After drooling over Construct Rider for a while, I got weary of the idea of taking either expensive or caster-seeking alternatives to healing the machine. Now I'm curious if there's a better way to get a mount. I was considering taking 4 levels of cavalier, order hardly matters to me, and grabbing Horse Master with my mount so I could have a nice leveling steed.
OR
Grabbing beast master/ghost rider for the technical-ride and nabbing boon companion for a max 8th level beastie.
OR
Saving up some dosh and just buying an axe beak or warhorse when I had the dough, coughing up for the basic feats and a cheap Comb-trained horse to start.
Assuming the game should reach about mid-level to late, would it be more feasible to go after a mount with special abilities that reaches level 8- then stops, sacrifice the technical mounts for one that levels with me to have extra health and potential power, or should I just drop cash on buying a mount now-and-again to ride?
Or, after all that, should I just go with riding a construct because I'd not lose alchemist levels, but have something painful to heal?
My biggest problem is that I want to Hyde it up with a beastmorph mutagen, and the Construct rider prevents the useage of a mutagen, EVER, without giving me the ability to just HEAL the mount somehow without dropping 100 g per HD level. This makes the other three more feasible, but having a non-eating, non-sleeping, darkvision having, same-perception-score-as-a-player, mount sounds really... Well neat.
