I was working on my hunter guide this morning and writing about mounted combat as a viable option and thought to myself, "What if my animal companion rode me into combat?"
The first animal that came to mind is the viper. I could keep him small and give him a +2 con and Dex at level 4. (I would need to change his poison ability as we do not typically use attribute damage in our games.)
What else can I do to improve this idea?
Quick build:
18 Str, 13 dex, 13 con, 13 Int, 13 wis, 10 cha
(@ 12 - 18 str, 14 dex, 14 con, 13 int, 14 wis, 10 cha)
Human Hunter
racial trait- eye for talent (granting my viper +2 int), dirty fighter
Weapon of choice Falchion
Feats
1- Combat expertise
3- Pack Flanking, Power Attack
5- Combat Reflexes
6- Paired Opportunist
Viper-
Str 8, Dex 17, Con 11, Int 3, Wis 12, Cha 2
(@ 4 10, 20, 12, 3, 12, 2)
Feats
1- Weapon Finesse
2- Combat Reflexes
5- Improved Natural Attack
Things I think would be good:
Increasing Viper's damage
Reach on the Viper
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Viper starts out small and only ever gets to medium at level 4. A Constrictor snake, on the other hand, starts medium and is large at level 4. For a human, you could take undersized mount early and retrain it after level 4. You would also need an exotic saddle to be able to justify riding a snake as a mount, though nagas have a cavalier archetype that does this pretty well.
Constrictors are also just better as companions than vipers anyway. Sure the damage dice is only 1d4 but Grab+Constrict is a great ability especially with that 24 Str at level 4.
Consider a lance for a charging build. Your large sized Constrictor would have the same reach as you with a lance, so you could charge in, bite, grab, constrict, lance. That amounts to essentially 4 attacks with the action economy of a single attack, and is better than full attacking until you're always getting hasted and have an iterative at level 8.
He wants the viper to ride him, not him to ride the viper.
I'd expect a lot of table variation with anything like this. The mounted combat rules aren't very clear or good even for the expected 'Character rides a Horse' scenario and extremely difficult to figure out how they should apply to other situations.
Mounted combat violates the rule that two creatures can't be in the same space, for example, but never justifies the precise requirement that allows violating that rule. It never defines what is required to be considered to be a mount, and how that works. Generally speaking, I don't think many GMs would allow a halfling to sit on a human friends shoulders and consider him a mount, and in a way that is pretty much what you are trying to do here.
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Aha, I misread what he was saying.
+1 for Dave, you'll have to work with your GM about how to handle the situation. Personally I don't find it game breaking in any way and in the interest of this being a game for fun I would have no problem with it as a GM. Not all will share in my opinion, however.
By RAW, there is no RAW. The most defined thing for mounted combat is that the creature ridden must be a "suitable mount" for the rider. That's basically all that is said about what qualifies.
We had a Hafling riding our half-orc barbarian in our current campaign at one point. Yeah, we embrace the rule of fun.
My questions were more for feats to actually get damage out there. So far it’s an extra attack with a d4+1 each round and when I crit I get an attack of opportunity (that part is pretty cool).
Would the viper need to put points into ride in order to ride me? As opposed to being carried. If he did would it be able to ride others? That could be funny. How hard is it to ride something that doesn’t want to be ridden? Ride skill vs CMD?
How do I get the viper’s damage up? Other than the obvious raise strength and power attack. Power attack is pretty late in this build (for the companion). I could drop int back to 1 to start with 10 str.
Still looking for some ideas.