Dummies Guide to Building: Horses

Rideable horses! Can I get a heck yeah? Thanks to our wonderful Tech Team of Zelknolf et. al., rideable horses are part of the ACR. Every server has them. They are driven by items. There are Ownership Items and Appearance Items in the pallet of each server.

Ownership Items

There are three of these. Having one in his possession means a PC owns a horse. The choices are Brown Warhorse, White Warhorse and White Warhorse with Barding. There are also three appearance items, which I believe can change the appearance of your existing horse and are items equippable by the horse itself, in the cloak slot. The PC is not supposed to equip these items. Doing so results in an equinified Escher print of a PC that bears no resemblance to horse, man or horseman.

These items may be spawned by DM or put into a store for purchase by PCs. On TSM I have a caravan stable that trades in horses. Horses cost 150gp. A complete TSM_Stable.erf containing an area, an NPC, his conversation, the store, flavor horse spawnpoints and an as_group_horse spawn group script and waypoint may be found on the DMFTP in the NWN2/Campaign/Contributions file for your use and modification. All of those things inside the erf will be tagged, prefaced and/or classified with either Flying Griffon, Griffon, or fg (Except for the spawn group waypoint, which is classified as ALFA_Groups). You will have to update your versions with your own tags and resrefs, and then carry through those tag and resref changes to the spawnpoints in the area.

Horse Behavior

• Horses will fight hostile creatures. The PC may be mounted or unmounted during the fight.
• Horses will recognize their owner. Talking to a horse toggles "stand your ground" and "follow me" behavior.
• Horses will remain in an area if told to, even if the PC leaves the area.
• Horses will follow a PC from area to area if told to.
• Leading a horse onto the TSM Travel Map or not being the leader of a multi-person mounted group on the TSM Travel Map can result in horseloss. See a DM if your PC's horse wanders off and refuses to respawn due to travel map related issues.

Horse Usage: Instructions for NPC and PC Mounting of Horses

(Thank you, HEEGZ)

NPC:

1. Select or create a NPC capable of riding horses (most humanoids).

2. Create a "Warhorse{Rideable..." from the creator palette.

3. Possess the NPC.

4. Target self (the NPC)

5. Open the console [~] key, enter this text:

givefeat 3740

6. Close the console.

7. Press C and drag the "Mount or Dismount Horse" feat to your quickbar.

8. Target the "Warhorse"

9. Cast the feat from quickbar.

Just confirmed this to work for both zSpawn and palette NPCs on TSM, using both brown and white horse types. Also, was successful for a dwarf and hin NPC as well, which have scaling horses/ponies too. Nice work.

PC:

1. Buy horse from vendor OR

2. Obtain horse from DM.

3. [If #2 then] Verify DM removed 150gp.

4. Drag "Mount or Dismount Horse" feat to quickbar.

5. Target horse and click on feat.

6. Option, you may talk to horse to enable/disable autofollow.

Release Notes for ACR 1.92 April 1, 2014

Extensive thread [1] discussing release.

Highlights include:

• Ridable horses, restricted only to warhorses (as we didn't have the people to really invest in untrained mounts in combat). Modules will have to add merchants to deal in them, they will cost 150 gold each.
• Horses behave similarly to ALFA1 horses, in that they may not be targeted while mounted and provide the mounted PC with a walking movement rate of 2.4m/s and a running movement rate of 4.8m/s (default unencumbered PC is 2.0 and 4.0)
• A new feat that all PCs acquire allows them to mount horses. The feat may be used on any horse owned by the PC to climb onto it, and may be used again to dismount.
• A PC may also dismount a horse by removing their cloak (a related restriction to this-- due to the nature of models available, we had to link the appearance of horseback riding to cloaks. Mounting a horse will create a plot-item cloak on your PC, which will copy all properties of the currently-worn cloak if there is one. I am recommending to HDMs to allow exchanges of items that boost charisma, due to the NWN2-level problem of drained spells when swapping spellcasting ability score items on spontaneous spellcasters, to rings).
• A horse may be instructed to follow its owner by speaking to it, provided that owner is in the same area.
• A horse may be instructed to cease to follow its owner by speaking to it again. (anyone can do this, mind, though abusing your abilty to "grab" another PC's horse might be CvC or griefing; such distinctions would belong to the PA if necessary)
• Slain horses are permanently dead. You have to buy another one. Precedent says that stealing or destroying another PC's property is absolutely CvC, and players should be aware.
• Horses spawn when you log in, and despawn when you log out. Error cases fail over to the horse spawning next to you, instead of where you left it. We have some outstanding issues with persistent location which currently results in often waking to an affectionate horse nuzzling its owner awake-- this will hopefully be resolved in time.
• Related, movement rates that are not damaged by movement-altering spells (like haste or expeditious retreat) and are not thwarted by Freedom of Movement are available for use on overland maps. These rates are 0.2m/s (on foot) or 0.4m/s (on horseback).
• Paladins get warhorses at level 5, with stats per the SRD.

• A thing to note is that the Paladin warhorse changed in the 3.0->3.5 transition, and ALFA2 is using D&D3.5. The paladin warhorse ability is thus not a regular companion-type relationship (as detailed in the 3.0 PHB), but a daily calling ability (as detailed in the 3.5 PHB). This means that paladins get a usable ability that just makes their horse show up. Because it's magic like that.

Tech Tip (from same post):

• It [Ability to ride] is, specifically, any NPC with a playable race. And I guess I should warn that it will check the race/subrace combination (so if you've tooled an "Outsider" which looks like a human, it will respond with a mighty "I have no clue what to do with this." -- or a "Giant" which looks like a scaled-up dwarf. So no giant horses unless we write special cases to handle giant horses, but that's going to be lower priority than making our planetouched PCs work. 'cuz there sure are at least four of 'em.)

Also, similar steps for PCs, but you acquire the horse to use the feat on by acquiring one of the "(( OOC )) Horse Ownership" items, and PCs can't mount horses that aren't theirs. But talking to a horse makes it follow the owner if the owner is in the same area, so one could sort a stable full of horses by just talking to each one and then said horse will walk up to the owner, provided enough distance (it's the same logic as DMFI follow).

Instructions for DMs to award a horse to a PC (from same post):

1. Target PC.

2. Double click on the OOC horse item in the DM creator menu.

3. Right click on PC, select second box from top.

4. Give/take gold value -150gp.