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So, say I take five levels of either Sohei or Unchained Monk and the Ki Mount ability, Animal Ally, then one level of Goliath Druid and Boon Companion before I become a Mammoth Rider.
That in itself will not satisfy the entry requirements for Mammoth Rider: 9 ranks in various skills (so no entry before level 10), an an effective druid level of 6 for your companion. With Boon Companion, that means you need at least 2 actual druid levels (or something else with a compatible companion, like cavalier or hunter).
Does Ki Mount give your animal your monk AC bonus if it is wearing barding but you are unarmored like usual?
I don't think so. The mammoth gets the whole ability, and the ability does state "He loses these bonuses when he is immobilized or helpless, when he wears any armor, when he carries a shield, or when he carries a medium or heavy load." The mammoth doesn't get to cherry-pick the sentences of the ability that are convenient.
How exactly does Animal Ally+Boon Companion stack with Druid levels? Is it total character level + druid level again as I have seen suggested?
Boon Companion raises your effective druid level by 4, up to a maximum of your total character level. So if you're Druid 1/Monk 5, you get an effective druid level of 5. If you're Druid 5/Monk 1, you get an effective druid level of 6. The point of the feat is basically to maintain an animal companion even though you're dipping something else; you can't actually get ahead of schedule.
Do you count as the size of your mount with your normal reach added on from that?
You stay your own size (medium/large depending on goliath druid) but you are considered to occupy all the squares of your mount. So if you're medium-sized you're an 1x1 creature simultaneously present in each of the mammoth's 3x3 squares, and your reach extends 5ft out from it into the 16 squares immediately surrounding the mammoth.
Related, do you provoke opportunity attacks from people within reach of your mammoth if you shoot them, or not because you are sitting 20 feet up in the air?
If that was the case then you wouldn't be able to attack them in melee either, which isn't mentioned anywhere, and would be important enough to mention. Pathfinder is weird with height. It's more a 2D game with an occasional complication than a fully 3D game.
So yeah, you probably provoke.
What happens to someone underneath a trampling mammoth if it doesn't move fully past them?
Unless the creature's size is 3 sizes less or more than the mammoth, they can't share a space. So the mammoth would be trying to end it's movement in an illegal square. That's not allowed, so the mammoth gets moved back to the last legal space it occupied.
Does it sound more fun to whack people with a melee weapon as your mammoth tramples them, or to make full attacks with a bow with the -4 penalty?
You only get bow penalties if the mammoth is moving more than a single move action.
My own mammoth rider in training is already a level 6 Goliath Druid, I'm a Large troll or giant all the time, and I have a chainsaw on a chronicle for purchase...
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questions I have:
1) Does Ki Mount give your animal your monk AC bonus if it is wearing barding but you are unarmored like usual?
2) How exactly does Animal Ally+Boon Companion stack with Druid levels? Is it total character level + druid level again as I have seen suggested?
3) Do you count as the size of your mount with your normal reach added on from that?
4) Related, do you provoke opportunity attacks from people within reach of your mammoth if you shoot them, or not because you are sitting 20 feet up in the air?
5) What happens to someone underneath a trampling mammoth if it doesn't move fully past them?
1) no
2) no. Animal ally gives you effective Druid levels for your non AC class levels. So a fighter 4 / Druid 5 with boon companion is (4-3)+3+5 = 9 the level AC3) no, you are medium. You can make an attacks from any square your AC shares using your reach.
4) Yes because you share all squares - guess this sucks for gargantuan
5) not sure. Guess prone. What does trample say?
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Animal ally then take Druid levels can never give you an EDL greater than character level, period. Yes some people misinterpret the rules. It's a thing.
Without looking up trample, if it doesn't say it's knocking them prone, the comment about being moved back to the last legal square (or closed legal square) would be the best rules answer.
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Overrun:
When you attempt to overrun a target, it can choose to avoid you, allowing you to pass through its square without requiring an attack. If your target does not avoid you, make a combat maneuver check as normal. If your maneuver is successful, you move through the target's space. If your attack exceeds your opponent's CMD by 5 or more, you move through the target's space and the target is knocked prone.
So sounds like "move through" is an important part of you didn't exceed by 5 (which you didn't roll so you can't exceed).
So yea you need to clear their space or be punted to a legal square.
Accidentally Ending Movement in an Illegal Space: Sometimes a character ends its movement while moving through a space where it's not allowed to stop. When that happens, put your miniature in the last legal position you occupied, or the closest legal position, if there's a legal position that's closer.
rules get kind of weird with mounts when you get bigger than large.
But practically speaking if you're sitting two stories high on a mount, you're not going to be reaching anyone with anything smaller than a telephone pole. Your mount IS your weapon at that point.
Trample can be great fun if you're facing a bunch of lower HP mooks. Mounted Combat or Bodyguard could be nice for protecting your mount during the Trample. If you want to make a full attack with a ranged weapon you'd probably suffer AoOs for making ranged attacks in melee, but there are various ways to avoid those. I guess you could also consider taking Snake Fang and kicking anybody who tries to AoO you but misses. That would work even better if you and the mammoth take Paired Opportunists.
Regarding the movement, since the rule is for "accidentally" ending up in an illegal space I could see DMs using some discretion regarding players ending up in an illegal space "on purpose". For instance, if you try to trample your full movement down a hallway full of foes and then bounce back to the beginning "for free" when you're done dealing damage I could see a DM not allowing it (instead requiring you to use half your movement to go down the hallway and the other half to come back). If something weird happens like the mammoth gets tripped while trampling through a large mass of enemies I guess it might get ejected to the edge of the enemy formation. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some DMs in home games decided to handle that differently and perhaps move the enemies around a little to let the mammoth land where it fell.
