Keeping a warhorse alive?

[Braininthejar2]

Any knightly character will inevitably reach a stage where he becomes tougher than the horse he rides on.

So, what ways are there to increase the survivability of a warhorse?

I was hoping a cavalier would have something, but the prestige class is available late, and contributes nothing to the mount's toughness unless you're a paladin.

The warbeast template is already implicitly included in a warhorse.

Short of constitution-boosting items, what else can be done?

[Segev]

There's always buying trained monstrous mounts, like hippogriffs or griffons. They're a bit tougher.

Hiring a dragon is as cheap as 500 gp/HD per year, if you can make a reasonably high Diplomacy DC. (See the Draconomicon.)

Ecalypses (from Manual of the Planes, in the Ephemera monster entry) are pretty good mounts with a fair number of hp, and can be obtained if you can find one and mount it and succeed at a DC 30 (with a -5 penalty for no saddle) ride check.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Mostly, be a Paladin or a Druid(lol). A reasonable DM will let your Fighter steadily purchase/find more expensive mounts, especially with a party Druid or Cleric to help, but that's a patch, and pretty soon you're either going on quests trying to find a rhino to ride, or you're watching the Bison you so love die anyway because it's a 5HD animal and you're going up against dragons. If you want to ride something past the mid levels, you need to be a Paladin*.
Alternately, if you've got a Wizard or Cleric in the party who doesn't object to necromancy, they can bring back enemy monsters that wouldn't normally be mounts(Dragons, Griffons, etc) and use them. At only 25GP per HD, that's pretty cheap, and if they're not using their reanimation cap for anything else, they'll probably be willing. But there's definitely RP implications to riding around on a dead dragon's skeleton.
A party Druid who isn't using their animal companion for much might let you ride it, but again, there's a lot of RP that would need to go into that.

All that said, if you're really trying to make your mount as strong as possible, there's the Beastmaster PrC and Natural Bond feat from Complete Adventurer, which can get you +6 to your Druid level for an Animal Companion. 3 levels and a feat for a 9th-level Druid's animal companion isn't terrible, though it is rough. I also know that there's a PRC out there that combines Druid AC/Paladin Mount progression, but I can't find it for the life of me. Toss Arcane Heirophant from Races of the Wild on that and you've got a mount that can adventure on it's own while you stay at the tavern. I hesitate to call any of that GOOD, but it exists.

*I believe there's a few Halfling-exclusive PRCs for mounted combat, but I have no experience with any of them, so I'll let someone else comment.

[Kelb_Panthera]

WIld cohort feat* is, hands down, the least intrusive answer that goes the furthest in the OPs stated goal.

Past that, you'll need something that gives you either the animal companion or special mount feature that you can apply to your horse and it's gonna cost you levels; wild outrider, beastmaster, etc and so on.

Fun option if you can get the GM to okay it: get the horse awakened and make it your cohort. Have it train in classes that make it more and more durable.


*used to be on an article on the WotC archives but theyr'e down now so you'll have to see about finding it through a web archive or one of the file-dumps on the the thread on the matter.

[Biggus]

The Mounted Combat feat allows you to make a Ride check to negate a hit on your mount once per round. Get some Riding Boots (MiC p.121) when you can afford them for a +5 bonus (and other benefits).

Get your mount some barding with Medium/ Heavy Fortification and attach an Iron Ward Diamond (MiC p.26) for some damage reduction. Add the Healing or Greater Healing property (MiC p.12) to keep it up when it would otherwise fall.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

As mentioned above, to keep upgrading a single mount Animal Companion, Paladin Mount, or the Wild Cohort feat are the way to go (or something similar, like the Aglarondan Griffonrider prestige class). Improved Familiar could also work, but is harder to get on a knight character type (though a Duskblade with the Obtain Familiar and Improved Familiar feats could work...). There are also a couple of tricks for creating an "uber-mount" by stacking multiple of these onto a single creature; the most famous is probably Ranger or Druid + Paladin or Prestige Paladin, the Devoted Tracker feat to make your animal companion and holy mount the same creature, and the Halfling Outrider prestige class to advance your mount and companion simultaneously, resulting in a companion/mount that would normally require a much higher character level to get.

If you don't mind getting new mounts over time, the Arms & Equipment Guide has some really cool ones (for example, rules for training and prices for buying a hydra mount). Or if you really want a war horse (or other specific animal), the Warbeast template from MMII can be used to calculate a price for an animal with any number of HD, letting you buy progressively stronger Warbeast Horses.

Also, arguably you can add the Warbeast template to your existing mount to give it an extra HD and some sweet bonuses... but that's kind of sketchy because it goes against the flavor text. Ask your DM before trying it.

[Gruftzwerg]

Some maneuvers from Tome of Battle could be helpful too.

just to name a few:
Shield Block (counter): as immediate action give your ally your Shield bonus + 4 AC
Iron Guards Glare (stance): enemies you threaten get -4 to hit your allies
Defensive Rebuke (boost): every enemy you hit this turn provokes AoO if they attack anyone but you
...
there are many more maneuvers that would help, like those for healing your allies. Crusader gives you access to most of the mentioned abilities. Dipping a few levels into it should be really beneficial. Remember that your other class lvls still count for 1/2 initiator lvls added to Crusader when you dip it. This allows you to avoid some of the low lvl maneuvers and go right for the stronger ones when choosing your maneuvers.

______________________

Horseshoes of Flame: 30,240 g
3/day for 1h/clvl (7)= up to 21h per day
your horse gets:

..fly speed of 90 feet (good), +1d4 fire damage on each hoof attack, +2 Dexterity, +10 Intelligence, and +6 Charisma. A blow from the transformed hooves sets combustables alight.

[Gruftzwerg]

Another thing is Fly-by-Attack with the ability to fly (from the horseshoes) for your horse. Attack your enemies and fly to safety.
Further flying enables Dive attacks which doubles the dmg for piercing and slashing attacks on a diving charge.

[Braininthejar2]

WIld cohort feat* is, hands down, the least intrusive answer that goes the furthest in the OPs stated goal.

That can be what I'm looking for. Taking that it specifically lists a horse as an option, I take it circumvents a warhorse being "advancement:-" ?

[Kelb_Panthera]

That can be what I'm looking for. Taking that it specifically lists a horse as an option, I take it circumvents a warhorse being "advancement:-" ?

It grants most of the benefits of being a druid's animal companion but one band on that table lower than a druid of your character level. It also misses share spells and, I think, a couple other specials.

[Uncle Pine]

Wild Cohort feat on the wayback machine.

[Segev]

That can be what I'm looking for. Taking that it specifically lists a horse as an option, I take it circumvents a warhorse being "advancement:-" ?

It grants most of the benefits of being a druid's animal companion but one band on that table lower than a druid of your character level. It also misses share spells and, I think, a couple other specials.

Which is to say, "Yes," its bonus HD are not part of the base creature's advancement. They're granted to it by you having the feat. So it doesn't matter what the warhorse's "advancement" is, because you're not advancing it. You're giving it bonus HD and other things.

[Telok]

What our party did for an npc cleric with a wild cohort warhorse:
1. Have an artificer PC.
2. Put a belt of dwarven kind and a headband of intellect on the horse. It can now read and understand dwarven.
3. Have the horse read a manual of +int sufficent to boost it's Int to at least 3.
4. Craft a scroll of Miracle (artificer) and use it to make the horse 1/2 celestial and 1/2 dragon.
5. Keep the belt on the horse and craft it some half decent magic armor. Include save boosters and an immunity or two.