Illustration Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

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Horses are a real-world animal, so you likely have a good idea of what they’re like. They’ve been in the game since the very beginning, and here they have their own entry in the MM and are part of the animal appendix on the MV.

The Lore

They’re horses! Herbivore ungulates widely used as mounts and beasts of burden by any society that managed to develop animal domestication. You can still find wild herds running through the plains of the world and the Feywild, but most horses the PCs are likely to meet in their adventures will be acting as someone’s mount.

Unlike in the real world, horses are far from the only choice of mount for your typical D&D society. There are plenty of other, more fantastic beasts that can do the job just as well. If that job is “war mount”, they can likely do it better. Yeah, warhorses are still a thing here, but the same amount of work that goes into training one can instead get you a dire boar, hippogriff, or some kind of drake. I think this is the first setting I see where a warhorse is the animal you ride into combat when nothing better is available.

There’s a breed of horse that’s a potential exception to this: the celestial charger, which is infused with divine energy and typically used as mounts only by noble warriors and champions of justice. A Paladin PC might get one of these as a reward for service to their kingdom, for example. They’re much more powerful and intelligent than a typical horse, though they’re still animals.

The Numbers

Horses are Large Natural Beasts with the Mount keyword. They have low-light vision, trained Perception and high ground speeds. We get three different stat blocks.

Riding Horse (MM)

These are meant for transportation, not battle, and are as close to a non-combatant as you can be while still having a stat block. They’re here because they’re likely to be the first rides your PCs get in their adventuring careers.

They’re Level 1 Brutes with 36 HP and can run at speed 10. Their usual strategy when in combat is to run away! Their only attack is a basic Kick they’ll only employ when trapped or startled. The only reason these aren’t minions it’s because have your horse one-shotted out from under you is no fun.

Warhorse (MM)

A larger, stronger horse trained to be ridden into combat and fight alongside its rider.

It’s a Level 3 Brute with 58 HP and a ground speed of 8. Its basic attack is still a Kick, but it can also Trample. We saw this one before: it allows the warhorse to move its speed, go through enemy spaces (while drawing opportunity attacks) and make an attack against any enemy whose space it crosses. This attack is a bit stronger than the kick, and knocks prone on a hit.

Warhorses also have a Charger passive trait, which gives their riders a +5 damage bonus on charges.

Horse (MV)

The “generic” horse in the MV animal appendix is actually an updated warhorse despite being a Level 1 Brute with 36 HP. The damage of its attacks has been fixed, so they’re actually stronger than the MM warhorse’s despite the lower level. The Charger trait is still here, though it only gives a +3 damage bonus in this version.

Celestial Charger (MM)

Celestial Chargers are Large Immortal Beasts with the Mount keyword, instead of being Natural like other horses. They’re Level 10 Soldiers with 111 HP, a +5 bonus to saves against fear, and Speed 8.

Celestial chargers kick and trample like warhorses, though their damage could use a serious boost. They have two supernatural passive traits: Zephyr Footing allows them to ignore all difficult terrain and move across any solid or liquid surface; and Celestial Charge gives a +2d6 radiant damage bonus to their rider’s charges.

I think these might be like the magic horses from Krull, or Gandalf’s Shadowfax.

Final Impressions

No sample encounters here, but as I said almost any sapient humanoid could be found riding horses.

I would normally say you gotta have horses in your medieval-ish setting, but we’ve seen so many other awesome mounts already that I think they might actually be somewhat redundant. A setting with no horses but all sorts of other mounts might look a bit like Final Fantasy. A few other possibilities present themselves as well:

  • The setting has no horses and everyone uses other mounts, but then it gets invaded by an interdimensional army and the invaders use horses, which would make them the exotic and alien mount.

  • The setting has no mundane horses, but one or more gods send celestial chargers to their chosen champions as a sign of their favor. They’re seen as this powerful divine beast without an eartlhy equivalent, in another neat role inversion.