Greetings and salutations, good people of the Paizo Forum.
This is the first real thread I have ever made despite being a member for two years now. But I have never really felt like I had anything to say, until now.
I would like some good advices on playing a Cavalier. You see I´m going to be playing on the Curse Of The Crimson Throne campaign and I am a little unsure as to how I should play her. I already have her personality down, it´s more in terms of making a good a solid build; What to do, what NOT to do, what to take into consideration and the likes.
Things I would like advice with is
Placing of stats, Weapons, Armor, Skills, Feats, and such.
My idea is that she´s suppose to be a tank, since she´s going to be part of the Order Of The Blue Rose (So violence is a no no, unless it´s really needed of her). I'm normally a range DPS type build, so having to play a tank is a whole different world to me.
Hope to hear from you soon.
And thanks in advance.
I've played a cavalier before, and the biggest issue is that you want to be able to charge as much as possible. Therefore, you definitely, definitely want to have a medium sized mount. Riding a horse means you'll barely ever be able to make a charge attack since even a single square of rough terrain in your path shuts down the charge, and a horse (or wolf or anything large size) that takes up four squares will have far more trouble than a boar, dog, or pony. Although I've never played through CotCT, I've played through other adventure paths, and the inside spaces are seldom large enough to let you make a charge attack. I would highly recommend either choosing a small race, or planning on taking the new feat from the advanced class guide (I forget the name) which allows you to ride a mount of your size (i.e. a medium creature on a medium mount).
Stats - Order of the blue rose has one effect that scales with CHA (Inner Peace), but if you want to be a tank, you'll want high physical stats, so CHA isn't that important to you. You're also going to need skill points in ride and handle animal, so don't dump INT too far. Bonuses to Will saves and perception are always nice too, so don't dump WIS.
In general STR>DEX=CON>INT=WIS>CHA
I'd go (Before racial modifiers)
STR 17
DEX 14
DEX 14
INT 10
WIS 10
CHA 7
Race - I would recommend a Halfling as you can take alternate racial traits that boost your riding abilities (Outrider). The penalty to STR hurts, but bonus to DEX and CHA are good for your order, and when you're using a lance, you'll be doing double damage on each charge, plus your challenge damage, which makes up for the penalty. Otherwise, if you're not trying to pull off a small character, half-orcs can take a feat called Beast Master that lets you swap out your lousy horse for an elephant, which is really strong. Depending on how your GM rules it, you can take a feat called Charge Through, have your elephant elect to use its trample to automatically succeed on the overrun attempt, and then finish by following through on your charge attack. I'd let you get away with it if you were playing in one of my games.
Weapons - Lance. You can use a shield with it when mounted for extra tankiness. Keep a composite long bow (can be fired from horse back while the horse moves with no penalty) on hand at all times too.
Armor - The heaviest you can get, assuming you'll be mounted most of the time, so the movement penalty won't matter. A mithral breast plate is handy as it has has no movement penalty, and only 1 point less AC than steel Full Plate if you're sitting at a +3 DEX Modifier.
Skills - Handle Animal, Ride, Perception, Diplomacy. If you have more than 4, take whatever, but the above 4 will be pretty important, and you get a diplomacy bump from your order.
Feats - Mounted Combat, Ride By Attack, Spirited Charge. Triple damage on a lance charge is amazingly powerful, especially when you can keep going afterwards. Other than that just take whatever you want. Like I mentioned before, if you take the new feat that lets a medium guy ride a pony, you could potentially pull off a medium sized race that gets to charge a lot. Another thing worth mentioning is Horse Master from the advanced class guide. If you wanted to, you could take four levels of Cavalier, and then switch over to another class while your horse continued to get full growth. Paladin, and fighter come to mind as good options that will work well in full plate. If you wanted to play a paladin, obviously, the importance of CHA goes way up.
Archetypes - The Beast Rider archetype is a solid choice. If you have high enough dex, the loss of heavy armor won't mater much, and you can pick a mount that is considerably tougher than a pony. The ankylosaurus comes to mind. Gendarme is also a popular choice. You net a few extra feats, but if you're playing a cavalier for the support features and not max dpr, then Gendarme probably isn't worth it.
Oh gosh! Thanks alot for the quick response.
I have actually taking all of this into consideration and went with a small size Cavalier. I had intended for her to be human at first, but I could see the better idea of having her as a small folk than human.
Luckily enough my GM allowed me to get a mount I have been trying hard to get on another scenario, a dire Corgi.
