Animals:

In general

Animals, in general, are non player characters with which the players can interact. The riding horse of the player, too, does not fall under his own control, like his character does, but under the control of the master, like any other non player character.

The main stats of the animals are more important than those of player characters, since animals don't have skills. But those statistics mean both more and less, than those of a human. A brahmin, with intelligence 5 (the maximum this kind of animal can have) is not as intelligent as the average human with the same value on that statistic. And a human with intelligence 4 will not loose a chess game to this brahmin.

What exactly the statistics of animals mean, is to be looked up at the pages detailing that specific animal race. There, you'll also find information on how those animals react in combat, how the rules governing their movement work and everything else you need to know about those critters.

Animals in combat:

Each race has clear rules for armor rating, movement in combat and hit points, even how much damage they cause on a successful attack. But what decides if a hit is made at all? Animals have no skills. To keep things simple, all animals test to check if a hit is made using a D10 and testing on their luck stat. The critical hit chance on the other hand is calculated like this:

Luck : 2 (rounded down) = critical hit chance.

Like with all other tests this looks like that (the example assumes a luck value of 5):

Dice:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Succeeded?

Critical hit

Critical hit

Hit

Hit

Hit

Miss

Miss

Miss

Miss

Critical fail