Hello all and welcome to another Third-Party Thursday!
Today I’m showcasing a supplement I created1 to combat a problem with higher-level play - namely that having a horse becomes a problem.
At low levels, having a horse is a cool thing which people rarely do, because it’s also quite powerful - you get a whole extra bag of hitpoints and a kick to boot2, so DMs seldom offer horses to low-level players.
At high levels, the problem switches - the horses are not powerful enough. Your party gets hit by one AOE spell, and the horses all die, and then the party feels terrible because all their horses died.
This then leads to the problem that the party will go one of two ways - they will abandon the concept of having mounts entirely, because they are a heart-wrench and an expense just to die in the first combat, or they will go all-out to try and preserve their mounts, becoming cautious to a fault on the road, and using up spells like Death Ward to try and keep their precious Jennifer the Horse alive. Finally, they might just detach themselves from the animals, and treat their mounts like cars in Grand-Theft Auto, as throwaway transports that they can always just get another of.
Well, I saw this problem happening in real-time. The party started the campaign at level 8, and they all started with mounts. Initially, I said “reflavour a war-horse statblock as you see fit”, and left it at that. However, the levels started to increase and AOE spells became more common, and I could see the distress in my players every time their mounts were hit. I realised that, once they get powerful enough, their mounts would die at the start of a combat, and they would feel distraught - it wouldn’t be a meaningful death, the sort that drives a story. It would be a meaningless “oops, collateral damage!” sort of death. And I wanted to avoid it.
I realised then that the mounts had been involved in most of the battles the party had fought - they had fought and defended, and been ridden about, and doubtless would have gained some experience from that. So, I made a supplement which was geared towards allowing the mounts to gain levels alongside the party, and I named it “Does my Horse Level Up?”
As with much of my work, I’m using stock public domain images - I’m saving up on Ko-Fi to hire artists for my publications, so please consider supporting me!
How’sit Work?
The supplement allows you to create a generic Steed statblock, which is a large creature which you can ride. The creature can be anything, within reason3, and it’s statblock and abilities are created using a combination of 2 traits from a list, each of which gives the steed unique abilities. This allows all steeds to be roughly equal, removing any meta-issues with picking the one with a higher AC, HP, and attack over the one which is more thematically true for your character.
Example of possible steed builds from the supplement.
The available traits in the supplement make for 136 different possible combinations for making your Steeds4.
Leveling Up
As your character gains levels, so too does your Steed. Each of the two traits you picked for your steed has 3 tiers of abilities, which unlock as your steed gains levels, giving you new things to try out with your steed:
Example of three of the traits.
These are gained on a rolling 3 levels, alternating between an ability score increase, hitpoint increase, and gaining a trait. This was designed to keep the steeds from outshining the characters, and maintaining them at a reasonable power so that they don’t die instantly when the combat kicks off!
Does it work?
Obviously I am a little biased, but I have been using this for a party of 5 from level 10 to level 13, and it’s worked really well. One of my friends (and a player in the campaign) has been using it in her campaign that she is running for another group, and they have also expressed how much they enjoy it. So there’s ringing endorsement all around here!
Special Discount
Naturally, I want to thank anyone who has read this far, and so I have made a discount code for Does my Horse Level Up? at just $0.99. There’s only 35 uses of it out there, which just-so-happens to be my subscriber count.5 Funny that!
If you’ve missed this one, and/or If you enjoy reading my articles, and want to see more, then hit subscribe! It’ll increase the number of uses for the codes, and you’ll know when they’re coming out - win win!
If you’ve got ideas for monsters or articles, or anything else, then let me know in the comments!
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Finally, if you love TTRPG content, then head over to DrivethruRPG - it’s packed with thrid party D&D content, unique TTRPGs, Pathfinder supplements - pretty much anything you could want for TTRPGs!
Yes, I will be reviewing other people’s works more in the future. Currently I have one to review, which looks amazing and I need to playtest it to give the best feedback and endorsement I can, so until I muster the troops to give it a good go, it’ll be on the back-burner!
Or hoof, if you’re feeling technical.
I am not the one to talk to here - ask your DM! Some DMs will prefer more basic steeds, like rams or horses, and others will be happy with drakes and wyverns and ankylosauri!
each of which then have 20 levels apiece, for 2,720 mechanically different steeds in total, if you’re being pedantic!
This was, in fact, intentional, and accurate at the time of writing! If it runs out I will definitely make another, and post it in the subscriber chat!
I might “hoof” it over to rpg drive thru and check it out…😊😊