Does a mounted cavalier count as "adjacent" to his mount...


Advanced Player's Guide Playtest: Final Playtest

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2009 Top 4

... for purposes of teamwork feats? Most of these feats require you to be adjacent to another character who has the same feat. The cavalier can grant a teamwork feat to his mount, since the recipients of "tactician" don't need to meet the feat's prerequisites. I'm just wondering how to adjudicate a cavalier who tries to use "coordinated defense" and "coordinated maneuvers" while mounted.

Thanks for any thoughts.


Had the same question actually.


raidou wrote:

... for purposes of teamwork feats? Most of these feats require you to be adjacent to another character who has the same feat. The cavalier can grant a teamwork feat to his mount, since the recipients of "tactician" don't need to meet the feat's prerequisites. I'm just wondering how to adjudicate a cavalier who tries to use "coordinated defense" and "coordinated maneuvers" while mounted.

Thanks for any thoughts.

I hate to answer this without the rulebook in front of me, but (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong) if I'm not mistaken, doesn't the cavalier and their mount count as being "in the same square" when mounted? Thus, they couldn't be adjacent to each other by the rules. I thought I recalled reading this somewhere once.

That one that lets you swap places sure would be wonky, though!

Sovereign Court

From the PRD:

Mounts in Combat: Horses, ponies, and riding dogs can serve readily as combat steeds. Mounts that do not possess combat training (see the Handle Animal skill) are frightened by combat. If you don't dismount, you must make a DC 20 Ride check each round as a move action to control such a mount. If you succeed, you can perform a standard action after the move action. If you fail, the move action becomes a full-round action, and you can't do anything else until your next turn.

Your mount acts on your initiative count as you direct it. You move at its speed, but the mount uses its action to move.

A horse (not a pony) is a Large creature and thus takes up a space 10 feet (2 squares) across. For simplicity, assume that you share your mount's space during combat.

--if the house is a Vrockin' don't bother knockin'!


Seems clear from the start that a rider shares his square with his mount, but I'm not sure that answers the "adjacent" question. Seems to me that two creature literally on top of each other are even more adjacent than two creatures laterally next to each other.

I really dislike these non-sensical semantic distinctions. It's why I play PF instead of 4E.


No. Adjacent requires two objects to be in adjoining spaces. The mount and rider share the exact same spaces. It's just like the "are you your own ally" question: no, you're not, because ally is a term for a relationship between two entities.


In a way, it isn't clear, but it isn't clear fromt he OGL rules, and not really Paizo's fault.

This is a unique situation where two "beings" (targets) occupy the same square(s) at the same time. The same sort of cunundrum occurs if someone not Grappling tries to stab someone who is involved in a Grapple. You get into weird issues of äccidentally hitting the wrong person" and other things.

We always rule based on size. Typical situation is a Medium attacker trying to hit a Medium rider on a Large mount. Because the mount in question is larger than the attacker and the rider, the mount is always targetted first. This leads to riders wanting to take the Mounted Cõmbat Feat at some point in their career!

If you have a differnt size set-up, say a Huge attacker versus a Medium Rider and Large mount, then Huge can choose whom to attack, but it's still easier to apply hits/damage to the mount first, incorporate Mounted Combat to negate the hits until they direct attacks at the rider, and then...

Wait.

There's no called shots.

Easiest is to apply the Mounted Combat to allow the Rider to negate attacks, and if the roll to hit would still hit the rider, apply the attack directly to him.

There's also being thrown from mounts, and all that.


Zurai wrote:
No. Adjacent requires two objects to be in adjoining spaces. The mount and rider share the exact same spaces. It's just like the "are you your own ally" question: no, you're not, because ally is a term for a relationship between two entities.

"No." sounds so final. You must be equally certain that reach weapons can attack tiny creatures occupying your own sqaure.

A rider and his mount are in adjoining "spaces", just not adjoining 5 foot squares. If you're saying adjacent means neighboring 5 foot squares, and only those squares excluding your own, then not only do we get crazy rules scenarios but it's also unsupported in the rules as far as I found.

Not sure how this is like being "your own ally". A mount is its own creature with its own actions and attacks. Just because rider and mount share space and initiative for combat doesn't mean they are one creature.

If the rules prohibited teamwork feats from working with mounts that would be totally fine and understandable for balance reasons, but then I would say that ruling should apply to any animal companion whether you sit on it or stand next to it. No need to rules lawyer "adjacent" IMHO.


If the answer is no then you are safe from cleave and whirlwind attack too since it must attack adjacent targets and you aren't adjacent.


My post was mainly to isllustrate that while the rules do state that the rider and mount are considered to occupy the same space/square at the same time, the fact remains tha there are no further rules to govern that case in the RAW. Never have been. In fact, movement rules explicitly prohibit occupying the same space as others, but both the mount rules and Grappling defy the prohibition.

The crux of my point was to use your best judgement, and that in doing so, there are verious rules that exist to form a position on the fly. Do what works for the adventure or encounter, but realize that there are rules that support verious positions on the topic.

I like the following:

1) Attacker strikes
2) Does it hit the mount AC? Yes = apply hit to Mount, unless rider AC lower, then apply hit to rider
3) Does it hit the mount AC? No = Does it hit the rider? Ten strike misses
4) Attacker can choose to focus his attack on rider or mount, but this action provokes from the opposite choice.
5) Rider gets bonus due to elevated position if mount is equal size or larger than attacker

I might change that up given the circumstances adn what feels like it would playout the best.

Liberty's Edge

Not to sound picky, but "adjacent" automatically negates being treated as adjacent to oneself. The term means "near" or "close" but does not mean "in the same spot." Therefor even if two objects are distinct, but occupy the exact same location and space, they are not adjacent. If they occupy different space but are close to each-other they are adjacent. Simple enough. (Note: When I say "space" I am talking literally, not in game rules).

To that end, I would say a mounted character acts as "adjacent" to his mount, and visa-versa. A cleave or whirlwind would treat them as separate eligible targets, and if you could somehow teach your animal teamwork feats it could help you (though this is not likely to be useful in the "mount" situation, as most require specific positioning).

When attacking a mounted character I've always seen it run that you simply pick which target to attack (after all, they are both adjacent and distinct targets) and go for it.


Nope.

The only thing we can be interested in here is game terminology, and that means 'adjacent' gets defined as being in a square next to another active member of the combat grid. You share a line.

Occupying the 'same space' means that you have two members on the grid counting as being int he same square. Again, the situation is deemed illegal, but it can occur under two spacial situations: Grapples, and riding mounts.

The problem is that, although your logic is sound, you can never use real world reasoning to figure game rule problems.

Maybe it's something Piazo can add to the book in order to clarify how mounts are considered in combat since the rules don't give a black and white means by the RAW.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
p182 Core, melee attack section wrote:

(Opponents within 5 feet are considered adjacent to you.)

After searching (via CTRL-F) the entire core book for a definition of the term adjacent (by searching for "adjacent"), this is the only thing that could be considered a definition.

If entity <= 5ft from your position, they are adjacent. This is a rules definition, not a real-world-logic one, so I hope it's to your liking.
I doubt whether or not something is adjacent depends on whether or not it is an opponent, as that would just be silly.

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Advanced Player's Guide Playtest / Advanced Player's Guide Playtest: Final Playtest / Does a mounted cavalier count as "adjacent" to his mount... All Messageboards
Recent threads in Advanced Player's Guide Playtest: Final Playtest