Mounted Combat Style

[Ahkavady]

I have decided to play a Nature Oracle in the up-coming Kingmaker AP.
The idea is with the first revelation to grab a horse companion.
I plan on playing an elf. The question I am stuck at is the style of play. Should I take mounted melee and use a spear, spend the feat to get a lance, or go with mounted archery?

The group is a Were-wolf Ranger (pure melee combat), a paladin and a heaven's Oracle. So the party has all the bases covered already in terms of range and up--close.

[aylatrigger]

Usually with mounted characters I would go for melee combat. There are many feats that can help out with mounted melee combat, and eventually you can go for lances. If your DM will allow it, get a feline mount. Tigers, for instance, have pounce. They can grapple on a charge and do a full attack. Thus, eventually you can deal 3x damage yourself and have your mount deal a lot of damage at the same time.
However, Oracles are mainly spellcasters. If you go for melee, you will have to use most of your feats on this. It will also be dangerous because of a lower amount of hp than fighters and paladins. If you get Ride-By-Attack you will be safer, but you may still be put in danger. I would mainly focus in casting long distance spells and use melee when you run out of spells and/or enemies get too close. It will partly depend on your play style, but I suggest melee weapons.

[Eric Mason 37]

Thus far ranged combat has seemed really useful in our Kingmaker game. Outdoor encounters often start at a fair distance. So ranged people can get in shots while the melee people close, and you can fairly easily maintain some distance.

My only use of archery on a mount was in 3.5, but I found it pretty useful even without the Mounted Combat feats. The ability to full attack when your mount moves more than five feet is very, very cool when you have space to move around in.

Mounted Combat and Mounted Archery are optional if you go ranged, because you're less likely to be attacked (Mounted Combat), and you don't have to have your mount make double moves if you don't want to (Mounted Archery). If someone does get close, your horse can hit them, five foot step away, and then you can shoot the crud out of them.

If you're low strength, you can use a crossbow, and pick up rapid reload. If you have some strength, pick up proficiency in the longbow (favourite weapon of Erastil, one of the Nature gods), and get a composite longbow (which can be used mounted) with the appropriate strength as soon as you can afford it.

Archery will take up a lot of feats too, but they will still be useful when you're not mounted. And you are keeping at a suitable range for spell casting to boot.

However I have not played an Oracle, so apply as much salt as you need to ;)

Eric

[Father Dale]

Elf...Nature oracle....

definitely grab a bow and use it.

You're getting a racial boost to dex already, and the racial hit to con makes it less desirable to be up close.

Really, the whole character concept is screaming for an archer.

Now, to be a really effective archer requires a hefty feat investment. And tacking on Mounted Archery just adds to the list. However, Mounted Archery isn't really necessary, as it only comes into play when a) when your mount moves more than its speed (i.e. double moves or runs), and b) you want to attack with your bow (as opposed to casting a spell). So it really isn't necessary for an oracle archer.

Just grab some archery feats (Pt. Blank, Precise Shot, Deadly Aim, Rapid Shot) and you should be set.