to hit, but also require a 50/50 roll as to whether it is the horse or rider that got hit. It creates a unique challenge when part of a cavalry force suddenly becomes infantry.

I'm not really sure that falling off a plunging horse constitutes "suddenly becoming infantry" any more than when I fall down the stairs I am deciding to take a nice lie down.

that last one made me chuckle… bravo.

OFM is waxing sour, because this isn't HIS game. But I bet that he wouldn't take such a cavalier attitude toward the pluses and minuses in one of HIS games. He is not alone.

@Davey, you are right; a horse is a huge amount of unarmored, tender flesh. When it gets pierced the horse becomes a liability.

Either ignore that when conducting missile fire, or make the horse slightly more likely to be taken out; I suggest the latter would be to downrate the cavalry armor class by one level, e.g. "Heavy" becomes "Medium". If the horse is fully barded then leave the armor level alone, or even raise it "+1", because a full barding does make the horse a lot tougher.

The advantage of horse versus foot is the mechanical advantage of extreme weight. It makes a horse roughly ten times more effective in a weight versus weight contest. However, as already mentioned, the obvious tactic to keep all that weight superiority at bay is a "wall" of grounded pointy sticks; a thick wall is even more likely to keep the horses at bay. If the horsemen do persist in pressing forward into said-sticky wall, the physics of the scenario dictate that the more momentum forward into the sticky bits, the more easily the horse impales itself. It is in fact using the horse's own weight and speed against itself….

OFM is waxing sour, because this isn't HIS game. But I bet that he wouldn't take such a cavalier attitude toward the pluses and minuses in one of HIS games. He is not alone.

SMOOOOOOOCHIES!

How's the marching band coming along?

Technically, the man is the same size, whether on foot, or on horse.

If firing directly at him, from the front of the horse, I can see the horse's head and neck providing some cover, which is probably why they add the protection modifier.

I think that against missile fire the man and horse together are an easier target to hit if not moving, but given a potential faster mobility, could it be argued that they are harder to hit if at a gallop? Also, in melee at least, I think that there is a psychological effect of fighting against a mounted man, those animals are big!

Allen

I've wondered about this, and read rules that take either position. I think the "harder to hit" approach its driven by two factors. First, a cavalryman moves faster than an infantryman, and would be more difficult to hit. Second, (and I suspect more important) cavalry is a more expensive arm to field, both for nations and for wargamers, so you don't want to wipe out the entire squadron in one volley. I suppose that would be historically accurate, if you were using the SMLE, but not so much if you were using the Brown Bess.
Grelber

I make no difference in my rules.

I've assumed the reasons for a bonus against missile fire are:

+ cavalry moves faster than infantry therefore harder to hit.
– rider is higher up in the air, therefore easier target than infantry.
+ horse masks some of the rider making him a smaller target than infantry.
– horse is bigger so easier to hit if you are trying to hit the horse.
+ horse is bigger so therefore some hits that would be serious on a man are superficial on a horse.

Three pluses, two minuses, balances out to a plus.

Thanks for the responses. Thinking about it further, I guess the +1 save for a mounted soldier could represent a 15% chance that strike that would have wounded a man, struck the horse but wasn't strong enough to hurt it.