Ok, I was convinced I had read somewhere that if you're mounted you can choose the square from which you attack.
In other words: If I'm on a horse, with a reach weapon, and someone is adjacent to me/the horse, then I can still attack him, by simply picking a square that's 10 ft away from the enemy.
However I've searched forever now, and I can't find that. Am I wrong? Is that not how it works?
I know Large creatures can do that for purposes of movement and attack. So maybe a medium mounted character would technically count as a large creature when mounted. It makes some kind of sense but I am not sure.
A really good question.
It could be argued, that by doing so the target could get cover because the adjacent part of the mount is between him and the point where the reach attack originates.
Not saying that's my opinion. Just stating the problem.
You might be thinking that reach weapons can choose the corner they attack from as per the ranged rules.
But, I'm not sure that this application of the Reach-Range rules applies since which Ranged rules are applied to Reach weapons is not always clear.
Here is a diagram of a Large creature fighting a medium creature:
MX
12
34
If you attack from corner "2" it takes 5' of range to go to the square labeled "X" and another 5' of range (total of 10') to go to the square labeled "M".
However, I believe this is at the very least against RAI and at my table I would probably say no. :)
- Gauss
You are correct that you read that, but it was a long time ago or in an old book. I think it was one of the 3.0 splatbooks before they were even hardbound that stated that. It might have been the Wizards' Rules of the Game article, but I don't think it was that.
It has sense changed to the idea that you take up all the squares. So you have reach as per normal, but take up the space as your mount. Therefore you gain a few squares but you cannot attack adjacent squares with a reach weapon.
Actually, in PF when you are mounted you share your creature's space for all intents and purposes.
This means that in the extremely common mounted lance scenario, you have a 10 foot reach from each of your four squares.
It's powerful, but mounted combat should be powerful. Adding another creature to the party is balanced if you account for that creature, and real-world strategies have been completely upset by mounted combat many times.