Horse riding is a feature of Neverwinter Nights introduced in patch 1.69. This allows both player characters (PCs) and non-player characters (NPCs) to ride horses, with varying degrees of benefits and penalties depending (among other things) on the level of support for horses in a module. In order for a PC to ride a horse, the horse menu must be used.
In some modules, particularly older modules, the only horses available for riding will be those obtained via summon mount. (This includes the modules making up the official campaigns.) As these modules are likely not balanced for horses, summoning mounts in these modules is done at the player's own risk.
Effects of riding[]
Riding a horse provides several default benefits.
- Armor class:
- If the horse has a higher armor class than the rider, the rider is given a natural armor bonus equal to the difference in armor class.
This benefit is only applied if specifically enabled in a module. - Hit points:
- The rider receives half the hit points of the horse in the form of temporary hit points.
This benefit is only applied if specifically enabled in a module. - Speed increase:
- The rider receives a 50% bonus to movement rate. In addition the rider will move at the "fast" base speed defined in creaturespeed.2da. This speed increase technically stacks with others, but only characters with monk levels would notice as the cap for non-monks is a 50% bonus. Barbarian fast movement and monk speed are intended to be negated while mounted, but they are only partially negated in practice, allowing mounted monks to still move very fast.
There are also default penalties resulting from horse riding.
- Archery penalty:
- The rider receive a -4 penalty to attack rolls made while mounted and wielding a ranged weapon. This penalty is reduced to -2 by the mounted archery feat. This penalty requires module-level support and may malfunction in modules that do not specifically support horses. (To avoid a malfunction in such modules, it is recommended that a ranged weapon not be wielded while mounting or dismounting a horse.)
- Skill decrease:
- The rider receives a -50 penalty to disable trap, hide, move silently, open lock, pick pocket, set trap, and tumble while riding. (The armor class bonus from tumble is not negated.)
These effects can be overridden for special horses, and a module can (as usual) modify these effects.
In addition, a module can enable "damage sharing" which causes half the damage incurred while riding to be transferred to the horse upon dismounting. This is rounded down, and further reduced if needed to avoid killing the horse.
Builders[]
Supporting horse riding requires incorporating several standard scripts into a module.
NPCs can be configured to ride a horse in the Toolset by choosing a "mounted" appearance, a "mounted" or "jousting" phenotype, and a "horse" tail. (When mounted, what appears to be the horse is in fact the rider's tail.)
Preventing ridable horses can be accomplished largely by not doing anything. If no horses are placed in the module, none are added to the creature lists of encounters, and none are spawned in module scripts, then the only ways horses can appear in the module are through hak pak scripts and through the summon mount feat. It is usually possible to avoid invoking the former by not adding horse-related items from hak paks, while the latter can be disabled by replacing the standard x3_s3_palmount script with something like the following.
void main()
{
FloatingTextStrRefOnCreature(2968, OBJECT_SELF, FALSE); // "Disabled"
}
External link[]
- 1.69 Builders Guide to Horses & Creature Scaling by Proleric