daimaru wrote:I can't find -anything- on this other than race horses can't take the rigors of the wilderness. Apparently the other breeds are supposed to magically subsist on whatever they find to eat. Does anyone know if anything else is said about it?
No, nothing else is ever said.
In the real world, a horse subject to constant, fast travel would need a supplement to whatever grazing it could pick up during breaks. Generally grain, and I'd have to pack some along, along with my own food supplies. Is this true in Rifts? If it is, I would think that as a biomancer I could grow Gifts of Nature to supplement the horses night time grazing. True?
Your getting into "GM's call" territorty. Palladium veiws horse-travel rules as inconsequential and in all probability forgot it even put those blurbs into south america.
But something to think about: a large reason for the Mongols incredible mobility wasn't the speed or strength of their horses--they were actually pretty diminuitive by european standards. it's that they had great endurance and could forage everything needing no supplementary grain. This fact alone freed them of the logistical constraints of a huge wagon train of grain following behind like most calvary forces did.
Race horses are bred for speed and size (to increase leg stride). These features means they need more calories than can be conviently gotten by grazing grass during breaks. sure they will, but it's not enough. A smaller, studier pony on the other hand is fine, because it's smaller, slower, and thus needs and burns fewer calories. The larger the animal, the more they need to eat to sustain themselves. The faster they can go, the more calories they burn. A slow, small horse will do much better in the wilderness than a large race horse, even if the race horse will out-run it in the short term, in the long term the pony covered twice the distance in a day. it's a marathon, not a sprint.
