Looking for a mount with survival chance


Advice

51 to 73 of 73 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>

Ascalaphus wrote:

Quantum Steve: that's basically my problem yeah.

Broom of Flying, Cauldron of Flying and Flying Carpet are starting to look interesting.

I suppose the Broom would fit in an Efficient Quiver. I wonder if a Broom of Flying gets in the way of Somatic spellcasting, or if just getting through the Concentration check is sufficient?

All those are great if you can swing it - I may have misinterpreted the amount of magic you have access to in the campaign.

Items like those are wonderful and beat a land mount any day.

Nothing in the Broom of Flying description says that it gets in the way of Somantic. If your DM says it does, you could go with Carpet of Flying, but the fall-off chance might make you a sad panda. Just fly at 5' off the ground then.

Sovereign Court

Well, since you don't apparently need to be able to cast the spells in the item yourself, it's the easy way to exceed limits; just have a high Spellcraft. That at least is quite possible under Epic 8 rules.

Getting the money is a whole lot harder I think, given the general poverty of our setting. Our main source of income is selling axes and swords taken from the corpses of slain orcs. On the plus side, the current orc incursion means plenty of potential loot. On the minus side we're having trouble finding buyers, because the population is that poor.

As a concession to playing in a deeply-below-WBL setting the DM has also reduced prices of spell components and item creation, although not enough to be comfortably off. I could take CWI to make a couple of items, or if I save up a Broom of Flying. The idea of flying on a broomstick does appeal to me.


Quantum Steve wrote:

More Hp than a commoner maybe. A horse has 15hp; 19hp if it has the advanced template (Heavy Horse). A Lv 5 fighter should have around 52hp (5d10+15(CON)+5(FC)) Just a few more hp than the horse.

Well, the average 1st level Human Warrior has 1D8+Con Bonus hit points. The average 1st level Orc Warrior has the same (though with probably a higher Con Bonus). Both have less hit points than the average horse. So the vast majority of horses have more hit points than the vast majority of humans and orcs. Player Characters are special case, they get to higher levels more readily and thus are a lot tougher. But they don't ride around with signs above their heads saying "52 hit points!" so that the orcs will automatically know that it's easier to kill the horse.

Thus, in the general case, orcs are better off killing the human. Once the human is dead the horse probably isn't an issue anymore. Kill the horse, and you've still got a live human with a pointy stick.

Now the mounted warrior in question WAS doing all the mounted nastiness on an unbarded steed, so yeah, at that point you're dumb to not shoot the horse. But that's not average mounted warrior you're going to be facing. Horses are treasure. Depending on how sophisticated the orcs are, they might have cavalry themselves. They will think "We can kill the puny humans and take their horses!" and laugh evilly until the PCs prove themselves 'not so puny'.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

hahahahaha much better to spend 600,000 plat on mechanical horses for the whole party (rather than a 30gp wagon) hahahahaha or even 2 gazillion plat on flying carpets for everyone!! wheeeeee!!!!! and beg the DM for favors beyond your current capacity... just to avoid having to THINK about using a wagon! Geeze, it's a wonder these folks ever got out of the Dark Ages... :) Most lvl5 parties aren't really ready for a full-on cavalry charge.... not everyone can put skill points in ride. Besides... wizards do not really want to charge into combat on horseback.

GET A WAGON!

Sovereign Court

I thought about the wagon, but I'm not seeing how that's going to actually raise my movement speed much above what it is now.

As for "how do they know to target the horse" - in this case there's an evil wizard who knows us, who's puppetteering the orcs. It's very annoying when most of the enemies you meet know who you are.


Porphyrogenitus wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:
The campaign setting is supposed to be a really low-resource tundra/taiga kind of place, we're nowhere near WBL, but neither is the opposition. It wasn't such a problem at first, but now To-Hit is outpacing armor more and more, which is especially hard on the fighting classes. In general it favors the casters, although the scarcity of wizards means I don't get many new spells.

"Low Magic" always sounds more interesting/fun in theory than it ends up being in practice because the game is built around certain expectations - before 3E these weren't explicitly laid out but by 3E/PF/and especially 4E, it's pretty clear, and after a certain level if you don't have various pieces of magic armor, you may as well not be wearing armor at all.

Which like you said is fine for Casters, they often may as well be naked anyhow with just a girdle of many pouches to keep their components in (or, if the group doesn't track it, no need for girdle even).

