Would Different Races Ride Different Animals?

[Arzanyos]

So, while I was working on my setting, I came across the snag that I wanted most of the gnomish military to be dragoons, but didn't know what gnomes would use as mounts? This led to mo the question of whether gnomes ride different things because they're too small for horses, or because they're gnomes? And if the latter, what other races have different mount preferences? Right now I have gnomes leaning towards big cats, and Orcs favoring boars.

What do you guys think?

[PoeticDwarf]

So, while I was working on my setting, I came across the snag that I wanted most of the gnomish military to be dragoons, but didn't know what gnomes would use as mounts? This led to mo the question of whether gnomes ride different things because they're too small for horses, or because they're gnomes? And if the latter, what other races have different mount preferences? Right now I have gnomes leaning towards big cats, and Orcs favoring boars.

What do you guys think?

Dire Badgers are typical for gnomes I think. But in your campaign it can be different

[Milo v3]

Kobolds ride dire weasels.

[ThePurple]

Right now I have gnomes leaning towards big cats, and Orcs favoring boars.

What do you guys think?

In 3.X, gnomes prefer dire members of the family mustelidae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae) because they have the racial ability to communicate with them as well as preferring similar environs (gnomes generally live in burrows). As such, it makes a lot of sense to ride them; wouldn't you prefer to ride something that you could straight up speak to and befriend conversationally instead of having to tame and train to listen to commands?

Dwarves generally prefer either mountain goats or boars when they don't use horses (or more esoteric mounts, like griffons). Mountain goats make a lot of sense because you're basically talking about riding the land creature most well adapted to traveling across mountains and other steep terrain, which is where dwarves tend to live. Also, they have beards. Boars are popular because they match the dwarven personality and physicality, since they are ill tempered, violently disposed when angered, stocky compared to similar possible mounts, slower land speed than other mounts, and sturdier than other mounts. As such, it probably comes down to whether you think dwarves would ride something that matches their personality/physicality or the terrain they call home. You could always have mountain dwarves ride goats and hill dwarves ride boars to get the best of both worlds.

I have two favorite variations on the traditional halfling mount.

The first is a relic of 3.X where the standard mount for small creatures was the riding dog/wolf. They make a lot of sense because both of them are highly social and familially oriented creatures that are territorially nomadic; their social structures and migration patterns match exceptionally well, and it wouldn't take a lot of time to domesticate them into usefulness (dire wolves are too dangerous and violent to be domesticated easily by larger races; standard wolves are already the appropriate size for halflings and much less dangerous to boot).

The second is based on Eberron (where Rule of Cool is a major factor) in which halflings ride dinosaurs. That's all that needs to be said on that front. Well, it could be elaborated on more, such as commenting that halflings are the appropriate size to be ride deinonychus (the dinosaurs that are what the Jurassic Park "velociraptors" would actually be), but, seriously, halflings riding dinosaurs: that's enough on its own.

For elves and orcs, it depends heavily upon your own interpretation and implementation of them.

Orcs could easily ride boars, for much the same reason that dwarves ride them. If you look at it from a terrain perspective, wolves make sense a *lot* of sense for tundra and plain orcs. Really, I could see them riding pretty much any carnivorous animal of sufficient size indigenous to their home terrain.

Elves are one of the more difficult ones because, once again, a lot of it is up to interpretation. More savage/aggressive elves would probably ride wolves or bears since they're natural beasts that are physically adequate for the job (and druidic magic makes it easier to domesticate and/or utilize beasts otherwise incapable of domestication). More dignified elves could ride deer since deer share many elven traits, both physical (grace, agility, physical frailty) and via connotations (nobility, naturalism, peacefulness). I could actually see a society of elves using all of those, with the nobility favoring deer and soldiers/working class elves riding wolves and bears.

[VoxRationis]

Elves are one of the more difficult ones because, once again, a lot of it is up to interpretation. More savage/aggressive elves would probably ride wolves or bears since they're natural beasts that are physically adequate for the job (and druidic magic makes it easier to domesticate and/or utilize beasts otherwise incapable of domestication). More dignified elves could ride deer since deer share many elven traits, both physical (grace, agility, physical frailty) and via connotations (nobility, naturalism, peacefulness). I could actually see a society of elves using all of those, with the nobility favoring deer and soldiers/working class elves riding wolves and bears.

Nobility would ride carnivores, not the working class. It's expensive to feed a carnivore, particularly one large enough to ride. Plus, having the ability to have your mount maul and devour the mounts of your lessers helps reinforce a social structure.

[ThePurple]

Nobility would ride carnivores, not the working class. It's expensive to feed a carnivore, particularly one large enough to ride. Plus, having the ability to have your mount maul and devour the mounts of your lessers helps reinforce a social structure.

I see elves as being more interested in connotation and appearance than with the actual mechanics of subjugating lower classes. Nobles riding bears and wolves would be much more antagonistic towards those that they rule over than nobles riding stags. So it's probably closer to soldiers riding bears/wolves and non-combatants riding deer.

Also, you underestimate the danger that stags represent. There's a reason that wolves hunt in packs even when taking down deer. Stags are dangerous, yo.

[LudicSavant]

Nobility would ride carnivores, not the working class. It's expensive to feed a carnivore, particularly one large enough to ride. Plus, having the ability to have your mount maul and devour the mounts of your lessers helps reinforce a social structure.

Yes. Though, perhaps it is the savage who is affluent? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society)

[jqavins]

To me, any matching of the animals' personalities to the riders' seems irrelevant at best. It's matching the animals' personalities to the job that matters. Boars are nasty ill-tempered brutes, and even another nasty ill-tempered brute like a orc would be a damn fool to sit on one. For me, the choice of mount species should be a matter of the climate, terrain, and size of the rider, along with traits that make the animal a good choice for domestication. Wolves might work well in some situations; domesticated wolves are called "dogs" and come in a convenient range of sizes.

Riding dogs can give options from pixies on little toy breeds to dwarves on mastiffs and can work in a wide variety of climates as long as the terrain isn't too rocky. But they are more expensive to feed (per ton of animal) than herbivores.
Deer are rarely domesticated in the real world (except the reindeer) but the whole cervide family might be fair game for fantasy mounts, from smaller deer to moose. Reindeer would be a reasonable size for halflings and gnomes, and an elf lord riding a moose would be pretty impressive.
Goats have been adapted in the real world to a wide range of climates, and riding goats make a lot of sense to me, especially in rocky terrain. And one could easily have specially bred extra-large riding goats in a fantasy setting.
Horses, naturally, from ponies on up to the really big breeds. Also donkeys and mules (and hinnies.)
For the larger riders - ogres, giants, and the like - you could go with elephants.


In 3.X, gnomes prefer dire members of the family mustelidae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae) because they have the racial ability to communicate with them as well as preferring similar environs (gnomes generally live in burrows). As such, it makes a lot of sense to ride them; wouldn't you prefer to ride something that you could straight up speak to and befriend conversationally instead of having to tame and train to listen to commands?
Frankly, no. I'd rather have a mount that is tempermentally inclined to do what I tell it, even if telling it takes a lot of work, than a surrly solitary hunter who understands me easily. You understand my commands, but I wouldn't want to try to make you my mount.:smallsmile: Communication is just not high on the list of important qualities.

[ThePurple]

Boars are nasty ill-tempered brutes, and even another nasty ill-tempered brute like a orc would be a damn fool to sit on one.

Being a nasty ill-tempered brute is pretty much the defining personality trait of a warhorse and, along with size, was one of the primary traits looked for when selecting one. They were known to bite (with the intention of drawing blood and/or literally taking a piece out of you), "punch", and kick with extremely little provocation because the rider of the warhorse was looking for their mount to be as much of a weapon as anything else they were wielding.

Orcs, being the angry, violent, and brutish culture of choice, would probably view boars as the perfect mount even if they were difficult to tame (and would probably view it as something of a right of passage or strength in going out and dragging a wild boar back to be trained as your personal mount).

Also, even if you don't think that a wild boar could be trained to accept a rider, a major element of domestication is in changing the personality traits of the domesticated beast to a more useful disposition. Pigs and boars are actually the same species. What we think of as pigs are just boars that have had pretty much all of the ill-temper and brutish traits (like their tusks) bred out of them (in much the same way that domesticated dogs are wolves with detrimental traits bred out and useful traits bred in). A culture that was never exposed to horses but was exposed to wild boars of sufficient size to actually ride would have good reason to domesticate them (humans have this weird habit of domesticating pretty much anything that's even remotely capable of being domesticated in their environment), especially if they were looking for a war steed of some kind.

Also, pigs and boars are the most intelligent fully domesticated animals that humans have (elephants are smarter, but you'd be hard pressed to actually find any trainer that considers elephants to be a truly domesticated species) which means that, once tame, they can learn tricks much faster and more complex than similar creatures, like horses or dogs.


Frankly, no. I'd rather have a mount that is tempermentally inclined to do what I tell it, even if telling it takes a lot of work, than a surrly solitary hunter who understands me easily. You understand my commands, but I wouldn't want to try to make you my mount.:smallsmile: Communication is just not high on the list of important qualities.

