Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

Been thinking about what traits you want in GURPS for a cavalryman vs. a charioteer. B397 says that for melee attacks, "the rider uses melee weapons at the lower of his Melee Weapon skill or Riding skill". Similarly, for ranged attacks, "Roll against the lower of Riding or ranged weapon skill to hit". This is an important rule because it requires mounted warriors to make a significant investment in Riding, and is reflected in some published templates, which invest as many points in Riding as in primary weapon skill(s). The Combat Riding technique in Martial Arts makes raising your skill cap cheaper if that's all you want Riding for.

Now a detail I hadn't noticed before in the section on melee weapons in mounted combat is the sentence that says, "Use the same rules when attacking from a motorcycle or similar open vehicle (substitute Driving skill for Riding skill above)". The fact that this applies to "a motorcycle or similar open vehicle" is something I just noticed writing this post—it doesn't seem to be included under the vehicular combat rules in chapter 17 of Campaigns. And presumably what applies to a motorcycle would also apply to chariots? Arguably the relevant skill should be DX-based Teamster, though I don't know of any official support for that. Unless it's totally unnecessary as long as the archer and the driver are two different people.

Basic Set has a Horse-Archery technique, mostly seems to be for doing tricks like shooting backwards—which historically, real horse archers were known for. Martial Arts broadens it to "Mounted Shooting" (p. 77), which can be bought for vehicles and reduces penalties for a "rough ride", which seems to refer to things like penalties for bad roads or no roads. Those bad roads / no roads penalties don't seem to apply to mounted warriors, but would apply to chariot warriors, making this technique in some respects even more necessary for them.

Except that then Low-Tech a perk to get rid of most penalties for attacking from a chariot, and the wording seems to imply it makes the Mounted Shooting technique totally redundant? The only thing it doesn't cover is penalties for using an early chariot design with solid wheels rather than spokes. From one POV that's an awfully good perk, but from another POV those penalties don't apply to mounted warriors in the first place, so I see why this perk was published.

What's the upshot of all this? If you read the rules in a such a way that being a chariot archer requires a significant investment in Teamster and maybe Combat Riding, and you are strictly following RAW, Teamster being IQ-based could be quite annoying. But if you don't think that applies, then being a chariot archer seems a lot easier than being a mounted warrior—mostly it seems you just need one perk.

It's all very confusing—does anyone know anywhere this has been further clarified?

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

A cavalryman has to both control the mount and wield the lance, bow, pistol, or whatever. But a chariot characteristically has two people: the driver and the shooter. Arjuna is making Bow rolls; Krishna is making Teamster rolls. It's rare for a chariot warrior to use a melee weapon; a chariot is primarily a shooting platform. So the rules you cite fail to apply on two grounds: That Arjuna isn't using a melee weapon, and that someone else is controlling his chariot for him.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

Note that the penalties for firing an unstabilized weapon from a moving vehicle (B548) will apply.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

That LT perk is pretty strong - it's considerably better than a chariot-riding version of Sure-Footed, for example.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

Re: number of people involved, I don't see the rules clearly saying this matters—the text seems to contemplate multiple riders and refers to them both as "riders". By the letter of the rules you might be right about the melee vs. ranged distinction, since the "Attack" paragraph under "Using Ranged Weapons While Mounted" doesn't mention vehicles. OTOH, if riders have both melee and ranged weapons skills capped by Riding when on a horse, and melee weapons skills capped by Driving on a motorcycle, it would seem very odd if ranged weapons skills weren't capped by Driving on a motorcycle.

Part of the problem here is that "motorcycle or similar open vehicle" is rather vague and it's unclear if it would apply to a chariot. Also, it's tucked away almost as an afterthought (indeed I wonder if it was an afterthought), both not really explained and easy to miss.

Yeah, I got that, that's what I meant by like "things like penalties for bad roads or no roads", since many of them are heavily affected by what the vehicle is moving over. Hand weapons are only at -1 on good roads, and in any case I'm pretty sure that -1 is negated by the Chariot Training perk.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

A point to consider: every people that had chariot archers abandoned them in favour of cavalry once they had access to horses that were large and strong enough. The reasons for that are likely to be complicated, but they probably didn't include cavalrymen needing a lot more training than charioteers.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

The two advantages that immediately occur to me are numbers and melee weapons. As noted above, a war chariot has a crew of two, while a horse has a crew of one, so that can potentially double your fighting manpower, and a horseman can fight in melee more easily if the fight comes to that.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

Two horse, one chariot, one driver, one archer, one bow vs. two horses, two riders, two bows seem to provide at least a significant part of the explanation.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

I wouldn't be surprised if the improved effectiveness of cavalry brought a better ROI for better training as well.

Re: Building a cavalryman vs. building a charioteer
 

Yeah, these seem likely. I'd imagine the riding horses are more expensive (stronger and more trained) than the ones that pull chariots, and the riders are more expensive (more talented and more trained) than the driver or the archer of the chariots. But the riding gear on two horses together probably costs less than a single chariot, and each of the riding horse and rider probably don't cost twice as much as those for chariots.

Basically, with chariots, you need two horses, a chariot, and a driver to support each archer. With cavalry, you need a single horse plus riding gear (saddle, stirrups, etc) to support each archer.

There's also the consideration of terrain - a horse with a rider can handle terrain that a chariot cannot.