FASA Games, Inc.

It's me again!

3 things.

A) The skill use of Animal training is now a day and not a week. Is this normal? Not only from previous editions, but also from a reality standpoint. Is it possible to train a dog to fetch in one day?

B) Training a mount to become war mount seems pretty fuzzy in the details. From p.127 (Animal Training) and p.395 (Mount Training), we don't get enough details on how a cavalryman should train his mount. It would seem pretty easy to turn a Untrained mount to a Trained mount using only 1 day of animal training. Even worst to turn a Trained mount to War Trained with another day. I wouldn't be able to explain how someone would charge 10x the regular price for a day of training. Especially if the training has an expiration date.

BTW, the mount table (p.440) should have all it's prices without the "war trained" effect. Since all mounts can be war trained, why put some prices x10 and others regular? The confusion grows with the harness price (1/3 of the price).

C) A War Trained mount can revert to Untrained after two months if the training was only rank 1? Seems pretty nasty... and counter-intuitive. Your riding your horse on a battle once week, and then he "mysteriously" forget how to attack or charge... and even how to support you?? Perhaps there should be something more in line of "if the creature is not using an ability learn via animal training, it will forget it within a month of the talent ending"? So that way, used or not, the mount abilities while the talent is in effect works, but at the talent end duration, if not used, the mount will forget. Well... I think it's more intuitive that way.


About Animal Training, here's my suggestion :

Training an animal from Untrained to Trained

#1 Animal must be at least friendly.
#2 Animal trained for ride.
#3 Animal trained to support heavy weight.
#4 Animal trained to run.

Training an animal from Trained to War Trained

#1 Animal must be at least loyal.
#2 Animal trained for Attack.
#3 Animal trained for Charge.
#4 Animal trained to hold still into a melee engagement.


And on a final note, Unmounting (getting off a mount p.395 and 396) should not be a simple action but a move action. Making it a simple action and than declaring he cannot move seems conflicting.

There are a lot of ED effects that are time dependent like that ... would be nice to have a good calendar available as a PDF - maybe one of those fancy editable ones if you didn't want to print it out.

Going back to the subject, the cavalrymen starts with a loyal Trained mount. Since he only gets Animal Training Circle 2, how can you explain that?Perhaps it's part of initiate training, where the master train the beast while showing the ropes of the discipline. Now, what happens if the mount dies before the cavalrymen reach circle 2? I guess he can always get the skill, and a big break... or just buy another one. But this also mean that a cavalrymen doesn't start the game with a War Train mount.

That being said, if you don't have a rule about mount training that is more coercive, you'll end up with a good mine. Since a War Trained Mount cost 10 times the cost of a Trained one, a cavalrymen circle 2 is in business! He just buy a horse, train him for a day and bang, the horse is now a cow! (metaphorically speaking, because the trainer will be a whale pretty fast if he reinvest into 10 new horses.)

So my proposition stated before require a cavalrymen circle 2 to have at least rang 3 in Animal Training to tame a wild horse into a riding one. But he would need rang 6 in Animal Training to War Train the same beast. You would need a pretty skillful name-giver to War Train a beast, which make sense. So this would lead to something like a Novice cavalrymen can Train a beast, but most likely only a Journeymen cavalrymen would have enough experience to War Train a mount. A novice could rush it, but it would hurt his normal progression.

To make it clear, I would say you need a minimum of rank 3 in Animal Training to tame a wild creature (to have it Trained), and you would need a minimum of rank 6 in Animal Training to War Train a riding mount. Don't forget the beast attitude (Animal Bond - going up to loyal). That x10 must be earned!

What say you?