"10.At the end of every turn, each animal in a player's inventory has a 1%
chance of dying."
I am already very tired of horses dying out under my nobles. It happens
very frequently with this 1% chance! Also maintaining horse or oxen herds
for trade routes is going to be a pain in the butt with them dying all the
time.
I infer that the purpose of this rule is to cause attrition in stacks using
beasts for combat. I think there are several alternatives that would allow
this to occur without having such an ongoing impact on traveling nobles:
1. Cut the risk of death to 1/200 or 1/300 per turn.
2. Only check for death once a game year instead of once a turn (different
beast could use different seasons)
3. Have the risk of death vary with the beast (using a table): Horses
1/1000 up to Dragons 1/50.
4. More complex: In a stack, each figure cares for one beast and reduces
the death risk to 1/1000. Excess beasts still have a 1% risk. For example,
an army with 100 soldiers and 100 horses, all the horses have a caretaker and
are 1/1000 risk. An army with 50 swordsmen and 80 dragons, 30 dragons have
1% risk, 50 have 1/1000 risk.
To put this another way: why should horses and dragons have the same risk of
dying each turn?
--Erik Gunderson/Gryphon Lords