Drones, Riding Saddle, and "Combat Trained" Mounts

[Cadynce Delholme]

I have a question about Drones with a Riding Saddle, and subsequently any medium, large, or larger 4-legged creatures that could be considered as mounts who are "combat trained".

Do these creatures (and the aforementioned drones) worry about the Bulk of their riders?

And more, in Pathfinder quadrupeds had a multiplier for Carrying Capacity due to how they built (4-legged plus weight distribution) was this purposefully left out of the CRB, or just an accident due to space concerns?

[Wikrin]

As it stands, none of the core races can realistically make use of the riding saddle. Ysoki weigh between sixty and a hundred pounds (more than two Gnomes), which is roughly 6-10 bulk, even if they're straight-up nude. Without anything to mitigate that, I don't understand how they expect the option to see use. Vesk are doomed.

[Cadynce Delholme]

Yes, that was my concern.

[Wikrin]

Sorry, just thought I should spell it out in case folks didn't realize why this was a concern. Haven't seen any answers yet, and consider this a pretty egregious oversight. Hopefully someone in the know is able to clarify soon.

[Shaudius]

Necroing this thread because I think we need some official clarification on riding drones. More than just the encumbrance but also the survival checks and whether they can use other mounted feature and if so when and if checks are required.

[kaid]

I looked at this last night and I am pretty sure it directly says you do not need to do survival checks when riding the drone. The encumbrance thing is a question although we do know that NPC don't use the same rules so that may be something that gets clarification in the alien book coming up.

[Peat]

Carrying capacity specifically discusses "your character". It says nothing about creatures, NPCs or anything else. It's probably a good way to estimate how much an NPC can carry, but from a game mechanics perspective I don't think NPCs are affected by bulk and encumbrance.

[Shaudius]

kaid wrote:

I looked at this last night and I am pretty sure it directly says you do not need to do survival checks when riding the drone. The encumbrance thing is a question although we do know that NPC don't use the same rules so that may be something that gets clarification in the alien book coming up.

You treat the drone as a combat trained mount which pretty clearly means you don't have to make survival checks to ride it in combat, but what about all the other mount tricks? Can it do them? Do you need to make survival checks when it does (for instance there's a trick that lets you spur it on with your feet).

[Metaphysician]

I think the answer is "you don't get the Bulk of a large object by dividing weight by 10". Insofar as the rules imply it, they will get errataed.