About pets riding you, and the fatigue it takes

[Blarc]

I have recently noticed that when my ferret is mounted on me, it takes more fatigue to move around. Infact more fatigue than moving around the roads outside, which makes no sense to me. One ferret, or hamster, or bird, or rat, or whatever shouldn't weight very much, atleast not that much that it'll make you considerably more fatigued.

So what I suggest is that pets such as these riding on you (read: sitting in your poket, on your shoulder etc.) won't affect your fatigue at all,or at the most would cost more like 1% of fatigue, since even your packs and bags weight more than your pet, unless you keep full sets of armour there of course.

[Raona]

It looks like the code currently tires you much more with a mounted pet than its weight alone would necessarily justify. My guess is that there is a one-size-fits-all additional tiring factor. (Specifically, carrying the corpse of a ferret five rooms tired my test character far less than having the live ferret mounted on them over that same distance. The ferret weighs 10 lbs and can carry up to 22.)

I would change this suggestion from mounted pets don't encumber you at all, to they only add to your carry weight. Thus they wouldn't have an impact provided they didn't tip you over the scales into the next load category; but you also couldn't pick them up at all if their weight on you exceeded your carry max. I think that makes more sense.

[Blarc]

This sounds nice, but what about halflings or other such races mounting PCs for one reason or another, would that still stay possible?
Maybe make it so that if the mounted creature makes you too encumbered, you just can't leave your current room or something similiar.

[Raona]

Right, perhaps a bit of nuance here based on my experiences carting around a 5-year-old:

Proposal is to revise mounting to have it simply add the weight of the mounting creature to the carry weight of the mounted creature. An additional (optional, but more realistic) proviso would stipulate that there is an additional encumbrance factor (or weight multiplier) if the mounting creature is not at least one size classification smaller than the mounted one.

Make sense?

[Orplar]

Im a fan

[Hrosskell]

I wanted to throw support into this--it'd also allow for same-size creatures to mount eachother in a similar fashion to being carried? Countless times I've seen a fellow warrior get his legs lopped off while we were adventuring and wanted to carry him/her off the battlefield, but instead we had to just let the fella drag his way to a priest.

[Harroghty]

I believe that allowing same-size creatures to mount is appropriate, but at a huge movement penalty. Carrying another person, esp. someone wearing gear, is exhausting.

It's also pretty tiring to carry a small creature though, moreso than their weight implies. I recommend a formula like weight + one half.