Does a mounted rider get any defensive benefits when attacked?
The Mounted Combat feat lets a rider make a Ride check once per round to negate an attack against his mount, which to me seems the better option is to simply attack the rider if he doesn't get any extra defenses.
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The Rider gets no special defense bonus - most of the bonuses for being mounted are all offensive in nature.
There's a really cool book that you might be interested in if you're doing a lot of Mounted Combat. ^_^
Thanks for the great tip, I'll have to remember that book if I ever get serious about Mounted Combat. I'm GM'ing my first Mounted Combat encounter next weekend so I was reading up about it, and that bit seemed a little unclear to me.
Depending on how the rider has set up his mount...
If my mount gets feats then I usually give it Combat Reflexes and then Bodyguard for an AC bonus (if they can beat an ac of 10) so bad guys have the opportunity for similar combos.
By the way, it surprises the junk out of bad guys when your horse AOO's the next punk that wanders by after you've spent your AOO on the first one...
The rider does get one pretty good defensive benefit while mounted. He or she can drop down alongside the mount to gain cover as an immediate action. This gives you a +4 AC bonus, but it does take a move action to get back in the saddle so you can attack and cast spells. The Ride check to do this DC15.
From the PRD:
"Cover: You can react instantly to drop down and hang alongside your mount, using it as cover. You can't attack or cast spells while using your mount as cover. If you fail your Ride check, you don't get the cover benefit. Using this option is an immediate action, but recovering from this position is a move action (no check required)."
Ahh yes! Totally slipped my mind. Good call Devilkiller.
As an Immediate action... which is pretty darned awesome.
but this does assume a reasonably well trained rider or no dice.