Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher
http://books.google.com/books?id=T55...0drive&f=false
FWIW, the link says 250-400 per cowboy, with the largest herd driven to be around 15,000 cattle. The daily mileage is much slower, of course, but that's a limit on the speed of cattle and keeping them in shape for the market.
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Intuitively, it seems that spirited warhorses and hunting horses suitable for war training might be considerably less docile than cows. Also, keeping horses from getting separated while running 80 miles seems like it would demand more attention to each horse than keeping together a herd of slow-moving cattle while moving at speeds of less than a quarter of that.
Pessimistically, I was thinking that up to ten people with Animal Handling 12+ might be needed per 100 horses that are being driven in a running group. Optimistically, I had considered that the PCs
might, given very successful organisational rolls, get away with leaving only 200 wranglers with the remuda herd* of 10,000 horse (less the mounts for the ones away as cavalry).
Going by the
single source I found that mentioned numbers of horses and wranglers on long drives, I thought it was unlikely that driving 50+ horses per man was an
unmodified Animal Handling roll.
Granted, a dozen men are noted as driving 1,100 head and 40 men drive 3,000, but those are mentioned as feats that were recorded, noticed and admired. That's probably an example of a successful roll at a penalty. And the desire to roughly double the travel times from the examples above** will probably call for fewer animals per wrangler, if only because parts of the way the animals will be running.
Also, loss rates are rarely mentioned, but in many cases, the drivers pick up replacements from wild horses en route, which is not a possibility for my PC horse thieves. They'll want to assign enough wranglers so that animals that run out of the herd can be caught without opening up an opportunity for others to stray.
*Actually, more likely to be three to twelve groups of wranglers and horses going slightly different routes, but I digress.
**Granted, 40 miles per day over thousands of miles which include the Mojave Desert and the Jornada del Muerto is considerably more impressive than 80 miles per day over 200 miles of perfect country followed by 50 miles per day over 150 miles of desert outskirts, good desert roads with oases and only a 50 mile stretch of truly dry desert without oases and springs.