A gentle slap to the horse will do nothing; warhorses are accustomed to violence. Punching it in the mouth would likely make it rear without causing major injury; that’s probably the limit of Ranar’s willingness to do damage to a mount.
One axe-blow that gets past the shield would almost certainly end the rider. If you freed a hand and grappled, you could probably dehorse him without much trouble. Once he’s down and grappled, Ranar could casually twist him into a pretzel.
Gratuitous detail:
The locks and snaps are exactly what they sound like. Following a lock with a throw allows you to torque the joint to a gruesome extent; it’s a near-certain limb cripple.
A Backbreaker is to lift someone by hips and shoulders and snap their spine across your knee. A Piledriver is to slam someone into the dirt headfirst. Wrench Spine involves grabbing hips and shoulders and twisting in opposite directions.
[quote=“DaakSyde, post:100, topic:601, full:true”]
This is a sentence that I did not expect to be typing tonight, but… I prefer the strap-on. It fits my image of Ranar as a basher in combat. He does want to train with his off-hand (and later duel-wielding) in case he gets caught with his shield down, arm grappled or whatever again, but he’s used to the big shield and it gives him some comfort.[/quote]
It’s your call, but from a purely tactical POV: Ranar is a ferociously effective grappler. If you ever run into an opponent too heavily armoured for his axe, or a foe that you need to take non-lethally, it would be very useful to be able to quickly switch to MMA mode.
You can still do slams without the strap-on shield. The advantage of the shield rush is that the shield’s DB adds to your damage (+3 with Ranar’s spiked shield, but he’s beefy enough to do a fair bit without it) and the shield absorbs the return damage (but his armour would easily soak that anyway).
With the strap-on shield, you’ll almost certainly knock over anyone who doesn’t Dodge your charge (usually about a 50% chance). With the buckler, you’ll probably knock over anyone who doesn’t Dodge your charge.
That was going to be my next move!
If Ranar can tell that there is no chance of spooking the horse without punching it or otherwise hurting it, then he’ll definitely go with dismounting the rider instead. Grab the rider’s leg and throw him off. (We’ll figure out what to do with him afterword.)
He’ll drop the ax to get a grip, but keep the shield to defend unless the initial attempt fails. If it is just getting in the way, then he’ll drop it and try again.
P.S. I don’t want to try a slam here, because without a trampoline or something, Ranar would be slamming the horse instead of the rider. But it’s good to know that it would be effective with or without the shield. 
Okay; I’m planning to run this as if Ranar had a buckler. Let me know if you’re really committed to the strap-on shield concept.
BTW, once Ranar has some CP to spare:
There’s a 1pt perk called “Power Grappling”. It lets you substitute ST for DX in most grappling rolls.
In effect, it’d give Ranar a further +5 in most armlock/takedown/pin type contests.
I’ve looked it up and learned something new! What I always pictured as a buckler (basically a soup bowl with a handle inside, only covering the user’s fist) is actually just a specific type of buckler used for duels. But a full-sized buckler shield on Ranar would be about equivalent to a 6-foot human with a 2-foot diameter shield. That seems pretty reasonable, and close to what I had pictured. It also seems more fitting for an adventurer wandering solo through the woods or working in a small mixed group than a large full-coverage battle shield which would typically used in formation. So yes, I am good with switching to a buckler, now that I know what it is.
Yah; in GURPS terms, “buckler” just means “hand-held shield”. Like so:
Instead of:
Yup.
In GURPSage, those are Duelling bucklers.
Ye olde Viking shields are pretty much a duelling buckler with a light wooden rim; if the wooden part gets hacked to bits, you still have the little buckler.
Viking swordplay is axe-derived; they tended to “fence” with their shield far out in front, with the sword held back until it swings in for a big chop/slice. English style swordplay is spear derived; sword out in front, with the shield just behind it, fencing with the swordpoint.
The English style works well with a strap-on shield, the Viking style wants a buckler.
To demonstrate:
Ranar’s current shield is a Heavy Medium shield with a spike.
The big Roman shields were technically bucklers as well; they were too awkward to strap on.
How badly hurt is that horse? Recoverable, or is the kindest thing going to be to put it down?
It was seriously shot by Thwip, and then tumbled into Sasha’s pit.
Hayu isn’t a vet, but it’s the sort of thing where you’d expect the horse to be put down unless it was valuable enough to justify magical healing.
Well, unless our resident mage has the spells and beats her to the punch, she’s going to put it out of its misery. She doesn’t like to see an animal suffer.
It was a judgement call as to whether Ranar should go with Wrench Limb there or just a Pin.
I went with the Wrench because (a) he’d already shot someone just a few seconds earlier, and (b) there was another opponent still active, and going for the Pin would’ve stopped Ranar from dealing with him (if he hadn’t run away).
Mangled limbs can be magically repaired, but it’s more than just a basic Healing spell.
Unless the horse’s leg is broken, which I think may be beyond my skills, I’m going to start handing out the heals
Fits the situation - Ranar has had some stress recently and suddenly found himself in a dangerous situation with 5 unknowns and only 1 known reliable ally (no offense to the new characters). He’s impulsive so he shot first, but when he realized that might’ve been wrong and tried to scare off the horsemen, when that didn’t work, instinctively acting to incapacitate to even the odds makes sense.
No offense taken . I mean it’s not like we stabbed you in the back we weren’t even there to do so. 
Meta-point: the tensions within the party regarding the appropriate use of violence are a good thing, handled right. This is the bread and potatoes of high-grade roleplaying.
It’s also kinda realistic; the party recently had a major disruption to its tactical command structure with the deaths of Aronn and de Courcy. A loosening of use-of-force standards is exactly what you’d expect if that happened in a military unit.
Yrth is a “plausible” epic fantasy world; there are plenty of shiny sparkles on the surface, but there’s also blood and cruelty underneath. I’ll follow the vibe of you guys as to how gritty you want it to get, but there are genuine human issues to play with if folks want to do so.
So long as everyone is careful to distinguish between player and character, it’s all good.
Healing the horse is double fatigue cost due to its size.
The horse’s legs are unbroken, but it took a lot of damage from Thwip’s bullet.: 16HP. It’s bleeding badly; without veterinary treatment, it will die. Sasha can restore HP, but he lacks the expertise to halt bleeding on a horse. He has First Aid skill for bleeding on people.
Ranar’s horseman is unconscious but stable. You can wake him up, but he won’t walk again without a specialist healer.
The first horseman is dead. Apart from the crossbow bolt and bullet wound, he appears to have broken his neck as he fell from the horse.
I will edit to reflect this.