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I've seen a mammoth on Spider Climb trample a bunch of harpies that flew too close to a cliff face :P
Regarding Animal Ally, the feat is just a bit weird. It's from a softcover book, those often get a bit sloppy with the rules language. Notice how taking druid levels later would technically violate the prerequisites and cause the feat to stop functioning? It's sort of implied that that doesn't happen but not explicitly said. Clear example of not so perfect rules writing so a bit more good-faith interpretation required to use it.
To me it's clear that the intent is that it gives you [level in non-Companion classes -3] worth of druid level for companions. You can polish off the -3 with Boon companion. But you should never end up with a companion higher than your own level.
(There is a different route to get a higher-than-level companion, via some favored class bonuses to oracle revelations, but those led to those FCBs being nerfed extremely hard. A sign that Paizo really doesn't want you to try this.)
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Animal Ally weird writing not having been ever updated.
kind of forced movement rules somewhere in such a simmy game to handle this kind of thing instead of yoyo gargants.
Animal Ally is considered sufficiently clear that no update is likely unless a large number of people get confused on the rules. Considering the number of FAQ similar to this that resulted in the conservative interpretation and didn't change the rules it should be fair to assume the conservative view.
Isn't the "Accidentally Ending Movement in an Illegal Space" that forced movement rule you want? Also, remember it's "accidentally" which isn't "I use my movement knowing I'll not get clear then yoyo." Your GM will respond with "No, that is an illegal move make a legal one".
2) no. Animal ally gives you effective Druid levels for your non AC class levels. So a fighter 4 / Druid 5 with boon companion is (4-3)+3+5 = 9 the level AC
Disagree, Character level /= class level. Nothing in the feat limits it to functioning on character level - class levels that provide an AC.
You would have (7-3)+5= EDL 9, since this is already equal to your character level Boon Companion has no effect.
An enhancement bonus to Wisdom stacks with an enhancement bonus to Will saves, even though your Wisdom mod is part of the Will save and it is the same type of bonus.
Similarly, your character level is a different thing than your class level, even though class levels are added to make your character level.
The feat is based on character level (total of all classes, including druid) and the class ability is based on class level alone.
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@Blind Monkey, again you can put one of your 9 squares on top of a medium target and then move off. So you generally can always trample who you'd like without intentionally "accidentally ending in an illegal square" or requiring the targets to move.
@Samasboy1, I'm confident if it goes to FAQ my version will be upheld. Based on nearly every previous FAQ. You don't see the ability asvexplicitly exempting the Druid levels and I do. It's a language parsing difference and some tables will opt for your interpretation as "RAW" and many will opt for my interpretation "RAW".
@Blind Monkey, again you can put one of your 9 squares on top of a medium target and then move off. So you generally can always trample who you'd like without intentionally "accidentally ending in an illegal square" or requiring the targets to move.Yes, but that would be silly since instead both you and your mammoth could full attack that one target instead of moving 10 feet to nowhere to trample it.
Where I think this is a bigger problem is say a street with various enemies scattering around. Logically you should be able to have your mammoth run down the street trampling everyone in your way like in real life. Instead if the enemies are arranged so you cannot place yourself somewhere empty you either bounce back to somewhere else or are told you cannot trample anybody just because?
Also just noting the mammoth in questions is a 4 by 4 square, not a 3 by 3.
The Magical Knack trait is a similar thing to Boon Companion and Animal Ally. I think there is a FAQ to the effect that each class level can only be counted once. This prevents the druid class levels adding to the other feats.
A 2 by 4 area is legal, but leaves the mount in a squeezed state.
/cevah
The archetypes can be OK depending on what you want to achieve. Cavaliers also don't have Share Spells to begin with, so giving that up doesn't hurt them too badly. Getting started early with Bodyguard might work out OK though I'd probably wait for the Int bump in most cases.
The archetypes can be OK depending on what you want to achieve. Cavaliers also don't have Share Spells to begin with, so giving that up doesn't hurt them too badly. Getting started early with Bodyguard might work out OK though I'd probably wait for the Int bump in most cases.
If they don't have it, they cannot give it up, invalidating the archetype as a choice.
/cevah
3) Do you count as the size of your mount with your normal reach added on from that?3) no, you are medium. You can make an attacks from any square your AC shares using your reach.
This really shouldn't be so. The rule exists because it is needed to simplify calculations for a cavalryman, who would logically be astride the four (really two, front & back) squares that his horse occupies.
IMHO, larger "mounts" should be treated more as vehicles. Your character, assuming medium size, will really only "occupy" a single square within your gargantuan mount's space, probably whatever square seems to logically correspond to the mount's neck - the place where a mahout would sit when riding an elephant. You really ought to have to measure your "reach" from that square, which means that even with a reach weapon, you probably wouldn't be able to touch guys who are adjacent to your mount (a very bad place to be, next to a gargantuan mammoth, but that's another question.
As James said, the Pathfinder rules allow measuring your reach from any of your mount's squares. I suggest you be more logical, and work out with your DM what squares you can actually reach to - probably only a few front squares, and that using a reach weapon. This would be a much-needed house rule for really big mounts.
@Cevah - That's usually true, but I have seen some clarifications that the animal companion archetypes are 'supposed to' work for Cavalier mounts even though they don't normally have share spells. I believe Jason Nelson was the source, though maybe no official change has been made yet. If not that puts the Charger archetype in an odd position since it includes an ability specifically for Cavaliers which you get in the place of share spells (sure, it could be an ability specifically for multi-class Cavaliers, but that seems less likely to me than that somebody just forgot Cavalier don't have share spells in the first place)