I'm not sure if this has been asked here before, but here are some questions regarding horses -

I wondered if anyone had any answers for stats for quality riding horses? Does quality add anything to the horse?

All of the horses in the Bestiary have Natural Armor 2, but the Riding Horse in the ARG has none. Is this an oversight?

Also, Loyal companion adds +1 to Skills and Defenses. First, does this +1 increase the Passives or just Skill rolls? Second, does the Defense increase add anything to the Stamina? Or do loyal companions never increase in Stamina?

I think Quality Riding Horse = Riding Horse with the Exceptional Specimen (from Bestiary).

I would actually say that the Bestiary is in error - horses definitely should not have NAR 2 (you might be able to convince me NAR 1 but even that seems like a stretch).

Good questions about Loyal Companion. When I played a Loyal Companion, I did add the +1 to passives but did not increase stamina (though it would make sense if it did increase (maybe not 1-for-1)).

The way NAR, the Monstrous Trait, works is that it grants NAR 2 as the base version, +1 NAR each time you take it again after the first. If the creature is incapable of wearing armour, they get NAR 3 upon first taking the Trait. If the creature does not have the Natural Armor (Tr), then it should have no NAR.

If it does not say specifically it increases the Passives, then it does not increase the passives (see Wary (Ta) as an example). Remember, even when you are Tier 5 and have advanced your Tier 1 companion all the way, it is still a Tier 1 creature. You don't 'level it up' so much as modify the statblock.

If it doesn't modify the passives, that makes some of the loyal companion options pretty much useless at higher tiers. For instance, iirc, the primary ability of the wolf is to grapple but without passive increases, the wolf will be useless as a grappler (since escapes and reversals are vs passive).

From my perspective, if the skills go up, then the trained skills passive goes up with it. Either it represents an additional skill rank which impacts the passive, or it represents the base defense and associated passive stat went up impacting the passive skill check.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

That is fair, and I would love to see confirmation that it does for the above mentioned reason, but presently the rules do not suggest that.

Thank you for posting the original question about the quality riding horse, as it is something I have also wondered about.

My understanding on a few points that have been raised:

The stamina should not go up. You'll see that at the 2nd tier of Loyal Companion, your companion's stamina becomes equal to your own, and therefore benefits from your defense bumps. If he also got to benefit from his own defense bumps, he'd be double counting, and would end up with a higher stamina pool in later tiers.

I personally interpret the +x to skills to be an increase in skill rank, given the context in which it is written. Increase passive values accordingly.

The ability of the wolf/dog is not a general "grapple", it is a "grab", which has it's own special rules on P. 310.

A Grab is what initiates a Grapple though (see Grapple page 311). Grapple is kind of weird in that it is listed as a Maneuver but it is more a Status.

Correct. The main difference is that your dog/wolf can deliver damage along with the grab; he does not have to wait to advance to pin and punish.

Hood has a War Dog named Dogmeat; I don't think that I have yet had him try to pin anyone, since the Grab already forces the opponent to attack Dogmeat so Hood can move in and get stabby.

Depending on the opponent, pin can be insanely effective even if it doesn't grant any more damage. When pinned, if you don't have an unarmed attack or light balanced weapon (I missed that qualifier on my first few read-throughs) then the only option is escape (which will be hard if the pinner is built to do so (or a critter that is naturally good at it)).

Edit: and the weapon must already be drawn (draw weapon is not one of the allowable actions under pin).