Mounted Vital Strike (NOT charging)

[Plenticool]

I'm wondering about making a half-giant Goliath Druid wielding a large-size Butchering Axe to use Vital Strike while riding a mammoth companion. The thought is, vital strike works best for large characters, and the single-attack nature means the low BAB from druid won't matter as much. The goal would be to have both of us Enlarged and vital striking, me with an impact, growing Butchering Axe, and it with the gore attack boosted with strong jaw and improved natural attack. Good silly fun (it should get up to 16d6 base weapon damage for me in huge-giant form and 12d6 for the enlarged mount after a mammoth rider dip, if I'm doing the tables right).

So the first question is:
1) Riding the mammoth, can we move its speed, and I use vital strike at the end? I believe the relevant piece of text is:

"If your mount moves more than 5 feet, you can only make a single melee attack. Essentially, you have to wait until the mount gets to your enemy before attacking, so you can’t make a full attack. Even at your mount’s full speed, you don’t take any penalty on melee attacks while mounted."

Can that 'single melee attack' use vital strike? It doesn't SAY standard action attack action but the intent certainly seems to be there.

More questions:
2) Can the mammoth vital strike when I do, after moving its speed? (I suspect this is a yes, even if the answer to 1 is 'no').

3) Can I use the mount to double move, and then I vital strike at the end? (This feels like it should be 'no', because the casting and ranged-attack-while-moving options happen DURING the double move/run and not at the end).

4) What can I do if my mount does a trample attack?

The action economy with mounts, especially mounts with attacks, seems really unclear to me, and I'd love a good summary. In this case I could just dismount and walk next to the mount and everything would be totally clear, but I'd like to use its speed if possible, and I just want to know the rules here.

I feel like a simplifying house-rule such as, "while mounted, either you or your mount has a full round of actions, and the other can take a standard action. Your mount cannot move more than 5 feet in a round that you make a melee full attack." would be very welcome and would kill the more ridiculous natural-attack double-pouncing shenanigan builds that you can't even picture being physically possible.

Last, is there anything else people see could go with this build? Cleaving Smash would be nice, clearly, and hippopotamus and arsinoitherium would do slightly more damage, but have trade-offs. Cornugon smash into Hurtful could get an swift action attack (without VS), if things aren't dead after the first.

For reference, the damage-by-size numbers I'm using:
3d6 med butcher axe
4d6 large (oversized) butcher axe - half giant
6d6 impact weapon
8d6 growing weapon 10 min/day
12d6 +1 size cat polymorph (enlarge person/wildshape giant)
16d6 +2 size cat polymorph (14th level giant form II)

2d6 large elephant gore (animal companion statblock)
3d6 huge (mammoth rider)
4d6 garg (enlarge person/animal growth)
6d6 imp nat attack
8d6
12d6 strong jaw

[blahpers]

Yes. As long as you aren't charging, you get your full action economy with the caveat that you can't take more than one melee attack. You can take the attack action and apply vital strike as usual.

(Aside: I always felt that you should be able to full-attack so long as the targets were sufficiently spread out, but that would be challenging to codify as a coherent rule.)

[Plenticool]

blahpers wrote:

Yes. As long as you aren't charging, you get your full action economy with the caveat that you can't take more than one melee attack. You can take the attack action and apply vital strike as usual.

Ah, I like that reading. So the 'single melee attack' wording is just meant to be like the condition on mount movement if you full attack in my house rule--your actions can't include more than one melee attack if your mount has moved more than 5 ft. Seems like that would kill the Hurtful combo, then, is that right?

What about mount double moving or trampling? Can I attack at any point, or just at the end, or not at all?

[Ssalarn]

Plenticool wrote:

1) Riding the mammoth, can we move its speed, and I use vital strike at the end?

Yes.

Quote:

2)Can the mammoth vital strike when I do, after moving its speed?

As long as it has the Vital Strike feat, yes.

Quote:

3)Can I use the mount to double move, and then I vital strike at the end?

Yes. The attack you're making is still an attack action.

Quote:

4)What can I do if my mount does a trample attack?

Generally, whatever you could have done if your mount didn't trample. Since you're not making mounted charges (which require both you and your mount to use the charge action), you don't have any specific limitations on what you can use your actions for outside of the standard mounted combat limitations, like not being able to make more than one attack if your mount moves more than 5 feet.