Mounts, Cavalier, and Pathfinder Society

Good morning,

Was looking at the new Cavalier Archetype today and began to ponder a new character into my head. Now, I'm a little fuzzy on how Mounts worked exactly in this system and how they work with Society exactly. I think I'm kind of over thinking things so I wanted some opinions on my thinking. I am going to strip it back to the base thought and make sure this is legal for Society play. Please note Society play and not home game.

A Kobold with the Cavalier Archetype can ride a medium sized Dromaeosaur animal companion.

Is that correct for Society play?

Thank you.

You gain a young animal companion that serves as your mount. You can choose from animal companions with the mount special ability, as well as any additional options from your pledge, as determined by your GM.

This is tricky for society. Anything that says "determined by your GM" is expected to have table variation. Unless something from Campaign Leadership states something or is listed under the character options blog that clarifies it or gives you a list.

Unfortunately there are only 2 animal companions that I know of that have the mount special ability. The horse and riding drake, the latter being uncommon.

So until a list comes out from campaign staff, you may find yourself in a tight spot. Run it by the GM at the start of the scenario and have a back up character ready just in case.

Sorry could not give you the answer you were probably looking for.

IMO, i see no harm in it and would allow it. It would just suffer the same disadvantages as riding animal companions without the mount feature. Half land speed and can not move and use its support function on the same turn.

Any character choice that says as determined by GM, if it's not something allowed by Campaign leadership in PFS, is not allowed.

You have to go by the actually, explicitly allowed option. The table GM doesn't count as the GM for such choices.

So in PFS you must use a creature that you have legal access to with the mount special ability. Right now the only creature you have that option with is a Horse, so all Cavaliers get horses.

Until leadership expands that list somehow you can't choose anything else and your character would be illegal.

That is the usual problem I run into as well with my line of thinking. It's disappointing that we don't even get Riding Dogs as an option for Halflings because they have not step up to provide statement on mount options.

That is the usual problem I run into as well with my line of thinking. It's disappointing that we don't even get Riding Dogs as an option for Halflings because they have not step up to provide statement on mount options.

Gotta admit, I find the riding dog not being a mount option also very weird given that Halflings have the Prairie Rider ancestry feat that calls out ponies and riding dogs as traditional halfling mounts. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually give you the mount trait or bypass the restriction.

The same cannot be said, however, about the level 1 Goblin ancestry feat Rough Rider. If you don't want to wait for a fully enabled dog-riding cavalier, you could do a bit of a legal end-around on this by taking Adopted Ancestry at level 3 (or 1 if human) to pick up Rough Rider. It wouldn't give your wolf/dog the mount trait, but it would let you select it for the purposes of Cavalier thanks to the line "You can always select a wolf as your animal companion, even if you would usually select an animal companion with the mount special ability, such as for a champion’s steed ally."

Kind of silly that you're forced to be adopted by goblins to enable this fairly simple behavior, but it's still early in the edition and it is available to you.