Horse Physiology (sage ability)

Horse Physiology is an authority-status sage ability in the study of Horseback Riding that encompasses practices that ensure the health, happiness and readiness of horses as loyal companions and symbols of prestige — as well as the backbone of the game world's society, as horses serve a vital importance with regards to transportation, labour and warfare.

With regards to these skills, the presence of a barn is a fundamental necessity, not just as a place to store grain and hay, but also as a vital shelter to protect the horse from harsh and unpredictable weather. While much of the ability can be used to care for horses in the outdoors, occasionally a horse must be given rest in a strong, warm, dry place, else it slowly weakens until it must be put down.

Practical Skills

What follows are a set of horse-related practices with which the character is very familiar and can employ without failure.

Aid Rest

This provides expert care and attention to a horse's recovery of lost hit points (h.p.) through adjustments to nutritional needs, poultices, massage and other forms of therapy. Normally, a horse heals at a rate of 1 h.p. per day; through use of this ability, the character can increase this to a pace equal to the animal's hit dice (HD) — so that a horse with 2 HD would heal at a rate of 2 h.p. per day. Further, if the horse is sheltered in a barn, this benefit is further increased by +2 additional hit points each day, until the horse has fully regained it's vitality.

Those possessed of horse physiology can provide care of this manner for one horse per 9 points of knowledge possessed. Thus, a character with 37 points could aid the rest of four horses.

Binding Wounds

Similar to the sage ability described for human combatants, this skill allows for the character to stauch the flow of blood resulting from a wound, the sort that might be gotten in battle or an accident.

• Binding the wounds of a horse more efficiently; if the binding is done carefully, in three rounds, the character can restore 1 hit point of damage that was caused by the wound before binding.
• Diagnose & treat horse-borne diseases.
• Limbering a horse after it has become physically exhausted. This includes doubling the horse's die, intermittently rubbing its muscles over a 24-hour period and treating the horses' tendons over that time.

These skills cannot be applied to animals or humanoids other than horses, though they resemble sage abilities related to animal physiology. To some extent the character can apply their horse-knowledge to centaurs, hippocampi, hippogriffs and pegasi.

Horse doctoring should be treated as more of an art than a science, given that veterinary practices of the 17th century would reflect traditional practices rather than the experimentation and examination of later centuries. In some ways, understanding has been expanded through druidic practices, which would have been part of training for those classes who have acquired the sage ability. We may freely imagine that persons in this environment have fantastical knowledge that would permit excellent treatment of these animals.

See Horseback Riding