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Not sure if advice or rules, but I'm having great difficulty understanding both mounted combat, and why mounted combat would be better than ground based combat. (0,) Can someone please explain it?
On the key points that I'm having difficult with:
1, can you use/have a mount that isn't a class feature?
2, while mounted, aside from moving as one and mounted combat related feats, what are the advantages to being mounted?
3, if the mount is larger than the PC riding it, does this mean reach weapons are required to hit the rider, and likewise, for the rider to hit enemies adjacent to the mount?
4, is what prevents the opponent from just directing attacks at rider, or likewise, just focusing on the mount?
5, since they occupy the same space, do AoE effects hit both the mount and the rider?
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1. Yes. They're generally crap, though, because they don't scale.
2. Movement, movement, movement. Incredible mobility. Also, triple-damage charge hits are nice.
3. Your reach extends away from your mount's edges. You take your mount's space, but keep your reach - in essence, for a human on a horse, you have a 10 ft square and 5 foot reach... which can be modified by reach weapons as usual.
4. The Mounted Combat feat helps, as do other defensive buffs to the mount. Generally you're better at avoiding hits than the mount so you'd rather have them attack you, but it can be different.
5. Yes. They save individually against any that require saves, as well.
At higher levels, you mainly want to avoid getting hit at all. Ride-by attack is a must for melee cavalry.
1) Yes, but since they don't advance with you they usually die very quickly since you end up with a base horse (or whatever). Also, since you don't have a link with them like druidds or rangers do with an animal companion, using handle animal (to make them attack) in combat usually takes too much time to be effective.
See here
2) Very open ended question. It's a combat style all it's own. Unless you want to play a mounted style combatant it's mostly a faster movement speed, in and out of combat.
3) With the exception of taking the undersized mount feat, you cannot ride something that is the same size as you or smaller. So mounts are generally larger than you. You are considered to occupy all the same sqaures as your mount. Which means you can attack from the edge of any of your mounts squares, but you can also be attacked if an enemy threatens any of those squares.
4) Nothing really. The mounted combat feat can allow the rider to negate hits. This is why non-class progressing mounts are a bad idea. They die too quickly to rely on, even if you have mounted combat.
5) Yep
A note on 1 - Leadership is a viable option to get a non-class-feature mount. That said, Cavaliers and Paladins are still king of mounted combat because sweet, sweet level-to-damage modifiers.
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A note on 1 - Leadership is a viable option to get a non-class-feature mount. That said, Cavaliers and Paladins are still king of mounted combat because sweet, sweet level-to-damage modifiers.
If your GM will allow leadership in the first place. Honestly, being able to pickup an animal companion+ for the price of a single feat is as overpowered as regular leadership is. Of course, that is a different discussion.
On a side note, if the mount has high intelligence, Like the oracle's pony/horse option with INT6 (base), how does this affect mounted combat?
Not very much. It will grant the pony or horse more tricks and skill points. Otherwise, ride and handle animal must be used normally.
There is a blogpost about it. I will dig it up for you.
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As to #1 - I've never actually done it as I'm afraid of too much table variation - but I think it'd be awesome for a halfling dragoon to ride a half-orc barbarian. Quite effective too - just take a penalty to ride checks for an unusual mount (either -4 or -5, I forget). And the mount wouldn't have to be much smarter than an oracle's horse - some races could drop down to 5 :P.
The one major rules issue is what initiative they'd go at. Since the mount is actually a seperate character - would it have its own initiative, or would they go at the rider's?
Anyway - I think that it'd be both effective and hilarious. If nothing else - you'd never run into the trouble of not being able to take your mount somewhere. (Arguably have the mount be a dwarf to make them less likely to be dominated and to avoid issues with low ceilings. :P)
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In addition to what Claxon said about the extra tricks and skill points, the real draw to having an intelligent mount over a store bought one is FEATS. They don't get any more of them, but they can take any feat they qualify for rather than the tiny list of like 20 feats animals usually get. Intelligent mounts and animal companions are like having a second character rather than just a pet.
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In addition to what Claxon said about the extra tricks and skill points, the real draw to having an intelligent mount over a store bought one is FEATS. They don't get any more of them, but they can take any feat they qualify for rather than the tiny list of like 20 feats animals usually get. Intelligent mounts and animal companions are like having a second character rather than just a pet.
My understanding is that you cannot teach tricks to companions over Int 3. They have enough intelligence to do what they want.
In addition to what Claxon said about the extra tricks and skill points, the real draw to having an intelligent mount over a store bought one is FEATS. They don't get any more of them, but they can take any feat they qualify for rather than the tiny list of like 20 feats animals usually get. Intelligent mounts and animal companions are like having a second character rather than just a pet.
That's a good point. I forgot about that.
My understanding is that you cannot teach tricks to companions over Int 3. They have enough intelligence to do what they want.
That's incorrect, please see the blog posts in the links above. Animal companions and animals in general are not able to perform actions without handle animal being used to get them to perform their trick or push them. Increased intelligence does not change this, per the posts.
One excerpt:
Smart Kitty: If you have increased your animal companion's intelligence score to 3 using various means, then great! You can now have your companion learn any feat it can physically perform, and it can put ranks into any skill. What this increase does not accomplish, however, is any advantage in commanding your companion whatsoever. It's still the same DC 10 to handle and DC 25 to push. It may still only learn six tricks plus your druid bonus tricks. However, for every point of Intelligence it gains above 2, that is three more tricks it can learn. A smart animal will have more versatility without needing to rely on pushing.
It's interesting, but both seem just targeted at INT 3. I'm thinking INT 6-10. Do we still roll handle animal and such with a mount which is smarter than many barbarian PCs...?Also see this blogpost and this one too.
Yep. The idea is that despite that increase in the score, there is somehow still a fundamental difference in how animal brains function from humanoid brains. Even exceptional ones. The one thing that changes this is awaken, though that bars it from being an animal companion.
The paladin or oracle mount with a base int of 6 still require tricks and handle animal rolls.