Shimmerwing dragonfly familiar with the mauler archetype.
As for wolves growing large, keep in mind you can decline the size increase and get other bonuses instead.
Deinonychus XD
In regards to the suggestions for big cats or a dinosaur, is there some way for a cavalier to get access to those options that I am unaware of?
Asingle level of hunter will let your cavalier give its mount a constant additional bonus to something, as well as grant them the ability to use reduce animal wands. My level 7 cavalier started a few levels of hunter at 8, and i have NEVER looked back. He is a charging wrecking ball of death and destruction, only three creatures have survived a charge from him to date, at level 10 (and that includes the time i charged 600 feet to kill the sy in the ally, and the time i jumped 30 feet up to the ceiling as a charge (cheetah spirit) and stood on the ceiling with spider climb after kiling the guy en route.
(btw my small cavalier uses an axebeak currently)
Giant skunk will put the enemy running before the combat start
How about a tapir (just use boar stats but have it bite instead of gore)?
I was playing a Hunter rather than a Cavalier, but my halfling's boar made a pretty good mount. It can wear horseshoes and you can use Tusk Blades to enhance its Gore attacks. So you can leave the boar's neck slot free and get a higher level of enhancement than an Amulet of Mighty Fists allows. Of course, without the Undersize Mount feat, you'd have to wait until level 4 to use the boar as a mount.
The Monstrous Mount feat gives access to a Worg. It's pretty convenient to have an intelligent mount (capable of speech, too). She managed to bring my unconscious body to a temple to be healed one time, that was pretty nice.
Probably the best one and it avoids the usual issue of not having enough space to bring a mount into certain places is the Giant Gecko Lizard. It does not much in the way of damage yet constant Spider-Climb means you can bring it almost anywhere the party visits.
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means you can bring it almost anywhere the party visits.
As an aside, make sure that you have a scroll or potion or two of carry companion. For those times where you cannot bring the animal with you (whether it is to a party, or through terrain the GM says the animal cannot traverse, or whatever). Best money you'll ever spend :-)
The unfortunate problem with the giant gecko, is that as an animal companion, it's not giant. Specifically, it starts as small (and thus unable to act as a mount, barring feat, for a small character). It becomes medium at lvl 4...
Actually you are wrong.
I created a quick Cavalier character on Herolab. I just focused on the mount aspect of the Cavalier. Halfling or Human, small or medium sized character I received no errors from Herolab on my choice of race or mount. No message telling me to change the creature I chose as a mount. In the description of the Gecko it even mentions Goblins using and training them as such.
The choices at first level when it comes to creatures of the small size category available as mounts is:
Antelope, Boar, Dog, Giant Gecko, Ram, Stag, Giant Weasel.
D&D and by extension Pathfinder is not about realism and yes if it was realistic then they could not be used as mounts.
Hero labs isn't a perfect check on rules.
If you get the gecko through vermin tamer then you automatically get undersized mount as a bonus feat rather than the mount getting light armor proficiency. The default cavalier has a restriction on only selecting things you can ride, so the Gecko option is only available if you have taken the undersized mount feat at 1st level or if you're 4th level.
Maybe they intended to use the riding gecko and never made a animal companion entry for it, but as is, it's restricted.
From the Pathfinder Srd:
The only restriction for small characters is Boar and Dog at fourth level.
So I stand corrected and kind of figured Herolab was mistaken about medium sized characters being able to take small mounts without a feat. If say one is playing a Halfling or gnome no feat is required.
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Boar and dog mounts were part of the original set of small mount options and existed before there was a way to ride something your own size. That's the only reason they have the level restriction and none of the others do.
Shimmerwing dragonfly familiar with the mauler archetype.How does a cavalier get a familiar, And why wouldent you use your actual mount...?
There are many feats that would allow any character that wishes to have a familiar to gain one. The most common combination would be grabbing eldritch heritage with the arcane bloodline.
As for why you're not using your normal mount I don't think any of the normal mount options can fly. The dragonfly familiar both can fly and can shrink to a size smaller than the character allowing you to have a flying mount option with you at all times.
It really depends on the limitations of the campaign. My most recent cavalier/hunter for example is in a campaign where large monstrous mounts aren't an issue so the mother's fang giant snake is fine. I plan on growing it further at higher levels with the mammoth rider prestige class.
One of the things that's nice about the snake is that it has both a climb speed and a swim speed so it doesn't slow the party down at all.