You're once again ignoring the socialization element inherent in domestication. If you can straight up talk to an animal, it's a lot easier to socialize it and get it to do what you tell/ask it to do than one that you have to create a common language (using hand signals and a limited vocabulary of command words) in order to communicate. Also, you can generate trust, alleviate fear, and understand behaviors and intentions a lot easier as well (which is one of the major blocks towards domestication).

Also, not all mustelidae are surly solitary hunters. Ferrets have been domesticated for a long period of time and are very affectionate and personable pets (if a bit malodorous) can even be trained for all kinds of useful purposes (many of which require said ferret to exhibit a bit of independent thought).

Combine the mustelid penchant for navigation through small, underground spaces, the gnomish ability to naturally communicate with them, and the known ferret sociability, and it makes a lot of sense for gnomes to domesticate them. It would probably be *way* easier for gnomes to have domesticated a number of different species of mustelid in their history than it would be for humans to domesticate wolves. I could see gnomes riding badgers and wolverines as humans use horses and oxen (mounts and agricultural purposes) and ferrets and weasels as humans use dogs (companionship and general utility).

I find it quite strange that you consider deer and similar cervids to make sense as domesticated animals when, personality wise, they are most definitely *not* of a particularly appropriate personality. Moose are *not* social and are extremely dangerous to approach. In the wild, *nothing* messes around with a bull moose because a bull moose will **** you up (a bull moose is more likely to kill a bear than a bear is to kill a bull moose); a cow moose is even worse when it has a calf. Deer are, by their very nature, extremely skittish and not biologically robust. If it makes sense that you can tame deer and breed the skittishness out of them and build them up to be more robust, why does it make no sense to be able to tame mustelids (especially when you can actually talk to them) or pigs/boars (which, once again, *extremely* domesticated in the real world and have been for a long period of time)? Hell, the only cervid that could be *seen* as domesticated (once again, up to interpretation, much like elephants and cats) is theorized to only have been domesticated as early as 3000 years ago (and there isn't any real archeological evidence of reindeer domestication to support that to any major extent either).

There's a lot of dissonance in what you say makes sense as a domesticated animal in a fantasy setting. The very reasons that you exclude some (pigs/boars) are completely untrue in the real world and, on top of that absurdity, you accept the potential for domestication of some (cervids) and deny that same potential in others (mustelids) using the same reasoning for both.

[Knaight]

Being a nasty ill-tempered brute is pretty much the defining personality trait of a warhorse and, along with size, was one of the primary traits looked for when selecting one. They were known to bite (with the intention of drawing blood and/or literally taking a piece out of you), "punch", and kick with extremely little provocation because the rider of the warhorse was looking for their mount to be as much of a weapon as anything else they were wielding.

Compared to other horses, sure. Compared to something like a boar (or a zebra) not so much. They also had other traits that made them desirable which were absent in other species.

From a realistic perspective, there's a limited number of species who are available for domestication, a limited number of species available for taming, and a limited number between those two who are viable as mounts. If fantasy creatures are getting brought in then an arbitrary number of them can be deemed domesticatable, tamable, and mountable. In addition, things like magic, differences between fantasy and real world version of real world animals, and similar factors can move animals that aren't suitable as mounts into the suitable as mounts territory. There's also the matter of pulling from folklore.

For instance, mythical beings that ride elk and caribou have shown up in mythology for a good long while. Neither elk or caribou are good candidates for mounts at all, and while caribou generally act like they're not particularly threatened by anything else and aren't necessarily going to either flee or get violent when people try to get close to them, elk are fond of doing both. Still, there is mythological backing, the mental image is cool, so they fit quite well in certain types of fantasy.

[jqavins]

Being a nasty ill-tempered brute is pretty much the defining personality trait of a warhorse and, along with size, was one of the primary traits looked for when selecting one. They were known to bite (with the intention of drawing blood and/or literally taking a piece out of you), "punch", and kick with extremely little provocation because the rider of the warhorse was looking for their mount to be as much of a weapon as anything else they were wielding.
Which was bred and trained back in to some lines after the aggression was bred out of the species. You had to have a species that was passivated first so there was something to work with.


Also, even if you don't think that a wild boar could be trained to accept a rider, a major element of domestication is in changing the personality traits of the domesticated beast to a more useful disposition. Pigs and boars are actually the same species. What we think of as pigs are just boars that have had pretty much all of the ill-temper and brutish traits (like their tusks) bred out of them
Ill-tempered and brutish traits bred out? Hardly! After millennia of domesticated use for food and hides, pigs are still responsible for more farm injuries than any other animal, and they've never been, to my knowledge, been put to any use other than slaughter, which they surely would have been had they been suitable.


You're once again ignoring the socialization element inherent in domestication. If you can straight up talk to an animal, it's a lot easier to socialize it and get it to do what you tell/ask it to do than one that you have to create a common language (using hand signals and a limited vocabulary of command words) in order to communicate. Also, you can generate trust, alleviate fear, and understand behaviors and intentions a lot easier as well (which is one of the major blocks towards domestication).

Also, not all mustelidae are surly solitary hunters. Ferrets have been domesticated for a long period of time and are very affectionate and personable pets (if a bit malodorous) can even be trained for all kinds of useful purposes (many of which require said ferret to exhibit a bit of independent thought).
I've known a couple of ferrrets, and I know that people keep de-scented skunks as pets as well. (Skunks are not in the mustelid family per se, but are close cousins in the musteloid superfamily.) It was badgers that were mentioned mentioned specifically earlier. Badgers and most of the subfamily mustilinae (ferrets being the exception) are well known as just plain nasty. (Yes I just looked up the taxonomy, as this stuff has changed three or four times since my high school biology. Damn scientists, always learning new stuff:smallwink:.)


Combine the mustelid penchant for navigation through small, underground spaces, the gnomish ability to naturally communicate with them, and the known ferret sociability, and it makes a lot of sense for gnomes to domesticate them. It would probably be *way* easier for gnomes to have domesticated a number of different species of mustelid in their history than it would be for humans to domesticate wolves. I could see gnomes riding badgers and wolverines as humans use horses and oxen (mounts and agricultural purposes) and ferrets and weasels as humans use dogs (companionship and general utility).
Perhaps. I don't see talking to it as doing a lot of good if all it ever says back is "go screw yourself," but I guess I'm not getting into the right spirit of the thing.


I find it quite strange that you consider deer and similar cervids to make sense as domesticated animals when, personality wise, they are most definitely *not* of a particularly appropriate personality. Moose are *not* social and are extremely dangerous to approach. In the wild, *nothing* messes around with a bull moose because a bull moose will **** you up (a bull moose is more likely to kill a bear than a bear is to kill a bull moose); a cow moose is even worse when it has a calf. Deer are, by their very nature, extremely skittish and not biologically robust.
All true, but...

If it makes sense that you can tame deer and breed the skittishness out of them and build them up to be more robust, why does it make no sense to be able to tame mustelids (especially when you can actually talk to them) or pigs/boars (which, once again, *extremely* domesticated in the real world and have been for a long period of time)? Hell, the only cervid that could be *seen* as domesticated (once again, up to interpretation, much like elephants and cats) is theorized to only have been domesticated as early as 3000 years ago (and there isn't any real archeological evidence of reindeer domestication to support that to any major extent either).
Exactly because there is one cervide that has been domesticated for such use. Not a single mustelid (or musteloid) has been domesticated (tamed individuals yes, but not domesticarted species) and porcines have been domesticated only for food and skins and remain nasty. Is it a mistake to generalize that other cervides are, therefore, closer to viable and better fantasy fodder? Alright, maybe so. I could buy the mustelids/musteloids. But I'm still not buying the pigs, despite their remarkable intelligence.

Goats would be my go to for an exotic mount for the smaller humanoid fantasy races.

[shawnhcorey]

Which was bred and trained back in to some lines after the aggression was bred out of the species. You had to have a species that was passivated first so there was something to work with.

Horses, wolves (dogs), elephants, and humans are the only animals that can be reliably used in war because they will follow their leader even to their own deaths. Horses don't have their aggressiveness bred out so much as they-will-follow-their-leader-no-matter-what bred in a long time ago.

[Xuc Xac]

Whether or not an animal has the personality to want to carry a rider is irrelevant. Most animals suggested as mounts aren't physically capable of carrying a rider. You could use a team of dogs to pull a load (like a sled or a chariot), but you can't sit on them no matter how big they are. Their backs don't have the skeletal structure to bear a load. Felines are even worse. That slinky back that makes them really flexible and nimble also makes them useless for carrying any weight. If you had a really big cat, like a tiger, and tried to sit on it, its belly would just drag on the ground.

Other than personality, a mount needs to have a skeleton that can support weight where the rider sits. Simply being big enough for a rider to sit on isn't enough.

[ThePurple]

Ill-tempered and brutish traits bred out? Hardly! After millennia of domesticated use for food and hides, pigs are still responsible for more farm injuries than any other animal, and they've never been, to my knowledge, been put to any use other than slaughter, which they surely would have been had they been suitable.

