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So, you have the basic Horsemanship skills, which give you a basic proficiency in the riding and care of a particular animal/particular cultural style of horsemanship. These cover animals of roughly Earth intelligence or less - which, to be fair, is fairly dumb; Horses aren't the smartest creatures on the planet by a long road. But what about an animal (ATB quadruped mutant, Rifts Earth cryptid, or similar) of human intelligence and sapience? They'd be able to understand what you want/what is needed more intuitively, and with greater nuance, than a horse is trained to understand by simple kicks to the flanks and tugs on the reins, and might not have/be able to resist a lot of the natural instincts that Earth horse-riders are constantly having to battle against when riding. Would it be fair, then, to give riders of such intelligent mounts a bonus of, say, 10-15% or even 20% to their Horsemanship skill? This is, of course, assuming that the intelligent mount has consented to being ridden. I feel like an intelligent mount like that would be able and willing to make adjustments to keep their rider in the saddle, that a regular horse would either be uninterested or unable to make on the fly. But then I've not actually ridden a horse before, so I can't really judge how much the horse you're riding really cares whether or not you stay on his back! For those with experience, do horses actively want you to stay on their back, or do they just not really care either way?

If you're riding an 'animal' of human intelligence, you're probably doing so with their consent and thus "Horsemanship" probably wouldn't factor into it unless the GM wan't to use that to see if the rider can hold on when the steed maneuvers in combat or while at a full gallop, and thus bonuses may be added based on the partnerships ability to communicate movements based on how long they have been working together.

If the intelligent steed is not a consensual partner in the situation, "Horsemanship" would be used in the riders ability to coerce the steed to move as they want. However, in this situation, any bonus or penalty would be based on how willing the 'intelligent/sapient' steed is in accepting such commands. However, even an intelligent steed would be able to be broken, and thus a bonus may then be applied, but if there's one thing I've learned about what happens to a person after they have been broken, I'd wager that any bonus would be minuscule; and if you ever got caught riding such a steed by someone from the Plains of the Free Cattle... Let's just say I wouldn't want to be that character.

The GM will have to decide how they want to run such situations.

Incidentally, which book are you pulling Horsemanship from? In relation to TMNT/AtB, it really only appears in Transdimensional TMNT and Heroes Unlimited.

Rali wrote:Incidentally, which book are you pulling Horsemanship from? In relation to TMNT/AtB, it really only appears in Transdimensional TMNT and Heroes Unlimited.

Ohh, sorry, I tend to pull bits and pieces from a lot of different books, especially where skills are concerned. I use the version of Horsemanship in Rifts: Ultimate Edition, but I asked in this forum because it seemed like the most likely setting for where you would actually find such human-intelligence creatures, unless I'm missing something. And yes Rali, combat etc would probably be the most likely time to be taking Horsemanship checks while riding a sapient mount.