Your DM might want to start building in "innate" non-magical bonuses for classes that are being gimped by not having "level appropriate" items. IIRC there were rules for this in one of the 3.5e books; basically all they were though is laying out at a certain level characters got a certain + to hit, damage, and AC.

"But Porphy" people say "if you do that they may as well not be playing low magic at all" - no, because you still "miss out"/don't get all the other weapon/armor special abilities (keen shocking holy vicious whatever), you're low on wondrous items, wands, rods, rings, and so on.

But back on track: Golem Mounts can be pretty badarse; Lord Robilar (of Greyhawk fame) had a Golem Mount. Personally I wouldn't ride a Flesh Golem Mount (this is very icky); I also wouldn't ride a Zombie Mount (also icky) or Skeleton (you get poked in ackward places. Ok ok you use a saddle, but still; it's just not done).

Note that unlike Leadership, you have to invest 2 Feats if you want to make your Golem yourself. Which you'll almost...

If you want more magi items and all your slots filled, you will never be happy with low magic. If you accept the setting and go from there, get stronger through levels not really items, and accept and prepare for not having magic always in your court, low magic is tremendous fun.

Less cloaks of resistance, less giant modifiers till much later in levels, more close and risky encounters. I've had great fun running them, and usually they are a joy to play. They also have far less chance to turn the game into the accounting chronicles (okay, so I turn that into a +3 sword, now can I pick up this, this and this) or the crafting chronicles.

Love me some spellcasters, but not the high magic.


Helic wrote:
Quantum Steve wrote:

More Hp than a commoner maybe. A horse has 15hp; 19hp if it has the advanced template (Heavy Horse). A Lv 5 fighter should have around 52hp (5d10+15(CON)+5(FC)) Just a few more hp than the horse.

Well, the average 1st level Human Warrior has 1D8+Con Bonus hit points. The average 1st level Orc Warrior has the same (though with probably a higher Con Bonus). Both have less hit points than the average horse. So the vast majority of horses have more hit points than the vast majority of humans and orcs. Player Characters are special case, they get to higher levels more readily and thus are a lot tougher. But they don't ride around with signs above their heads saying "52 hit points!" so that the orcs will automatically know that it's easier to kill the horse.

Thus, in the general case, orcs are better off killing the human. Once the human is dead the horse probably isn't an issue anymore. Kill the horse, and you've still got a live human with a pointy stick.

Now the mounted warrior in question WAS doing all the mounted nastiness on an unbarded steed, so yeah, at that point you're dumb to not shoot the horse. But that's not average mounted warrior you're going to be facing. Horses are treasure. Depending on how sophisticated the orcs are, they might have cavalry themselves. They will think "We can kill the puny humans and take their horses!" and laugh evilly until the PCs prove themselves 'not so puny'.

If a cavalryman has seen a single successful serious battle though, they are unlikely to be level 1 anymore. Survived their first clash, cut down other fresh cav, flanked inf or charged into bows, killed those that routed, hunted them down. It can be very easy to level up fast as a cavalryman, that speed can be great for the xp.

This is just a cav fanboy ranting, but a lot of the cav in Golarion are presented as quite veteran, Lastwall, Taldorian, Hellknight cavalry, cavaliers overall of any level above squire. For cav that have seen action, I usually make them level 3, with a serious leader of about 6. Killing the horse then can be a fair bit easier, but they do have mounted combat.

Cheerio!

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well, under Epic 8 levelling out of trouble isn't really an option. Also, it's not like I'm running out of item slots anytime soon, we're only now getting together enough money to start making any items at all.


3.5 Loyalist wrote:
If you want more magi items and all your slots filled, you will never be happy with low magic. If you accept the setting and go from there, get stronger through levels not really items, and accept and prepare for not having magic always in your court, low magic is tremendous fun.

you missed the point; it's one thing to not be festooned with Wondrous items in every slot. It's another thing to miss out on the +to hit/ac/saves the game essentially expects everyone to have at a given level. of course you can play low magic if you're a PF Fighter, apparently (though you'll get hit a lot), as long as no one ever targets your weakest save, and see also "HawaiianNative's" thread (there it was refusal to accept WBL for RPing purposes, and thus missing out gear that would come as a result of it; here it is a DM-enforced impoverishment - which isn't about "well, gee, the party doesn't have big bags of swag. Porphy, you nab, don't you understand it can be fun to play without having an immense bank vault? Sheesh!" - sure it can be but if you miss out on the items that result from it, you look for creative work-arounds).