Pigs, because of their intelligence, actually make excellent service and assistance animals (as well as emotional support pets and medical detection pets, since they have a better sense of smell than dogs). One of the biggest obstacles with them isn't their temperament but rather that pretty much all cultures with pigs view them as food animals rather than companion or working animals (not to mention having been bred exclusively as food beasts throughout the entirety of their domestication with little regard towards anything else). There are a surprising number of cases where pigs are trained as service animals only to be denied a license on the grounds that they are categorized legally as "farm animals" and not "pets" which excludes them from any service certification, regardless of how effectively they can perform those duties.

Also, I looked for statistics regarding injuries to agricultural workers by animals and the only sources that I could find (like this (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/are-animals-occupational-hazards.pdf) which states that swine caused no fatal injuries from 92-97 compared to over 100 each for horses and cows, and 3% of total non-fatal injuries compared to 7% each for cows and horses) lead me to believe that swine are actually *less* likely to injure you than most other common American farm animals (that article actually outright states "Swine make up one-third of farm mammals, but account for few fatalities.").

I can understand that people might think that pigs are more dangerous because the idea of a pig causing harm to a human definitely sticks out in the mind (when you hear about someone getting injured by a bull, you don't see it as particularly special since you expect people to be injured by bulls; when you hear about someone being injured by a pig, you remember it better because it defies your expectations), not to mention that pigs aren't really aesthetically pleasing in most people's mind (and there is an absolutely *huge* bias towards the aesthetically pleasing where opinions and beliefs are concerned), but I'm pretty sure it's not true.

[ThePurple]

Whether or not an animal has the personality to want to carry a rider is irrelevant. Most animals suggested as mounts aren't physically capable of carrying a rider. You could use a team of dogs to pull a load (like a sled or a chariot), but you can't sit on them no matter how big they are.

I totally believe you where cats are concerned, but I'm not sure I agree with you on dogs. You can find loads of doggy backpacks which indicate that most dogs are perfectly capable of carrying up to 25-33% of their body weight square on their back and shoulders for extended periods of time (and you can find plenty of videos, pictures, and anecdotal evidence of children riding dogs). To put this in perspective, the max suggested load for a horse is roughly 25-30% of their total body weight (and rider + riding gear is generally around 10%).

The bigger problem, from what I've been able to find, is that dogs don't *like* carrying weight on their back, not that they are *incapable* of it (I read multiple sources that said that their dogs would behave as if empty packs were weighing them down intolerably), and getting an animal to like something that they are capable of doing is more about exposure and training than it is about their skeletal structure (re: it's personality, not biology).

Furthermore, I don't think anyone is suggesting oversized riding dogs for humans or other full sized/weighted fantasy races. It's been primarily suggest for halflings, who are basically sized and weighted as human children, which large dogs can carry just fine.

[GorinichSerpant]

Exactly because there is one cervide that has been domesticated for such use. Not a single mustelid (or musteloid) has been domesticated (tamed individuals yes, but not domesticarted species) and porcines have been domesticated only for food and skins and remain nasty. Is it a mistake to generalize that other cervides are, therefore, closer to viable and better fantasy fodder? Alright, maybe so. I could buy the mustelids/musteloids. But I'm still not buying the pigs, despite their remarkable intelligence.


Except ferrets are domesticated mustelidae. Either that or wikipedia and my ferret caretaking book lied to me.

[Xuc Xac]

Furthermore, I don't think anyone is suggesting oversized riding dogs for humans or other full sized/weighted fantasy races. It's been primarily suggest for halflings, who are basically sized and weighted as human children, which large dogs can carry just fine.

You know what else carries human children just fine? Horses. Ask any 10 year old girl.

Small races don't need small mounts. If humans can ride elephants (or dragons, or Shai-hulud), halflings can ride horses.

[Venardhi]

Races would ride whatever is available, readily domesticated and reasonably easy to care for. The same way they do in the real world. It isn't like everyone rides Horses around the world, though they may be the most common riding animals in our history.

Asses
Camels
Elephants
Horses
Llamas
Oxen
Reindeer
Water Buffalo
Yaks
etc.

Not all of those are necessarily GOOD riding animals mind you, but a few hundred years of selective breeding could do wonders. Likewise, with enough encouragement and familiarity you can get all sorts of other animals to let you ride them for a little while:

Antelope (Certain big species)
Bears
Bison
Dolphins
Giraffes
Hippos
Ostriches
Pigs
Tortises (Giant)
Zebra
etc.

One can assume that any creature that is reasonably physiologically capable of carrying a rider and willing to accept basic instruction (pack or herd animal) could be domesticated and selectively bred to be a mount. Even bred to be bigger and stronger and capable of being a better mount, like we did with horses.

I gave the "Riverfolk" (halflings who travel the rivers of my setting in houseboats) in my campaign Capibaras, and the Humans of one kingdom ride creatures similar to an Eland or Kudu.

[ThePurple]

You know what else carries human children just fine? Horses. Ask any 10 year old girl.

Small races don't need small mounts. If humans can ride elephants (or dragons, or Shai-hulud), halflings can ride horses.

Small race would actually prefer smaller mounts simply out of comfort, even if they're capable of riding larger ones.

If you placed a 10 year old girl on a full sized destrier, I can assure you that she would not find it to be an enjoyable experience. For a 10 year old girl to actually have a reasonably enjoyable riding experience, she would need to be on a pony purely because of size considerations (I'm not even sure a 10 y/o girl could actually ride a destrier because I'm pretty sure their legs wouldn't even reach the stirrups).

Also, humans ride elephants, but elephants are *far* from being a domesticated species (nor do they fill the same role as "mount" that horses fill; horses are cars and tractors; elephants are tanks and bulldozers). One of the reasons that comes to my mind is the raw physicality of an elephant compared to a human. A human can actually manage to wrestle a horse or at least establish some level of physical control over it, as can humans over any fully domesticated animal that I can think of (yes, a human can actually wrestle down a steer; I've seen it; it's pretty badass). A human is basically incapable of doing anything close that to an elephant because we're just not big enough (a fully grown elephant can run straight through a car; a single human isn't even gonna be worth notice). Elephants that act as service animals do so because they are trained from a *very* early age and, even then, they're still very likely to go "stompy-smashy-angry" and realize that humans can't really do anything to stop them without also killing them (especially since male elephants in rutting season are violently aggressive).

Horses and halflings share a pretty similar size difference between humans and elephants so the difference in physicality (at least from a realistic perspective though probably not a mechanical perspective in a game) is going to be a major factor. Little girls can ride horses because there are bigger humans to keep them in line and did all of the hard work of rendering them into rideable beasts ages ago. Unless your argument is that a single culture domesticated horses before any other culture domesticated mounts more physically suited to them and then exported them into absolute ubiquity through the entire campaign world, halfings aren't going to be riding ponies and horses as their racial mount. They going to go with something smaller, that actually makes sense for their frames.

And, with that in mind, wolves are physically appropriate size and are significantly easier to domesticate. It makes a lot more sense for halflings to have domesticated wolves and trained and bred them to act as mounts than it does for them to have domesticated horses (or pretty much any other animal, honestly).

Furthermore, the entire question was whether different races would ride different animals. If you were to ask the question of "which single mount would most races end up riding", the answer is probably going to be "horse" because horses are ubiquitous and the default mount for pretty much all human cultures that *have* domesticated mounts. The horse is pretty much the perfect mount for any medium sized creature and, with proper breeding, can be small enough to accommodate small races as well.

We're not asking for a single species to cover as many different races as possible, however. We're asking about optimal species would make sense for individual races. Just because horses are pretty much perfect for humans does not mean that they're perfect for *absolutely everyone else*. Just like horses do not make much, if any, sense for dwarves (even though a dwarf would be capable of riding a horse), horses do not make a lot of sense for halflings. If you *do* think that, you're probably also the kind of person who thinks that halfling and gnome homes and settlements would be large enough to easily accommodate medium sized creatures (here's a hint: they wouldn't because it makes no sense; halfling houses would be built to the same scale as a human child's play house because it's a waste of space and resources, in addition to being more difficult, to build a house that's scaled to be twice as tall as necessary). The only reason most games/settings do that is for playability: what's the point of having a village with an inn that's too small for at least half of the party to enter? Small creatures can more easily fit into the world of a larger creature, but that does not mean that, if they had the choice, that they would use things sized for larger creatures if they had the option of using more appropriately sized ones.

[LudicSavant]

(yes, a human can actually wrestle down a steer; I've seen it; it's pretty badass) Yes, I've seen this as well.


Also, humans ride elephants, but elephants are *far* from being a domesticated species

Elephants have been tamed and bred by humans in a variety of cultures throughout history for industry, war, or zoos and circuses. This goes back at least to the Indus civilization in 2000 BC.

Here's an example of one modern culture which uses elephants for industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm1IVbB8aOY

It's true that selective breeding (as opposed to taming) of elephants is relatively rare, particularly nowadays (when they are not quite as much of an advantage for industry or war), but the emphasis on "far" seems odd.


One of the reasons that comes to my mind is the raw physicality of an elephant compared to a human.

The reason that selective breeding of elephants is rare is the same reason that selective breeding of turtles is rare: Long reproductive cycles and lifespans make it impractical.

