You might want to check this blog post.
A paladin's mount retains the animal type, despite its increased Intelligence, until the paladin attains level 11. At this point the mount gains the celestial template, and becomes a magical beast.
The delicious type!
You can really taste the divine bond! It's almost like a honey glaze.
ent.
You might want to check this blog post.Note that while the monster guidelines talk about a maximum Int for an animal, this only applies to the creation process.The Paladin mount is created with a 6 INT. It can't be an animal.
-James
Oh yes, right.....
Well there goes that.
The Paladin mount is created with a 6 INT. It can't be an animal.
The paladin mount is an exception to the general rules.
Looking at the rules, I would say that you could really go either way, and reference a rule that supports that decision.
I think that most of this stuff will be tweaked once a sort of "rules clarifications and adjustments" document comes out.
I'm going to say type is animal, and that's the reason for this line: "At 11th level, the mount gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast for the purposes of determining which spells affect it.".
But again, I don't think this stuff has been 100% sorted out yet, so I wouldn't get attached to doing it my way.
It originally is treated as an animal for purposes of determining which spells affect it by virtue of the rules for animal companions.
Neither of these denote the actual type however... only how the creature is considered for purposes of spells.
What does it matter what the mount's type is, then, so long as its treated as an animal until level 11, and a magical beast thereafter?
Ultimately, it sounds as if you're looking for information that doesn't matter in any way.
If it is not an animal then it does not have to be commanded with the handle animal skill and can be given more complex orders than are available with handle animal.
That's a given anyway, due to its Intelligence; at an Intelligence of 6, even an animal can understand language, and commands can be issued without use of the Handle Animal skill.
I'm gonna sit back and watch this one. This looks like fun....
Ok, proceed.
the type can affect things other than spells, like does a Ranger with Animal Favored Enemy get bonuses against it? or does it need magical beasts? What about a Bane weapon?
they likely use the "it retains the animal type" language b/c you take the stats for a Horse (or camel or wolf etc.) and then just give it a 6 Int instead of 2. Really it doesn't really make that much of a difference what you call it, just make a decision and stick with it.
It's actually very easy to determine. An animal companion is of the animal type; apes, horses, lions, dinosaurs, etc., are all animals. There is no statement in the druid class' writeup stating that this changes. Similarly, there is no statement in the paladin's class writeup that this changes. A paladin's mount is an animal, though it is treated as a magical beast with regard to spells beyond level 11.
My version of a Paladin mount is a house rule, but I feel it adds a ton of flavor to the game.....
A paladin mount is actually a paladin who is serving a pennance for something they have done or a mistake in judgement they may of made. This is reserved for paladins who did not mean to be bad, made an honest mistake but that mistake resulting in someing bad and who really still want to be paladins.
These "pennance paladins" are given a form, something that really makes them feel like they are "paying a price". For example, in my current game one of the paladins called for his mount at 4th level and got a "pennance paladin" which, in this case, happens to be a female gnome paladin in the form of a centaur.
It creates some wonderful RP situations when a Dwarf paladin rides into town on a centaur that talks like a repentant female gnome.
As for what the mount can do, I have always treated it as something very special. I don't sweat the rules so much in that area.
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Many people seem to be of the opinion that the Paladin's mount is of type animal.I believe that seeing as it has an INT of 6 it doesn't qualify for type: animal, and as such it is a magic beast. By the rules for Paladin mounts they count as animals for purposes of spells, but their type is magical beast.
How do other people weigh in on this?
If it is type: animal.. what's the point of giving it an INT of 6? Why make something strange here if for no purpose?
-James
I'm assuming for this discussion that we are treating the animal intelligence blog as a rules source.
The premise of this thread is that a paladin's mount is created with an intelligence of 6 or higher. This premise is false.
This says, to paraphrase, "The paladin has an animal as a mount. Here are some examples; the examples are all animals. Use the rules for animal companion, but it's intelligence is 6 or more."
Your argument is that since the intelligence is 6 or more, but didn't happen through HP intelligence bump, the mount couldn't have been an animal to start with. This is invalid. The animal becomes a mount with intelligence of 6. What the mount had at creation is undefined. You are assuming that entering gameplay is creation. It is an unnecessary assumption that creates a paradox. Occam must be rolling in his grave. :)
In addition, increased intelligence can happen in a number of ways, not just through HP bump and gameplay at the table. The only thing we know about an animal's intelligence is that it generally doesn't have an intelligence greater than 2 at birth. The bestiary says it never does. The blog says it generally doesn't.
This says nothing about gameplay being the only way an animal can have intelligence greater than 2. It says nothing about an animal with intelligence greater than 2 becoming a magical beast. In contrast, it explicitly says that an effect that gives an animal intelligence greater than 2 does not make it a magical beast unless the effect says so. It says that an animal can grow (nothing about only through gameplay) to have an intelligence greater than 2 through a variety of means. As a final out, despite starting with the statement that the maximum Int of 2 only applies to creation process, this isn't absolute. The blog says that animals should not generally be created this way; the clear implication is that they can be created this way as an exception.
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So, a paladin's mount can be an animal that gained a higher intelligence through some unspecified means prior to becoming a bonded mount. It's even possible that the act of becoming a mount is one of the various means that a mount can gain a higher intelligence. Or, the paladin's mount can be the implied exception to the creation process. While the explicit process isn't defined, it is an unnecessary complication to say that the mount must be an magical beast.
This all said, I agree with the idea that the underlying problem is that the developers let the genie out of the bottle by allowing animals to have intelligence greater than 2. It violates core design concepts of the game system that they inherited and built upon including creature type and game mastery. That is primarily theoretical. From a practical standpoint this comes into play regarding how to control animals that have an intelligence greater than 6; Jason acknowledges this in the discussion of the blog, in this post. Expect change in a hypothetical future edition. :)
Removed a post. Please keep it civil.