And, as OP is finding out, of course it's possible to play a low magic caster, as long as you're willing to walk everywhere. Or come up with a solution that basically substitutes in a "non-magic" equivalent.

Anyhow, next time please pick on someone else for your straw-man arguments; I'm trying to be nice & civil on these boards and would hate to be drawn into replying in kind to pointed snark.


Now, as for mounts. . .here is something fairly cheesy, and normally I wouldn't recommend it for this era's play.

But back in the day, when we were basically using our horses for mobility and there were no feats or real special abilities (except for Paladins) to increase a mount's survivability, we (my group at the time, where we rotated DMing duties) used to essentially handwave mount survivability.

We'd neglect to roll damage on them in spell AoEs most of the time, enemies would *mostly* neglect to attack them, and the like. It could happen, but was kept to a minimum so the mounts wouldn't be dead all the time when we were outdoors. It's a truly cheesy way to go (we were in middle school and high school at the time), and if you're very into versimilitude it won't be satisfying.

BUT if all you'er looking for from your mount is survivability, not something that will contribute meaningfully to the battle beyond the movement increase (which in your case you could get from casting Expeditious Retreat), and you and your DM is willing to "abstract out" the mount from attacks (after all, while killing the mount might gimp the mounted combat fighter, geeking the mage first is a better strategy for enemies to employ vs you), it might be the way to go.

I hesitated to propose this alternative because the cheese factor is high and, well, like I said, normally I wouldn't recommend this "solution" nowdays. But it might work for this low-wealth campaign and save both coin and the lives of many horses.


3.5 Loyalist wrote:
This is just a cav fanboy ranting, but a lot of the cav in Golarion are presented as quite veteran, Lastwall, Taldorian, Hellknight cavalry, cavaliers overall of any level above squire. For cav that have seen action, I...

Cavalry units, sure! However, I posit that not every group of guys on horses is a cavalry unit. People use horses to travel around.

Now as the OP has stated, the orcs are being directed by EvilBadWizard, so they have foreknowledge as to what/who to target. So the cavalry fighter's ride is basically screwed.


Porphyrogenitus wrote:
3.5 Loyalist wrote:
If you want more magi items and all your slots filled, you will never be happy with low magic. If you accept the setting and go from there, get stronger through levels not really items, and accept and prepare for not having magic always in your court, low magic is tremendous fun.

you missed the point; it's one thing to not be festooned with Wondrous items in every slot. It's another thing to miss out on the +to hit/ac/saves the game essentially expects everyone to have at a given level. of course you can play low magic if you're a PF Fighter, apparently (though you'll get hit a lot), as long as no one ever targets your weakest save, and see also "HawaiianNative's" thread (there it was refusal to accept WBL for RPing purposes, and thus missing out gear that would come as a result of it; here it is a DM-enforced impoverishment - which isn't about "well, gee, the party doesn't have big bags of swag. Porphy, you nab, don't you understand it can be fun to play without having an immense bank vault? Sheesh!" - sure it can be but if you miss out on the items that result from it, you look for creative work-arounds).

And, as OP is finding out, of course it's possible to play a low magic caster, as long as you're willing to walk everywhere. Or come up with a solution that basically substitutes in a "non-magic" equivalent.

Anyhow, next time please pick on someone else for your straw-man arguments; I'm trying to be nice & civil on these boards and would hate to be drawn into replying in kind to pointed snark.

What the game expects be damned! It isn't the boss of us, it cannot make the necessity argument. :P


Porphyrogenitus wrote:

Now, as for mounts. . .here is something fairly cheesy, and normally I wouldn't recommend it for this era's play.

But back in the day, when we were basically using our horses for mobility and there were no feats or real special abilities (except for Paladins) to increase a mount's survivability, we (my group at the time, where we rotated DMing duties) used to essentially handwave mount survivability.

We'd neglect to roll damage on them in spell AoEs most of the time, enemies would *mostly* neglect to attack them, and the like. It could happen, but was kept to a minimum so the mounts wouldn't be dead all the time when we were outdoors. It's a truly cheesy way to go (we were in middle school and high school at the time), and if you're very into versimilitude it won't be satisfying.

