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Originally Posted by Witchking
Under magic illusions can be devastating. After all you are just trying to beat the Horse's IQ...
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The right breeds of horses can be trained to obey and trust its' master absolutely . They can be trained to ride through apparant obstacles which is how show horses can ride through paper banners or crash through prop walls and sugarglass windows in movies . It why horses can be trained to ride down onto a steep downward slope , which due to the way a horses eyes are set and function , looks like a shere drop into empty space .
If it were impossible to train horses {which are pretty stupid creatures with vitually no imagination , thus they can be taught to do even obviously suicidal things if they trust their handler} to enter terrain they would concider impassable , you would never have seen such scenes in film as where cowboys gallop off a plateu and down a steep trail {Young Guns , Man from Snowy River etc} and Scottish infantry worried about Englands' heavy cavary wouldn't have bothered with pikes many ranks deep to stop a charge , they would have simply have woven grass mats and have one single rank hang them from poles infront of the formation to have the chargers halt {as would everyone else} .
Magic would be quite a boon to training chargers . The extra expense would be made up for by time saved . Also , magical charms against the most likely michief of enemy mages wouldn't have to be too powerful as in European style Medieval warfare , each Knight brings several Men At Arms whom are almost as heavily armed and armoured and riding powerful and well trained warhorses and the numbers thus of the heavy cavalry contingent of such an army would be too great for the likely number of combat worthy mages to do more than anoy or inconvienience with spells that would be difficult or very expensive to ward against with affordable protective charms , training and tatics .
A single mage cannot control the horses of a whole banner of Knights and the supporting Men At Arms {and a contingent of knights will contain many banners} .
The range at which mages could realistically try to use most spells that could
actually effectivly counter heavy cavalry is so close that the charge will have struck home before the mage has finished casting it or so soon thereafter that it might as well have {10 yards is -4 to skill , 20 is -6 , but try to keep calm when a solid wall of knights is bearing down on you at full tilt in phallanx and having to wait until they are but one or two seconds from impact before you
begin to cast !} .
Horses have been trained successfully to ride into blazing cannon and musket fire , ride through walls of flame , ride into what looks to horse perceptions like solid walls or into seeming shere drops into empty space {ever seen "diving" horses at carnivals ?} into gigantic solid ranks of armed angry men , to chase their natural predators {the reason there are no more lions in the Middle East is they were hunted to extinction be men in horse drawn chariots and on horse back} and to even fight armed men directly {the "dancing" of modern Andelucian horses is directly derived from combat maneuvers , including attack maneuvers , their warhorse ancestors were trained to use in battle} . Charging through an illusion at the direction of their riders would be concidered a normal and required ability for any genuine warhorse in such a setting .