Horse Armor Stand

A Horse Armor Stand — the horse-armour equivalent of the vanilla armour stand. Place the rack, put horse armour on it, and it stays on display. Any item the game itself calls horse armour works, including armour from other mods, without this mod knowing that mod exists.

Install on both the client and the server. Works in singleplayer — just drop it into your mods folder.

Dependencies: Fabric needs Fabric API and Architectury API. NeoForge needs Architectury API. Forge needs no additional dependencies.

Free to use in any modpack — public or private, no permission needed.

What it does

• Place — right-click a block to place the stand on that face, standing on the surface and facing you (nothing places if there is no room).
• Dress / Swap — right-click with horse armour to put it on; whatever was there returns to your inventory.
• Undress — right-click with an empty hand to take the armour off (can be disabled in config).
• Turn — sneak + right-click to rotate (default 45° per click); sneaking always turns, whatever is in your hand.
• Break — hit once to drop the stand and its armour (creative: armour only; explosions destroy the stand and leave the armour on the ground).
• Stays Put — armour is saved with the world; the stand does not fall if the block under it is mined (like an item frame).
• Modded Armour — accepts whatever the game classifies as horse armour (and datapack-made horse armour on 1.21.11+). Drawn with the vanilla horse-armour model, so it looks on the stand as it looks on a horse.
• Dragn's Livestock Overhaul (Forge 1.20.1, optional) — when installed, the stand draws horse armour on that mod's horse model with its textures, for both its own armours (including riot and minimal) and vanilla ones. Any armour that mod cannot draw keeps the vanilla look.

Limitation: armour that replaces the horse with a fully custom 3D model (instead of a vanilla-style texture/equipment asset, aside from supported integrations) will not use that custom model on the stand — it may draw on the standard shape or not draw at all, and armour with a missing texture is not drawn either, though the stand still holds and returns the item. Use extraHorseArmorItems / blockedHorseArmorItems in config if a pack needs to force-allow or block a specific id.

Crafting

Row	Pattern
top	Stick · Leather · Stick
middle	(empty) · Stick · (empty)
bottom	Stick · Smooth Stone Slab · Stick

Five sticks, one leather, one smooth stone slab → 1 Horse Armor Stand (vanilla armour-stand recipe with leather in the top middle). The leather slot is the tag #horsearmorstand:stand_craft_materials (ships with minecraft:leather).

Configuration

File: config/horsearmorstand.json (created on first launch). Same file and keys on Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge — ship one config for every loader.

{
  "rotationStepDegrees": 45,
  "emptyHandRemovesArmor": true,
  "adventureModeCanInteract": false,
  "extraHorseArmorItems": [],
  "blockedHorseArmorItems": [],
  "renderScale": 1.0,
  "renderHeightOffset": 0.0,
  "debugLogging": false
}

Keys:

• rotationStepDegrees (45, range 1–180) — degrees per sneak-right-click; also the snap step for a freshly placed stand.
• emptyHandRemovesArmor (true) — empty-hand right-click undresses the stand. Set false on a display server so visitors cannot undress exhibits.
• adventureModeCanInteract (false) — whether adventure-mode players may dress, undress, turn, or break a stand.
• extraHorseArmorItems ([]) — item ids accepted in addition to what the game classifies as horse armour.
• blockedHorseArmorItems ([]) — item ids refused even if the game calls them horse armour (wins over the list above).
• renderScale (1.0, range 0.25–2.0) — display size multiplier (1.0 = a real horse).
• renderHeightOffset (0.0, range −1.0–1.0) — lift or sink the display, in blocks.
• debugLogging (false) — log every accept/refuse decision when debugging modded armour.

Item ids are forgiving: Iron_Horse_Armor, iron horse armor, and minecraft:iron_horse_armor all match; a missing namespace defaults to minecraft. Out-of-range values are clamped on load, NaN in renderScale or renderHeightOffset falls back to its default (1.0 / 0.0), and unknown keys keep their defaults.

Force-allow one mod's item:

{ "extraHorseArmorItems": ["my_mod:steel_horse_armor"] }

Block one item even though the game calls it horse armour:

{ "blockedHorseArmorItems": ["some_mod:cursed_barding"] }

For Modpack Creators

Recipe and craft-material tag are datapack-driven — no jar rebuild and no config required for those.

Change what the stand is crafted from

Override #horsearmorstand:stand_craft_materials:

{
  "replace": true,
  "values": ["minecraft:iron_ingot", "minecraft:copper_ingot"]
}

Minecraft	Path
1.19.2, 1.20.1	data/horsearmorstand/tags/items/stand_craft_materials.json
1.21.1+	data/horsearmorstand/tags/item/stand_craft_materials.json

"replace": false adds to the default leather instead of replacing it.

Replace or disable the recipe

Keep recipe id horsearmorstand:horse_armor_stand so yours overrides the built-in one.

Minecraft	Path	Ingredient form	Result key
1.19.2, 1.20.1	data/horsearmorstand/recipes/horse_armor_stand.json	{"item": "minecraft:stick"}	"item"
1.21.1	data/horsearmorstand/recipe/horse_armor_stand.json	{"item": "minecraft:stick"}	"id"
1.21.11, 26.2, 26.3	data/horsearmorstand/recipe/horse_armor_stand.json	"minecraft:stick"	"id"

To disable crafting, override with an unsatisfiable recipe (e.g. a single minecraft:barrier) — there is no config toggle for this on purpose (a datapack override works on every supported line).

Translations (resource pack): assets/horsearmorstand/lang/<locale>.json

• item.horsearmorstand.horse_armor_stand
• item.horsearmorstand.horse_armor_stand.tooltip
• entity.horsearmorstand.horse_armor_stand

Details

• Real entity on the server, drawn on the client (like a vanilla armour stand).
• With Dragn's Livestock Overhaul, the horse on a stand keeps the model's default pose with its head up (unlike live horses' idle animation).
• Creative tab: Functional Blocks (next to the vanilla armour stand).
• Sounds: vanilla armour-stand place/break; vanilla horse-armour sound when armour goes on or off. No particles.
• Ships 10 languages: English, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, and Italian.

Feedback

Please report any bugs, errors, or feature suggestions on Discord: https://discord.gg/HTkn94BXmA

More mods by Nikrecs: LeashAll · Better Caravans

My other mods that I recommend.