Breeders like to breed things that breed significantly faster than humans and grow up significantly faster than humans.


a single human isn't even gonna be worth notice)

A human teenager with a few rocks can do more than just get noticed; he can drive off a herd of 50 grumpy, thirsty elephants from an oasis they're using because he wants to water his cattle there.

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/human-planet/videos/elephant-face-off/

[Yora]

Gnomes are not too small for horses. They just have to ride them differently.

Otherwise it would be a real coincidence that humans are the right size for horses, camels, elephants, and ostriches.

[ThePurple]

It's true that selective breeding (as opposed to taming) of elephants is relatively rare, particularly nowadays (when they are not quite as much of an advantage for industry or war), but the emphasis on "far" seems odd.

There's a pretty big distinction between "tame" and "domesticated" that often gets ignored because the two terms are generally conflated by most people. Check out Wikipedia's list of domesticated animals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals) and you'll notice that Asian/Indian elephants are considered semi-domesticated (there are some breeding programs for elephants, but a majority of captured elephants are wild caught) and African elephants are completely absent (and, if you didn't know, African elephants are about 33% larger and significantly more dangerous because both genders have tusks, unlike Indians, which are also significantly larger).

The easiest way to delineate between "taming" and "domesticating" is that taming happens on a small scale (individuals or single family groups) while domestication happens on a very large scale (entire species of major breeding populations). In addition, taming represents a deviation from the natural state of the animal (and oftentimes results in a reversion to the natural state at some point during its life) whereas domestication represents an explicit change in the natural state of the animal compared to its wild counterpart (and, even when you have a feral animal, you'll oftentimes see a reversion to a tame state at some point in its life).


The reason that selective breeding of elephants is rare is the same reason that selective breeding of turtles is rare: Long reproductive cycles and lifespans make it impractical.

Except that selective breeding of turtles doesn't really make much sense because turtles aren't really useful to humans. What is practical purpose is there for owning a turtle?

There are significant advantages to owning an elephant, which have been gone over numerous times, and, even with the long reproductive cycle, the fact that elephants provide such tremendous advantages over other shorter lived and faster breeding species means that there is still a significant impetus to attempt to domesticate them *which is why humans have been trying and failing to domesticate them for millennia*.

Reproductive cycle is a factor (and you'll notice I never said that the difference in physicality is the determining factor; I specific said "one of"), but it is far from the determining factor. Utility, genetic variability, compliance, resource requirement, risk to person and community, and a host of other factors are also major considerations.

A good example for this would be the reason why Indian elephants are semi-domesticated while African elephants are completely undomesticated. Indian elephants are significantly smaller and, while still extremely dangerous, are not *as* dangerous as African elephants are. Even though African elephants would have greater returns (since they're stronger) for a similar investment and time til payoff (Indians have ~20 month gestation period and Africans have ~22 month gestation period; both achieve puberty in roughly a decade), it would make a lot more sense for Africans to have been domesticated rather than Indians (from an investment:payout perspective, ignoring risk). Africans are significantly higher risk, however, which could easily explain the more successful attempts to tame and domesticate Indians.

I do admit that it's not the *only* explanation, because they have significantly different geography and numerous other extraneous and confounding variables, but there is a significant degree of logic to the argument.


A human teenager with a few rocks can do more than just get noticed; he can drive off a herd of 50 grumpy, thirsty elephants from an oasis they're using because he wants to water his cattle there.

And if any *one* of those elephants actually cared enough to pick a fight, that teenaged human would be completely and utterly *screwed*.

It's like when a cat tries to scratch or bite a human. A cat can't cause any substantial degree of injury to a human that would be threatening to its life but most humans will just leave an angry cat alone because it's not worth the effort to confront the cat. If the human *did* want to make a big deal about it, any cat could easily be killed by a human if we actually felt compelled to do so because cats are tiny and frail compared to us.

Not getting involved is not the same as an admission of inferiority. Oftentimes, one side in a conflict that could defeat the other in a resounding victory with negligible risk won't bother getting into a fight because it's just not worth the time and effort required.

Those elephants had little to gain (since they'd already watered themselves) by running over that teenager. As such, there wasn't any particularly compelling reason for them to fight. If one of those elephants was having a bad day or actually had a reason to feel threatened rather than just annoyed, however, you can be damned sure that the provocation would have been met by overwhelming force resulting in a well pulped and gored human (and there are plenty of examples of humans attempting to scare elephants with physical force and getting killed or grievously injured for their trouble; the only really effective ways to ward off elephants involve playing on their natural survival instincts or causing significant annoyance whose *only* solution is gtfo).

[ThePurple]

Gnomes are not too small for horses. They just have to ride them differently.

Once again, "can" is not the same as "would prefer to". This seems to be a major distinction you repeatedly miss.

Gnomes *can* ride horses, but horses are far from the optimal animal for them to ride.

Riding an elephant requires a significant larger amount of effort and investment in resources than riding a smaller animal, like a horse, if only because you need a lot of help to get on top of an elephant while a normal sized human can mount a horse on their own.

[Xuc Xac]

In real world human history, chariots were really popular in the ancient world because horses weren't good mounts in the beginning either. They were too small to carry a fully armed adult into battle, but they could pull a little cart. We had horses fairly early in history, but riding horses were bred into existence over several centuries.

In a fantasy world, it's likely that halflings and gnomes and other small races would have invented the saddle because they would have been able to ride horses nearly a thousand years before horses were big enough for humans to ride. Humans might actually breed late medieval era warhorses much earlier as part of an arms race to catch up to the incredible halfling cavalry.

[Composer99]

OP, the rest of the thread notwithstanding, there are IMO a few questions you'll want to ask yourself in order to decide what are typical or common mount animals for the races in your setting:

(1) Do you (or will your players) care if the real-world animals are realistic choices for mounts or not? If so, then tigers and zebras, say, are out. If not, then your savannah elves can ride zebras while your Arctic gnomes ride polar bears.

(2) Will fantasy beasts be available as mounts? E.g. griffons, nightmares, and so on. Dinosaurs count as fantasy beasts on account of being extinct. If you're aiming for realism, then very few fantastic beasts will make suitable mounts, whether for reasons of personality or physiology. (I mean, griffon mounts are really cool, but it's doubtful a griffon could realistically bear the weight of a rider and stay airborne.) If you aren't, you have a plethora of choices. (Just look at how the available mounts have multiplied in, say, World of Warcraft​.)

(3) To what extent will magic (of druids, rangers, and the like) be used to overcome obstacles to taming/domesticating animals enough to use them as mounts?

The bottom line is that it's your setting, so if you want gnomes to ride dragons (keeping dragons' presumed intelligence in mind), then by golly, they'll ride dragons.

[LudicSavant]

There's a pretty big distinction between "tame" and "domesticated" that often gets ignored because the two terms are generally conflated by most people. Check out Wikipedia's list of domesticated animals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals) and you'll notice that Asian/Indian elephants are considered semi-domesticated I already know all of this. The part that's strange is that when they're considered "semi-domesticated" even today and that taming them is just plain cheaper due to factors like long reproductive cycles, you said that they are *far* (with lots of emphasis) from being domesticated and that the reason that jumps to mind is because of raw physical power (which would affect taming just as much as selective breeding!).

While it's true that selective breeding of elephants is rare and that the power of an elephant is an issue that must be dealt with by tamers and breeders, my concern is that such a description would be misleading to someone unfamiliar with the subject matter.

Most aren't going to hear "*far* from domesticated, because of reasons like their raw physicality" as "semi-domesticated, regularly included on domesticated species lists, tamed and utilized by humans for thousands of years but impractical for selective breeding because of factors like lifespan, reproductive cycle, and maintenance."


Reproductive cycle is a factor (and you'll notice I never said that the difference in physicality is the determining factor; I specific said "one of"), but it is far from the determining factor.
Again with the puzzling emphasis on "far from."

Your own source, Wikipedia, names reproductive cycle as a determining factor: "Selective breeding of elephants is impractical due to their long reproductive cycle, so there are no domestic breeds."


It's like when a cat tries to scratch or bite a human. A cat can't cause any substantial degree of injury to a human that would be threatening to its life but most humans will just leave an angry cat alone because it's not worth the effort to confront the cat. If the human *did* want to make a big deal about it, any cat could easily be killed by a human if we actually felt compelled to do so because cats are tiny and frail compared to us.

Humans can in fact cause substantial injury to an elephant. In fact, humans kill elephants an awful lot more than elephants kill humans.

One shouldn't underestimate just how threatening humans are to animals. This is why, for instance, an old man and two of his buddies can walk straight into the middle of a pride of lions, steal their fresh kill, and walk away with it while the lions look on angrily. On a regular basis, even.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNeNTMmltyc

One should also not underestimate how dangerous a lone human can be to a large, powerful animal. A guy in a little canoe can kill a whale. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/human-planet/videos/capturing-a-narwhal/

Here's some guys jumping at a sperm whale with pointy sticks. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/human-planet/videos/hunting-a-sperm-whale/

The thing is, a human prepared for the job beats a large, powerful animal pretty much every time.

And the other thing is, taming vs selective breeding isn't an issue of how hard something is to overpower. You've gotta overpower something for taming too.

[Gnorman]

Have them ride literally anything you want them to. Who cares about their temperament? Wizards exist. Druids and rangers exist. The natural order is a thing to be bent over magic's knee and liberally spanked.

