I am playing a cavalier in a kingmaker campaign and I realized that the current rules for mounted combat are ambiguous in a lot of place. For example: who exactly uses full round action when you charge with a mount? If you mount your horse, can it still charge that round? Can you attack of it does?
Also, its unclear who needs to have feats like Improved overrun when you want to ride someone down.
So I wrote some house rules. My goal is to let a character's abilities while mounted scale according to their level, but to not make the mount irrelevant either.
Please give feed back on anything that seems overpowered or that seems unrealistic.
I promise to take a closer look at it, but this was leaping at me at (pun intended)
Leap is problematic, because it uses the lower of the rider’s ride modifier and mount’s acrobatics modifier. Since most mounts get a hefty racial bonus on jump checks for having a high land speed, most often, the rider’s skill will be used. The problem with this is that this mean what you are riding has no effect on how far you can jump. Picture an athlete with +8 to acrobatics and ride. Taking 10, he can jump 18 ft. He gets on a horse, and he can still only jump 18 feet, even though the animal under him is much more powerful.
"realistically", a poor rider will make a good horse perform poorly. The contrary is also true; a skilled rider can make a poor horse perform better than on its own.
Practically speaking, your houserule asks for two dice rolls every time a rider wants to jump/leap, which becomes mechanically heavy.
You might find these useful. There isn't anything (that I know of) that exists in PF to this degree:
Old 3.5 Rules of the Game Article on Mounted Combat by WotC
Some of it will need some minor tweaking, but overall there's some valuable information there and it helps clarify some fuzzy areas. There are 5 parts to the article--just scroll on down, or you may need to fish a bit.
I promise to take a closer look at it, but this was leaping at me at (pun intended)
"realistically", a poor rider will make a good horse perform poorly. The contrary is also true; a skilled rider can make a poor horse perform better than on its own.
Practically speaking, your houserule asks for two dice rolls every time a rider wants to jump/leap, which becomes mechanically heavy.
The two dice rolls is from the current rules :) I just added the horse's racial modifiers to the second roll.
The two dice rolls is from the current rules :) I just added the horse's racial modifiers to the second roll.I promise to take a closer look at it, but this was leaping at me at (pun intended)
"realistically", a poor rider will make a good horse perform poorly. The contrary is also true; a skilled rider can make a poor horse perform better than on its own.
Practically speaking, your houserule asks for two dice rolls every time a rider wants to jump/leap, which becomes mechanically heavy.
hum, right you are. Your also right about many of those rules being clunky. I have been playing with my own set of houserules for so long, I had forgotten about RaW...