How important is Riding?

[Joheshua]

I noticed that my cleric does not have riding as a skill, nor does the bard that I will get 3 levels of. Does this mean I will not be able to ride a horse effectively if I cross class into it?

How important is it to be able to ride a horse?

[Nitro]

Almost entirely inconsequential. The only benefit is being able to get around faster unless you want to focus fully into it and even then you can only use the horse in outdoor areas which makes it useful on about 20% of the server.

[TimeAdept]

Negative importance, as in, I would actively consider it a detriment to add to your character.

[Joheshua]

Good to know, thanks guys

[Regionals]

I think you can put one point in the skill (which will cost 2 skill points cross-classed), acquire the two or three riding skill gear items out there (and/or raise your dexterity) and be able to get the 8 or so you need to ride a horse.

It's more or less a novelty.. Though on Skal with the HUGE tundra areas you have to cross I found being able to ride helpful for my sanity.

[PinataPlethora]

I think you can put one point in the skill (which will cost 2 skill points cross-classed), acquire the two or three riding skill gear items out there (and/or raise your dexterity) and be able to get the 8 or so you need to ride a horse.

You must have 6 base ranks in Ride to use horses. Even if you have a negative DEX modifier, you can still ride.

[Vrass]

Teleportation makes horses, and almost all normal travel obsolete.

[flower]

15 riding is enough to ride even in combat, 20 i never experienced a fall.

IT will however give you spell failure if not mounted combat feat. Not clue if it applies to clerical spells but Saelynn keeps to mention IC she cannot use magic on horse.


It is not detrimental to a character. IT is a cool feature.It makes travelling and grinding (in areas like orcland, gnolls and alike) easier. Horse saved my elf numerous times in past by letting him gallop into safety.

[Echohawk]

There are some builds that can specialize in mounted combat, but it's more of a niche combat style (ie. feats like mounted combat and high ride granting AC and so on)

Upside - looks cool, makes traveling without portals less of a chore, potential to also escape or join combat even

Downside - increases your hit box on the server where you were mounted (you might notice bumping party members/having trouble getting close to people in party), being thrown from a horse has a decent potential with low ride skill (and if done so in a space that doesn't have room for allowing the mount to generate it can potentially delete it unexpectedly), being thrown is a little jarring for roleplay and does a bit of damage, not recommended for extremely low levels. Spell failure for all spells (yes even you divine caster), and multiple skills reduced to unusable levels.

[flower]

I think the biggest downside is the increased hit box. You get easily blocked and i had only one pvp mounted and it kept me from passing by between two hostile people even if the gap was visually bigger than my character on horse.

[The Kriv]

Perk: Riding horses justifies "running" everywhere. Generally if your character were to 'run' everywhere, folk would look at you queer. The more common RP is to have your character walk... however... investing in Ride skill, and mounting a horse and "running" (with the animation of your horse galloping) appears to be more acceptable than your character "running" everywhere.

It's been stated above that "riding" makes you look 'cool' -personally, I think the horse models are clunky and awkward-looking and the horse animation is poor. I mean... NWN is kinda low poly by today's standards anyway, but having done a good bit of organic and hard surface modeling, I cringe when I see the horse animation walk and (gah!) the gallop.

Nobody says having a horse means you have to participate in Mounted Combat. You could invest in horse just for transportation and unless your RP is based around combat from horseback, that's all you would need.

If you want to ride... just invest 1 rank, and go and pick up some spurs to give you a +5 Ride skill, at (FOIG) vendor... and there's your 6 ride skill. And gallop around and if you like it... you may find (for you) it is essential!


personally... I believe that taking any of the "Martial" classes/PrClasses ought to qualify you for basic ride skill:
( Fighter/Paladin/Ranger/BG/WM/CoT/DD/PDK )
Since 'training' in those types of classes would traditionally involve some sort of horse-use.

[Joheshua]

First time I saw a person with a horse all saddled up I wanted to ride one, so I am thinking about maybe getting it.

One question, I am using the Cleric build from the cookie cutter build thread, this one,

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

It says that there will be 27 points remaining, does that means I can basically throw them into anything and it will be inconsequential to my character build? Might put some of those points into riding if so.

Thanks for all the helpful comments.

[triaddraykin]

Couple things to note.

1. Arcane Tower horses have no spell failure.

2. My mage Angela is at a point where lenses everywhere is an easy thing to maintain. But. I was a fan of no-fast-travel Skyrim. I think it adds to the experience to ride around, even just going between settlements. If you're not in a hurry, then why not travel by foot, and if you're traveling by foot, travel in style.

I very much enjoyed the aspect of having her summon ahead of her, and her just leisurely walking behind, noble and untouched. A battle then felt separated from her, and she was someone watching a curiosity. When you're on a horse, you're hardly expected to fight, that's for others to do. So on. It's fun, I've never regretted the investment.

I will say, for Kriv's remark, it's 6 base, character-sheet ranks, before Dex mod is applied. 1 and a +5 boot won't do it. I tried.

[MissEvelyn]

Will a character with only 6 ranks in Ride fall off the horse a lot?

[PinataPlethora]

Will a character with only 6 ranks in Ride fall off the horse a lot?

Thanks to Beamdog's decision to replace the random number generator with a random 1 spammer, even at 6 ranks, you're probably only going to fall off a few times per RL hour, but it's not uncommon to get thrown off immediately after you get on maybe two or three or twenty times in a row.

I've had characters with about 5-10 modified ranks go for RL weeks without a single problem, and I've had a character with 29 ride get constantly thrown off every few minutes.

If you have less than 30, don't ride into combat, just use it for fast travel and impressing the damsels. The system is completely unpredictable, and utterly unreliable.

[Nitro]

That's because the ride system is (supposedly) complicated to an insane degree with modifiers depending on your race, what horse you ride, weather, time of day, location etc. I say supposedly because the guy who made it didn't want to share any concrete numbers beyond the minimum and maximum investments of 6 and 30.

[naturaly]

I’m a gnome with 8 dex and 10 ride. On a normal “horse” or “pack horse”. I’ve only been thrown off in combat, and only then maybe every third or fourth encounter. Never thrown off when not in combat. No nature classes or AE.

[Revelations]

Think of it as an RP tool.

[Hunter548]

My paladin max'd ride and still got thrown off in combat semi-regularly. Make of that as you will.

Until ride gets (re) touched up again, I'd probably ignore it whenever possible. The system's just way too overly complicated and obscured.

[flower]

My paladin max'd ride and still got thrown off in combat semi-regularly. Make of that as you will.

Until ride gets (re) touched up again, I'd probably ignore it whenever possible. The system's just way too overly complicated and obscured.

MY character had 15 ranks and MC feat and never fell off in fight since it. Now i have 10 ranks and no feat and get time to time tossed down.

When he reached 20+ ranks he never fell off horse, and i spent lots of time riding / fighting mounted.

[Nitro]

My paladin max'd ride and still got thrown off in combat semi-regularly. Make of that as you will.

Until ride gets (re) touched up again, I'd probably ignore it whenever possible. The system's just way too overly complicated and obscured.

MY character had 15 ranks and MC feat and never fell off in fight since it. Now i have 10 ranks and no feat and get time to time tossed down.

When he reached 20+ ranks he never fell off horse, and i spent lots of time riding / fighting mounted.

But it'll be hard to compare those two characters since stuff like race, mount and even what you're fighting supposedly adds or detracts from the DC.

[flower]

My elf rode all, pack horses, arcane horses, elven war horses, and those from radiant order too and i saw no difference.