Medieval Horse Types and Traits

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Is there any information on how much it cost in middle ages Europe to maintain a farm, saddle, or war horse for a year? That's what I was asking. Buying a horse for a character doesn't accomplish anything if they have to sell it immediately because they can't feed it. It's necessary to know what monthly wage they need to earn, or else what Status they have to be able to support, to maintain a work horse. There must be some historical information about which people back then could keep horses.

A farm horse which cost about 240d would cost about that much to maintain since it's on the farm.
A war horse which cost about 1,200d would cost about 800d to maintain in the country and about 1,200d to maintain in a city, including feed and care.

The link I posted above has some decent numbers:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sourc...valprices.html

Note: [1], pp 126-129, gives the following prices at an inn in 1331. For one day, 3 men with 4 servants spent: Bread, 4d; beer, 2d; wine 1.25d; meat, 5.5d; potage, .25d; candles, .25d; fueld, 2d; beds, 2d; fodder for horses, 10d. The four servants staying alone sleep 2 nights for 1d. Generally, all 7 spend 2d a night on beds; in London, it is 1d per head.

[1] English Wayfaring Life in the XIVth Century, J. J. Jusserand, trans Lucy Smith, Putnam's Sons, New York,1931 (Orig. 1889).

So from those numbers you could extrapolate that they spent about as much for people food as for horses' fodder, about 1.5d a horse per day.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

In GURPS $1 always equals the cost of a loaf of bread. That is a fixed value and never changes, no matter the TL or setting, regardless of whether any local currency is named dollars at the time.

That's probably less useful than you may think, the relation between the cost of a loaf of bread and the cost of a house, or maintaining a farm or purchasing and maintaining a horse are tenuous at best.

Thirty years ago I could buy a loaf of bread for $.50 and a house for $30k, today I can go out and buy that same loaf of bread for $1 but that $30k house is now priced at $500k instead of the $60k a doubling of the price of bread would mean if they had much to do with each other.


I can also go out and buy a horse for under $500 without even trying, and if I tried I could get one for free from someone who is having maintenance issues, maintenance being at least $1,500 a year due to feed plus incidentals like pasture and stabling, etc.
http://horses.about.com/od/buyingyou...rsekeeping.htm
http://www.equine.com/horses-for-sal...ad-990528.html

If a horse is eating half a bale of hay a day, then your price to maintain it varies by the price of hay, $2 a bale means you can likely easily keep costs under $1500 a year, $10 a bale means your costs are probably over $3000 a year, not even getting into the costs of pasture on your own land vs. stabling it at a stablers.

[Polydamas]

Ze'manel, S.E. Mortimer's research suggested that the most expensive horses cost 200 times the price of a plow horse. Not that an average horse did. The kind of man who owned the best horse in England would also tend to own castles and manors and town houses and velvets and jewels and manuscripts and ships and other precious things. Ordinary milites would make do with a set of much less expensive horses.

Vaevictis, there is lots of research on the medieval English economy out there, but you have to dig for it. Prices and ratios vary a lot over time and space ... "medieval Europe" covers 1,000 years and most of a continent! Christopher Dyer is a good and readable historian, and J.E. Thorold Rogers published a huge mass of prices for different things in the 19th century. I would also look for books on medieval horses.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

In GURPS $1 always equals the cost of a loaf of bread. That is a fixed value and never changes, no matter the TL or setting, regardless of whether any local currency is named dollars at the time.

The "$1 is the cost of a loaf of bread" thing is only stated as a rule of thumb (p. B27). The problem is that wages and costs of living are also fixed, and the ratios don't match any one historical society.

[Godogma]

And good luck trying to buy a loaf of bread that isn't near its expiration date now in 2010 for a single one dollar bill; at least of any name brand or that you're sure what went into it (vastly important due to allergies etc).

Frankly, I have never seen any real world prices that match up to the (sometimes entirely) absurd ones they have in the GURPS books. GURPS publishes some sort of generalization, not the exact prices from anywhere and generally rounds up from there if it doesn't "look" right from what I've been able to determine. (Or perhaps everything is balanced on some sort of sliding scale).

This is most obvious for firearms and ammunition, however that may be a game balance issue as much as a sliding scale or anything else.

And as for a dollar being worth an ounce of gold in the old west, I'm afraid whoever told you that was mistaken. An ounce of gold was roughly equal to a 10 or 20 dollar gold piece in weight.

