Beast Rider Confusion

[Roaming Shadow]

I'm pretty sure this was discussed at length shortly after Ultimate Combat came out, but I don't have the inclination to sift through all the threads and all the replys to figure out what the consensus was, and it doesn't seem to be in the product FAQ, so here goes.

The Cavalier archetype Beast Rider from Ultimate Combat allows a Cavalier to select as a mount any creature a Druid could select as an animal companion to be their mount, so long as the creature is capable of supporting them. At 4th level, the list of available mounts expands.

Here's the issue I see: the vast majority of animal companions available from levels 1-6 are size Medium or smaller, meaning they can't support a Medium sized Cavalier, which includes most/all the expanded selections at level 4; they don't reach Large size per companion rules until 7th level. Is this an oversight, or is the Beast Rider archetype essentially identical for Medium size Cavaliers without the archetype until 7th level+?

Also, for the 7th level ability that stats you can make any mount size large so long as it's natural size is large or huge, and it's selectable as an animal companion, isn't this ability superfluous? By the animal companion rules, any normally large, huge, or larger animal reaches large size at level 7 as far as I'm aware.

So is it just me, or could the entire archetype have been summed up rules wise by saying, "The Beast Rider may select any animal available as an animal companion as a mount", and then the arbitrary "wait until level 4" selections?

[Stikye]

It seems simple enough, to me.

At first level a medium beast rider can have a horse or camel, and a small beast rider can have a wolf or pony.

At 4th level a medium beast rider is screwed, because none of the animals on that list are big enough to be his mount, but a small one can pick up a new ride.

At 7th level a medium beast rider can pick from the same list and most of those animals are now big enough for him to ride.

The last part, is that pending DM Approval you can take an animal companion that normally goes from small --> medium, like say, a bear, and make it large enough to ride by adding the pluses to it.

[redward]

Here's the Design Team's explanation:

Quote:

Yes, the beast rider archetype (UC page 36) offers Medium riders extra animal companion choices, and at that level some of those cavalier's companions will be Medium rather than Large. But at the "you can't select things unless you can use it as a mount" rule still applies. So unless you're beast rider level is high enough to make the animal in that list mount-appropriate for you, you can't select it as a mount. It's presented the way it is so we didn't have to have separate 4th- and 7th-level lists for Small and Medium characters (space is short, and writing it that way is cumbersome because at 7th level you'd either have to look at two lists, as in "anything from the previous list plus these new ones," or repeat all of the 4th-level list in the 7th-level list).

Another way to look at it from a different situation. The fighter class gets bonus combat feats. But that class feature still follows the normal prerequisite rules for selecting feats—a 2nd-level fighter can't select Weapon Specialization because he doesn't meet the "fighter 4th" prerequisite. A 2nd-level fighter arguing "but it just told me I can select a combat feat, and Weapon Specialization is a combat feat!" doesn't hold water; you don't meet the prerequisites, so you can't select it.

So:

Quote:

Is the Beast Rider archetype essentially identical for Medium size Cavaliers without the archetype until 7th level+?

Short answer: Yes.