Beast Rider Cavalier Archetype

[Jolken Jenkins]

So under Beast Rider it says "Medium beast riders can choose a camel or horse mount at 1st level. At 4th level, a Medium beast rider can also choose an allosaurus, ankylosaurus, arsinoitherium, aurochs, bison, brachiosaurus, elephant, glyptodon, hippopotamus, lion, mastodon, megaloceros, snapping turtle (giant), tiger, triceratops, or tyrannosaurus as his mount. Additional mounts might be available with GM approval" but at 4th level none of those companions that become available to a medium beast rider have hit the 7th level advancement to become large. So is the beast rider archetype completely useless or am I missing something?

[Chess Pwn]

I'm not seeing the problem. At lv4 you can choose a bison as your mount. It's medium. You're medium. So you're probably not riding on it much, but you could since it has to be strong enough to carry you.

[Odo Hillborne]

You can ride such a beast with the Undersized Mount feat. Note that without the conversion to large, there might be an encumbrance problem. Look up the strength of the animal and check the carrying capacity by Str.

[graystone]

Odo Hillborne wrote:

You can ride such a beast with the Undersized Mount feat. Note that without the conversion to large, there might be an encumbrance problem. Look up the strength of the animal and check the carrying capacity by Str.

You could skip the feat if you don't mind the -5 "ill suited" penalty to ride.

[Odo Hillborne]

graystone wrote:

You could skip the feat if you don't mind the -5 "ill suited" penalty to ride.

True, but it's embarrassing for a Cavalier to fall off his mount (especially if it leaves you prone during combat). Try taking Undersized Mount, then retraining it when the mount goes large.

[graystone]

Odo Hillborne wrote:

True, but it's embarrassing for a Cavalier to fall off his mount (especially if it leaves you prone during combat).

That really depends how often you plan to plan to ride in combat and how high your skill is. Stay in saddle is only a DC 5 so -5 is only a DC 10: It's not exactly hard to get that to an auto success even at 1st WITH the minus.

Odo Hillborne wrote:

Try taking Undersized Mount, then retraining it when the mount goes large.

You could is your DM allows retraining, which isn't a given [and you don't mind spending cash on it]. Myself, it's rarely bad to have a high ride skill on a mounted character, so my 'fix' is to deal with it through that.

[Saldiven]

It is, unfortunately, a poorly written archetype where the person who created it apparently didn't do a lot of research into existing stuff.