Horse speed and chasing

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Hey OL community
Last session I had a bad guy that I would like to be a recurring villan run away from the party with some of his mooks on horseback. The party wizard has boon acces 2 for haste and hast hasted most of the party, who now have a movement of 40 - 45 ft. While horses only have… 40.
For next session I have thought of some ways the villan can get away from the party (leaving his mooks to die for him, and run into a forest himself).
However I thought it quite strange that horses are so, slow. For long distances yes, but a galloping should easily outrun even hasted charachters from my perspective (2x45=90t/round = 10mph. While a horse galloping horse is 25-30mph).

Any suggestions how to fix this? Do horses get a special galop feature. Or do I change the mount rules to let both the rider and the steed act independently while also letting the rider give its actions to it’s steed (effectively doubling its speed if the rider is not doing anything else)?

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Actually, over long distances a regular human in the real world can outrun a horse. It’s not easy, but the reason is, humans sweat so they don’t overheat, horses pant to not overheat.

There’s some race that’s run every year, and there’s only been a few cases of it happening that the human won, but it has happened.

So if a human was hasted, it is even more likely to happen. Though PL2 haste is a little less, and that was an impressive disadvantage roll to haste the whole party.

also, you are the GM, you define the speed of a horse in your world.

Just b/c you are fast doesn’t mean you can catch up, there are rolls you can do if you want to see if players get tripped up, not to mention over a long period of time, maintaining the sustain on haste would be difficult.

You can do anything you want to do, really. You can just say, you are roughly matching the speed of the riders, but don’t seem to be gaining on them. You can attempt to maintain this pace, but you will likely suffer fatigue, etc.

The easiest way (besides just telling them they aren’t catching up) is to have the mooks turn around and fight which lets the guy get away.

Also, there are lots of times where a GM plans for a villain to get away, and it doesn’t happen. That can be interesting story as well, if that’s how the dice landed, and the players were inventive and creative, then you are punishing them for the inventive and creativity they had by allowing the person to get away (not saying that is the specific case here).

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just to follow up, horses do sweat, but humans are more effecient at it, but that’s just based on some light reading. I haven’t studied it in depth or anything. Most mammels regulate through panting, and some sweat too I guess, but humans do it solely through sweat. Interesting stuff.

For those interested, here’s that human vs Human on Horse racing I remembered reading about:

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