[jqavins]

OP, the rest of the thread notwithstanding, there are IMO a few questions you'll want to ask yourself in order to decide what are typical or common mount animals for the races in your setting:
If the original question had been "Can they..." or "Should I..." then of course the answer would be "It's your world, so they can and you should if that's what you want." But the question was "Would they..." which is for more open ended.

[Composer99]

If the original question had been "Can they..." or "Should I..." then of course the answer would be "It's your world, so they can and you should if that's what you want." But the question was "Would they..." which is for more open ended.

Since the context of "would they...?" remains Arzanyos' setting, there is no distinction to speak of between "can" and "would".

Would gnomes ride dire badgers, or dragons, or big cats, in Arzanyos' setting? It depends on Arzanyos' answers to the questions I posed, or some variants thereof.

[Dusk Raven]

It's always kind of been a sticking point when I see fantasy worlds with mounts that would be blatantly impractical in the real world, like deer, wolves, and boars. A question one should ask is - why do humans not use them as mounts? What is it about the fantastic race that they can ride them and humans can't? Or does the fantastic race not have a choice?

Of course, since prolonged taming and breeding can change animals quite a bit, I'd like to see fantastic domestic animals that are descended from wild animals and are thus significantly different. What might a domestic cervid be like, for instance?


Humans can in fact cause substantial injury to an elephant. In fact, humans kill elephants an awful lot more than elephants kill humans.

You realize we have high-caliber guns now, right? I'm not sure at what point elephant-hunting became practical, but I'm relatively certain it's with the aid of technology past the medieval stage. Even quite a few modern weapons can't kill an elephant outright.


One shouldn't underestimate just how threatening humans are to animals. This is why, for instance, an old man and two of his buddies can walk straight into the middle of a pride of lions, steal their fresh kill, and walk away with it while the lions look on angrily. On a regular basis, even.

The cause is psychological, not physical. Again, apathetic human and angry housecat. Most animals avoid fights simply because getting injured can be crippling if not fatal, and it doesn't pay to get into a fight over every kill. Humans, of course, are smart enough to realize this, and know that if they show no fear the animals will back off. Over time they can build a reputation amongst animals as being incredibly dangerous. This is essentially the strategy I was taught when learning about bears before going backpacking - a lot of confrontations between animals just involve posturing and intimidation, at least to start, and if a bear charges you and you don't back down, it'll think that you think you can take it on. You can't, of course, but that's not a risk it's going to take. Unless it's a mother bear, in which case, may the Great Spirit have mercy on you body and soul.

The difference isn't physical. It's psychological, as I understand it. Humans can surpass animals a lot of the time in determination - but you take that away, and the human's probably in trouble. Find some statistics or stories of humans against beasts where the non-human was at the end of their rope and truly willing to go full-force, then I'll believe that humans might be able to handle themselves in a fight, weapons notwithstanding

[LudicSavant]

You realize we have high-caliber guns now, right? I'm not sure at what point elephant-hunting became practical, but I'm relatively certain it's with the aid of technology past the medieval stage. Even quite a few modern weapons can't kill an elephant outright.

Perhaps look it up before assuming. We've been slaughtering elephants since prehistory. Oh, and there were guns in medieval times too, though you definitely don't need those to beat an elephant. A spear will do for an elephant just as well as it does for whales.

[JoeJ]

You realize we have high-caliber guns now, right? I'm not sure at what point elephant-hunting became practical, but I'm relatively certain it's with the aid of technology past the medieval stage. Even quite a few modern weapons can't kill an elephant outright.

In North America, Paleo-Indians were killing mammoths and mastodons with spears ca. 13,000 years ago.

[Dusk Raven]

In North America, Paleo-Indians were killing mammoths and mastodons with spears ca. 13,000 years ago.

True. But I will bring up that mammoths are different from elephants. I believe they have rather thinner hides than elephants, though. I do not claim that killing elephants with primitive weapons is impossible, I merely think it would take quite a coordinated effort, and would not have been a pretty or quick end for the elephant.

[ThePurple]

Perhaps look it up before assuming. We've been slaughtering elephants since prehistory.

Slaughtering as "butchering", which is what the evidence points to for human consumption of elephants and mammoths, is far from slaughtering as "killing boatloads", of which there is really only conjecture. Humans *can* kill elephants, but when they did so, it was a large collected effort on an isolated animal that took a long period of time and specialized tactics. Get rid of any one of those elements, and the hunt is pretty much ****ed.


Oh, and there were guns in medieval times too, though you definitely don't need those to beat an elephant.

The arquebus only existed for the extreme *end* of medieval times (15th century; medieval is generally considered to be 5th to 15th; after the Fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance) and is more appropriately labeled as a Renaissance weapon (keep in mind, Columbus went to the Americas in the 15th century and is generally considered a Renaissance, not a medieval, character) than a medieval weapon.

If your game has broadswords and body armor, it's a medieval game and arquebuses aren't appropriate for it, because the arquebus quickly rendered the latter irrelevant which then rendered the former irrelevant. A game with arquebuses should be more like the Three Musketeers or Pirates of the Caribbean than Lord of the Rings or the Knights of the Round Table because of the impact that the arquebus and firearm development (which was actually really fast thanks to the metallurgical skills learned from developing heavy armor and iron weapons) had on warfare.


A spear will do for an elephant just as well as it does for whales.

Except that there is a *massive* difference between "subduing/controlling" and "killing". Subduing a target actually requires a lot more skill and finesse than simply killing it. The tribal tactics that have allowed African tribes (and presumably cro magnon, as well) to hunt down elephants are not compatible with subduing the animal because they bleed the animal out over a period of time. The same is true of aboriginal whale hunting (though the primary argument against domesticating whales can probably be summed up as "they're in the water; we're on land", else we'd probably have domesticated dolphins at some point).

To domesticate an animal species, you need to be able to control it on a large scale. Wolves were controlled psychologically (pack mentality emphasizing physical and social dominance) and dietarily (providing food to prevent conflict and generate friendship). Herd animals were controlled physically (penning them in, nonlethally whipping/hitting those that attempt to leave) as well as psychologically (herd mentality).

The only way to control an elephant is on a small scale: you scare a young elephant into an enclosure (in groups that had high risk because, you know, you're scaring elephants), trap it, abuse it (and expose it to other abused elephants) until it no longer has any fight left in order to render it tame (because, if it *did* want to fight, you'd be screwed), and then you can finally train it. They're not liable to remain tamed forever, though, especially if you continue using abusive training methods on it (there are numerous examples of elephants escaping enclosures or rebelling against trainers and running amok). Even if they had a faster reproductive cycle, I'd be doubtful that humans would have domesticated elephants, much like the Native American tribes had domesticated wolves and alpaca but never managed to domesticate buffalo.

Just because humans can kill a creature doesn't mean that the animal isn't still too dangerous to domesticate. The long reproductive cycle is a major factor in making elephants unappealing and impractical for domestication (I'll admit that it could be the biggest factor, given what I've been researching more and more; this is why I like these discussions; I learn stuff :3), but you can't ignore the sheer difference in physical power that *still* causes *tame* elephants to be highly problematic (I can't find statistics for it, but, anecdotally, tame elephants are considered to be significantly more dangerous than even tigers, bears, and lions).

This is probably best exemplified by musth, which is a hormonal state of near homicidal sexually driven rage that affects all male elephants on a recurring basis. It's so bad (and remarkably unpredictable since a lot of bulls don't show the physical warning signs until they're fully in its throes) that tamed bull elephants are generally isolated almost all the time. Consider whether humans would have ever domesticated wolves if all males went rabid for one month out of every year once they reach puberty (and it was a random month, not like "every December"). Even considering how useful dogs are, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't because it's just too dangerous to keep them around. We might tame a few (probably using females for productive purposes and only keeping males around for breeding purposes), but I see a lot of problems with actual domestication (at least without major infrastructure built around it).

That's not really an issue with horses or other large domestics and what the likelihood of small races domesticating them would be, though, so musth is just something of an interesting tangent to demonstrate that reproductive cycle isn't the only thing that prevented elephant domestication. The difference in size and strength acts as both psychological as well physical deterrent to domestication.

[LudicSavant]

Slaughtering as "butchering", which is what the evidence points to for human consumption of elephants and mammoths, is far from slaughtering as "killing boatloads"

Slaughtering as in killing boatloads. (http://www.livescience.com/6984-prehistoric-humans-wiped-elephants.html)

Humans didn't have to wait until guns were invented to be the most dangerous hunters on the planet.


The arquebus only existed for the extreme *end* of medieval times (15th century; medieval is generally considered to be 5th to 15th; after the Fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance) First, arquebuses were around in the 14th century. Second, the arquebus wasn't the first firearm; its precursors were available for a coupla centuries before that. Third... why are we even talking about guns? Spears are good enough.


If your game has broadswords and body armor, it's a medieval game and arquebuses aren't appropriate for it, because the arquebus quickly rendered the latter irrelevant which then rendered the former irrelevant.

Fantasy gun control (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyGunControl) is a popular myth, but popular myths are still myths (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/FantasyGunControl).