This thread had been such a huge help to me, so to you sir, I say thank you. Any last things you think I should take into consideration?
I'm currently going to go on a shopping spree with her.
If your GM is cool (and letting you have a dire Corgi makes her pretty cool in my book) you don't need this, but some GMs will act like your mount shouldn't be allowed to come indoors, or move up and down ladders and stuff like that, which can lead to you being an unmounted cavalier, which is really just a weaker fighter. If that's the case, spring for hosteling armor. It lets you magically hide your animal while you do whatever, and then pop it back out on command.
Being Medium isn't a problem, the Large mount just needs to spend a feat on Narrow Frame.
I would disagree with that. I'm not talking about getting through a 5-foot wide hallway without an AC penalty, I mean that you need a completely unobstructed path to your target to charge. This is considerably more difficult with a 10-foot wide large-sized mount than it is with a 5-foot wide one. Narrow frame doesn't let you charge down a 5-foot wide passage on a horse either.
Yeah, I can see that, fair enough.
Wheeling Charge is a fantastic feat to include in your list.
Only other suggestion I have (you hit almost everything), is to possibly use a cestus instead of a shield while mounted, so that you threaten adjacent squares.
Or the new Undersized Mount feat from the ACG. That solves the mount size issue rather handily.
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I will say that your going to have issue with being off your mount quiet a bit for the first part of the Campaign.
I suggest a small Rider over a big one for this if your still going cavalier.
I recommend any kind of mount with optional movements. I really love giant geckos...they are dungeon busters with natural spider climb. Dire bats, Rocs, Giant eagles/owls are pre-mo as flying mounts are the strongest form of mounts...Fly is the superior method of movement for a charger type.
Thank you all for the input, it really means alot and it´s helped me quite abit in forming here.
I actually wanted to show the picture I drew of her.
I´m trying to find some more things to add along the way, but for now I need to take a little break from it.
Thank you all for the input, it really means alot and it´s helped me quite abit in forming here.
I actually wanted to show the picture I drew of her.
I´m trying to find some more things to add along the way, but for now I need to take a little break from it.
Hmm... I have a 10th level Halfling Cavalier that has just fallen in love. :)
If you don't plan on using Teamwork feats much, you can take the Emissary archetype for the Cavalier which makes for a great mounted Cavalier.
The reason being is it grants free feats, and it also grants a more powerful version of Trick Riding, which lets you negate a hit on your mount twice a round.
Also, something really important is that, since your mount acts like a druid's animal companion, it becomes more intelligent, which allows for it to take more feats than normal.
For example, you could teach the following feats to your mount once it becomes intelligent enough:
1) Improved Unarmed Strike
2) Dragon Style
5) Combat Reflexes
8) Bodyguard
10) In Harm's Way
What this does, is your mount can employ Dragon Style, which allows it to charge through allies and across difficult terrain, which is awesome. The second, is that your mount can, as an immediate action, use Bodyguard + In Harm's Way to make an attack hit the mount instead... which you can then negate with a Ride check per Mounted Combat and Trick Riding. This lets you more easily tank as a Cavalier from your mount because your Mount is often tougher than you are. Look at Fendigaidlid in the link above; he's got a smaller hit die, and less hit die than Gwyn, but he's got basically the same HP. If he had the same HD. he'd have ~100 HP.
Oh, by the way, the above Link is a projected aspect of a Cavalier build I made just to see what was possible at Level 10. He's still only level 1 at the moment, I just wanted to see what he was capable of.
As a GM who's currently running Curse of the Crimson Throne, you will definitely experience difficulties playing a Cavalier. The reason being is it's not appropriate to bring a mount everywhere.
I mean, sure, by the rules, you could totally ride a Dire Corgi into an underground cave full of undead (there is no such place in Curse, by the way), but that doesn't mean your character would want to do so, from a role play perspective.
Anyway, if you're fine with riding your Corgi everywhere, then there are only a couple places in the game you might have issues, though everywhere in the game seems to be designed for medium creatures or larger.
On the none-combat side, the Cavalier could easily be a prospective knight for Castle Korvosa, an aspiring member of the Korvosan Guard, or maybe a drop-out student of the Sable Company marines as you never could form the right kind of bond with the Hypogriffs.
A magic item you might want to invest in, is boots of levitation, which can be worn by your mount in case you ever need to do something like climb a ladder. I don't recall any such things in Curse, but I might be mistaken.