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I'm saying that the Paladin mount feature does not say that it raises the mounts INT to 6, but rather the paladin gains a mount that has these features.
Your argument is that since the intelligence is 6 or more, but didn't happen through HP intelligence bump, the mount couldn't have been an animal to start with. This is invalid. The animal becomes a mount with intelligence of 6. What the mount had at creation is undefined. You are assuming that entering gameplay is creation. It is an unnecessary assumption that creates a paradox. Occam must be rolling in his grave. :)
Actually, what you have said is:
- "I believe that seeing as it has an INT of 6 it doesn't qualify for type: animal, and as such it is a magic beast." This is false. An Animal can have Int 6+ per the animal intelligence blog
- "The Paladin mount is created with a 6 INT. It can't be an animal." The first sentence is an assumption. The conclusion is only valid for those who agree with the assumption.
- "Why would it retain the animal type? It never was an animal." Formally, this is "It never was an animal. Thus it is doesn't retain the animal type." Whether it was an animal and whether it still is is the question; this is circular reasoning.
- "The very blog you are talking about distinguishes say an animal companion who puts the 4HD stat bump into INT (to raise it to a 3) and a creature that starts with a higher INT than 2. The later is not an animal. Paladin mounts fall into this category." This again assumes that the mount starts with Int of 6+. It is only valid for those who accept that premise.
- (from the PFS boards) "This is also the case of a Paladin's mount. It starts with an INT of 6, which is 3 or higher. Ergo, via Mark, it is not of type animal." This again assumes that the mount starts with Int 6. It is only valid for those who accept that premise.
- "And frankly this was the way its always been in 3rd edition up to the time of Jason's blog at which time the waters got muddied by his exception. An exception, mind you, for those creatures whose INT scores are raised during play (bumping INT at 4HD for an animal companion) and expressly not for creatures that start with a higher INT out of the gate." This states the false assumption that only gameplay can raise a creature's INT. Jason lists a number of exception, including language that leaves it wide open. It also again assumes that the mount starts with Int 6
I'm going to stop with the quotes here.
You have said multiple times either directly or by implication that the paladin not only gains a mount with Int 6 (which no one disagrees about) but that mount must be have been created with Int 6 or otherwise does not meet the exceptions for how a creature of the animal type can have an Int 6. You have then used this to argue that, in a universe where the mount can be only of type Animal or Magical Beast, it cannot be Animal, and thus must be Magical Beast. This is implied with the "Ergo...it is not of type animal" above
My post above argues the point that there are multiple ways for the mount to have gained an Int of 6. The assumption falls.
It creates no paradox. For two reasons.
First:
There is a difference between 'animal' and type: animal. Seeing as this is in the game where there are more uses for the word 'level' than there are levels in the game this should not be surprising.
We are talking about the game term Animal, which is a Type of creature.
Humans are animals, yet they are not type animal. There is no paradox here, only semantics.
Humans are biologically animals in the real world. They are reasonably a hyponym of a non-game-term group, animal, in the game. It is irrelevant to the discussion.
And Second:
Actually, if you read the paladin mount section carefully you'll note that the word 'animal' is not used beyond the phrase 'animal companion'. Sure it lists things that are normally animals, but an awakened horse is still a horse even though it is no longer type animal.
This is obfuscating the issue. All of the listed acceptable mounts have bestiary entries of type Animal. Whether an awakened horse is still a horse (a horse is a horse, of course...sorry, had to...) or is now an awakened horse, how they are the same, how they are different: this is point that I'm not going to get into.
It does create a paradox. It can't be an animal because of the Int 6. It can't be a magical beast because it specifies that it treated as a magical beast for targeting spells at 11th level. I appreciate that if you interpret the druid text "They remain creatures of the animal type for purposes of determining which spells can affect them," in a way that the paladin 11th-level mount text merely reverts, this paradox may be less apparent. But, if it were never an animal, how can it remain an animal for any purpose?
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James, I'm going to have to bow out of the discussion at this point. It has taken time from me today that I didn't have to give. We've both been in these types of discussions before; they're interesting in their own way, but they accomplish little. I get rule issues stuck under my saddle at times, too, so I understand where you're coming from. Ultimately, we agree that the poor treatment of the animal rules are the source. Ultimately, they will change.
Best of luck.
Developer
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The creature is an animal as it is not specified otherwise.
Let's take a look at the familiar, a creature that also begins with an INT of 6.
The core says, concerning the familiar
"It retains the appearance, Hit Dice, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, skills, and feats of the normal animal it once was, but is now a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type."
Why would the core need to specify this type if creating the familiar knocks its int up to a minimum of 6 to begin with? The fact that this specification is needed says something about the lack of such a statement in the Paladin entry.
Type changes only when the rules specifically say that type changes. The blog shows that stats don't necessarily determine type.
Expressio Unius. Nowhere in the paladin mount ability, until celestial is applied, is there anything indicating type would change explicitly.
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pretty good points
I still think that unless a type is expressed, that the animal assumption holds. The initial entry sends us to animal companions, which are undoubtedly animals. Then we're given a minimum int score. If we were to treat type differently, I think it would have to say the type would be something apart from the ability it ties itself to (animal companion => animal).
I think we both agree the animal rules are horribly worded, though, and lead to a great deal of vagueness and confusion. I tend to respond to this with rules of expressio unius because law school rotted my brain, but there are other valid theories of textual construction out there.
I just feel the less we read into it, the better, as your reading requires us to decide what it means for a mount to be created, which isn't really something the paladin entry goes into. Doesn't mean you're wrong, necessarily, I just feel looking for express wording is better in this instance.