I'm not sure why this is even relevant to the discussion though, because we totally didn't need guns to hunt elephants, mastodons, mammoths, whales, buffalo, whatever.


Except that there is a *massive* difference between "subduing/controlling" and "killing"
Your original statement was that a human is so physically insignificant compared to an elephant that they would not even be worthy of notice by an elephant. If a human can kill or even harm an elephant, that's not true.

My response to your other claim (that elephants aren't selectively bred because they are big and scary) was that one shouldn't overlook factors such as longevity and reproductive cycles.


The long reproductive cycle is a major factor in making elephants unappealing and impractical for domestication (I'll admit that it could be the biggest factor, given what I've been researching more and more; this is why I like these discussions; I learn stuff :3)

Yay! Learning! :smallsmile:

[Everyl]

Lurking in the thread so far, I've caught a few ideas that look neat.

Halfling cavalry terrorizing the larger races sounds pretty awesome to me. I can imagine a world history in which the cultures of various races wind up being shaped by the existence of armies mounted on horses that just simply don't come in sizes big enough for other races to fight back the same way. Those of other races who didn't fall to the halflings needed some way to counter the cavalry. Many elves retreated to heavily-forested regions where horses were less useful, and developed a culture heavy on archery and magecraft to enable them to fight back from a safe distance. The most successful independent dwarves withdrew to mountainous regions, mines, and heavy stone fortifications, as a way of securing their homeland against invaders. Orcs were simply forced out onto marginal lands, or enslaved and forced into manual labor. Humans, ultimately, wound up beating the halflings by joining them - it was eventually a human population group that finally bred horses large enough to carry a human to battle.

Humans have since enjoyed much the same role that halflings once did. Their horses aren't as size-exclusive as those of the halflings, but their jump start on seizing halfling territory has made it difficult for other races to expand. Indeed, many historians are already declaring the dawn of the Age of Humans.

Little do these historians realize, however, that an elven nation has successfully domesticated elephants, through a breeding program spanning numerous elven lifetimes. Domesticated bull elephants do not go berserk during musth, and a well-trained war elephant can be relied on to follow orders and not turn on its handlers; many are trained to distinguish between elves and non-elf humanoids. The Age of Man may turn out to be shorter than anticipated.

(And I have no idea where gnomes and their mounts or lack thereof fit into that concept. I've always struggled to find a place to fit gnomes into a setting that seems distinct and interesting compared to dwarves and halflings.)

[LudicSavant]

Elves do seem like they'd be very well suited to long term payoff projects like selective breeding, since a single breeder could oversee many, many generations of animals. So, look at some of the weird stuff hobbyist breeders come up with (google "weird chicken breeds" or something and you'll come up with stuff like this (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b3/1e/5d/b31e5de040ec9cc091f9e97a6de62fd1.jpg) or this (https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/7067881_f520.jpg) or this (https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/7067790_f520.jpg) or this (https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/7067736_f520.jpg))... and then multiply that for what oddball elves can come up with.

Basically, what might have taken 500 years of ongoing consensus between many generations of humans to do, a single wacky elf breeder can do during his lifetime.

[Dusk Raven]

Elves do seem like they'd be very well suited to long term payoff projects like selective breeding, since a single breeder could oversee many, many generations of animals. So, look at some of the weird stuff hobbyist breeders come up with (google "weird chicken breeds" or something and you'll come up with stuff like this (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b3/1e/5d/b31e5de040ec9cc091f9e97a6de62fd1.jpg) or this (https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/7067881_f520.jpg) or this (https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/7067790_f520.jpg) or this (https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/7067736_f520.jpg))... and then multiply that for what oddball elves can come up with.

Basically, what might have taken 500 years of ongoing consensus between many generations of humans to do, a single wacky elf breeder can do during his lifetime.

I hadn't thought of that, that's pretty interesting. Who needs a mad wizard when you can have a mad animal husbandry enthusiasts? I've always seen elves as being in it for the really long haul anyway, so once they get a handle for for the way breeding works I can see them doing things like pass up short-term disadvantages for long-term gain.

[JoeJ]

True. But I will bring up that mammoths are different from elephants. I believe they have rather thinner hides than elephants, though. I do not claim that killing elephants with primitive weapons is impossible, I merely think it would take quite a coordinated effort, and would not have been a pretty or quick end for the elephant.

Average thickness of a wooly mammoth's skin was less than the average thickness of a modern elephant's skin, but the thinnest wooly mammoth skin known is quite a bit thicker than the thinnest elephant skin. I don't know about other species of mammoths or mastodons. The difference, however, would not have been enough to matter in resisting spear thrusts.

No doubt it did take a coordinate effort to hunt the largest Pleistocene megafauna, but humans are pretty good at coordinated efforts.

[LudicSavant]

I hadn't thought of that, that's pretty interesting. Who needs a mad wizard when you can have a mad animal husbandry enthusiasts?

It was pretty much the idea for the Auspicium (the elven organization included in the Lolth writeup in my sig).

[Yora]

In my setting the choice of riding animals depends mostly on the environment where people live. Most of them are in the camel-elephant size range, so the size and weight of the rider doesn't really make any difference.

[Klaatu B. Nikto]

What is practical purpose is there for owning a turtle?

They make excellent ninjas and surprisingly talented slow cookers.

[Aedilred]

On the elephant matter, it's perhaps worth drawing attention to the north African elephant. This was a smaller subspecies of the African elephant which was partially domesticated in antiquity, but declined into extinction in the Roman era. So there have been partially successful attempts to domesticate African elephants as well as Asian ones.

I wonder if the problem with domesticating elephants is as much about infrastructure as anything else. Elephants are big animals that need a lot of food and space, take a long time to reach maturity, and are difficult to control. Isolating and maintaining a stable and healthy breeding population is extraordinarily expensive and difficult and probably beyond the reach of most early agricultural societies: indeed, humans and elephants don't tend to coexist all that well, and the growth of human settlements has usually resulted in major decline of elephant populations in the area, whether intentional or not.

When you factor in that elephant generations are much longer than for any domestic species, it will also take a lot longer to select for the desired characteristics to domesticate them. If humans had started domesticating elephants around the time they did horses, say (around 3,500 BC, most likely), elephants would still only have made, at most, half the "progress" that horses have, and likely a lot less. That's without considering intelligence: many domesticated animals are really pretty stupid: the more intelligent ones (dogs, pigs) either began the domestication process a lot earlier or are rather less domesticated than we like to think (consider that if cats were much larger than they are, their behaviour would make them too dangerous to keep as pets). And elephants are probably cleverer than anything else humans have yet domesticated.

Even if you do succeed in making progress you'll likely still have a very small and vulnerable population, because the investment of resources and the extremely slow breeding rate (consider that it will take an adult female nearly four years to bear two calves, which even assuming both survive is only replacement rate) make it difficult to establish large domestic populations. It's going to take a seriously long-term commitment on the part of a whole society to keep up with the project. A bad bout of disease, a couple of bad harvests, war with the neighbours, even a few recalcitrant bad apples from your own towns who take up poaching, any of them could wipe out enough of the domesticated population to set the process back centuries, or ruin it altogether. This may well have been what happened with the north African elephant: millennia of effort made to domesticate the species undone in a couple of centuries of mismanagement, ultimately ending with extinction.

In a fantasy world, of course, you can sidestep a lot of that.

[sktarq]

Oh boy more domestication discussion. . .

Firstly It is damn hard to domesticate an animal. It requires not just being able to tame the animal but to control a breeding population. Lots of animals are very picky about who with and when they get frisky. Look at Asian Cheetahs for example. People (espially Indian and Persian Noblity) have been keeping them for thousands of years. Various Shahs boasted of having thousands of individuals and bragging about rare colour morphs (like Blue, Cream, and Red) but none were bred in captivity they all had to caught from the wild. . . Did I mention this was a significant factor in driving the cat to the Critically endangered status is has today? Cheetahs were not bred in captivity until the 2nd Half of the 20th Century. So just saying an animal is tameable (and Cheetahs certainly are) doesn't mean it is domesticatable. Zebras have similar issues. Bear raising (for food) was common in parts of Japan at one time and tame bears have been staple of European tradition for many years (Rome to 1800's at least). And Falconry has yet a long tradition and yet very very little domestic breeding. Also if it was easy animals like the Peccary would be a clear choice but peccaries have never been domesticated (and people and peccaries have been together longer than any other animal except the dog has been domesticated).

The semi domesticated animals mentioned in Wikipedia ranged from bred in captivity on a more than freak occurrence to basically domesticated (complete with certain mutations like black and white banding that are far far far more common in domestic population than in wild populations as it relys on multiple mutations of the genes controlling melanin production back in the parts that are also linked to adrenal formation) in parts of range and basically wild in others with lots of interbreeding. . .

