I've got a player that is converting his dwarven ex-military character from a fighter to a cavalier, and figures its a fairly good fit with the former formal military angle.
Appropriate Mount
Upon trying to find an appropriate mount, he settled on the boar, since dwarves are depicted riding boars often in fantasy literature, and the boar is on the list for animal companions.
Unfortunately, the boar doesn't get a Large advancement, which means its not really a good fit as a mount. Dire boars can be trained as mounts, but there is no way to advance a boar animal companion to a dire boar, even though you can do something similar with wolves, etc.
As a side note, dire boars are noted as mounts used by orcs in the Bestiary, so there is a precedence for boar mounts, even if it doesn't mention dwarves in the entry.
As a stop gap, I'm offering to let him use a feat from Knightly Orders of Ansalon which allows a prospective mount to be the same size as the rider with no penalties, and I'm waiting to see if this works for him.
That having been said, I would have liked to have had a Pathfinder option for this.
Brainstorming/Questions
My player and I discussed the limited use of charge if you can't get your mount into an area. One option that we discussed was if the bonuses to charge worked on any charge, i.e. even if the cavalier charges without a mount.
We also discussed that most classes that have an animal companion get an alternate feature as well. While we agree that charging/riding based abilities should always be a standard for cavaliers, maybe not having a special mount should be an option, and perhaps sharing class abilities might be appropriate, like the ranger's hunter's bond.
He also feels that most of the oaths are corner case situations that don't matter in a lot of adventures. He likes the idea of them, but not the specific oaths and bonuses.
Summation of Brainstorming
We found a work around for the boar mount, although I'm waiting to see if its acceptable. The rest, for the moment, are theories for us to put to the test in the campaign.
It's totally up to you and your player, but its been suggested that mounted combat doesn't work entirely well with the Urban campaign Council of Thieves. A lot of combat goes on indoors. A mount would be useless for the entire second module.
This may be true, but that's kind of part of why were're playtesting it. It fits his background as ex-military, and he wants to see if the times that it does come into play, if it does, makes it worth all of the times in the adventure that it won't come into play.
I did mention that CoT is very much an urban campaign to him when we started this up.
It's totally up to you and your player, but its been suggested that mounted combat doesn't work entirely well with the Urban campaign Council of Thieves. A lot of combat goes on indoors. A mount would be useless for the entire second module.
This may be true, but that's kind of part of why were're playtesting it. It fits his background as ex-military, and he wants to see if the times that it does come into play, if it does, makes it worth all of the times in the adventure that it won't come into play.
I did mention that CoT is very much an urban campaign to him when we started this up.
Well such campains exist, it should be considered in designing the class. This is after all paizo's first Pathfinder AP. It is a very good playtest source. The designers know this adventure well, and your report will be easy for them to evaluate. So I say go for it. Feedback from their own adventure will be more valuable then from my homebrew game because they know exactly what goes into the AP. And council of thieves being mostly an urban adventure means that a less then ideal situation for the cavalier can be explored. Maybe he still does well and just really shines when he can get on his mount, or maybe he is totally gimped, only one way to find out.
Further Musings
Because we really want to see how a cavalier without any band aids works, my player is going to run with an axebeak for a mount, once he gets the chance to ride one, since its too small at 2nd level.
Everything else will be in the actual play playtest thread.