I apologize if my post seems combative; I haven't been able to get enough sleep today and mood isn't the greatest nothing is intended to cause offense.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Ze'manel, S.E. Mortimer's research suggested that the most expensive horses cost 200 times the price of a plow horse. Not that an average horse did. The kind of man who owned the best horse in England would also tend to own castles and manors and town houses and velvets and jewels and manuscripts and ships and other precious things. Ordinary milites would make do with a set of much less expensive horses.

Sure, sure, my point though was that 200 times the price of a plow horse doesn't mean that you can take the price of a draft horse in Basic p.460, listed as $2,000 and multiply that by 200 and come back and say that Baron Schmoe spent $400,000 on his new fancy destrier.

On the other hand, if a plow horse cost 120d-240d and Baron Schmoe spent 24,000d-48,000d (L100-L200) on his new fancy destrier, then that's all fine considering his expected yearly salary is probably in the L200-L500 range.

Keeping in mind too of course that Baron Schmoe has to be at the very least Filthy Rich to qualify for his expected yearly salary.

[Lupo]

Hi, I revive this old post (and a terribly useful one! kudos to Icelander) just to ask a question about the Mount skill.

B210 says:
"If you have any points in this skill, your rider gets a minimum +1 to skill."

Since ALL horses listed on Campaigns have the Mount skill (and arguably, all trained mounts do), does this mean that all riders always get a +1 to skill?
(unless they are untrained mounts, of course).

Do you use this rule in your campaigns?

Since weapon skills when riding are capped by Riding skill, this would mean that a knight does not need, say, Riding 16 to avoid penalizing his Broadsword-16... Riding 15 would be enough since he'd always enjoy a +1 to Riding due to his horse Mount skill...

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by Lupo

Hi, I revive this old post (and a terribly useful one! kudos to Icelander) just to ask a question about the Mount skill.

B210 says:
"If you have any points in this skill, your rider gets a minimum +1 to skill."

Since ALL horses listed on Campaigns have the Mount skill (and arguably, all trained mounts do), does this mean that all riders always get a +1 to skill?
(unless they are untrained mounts, of course).

Do you use this rule in your campaigns?

Since weapon skills when riding are capped by Riding skill, this would mean that a knight does not need, say, Riding 16 to avoid penalizing his Broadsword-16... Riding 15 would be enough since he'd always enjoy a +1 to Riding due to his horse Mount skill...

Only if he is on a trained horse, if he takes a horse of the mill, he would have the -1.

[Lupo]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Only if he is on a trained horse, if he takes a horse of the mill, he would have the -1.

It appears you didn't read my post.
If the horse is untrained (without "Mount" skill) my question doesn't apply. That's pretty obvious.

What I was asking is: since in practice ALL horses meant to be ridden *are* trained, e.g., they have at least 1 point in Mount skill (as all the horses on Basic Set do), does this mean that all riders always get a +1 to skill?

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by Lupo

It appears you didn't read my post.
If the horse is untrained (without "Mount" skill) my question doesn't apply. That's pretty obvious.

What I was asking is: since in practice ALL horses meant to be ridden *are* trained, e.g., they have at least 1 point in Mount skill (as all the horses on Basic Set do), does this mean that all riders always get a +1 to skill?

Yes, this means, but also remember that there are some penalties regarding the riding equipment, and not because the riding horses have the skill, that a player won't try to ride a donkey or something like that.

[Lupo]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Yes, this means, but also remember that there are some penalties regarding the riding equipment

Which ones? It seems to me that, unless you lack the "saddle & tack", you have no penalties... only bonuses (which "only offset penalties; they never give a net bonus", though).

Per B289, a basic rider with "ordinary" Bit & Bridle, Spurs, Stirrups, would have a +4 to control a Mount, +5 if using both hands.
This +5 only works for "offsetting penalties", yet this might be very useful, because per B398: "If the mount is hit, the rider must roll vs. Riding, minus the shock penalty suffered by the mount, to keep it from spooking".

I always thought this was a quite risky roll, actually it is a very trivial one, because even if the mount suffered major damage (giving the maximum shock penalty of -4) the rider would likely roll at Riding +1... since the riding equipment would offset the -4, and the Mount skill would give +1 to Riding.
(of course, the rider would roll just at plain Riding skill if he's using only one hand).

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by martinl

"Sir."

tencharlimit

I love you, Martinl.

Also, You might see this list of horses when you get to gaming in under 3 hours. :)

-P