On Gnomes and Halflings favored mounts.
Halflings favorite mounts would probably be: Small Horses. No really. Ever looked up the size of the Prwewalski's Wild Horse (sorry Poland I'm just calling it Mongolian if if comes up again) or the Tarpan (of Belarus, Ukraine to Kazakhstan) who are two main populations thought to have produced the domestic horse? They are small by today's standards. So a population domesticating them smaller (for which there are plenty of examples) is just as possible as breeding them larger. Lots of the breeds that the Halflings breeds may look like have pony in their name today (Icelandic Pony, Shetland Pony, etc) and I generally took the Ponies mentioned in the various DnD guides to be of this variety. And while an adult human can ride those breeds it would probably be comfortable for smaller people in the way that a Fresian or coldblood is comfortable for an adult human. So these known breeds (which are small for humans) would be the equivalent of a large horse to gnomes and halflings. And why would they want a smaller breed? Mostly because it would make sense to have the cheapest breed to run while getting the job done. So while halflings may breed equines smaller than the Norse/Celtic Pony family for riding the way horses were also used for plowing (which has a lower scalability limit) may have made them less useful in general. But halfling horses of the Mine Horse/Miniature Horse type would be possible.

The other obvious example would be to ride donkeys. People ride donkeys regularly but they can be a bit ornery (and the onager aka Asian donkey can be taught to pull a cart but not ride is especially so-some minor difference with Nubian/Somali ass making it undomesticatable in spite of millennia of trying). However they are the right size and still usable around the farm. And war donkeys would be a sight to behold....since a normal donkey bites and kicks like a war horse anyway a trained up one would be kinda special to watch. Could have a lot of fun with friendly halflings on their mean donkeys as a cultural stereotype.

And why not dogs? well You could breed dogs for riding I guess. Start with the cart dog breeds and go from there. However dogs need at least some meat in their diets and that has a tendency to get expensive (see cats) plus the larger and heavier you breed a dog the less healthy they generally are which could be a major limiting factor.

Big Cats? Okay it is technically possible for humans to ride tigers, Ligers, Etc. However. Cats are sprintters and even if you could breed a bigger stronger cat they would still be a very short range ride....cats just get too tired from such things too quickly. Breed an endurance cat? sure just give it a stiffer back, prevent the paws from turning inward, un-retract the claws, give them long twitch muscle fibers instead of short-twitch and several other things go against the ideas of having a cat mount in the first place. Plus it is dangerous every moment of every day you have one near. And Finally they are obligate carnivores which means that massive amounts of meat must be provided . . . and meat has until very recent times far too expensive to use as feedstock. Basically you'd feed twenty horses on the same budget so unless you 1 Liger Paladin can face down 20 Horse Knights and win you'd be stupid to do it.

So why not Pigs. . . Doable but a pain in the neck. Not very good at endurance, probably smart and strong enough to get into trouble on a regular basis (they would dig up hitching posts and the like), the aggressive ones are very aggressive which can be problematic on a day to day stable basis. Also the larger breeds tend loose speed quickly as they scale up - this may be avoidable by starting with the longer legged old European ham breeds like the Tamworth and especially the Old Tamworth of pre-1780's "improvement"


Goats and Rams-I mentioned domestication is hard? So bighorn sheep have resisted domestication but Mouflon gave us domestic sheep even those the differences are minor. Turns out they are minor but key. That said since we are talking about a fantasy world I wouldn't say it is a big change to give those tiny key modifications to say a Marco Polo Sheep (Giant Argali) in order to drive a large domestic war ram...sure. The differences between Ibex and Wild Goats are in the same vein and since some Ibex and other goat related species (like the Markhor-which may have had influence on the domestic goat) make impressive statements I would say it is only a small stretch to have them in a fantasy world.

While a halfling cavalry charge would be both dangerous and hilarious I would wonder how they got on. Ostriches are a hard domestication candidate RW but not too much of a stretch in a fantasy one. Issues of controling them which we use technolgy for would be easy enough to fight with magic. Also while they are not actually domesticated they have been ridden which is good indicator for your criteria. Which leads to halfling barbarians riding cassowaries making the jungles a place of fear and death. . . :smalleek:

Elephants: With the lifecycle being the limiting factor for domestication. There is actually quite a bit of debate about why elephants were not domesticated with lots of reasons tossed out. The long lifecycle is one that just about everyone can agree on and so gets thrown out first. Also while breeding occurred it was very rare and often not very selective. And even when it was it was not on a large enough scale to manipulate the gene pool. Part of that is because they are "big and scary"; not because that stops people but because it makes it hard to do which requires resources and elephant taming and maintenance is so expensive as to distort the culling and focus needed for domestication. Another major factor is that elephants were rarely used in large enough groups to pick and choose desirable ones for breeding-it was not necessarily a matter of total numbers but density and elephants due to needing massive feed bins and the fact that a couple elephants could do all the "elephant work" in a given area they were rarely in groups so any breeding was with what was available.
another aspect is that social hierarchy is not based on the same kinds of dominance fights that just about all other large domesticated animals have. Mostly it is age based system in the female herds while fully adult males were basically solitary.
On hunting elephants. . . the Syrian/Turkish (and possibly Egyptian) population of Indian Elephants were the major source of both Ivory and War Elephants in much of the western classical world (and which was probably much larger than the modern asian elephant). The Egyptian Pharaohs bragged about hunting Elephants in Syria often enough for it to be a thing. but that doesn't mean they are not too dangerous to domesticate. Hunting, especially team hunting maximizes humans ability to kill massiving beyond the norm because it brings in weapons, training, other animals (hounds and horses) etc. but domesticating an animal means controlling it continually which could a hugely different task and often a far far greater one. People control it while most people sleep (usually via building enclosures - which can be tough for elephants moose, dire badgers etc) and all the team effort needed to even move or feed very dangerous animals means an opportunity cost on what those people could have been doing with their effort instead. So Indian Elephants are probably near or just beyond the limit on what humans can domesticate in terms of danger without modern tools.
And as for African War Elephants. Only known use was by Carthage. Hannibal's elephants that marched on rome were almost certainly of the now extinct North African subspecies of African elephant which was significantly smaller than their bush elephant brethren to the south. And he may have had only had 25 or possibly 24 if his personal mount was actually a very large Syrian specimen (for which there is some evidence for Surus) The Others were mostly on loan from egypt and while probably of North African Stock it isn't well known what kind they were. And even the greatest war elephant forces Nanda Empire (6K) Maurya Empire (9K) were not the large isolated populations needed for domestication - they were still wild caught EDIT: partially Ninja'd on elephants darn but would note that no evidence of domestication has been noted only taming of wild animals (domestic breeding evidence is lacking)

minor note on war pigs. . . they existed but not as mounts. . . they were oiled up and set on fire to scare the enemy horses. . . probably not what you're looking for a gnome to ride.

[Everyl]

(And I have no idea where gnomes and their mounts or lack thereof fit into that concept. I've always struggled to find a place to fit gnomes into a setting that seems distinct and interesting compared to dwarves and halflings.)


minor note on war pigs. . . they existed but not as mounts. . . they were oiled up and set on fire to scare the enemy horses. . . probably not what you're looking for a gnome to ride.

Self-immolating gnomish boarback berserkers! Why didn't I think of that? It would certainly be an effective way to make the halfling horse-armies want to stay waaaaaaaay clear of the gnomes!

[LudicSavant]

When you factor in that elephant generations are much longer than for any domestic species, it will also take a lot longer to select for the desired characteristics to domesticate them. If humans had started domesticating elephants around the time they did horses, say (around 3,500 BC, most likely), elephants would still only have made, at most, half the "progress" that horses have, and likely a lot less. That's without considering intelligence: many domesticated animals are really pretty stupid: the more intelligent ones (dogs, pigs) either began the domestication process a lot earlier or are rather less domesticated than we like to think (consider that if cats were much larger than they are, their behaviour would make them too dangerous to keep as pets). And elephants are probably cleverer than anything else humans have yet domesticated.

Even if you do succeed in making progress you'll likely still have a very small and vulnerable population, because the investment of resources and the extremely slow breeding rate (consider that it will take an adult female nearly four years to bear two calves, which even assuming both survive is only replacement rate) make it difficult to establish large domestic populations. It's going to take a seriously long-term commitment on the part of a whole society to keep up with the project. A bad bout of disease, a couple of bad harvests, war with the neighbours, even a few recalcitrant bad apples from your own towns who take up poaching, any of them could wipe out enough of the domesticated population to set the process back centuries, or ruin it altogether. This may well have been what happened with the north African elephant: millennia of effort made to domesticate the species undone in a couple of centuries of mismanagement, ultimately ending with extinction.

Pretty much this.

The North African elephant was mentioned. They are yet another example of how effective humans are against elephants without post-medieval (or even medieval, for that matter) technology. For one thing, they made for popular spectacle in the Roman Colosseum.

Just some of the first references off of Google (I can't actually find internet versions of the scholarly sources where I learned this stuff in the first place):


The Roman audiences cheered these brutal slaughters enthusiastically as a rule, but when 20 elephants were pitted against heavily armed warriors, the screaming of these gentle animals as they were wounded caused the crowd to boo the emperor for his cruelty

Morris 1990


The sheer quantity of slaughter in the Colosseum saw the number of lions, jaguars, and tigers plummet across the globe. According to some, Roman hunting absolutely “devastated the wildlife of North Africa and the entire Mediterranean region,” wiping some species of animal off the map entirely.

