Mounted Ogres

I've got a bit of an odd question, and I'm interested to see people's opinions on the matter:

So let's say, for whatever reason, I want to have ogre cavalry. What's an appropriately sized monster that an ogre might ride?

My first thought was actually to have ogre chariots instead, reasoning that they're probably not so much bigger than a human that a team of horses couldn't pull them around pretty fast. But chariots have their own drawbacks, and it occurs to me that it might be cooler to instead put the big monster on top of an even bigger monster, for the sake of intimidation, if nothing else.

Ogres are large, counting as 2 men - your minimum mount size would be Huge.

In ACKS default, for Huge War Mounts there's Chimera, the younger dragons, and Small Roc (who prob. wouldn't let an ogre on, being Lawful)

Chariot-wise, you could fit 1 in a Light Chariot and 2 in a Heavy Chariot, it looks like.

Ogres on Chimera mounts seems sufficiently metal.

 

Rhinocerous. Maybe slightly bigger than normal if need be, but for sure rhinos are the way to go here.

L&E lists Wooly Rhinos as well. More hair == more flair, that's what I always say.

War Mount is 8 tricks, and Rhinos have a TM of 0 - rhinos capable of being war mounts will be rare and expensive.

Mastodons or War Elephants could carry 3 ogres.

There's some really light guidance on huge+ size chariots here:

http://www.autarch.co/forums/development-and-playtest/acks-domains-war-playtest/chariots

Implications in D@W:B in the Chariot section tell me you can use the default Hunter-trained rhinos to pull big chariots. They'd be Irregular Mounted no matter what you do anyway cause you're using ogres.

 

 

Thanks a ton for the input, you guys! I am curious where you found information on the "TM" of a rhino, though; I'm not familiar with that statistic.

TM refers to Training Modifier, a measure of how easy it is to train/how good at learning the animal is.

It’s in Lairs and Encounters, an upcoming release; the sneak preview is currently available to Kickstarter backers, which is why it’s been referenced.

Why have the mount and the ogre separate? Ogre centaurs are much more fun!

[quote="The Dark"]

Why have the mount and the ogre separate? Ogre centaurs are much more fun!

[/quote]

Honestly, my inspiration for this whole thing is that the word for "tribe" in the Lir-Turkic languages (like Bulgar and Khazar) is "oğur," which sounds a bit like "ogre." Now I can't get the idea of fierce ogre cavalry riding off the steppes out of my head. :P

Ogres in your head sounds messy. And painful. :P

Clearly, they should ride dinosaurs.

Creatures can learn 2d4 tricks from a trainer (ACKS pg 58); in L&E, creatures are given a trainability modifier by type to increase that number. Additionally, L&E has optional ability scores for monsters, and a high or low INT will modify that as well, for exceptional individual examples of the type.

All horses get a +1 TM, so they're more likely to hit 2d4+1>=8 - rhinos less so.

L&E has rules for creating monsters as well; so; if you're modeling ogres as a more structured society that can employ cavalry, it's extremely likely they also have animal husbandry, and as such may have developed a mount more suited to their frame and the task - either something derived from a natural animal or something crazier from your own imagination.