BUT if all you'er looking for from your mount is survivability, not something that will contribute meaningfully to the battle beyond the movement increase (which in your case you could get from casting Expeditious Retreat), and you and your DM is willing to "abstract out" the mount from attacks (after all, while killing the mount might gimp the mounted combat fighter, geeking the mage first is a better strategy for enemies to employ vs you), it might be the way to go.

I hesitated to propose this alternative because the cheese factor is high and, well, like I said, normally I wouldn't recommend this "solution" nowdays. But it might work for this low-wealth campaign and save both coin and the lives of many horses.

There are non horse mounts, giant lizards, nightmares, I had a char that rode a half yuanti horse once. It entirely depends what the dm offers and for them to realise that you want something more than horse flesh. The small lizardmen in my world ride giant grasshoppers.


Porphyrogenitus wrote:
3.5 Loyalist wrote:
If you want more magi items and all your slots filled, you will never be happy with low magic. If you accept the setting and go from there, get stronger through levels not really items, and accept and prepare for not having magic always in your court, low magic is tremendous fun.

you missed the point; it's one thing to not be festooned with Wondrous items in every slot. It's another thing to miss out on the +to hit/ac/saves the game essentially expects everyone to have at a given level. of course you can play low magic if you're a PF Fighter, apparently (though you'll get hit a lot), as long as no one ever targets your weakest save, and see also "HawaiianNative's" thread (there it was refusal to accept WBL for RPing purposes, and thus missing out gear that would come as a result of it; here it is a DM-enforced impoverishment - which isn't about "well, gee, the party doesn't have big bags of swag. Porphy, you nab, don't you understand it can be fun to play without having an immense bank vault? Sheesh!" - sure it can be but if you miss out on the items that result from it, you look for creative work-arounds).

And, as OP is finding out, of course it's possible to play a low magic caster, as long as you're willing to walk everywhere. Or come up with a solution that basically substitutes in a "non-magic" equivalent.

Anyhow, next time please pick on someone else for your straw-man arguments; I'm trying to be nice & civil on these boards and would hate to be drawn into replying in kind to pointed snark.

This is no snark, this is plain, I've seen it. There are divisions that can be made based on what players want and focus upon. Some hate low magic settings and games, despise them. I have dmed enough to know this at least. Some might see this as a serious problem facing the hobby. You don't have to listen to me though, head out, play and observe.


3.5 Loyalist wrote:
What the game expects be damned! It isn't the boss of us, it cannot make the necessity argument. :P
Well that's true, but we have to come up with clever (or not so clever, in my case) work arounds, which is what we're trying to help OP out with here. ^_^
Quote:
This is no snark, this is plain, I've seen it.

Fair enough; I probably interpreted your post as pointedly aimed at me when it wasn't.

Anyhoo, the "easy" solution, for high-fantasy settings (which is inclusive of higher magic), everyone who needs a mount finds/gets one suitable for their level, in other words that can survive (and then probably contribute to, for better or worse) the encounters the party faces.

The "hard but potentially very fun" one is just going with horses, but finding a way to keep them from being turned into monster kibble every encounter. I do like the moar HD idea, especially since the campaign has an 8th-level cap, so since the party won't be gaining more HD, the mounts won't need to "keep up with the joneses" in order to remain relevant/alive as the campaign goes on.

5-6 HD Horses, and/or Horses with the Toughness Feat, might be fine. Then you're not flying around. But when OP mentioned he could craft a broom of flying now, well, that rather solves his problem (though without being "low magic") - the broom doesn't fight (he's not interested in having the mount fight anyhow), and it doesn't have to worry too much about hit points too often (except for attacks that hit an object).

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Talisman of the Summoned Steed 3,600gp.

Sovereign Court

Well, just played a new session. Fairly uneventful, but we managed to reach a city and sell off previous battlefield loot that was starting to pile up. We're now around 10% of WBL or so.

I've told the DM I'm gonna scribe some scrolls next session. He's frightened of losing control (new to PF, too), so I'm gonna get him used to magic item creation starting on the easy stuff. Depending on how that goes maybe I'll take CWI as my next feat.

Getting a Broom of Flying will still take significant saving up, but the flavor appeals to me and the mechanics are agreeable.

A Figurine might also work, especially because the item isn't destroyed if the critter gets killed, and some of the critters could kick the asses of our fairly mundane opponents.

The custom magic item could be the cheapest and most precise solution yet, but given how scaredy my DM is, I don't know if it'll work out well.