For example, after one particularly brutal set of games in which 9,000 animals were slaughtered, the hippo disappeared from the river Nile. Creatures like the North African elephant, which was also commonly used as a war elephant during the time, were wiped of the face of the Earth completely.

http://listverse.com/2014/01/15/10-cruel-and-unusual-facts-about-animals-in-the-roman-colosseum/

[sktarq]

Well since the Great Auk was killed off in the 1850s
the Wild Horse of Europe are argued over continually and whose loss is even debated
The Auroch died off in Poland in the 1600's
Eurasian Lynx is still with us as is the Mediterranean Lynx though it is basically limited to Spain and takes its name from there now

so I call deep exaggeration on that last one. Local die offs sure and the loss of the N African Elephant, N African Giraffe, Possibly Lower Nile Hippo Local Populations, Spanish Lions almost certainly, Possibly Balkan Leopards (they were in Greece and Turkey until the 1800s at least),

[LudicSavant]

Well since the Great Auk was killed off in the 1850s
the Wild Horse of Europe are argued over continually and whose loss is even debated
The Auroch died off in Poland in the 1600's
Eurasian Lynx is still with us as is the Mediterranean Lynx though it is basically limited to Spain and takes its name from there now

so I call deep exaggeration on that last one. Local die offs sure and the loss of the N African Elephant, N African Giraffe, Possibly Lower Nile Hippo Local Populations, Spanish Lions almost certainly, Possibly Balkan Leopards (they were in Greece and Turkey until the 1800s at least),

I don't see what the Great Auk has to do with this topic (I was talking about the use of North African elephants in the Roman Colosseum), but I'll remove that source from the list if you want. There are honestly hundreds of others to use which will say the same thing, and you're already agreeing with the things I actually said myself.

For instance, here's wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venatio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

And here's another source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=94NuSg3tlsgC&dq=ancient+civilizations+the+illustrated+guide+myt hology&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=3%2C500+elephants

[sktarq]

Since the quote in question implied that the Great Auk, Auroch, and European wild horse were driven to extinction by Roman hunting (in part driven by public slaughter for entertainment) it didn't seem to support your point

[LudicSavant]

Since the quote in question implied that the Great Auk, Auroch, and European wild horse were driven to extinction by Roman hunting (in part driven by public slaughter for entertainment) it didn't seem to support your point

Next I'm going to hear about how linking to wikipedia doesn't support my point that elephants were exploited for spectacle in gladiatorial arenas because some other page on wikipedia contains implied inaccuracies about some completely unrelated species going extinct. :smallconfused:

[sktarq]

Sir, Relax.

The statement in question said
that there was massive hunting by Romans
that the Great Auk, Wild Horse, and Wild Ox have gone extinct.

both of those points are true however by putting them together there was implied causality.

this did nothing to further your argument and if anything seemed silly. You removed it. . . no big deal

[LudicSavant]

Sir, Relax.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

Okay I put the table back. :smalltongue:

[Aniikinis]

I have a feeling that water-dwelling Humanoids would ride on either porpoises or manta rays, but I'm not too sure why I'm thinking that.

[sktarq]

Well Porpoises/Dolphins are regularly mentioned in the D&D books, particularly in regard to Sea Elves. Which considering their intelligence would be difficult to be considered domesticated but possibly ridden.

As for Manta Rays. . . Well scuba divers do ride manta rays (though you are not supposed to) and remoras ride them very visibly so people have the association. . . not that they would be very good at it necessarily, but it does have a cool image.

Frankly aquatic animals would generally kind of suck at bearing riders. The added air resistance of carrying a rider is pretty negligible in comparison to comparison to its weight in air, not so in water. So riding a dolphin would be done like high performance motorcycle in order to minimize drag. . . also saddles would be problematic as there isn't much to easily attach to and if it presses up against any fins the animal would have stability/steering issues.

Then again riding giant seahorses (which would go all of what? 2 mph?) and the made for underwater riding hippocampi (singular hippocampus) would both be classics from our world. . .

yeah - unless you are using a whale/whaleshark to pull a cabin around I don't see many effective uses for a "mount" underwater.

[Digitalfruitz]

To answer Arzanyos's question at the begining. I could see the gnomes using a reflagged version of the dire corgi (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/dog/corgi-dire) to be something along the lines of a "Dire Tomcat" also you could just try to modify the clockwork steed that has already been made by pathfinder (what I would do is change the size to medium, switch its strength stat with its dexterity stat, and finally replace its hooves with claws); http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/clockwork/clockwork-steed

[Arzanyos]

Thanks for all the answers, guys. For gnomes, I settled on goats for normal gnomes, and mechanical steed thingies for special gnomes. Goats because they fit the kind of go-everywhere wanderer image I was going for, whilst still being somewhat believable.

[sktarq]

Thanks for all the answers, guys. For gnomes, I settled on goats for normal gnomes,...

Sounds good, would toss out the idea that different gnome clans/peoples/ethnic groupings may have goats with different head/horn structures which could be useful thing in game for easy reference and clear demarcation in gnome to gnome conflict. Look up things like the Irish goat and compare to say the Markhor, the Wild Goat, the Cretean "Wild" Goat (technically a very old feral), the Chamois or Mountain Gooat, the Nubian, and the Agaili for examples and range.

[VoxRationis]

Well Porpoises/Dolphins are regularly mentioned in the D&D books, particularly in regard to Sea Elves. Which considering their intelligence would be difficult to be considered domesticated but possibly ridden.

As for Manta Rays. . . Well scuba divers do ride manta rays (though you are not supposed to) and remoras ride them very visibly so people have the association. . . not that they would be very good at it necessarily, but it does have a cool image.

Frankly aquatic animals would generally kind of suck at bearing riders. The added air resistance of carrying a rider is pretty negligible in comparison to comparison to its weight in air, not so in water. So riding a dolphin would be done like high performance motorcycle in order to minimize drag. . . also saddles would be problematic as there isn't much to easily attach to and if it presses up against any fins the animal would have stability/steering issues.

Then again riding giant seahorses (which would go all of what? 2 mph?) and the made for underwater riding hippocampi (singular hippocampus) would both be classics from our world. . .

yeah - unless you are using a whale/whaleshark to pull a cabin around I don't see many effective uses for a "mount" underwater.

I'm glad the giant seahorse thing bugs someone besides me. People latch onto the "horse" part and forget that the seahorse is one of the slowest fish in the ocean, largely because it moves with a very small fin and a vertical body formation.

[Medival Wombat]

This might be an unpopular opinion, but we are still speaking about a fantasy game, where energie is created out of thin air, and the laws of science and nature are little more then guidelines then real rules, right?

I don´t know your groups, but the people I game with simply do not care how much good the exoskelleton of a giant sandworm is build to realistcly carry the orcish caravan raiders. It is just a really cool image to fight against it, and maybe at the end tame it to ride it into the next encounter.

I would agree with the idea of direbadgers as a suitable mount for gnomes, it is just to conviniant to not use. Alternative, golems and other constructs (if your gnomes are those wierd tinker-ones) make an eccelent heavy cavalley...

Dwarves could use giant ants. They can lift a lot of weight and are a collective state that lives underground and works a lot. I´m sure, dwarves would like those traits in their mounts, also they could -with a good saddle- ride upside down in a tunnel.

For orcs, I am not sure. They are either a primary riding force like the mongols, wich leads to fast, sturdy horses, or they do not care about real taming, and use big, scary monsters (like as mentioned earlier: giant sandworms, king kong-like apes, mammoths, or worse) that no same man would even dare to even touch.

Elves, and not only drow could also use giant spiders (instead of the ideas of bears, wolves and meese (mooses?), who i also really like), for they are quite mobile and -most importantly- look really cool. You´d probably need a good saddle though...

Halflings already have a good mount with their dogs (and the idea of the halflings as the fist cavalery, dominating the planet is just awesome), but I could imagine an airial force of halflings, throwing rocks, knives and alchemistic fires from the back of eagles or other large bird of pray as an image, you´ll not forget in a log time. They would nest on the roofs of the caravan and scout for a good place to camp for the tribe.

[Xalyz]

There is a Plane in Magic the Gathering where monks ride giant mantises that are only loosely tamed. It is said that their mounts hold no allegiance to their riders and if they loose concentration for a second, the mantis would turn and eat them.

I could see some Elven variant that does something similar; perhaps some water Elves that ride sharks.

[Ravian]

I've always had an idea of making a gnomish society inspired by Dinotopia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinotopia)

I've always loved the design of everything involved in those books, but they it never really seemed to be appropriate for most fantasy settings where it might be considered a little too unconventional.

But I think it would really work for gnomes. Gnomes always have difficulty with establishing themselves as a culture without treading on the toes of elves, dwarves or halflings. They need something unconventional to stand out, but if you get too out there, they just look goofy. The closest we've gotten is tinker gnomes, but even they can be seen as stepping on dwarf turf, and the steampunk can often seem anachronistic.

Dinotopia seems right up the alley for gnomes, beautifully designed but in a way that's distinct from Elven or Dwarven architecture, and just the right variety of unconventional. Sort of like Eberron's dinosaur riding halflings, but its an advanced an structured society rather than a nomadic one like the halflings have.

Plus look up the pictures in these books, tell me that you couldn't see that in a fantasy setting with the humans a little on the short side.