Alternatively, such a "gentleman's agreement" about mounts as described above also appeals to me, but I don't know if it'll fly. I'm afraid the DM will consider it too "unrealistic". But most of the party is now becoming convinced of the need for steed, getting pursued by foot soldiers (while out of spells) and having a hard time getting away is annoying.


3.5 Loyalist wrote:
This is no snark, this is plain, I've seen it. There are divisions that can be made based on what players want and focus upon. Some hate low magic settings and games, despise them. I have dmed enough to know this at least. Some might see this as a serious problem facing the hobby. You don't have to listen to me though, head out, play and observe.

Another problem with low magic is that it doesn't always mean the same thing. Some GMs might see it as "You won't have jack for magic.", while others might just want to ratchet back the "Quiver'o'UsefulWands" overkill but still hand out the odd powerful item.


Yep, its meaning can really change.

I would never take out magic items entirely, but if the players are smart they can load up pretty quick. Very few stores o' magic except for alchemists and herbalists.


Remco Sommeling wrote:
"To create magic items, spellcasters use special feats which allow them to invest time and money in an item's creation. At the end of this process, the spellcaster must make a single skill check (usually Spellcraft, but sometimes another skill) to finish the item. If an item type has multiple possible skills, you choose which skill to make the check with. The DC to create a magic item is 5 + the caster level for the item. Failing this check means that the item does not function and the materials and time are wasted. Failing this check by 5 or more results in a cursed item.

For creating an item, here is how the spellcraft check for, say a 10dc goes. 10+ means the item is good and grand. 9-6 means dangnabit! we suck, its broke! 5 and below means Sweet! We rock, we built it! Now lets go check it out... Dangnabit! its cursed! Git it offa me!!!

Going with this, you can attempt to create an item that you have no reason to actually believe you could succeed at creating. Create it with none of the spells, rush building it, choose to atto fail if you want. As long as you fail to meet the targeted dc -5 your item automatically counts as being passed. It just has a curse tacked on...
Now here is the risky part. The curse could be something as benign as growing 6 inches taller... Or as bad as your alignment switching, or gaining 2 negative levels...
So if your willing to take the risk, or you are building something you generally have no direct contact with (a golem for instance) this can be an interesting alternative. Great roleplaying can come from this and Incredible randomness as well.

Be on the safe side, have someone who can identify the curse (if you know that it is cursed, and you would know that it is in this case, the dc is the same)

As someone else mentioned, a battle wagon would be a good idea, have the wizard in the topmost middle tower, the fighters get free roam around the sides, and the archer gets the middle platform.

You might want to look at a folding boat and turn it into an animated object. You are probably looking at a huge construct as that is the size of a wagon. I would probably give it 2X faster and trample for its construction points. This would give you a huge wagon, 78 hp, hardness 5, move speed of 50 and the ability to trample to prevent you from getting surrounded. This would require you to be level 7 and cost roughly 18,200 to buy, or 9,100 to build. Essentially replacing the broom of flying. Alternatively you could give it 4 speed increases to have it have a move speed of 70.

The benefits of this is that it can fold up and fit in your backpack, turn into a horse sized box that can hold 4 people, or turn into the battle fortress.

To make it cheaper, you can give it the slower and flammable flaws to reduce its price by 1000, or add the brittle and haunted flaws as well to reduce the price by 2000.

Or if you want it sooner, you could animate a statue of a horse "borrowed" from the town square and give it the metal and faster craft points. It would count as large, have 52 hp and 10 hardness, 40 base speed. Give it the haunted flaw and have it move faster (50). This would cost 7000 +the cost of the statue and have a caster level of 4 (5 to qualify for craft construct). Give it the flammable and brittle flaws and it would cost 5000, or 2500 to craft.


And whops I just realized I necroed this thread from a month ago... Sorry. Chances are the OP is already beyond this point in the campaign, tho it is still good knowledge to have.

But I still love the idea of a battle fortess rolling up the hill with the entire party sitting inside!

Sovereign Court

No biggie, holidays meant the party didn't move forward much this month :)

You probably came here through the other thread about mounts not going splat, huh?


Ya I did actually, but huh. No loss, this was good exercise for me in construct crafting. One thing I would love to do is build a crafter. Someone who builds miniture armies of constructs and golems, or even just a few big ones.

So it was fun after all, and Still love the idea of building a battle wagon!

51 to 73 of 73 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Looking for a mount with survival chance All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.