Ride feat outside encounters

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Is the Ride feat necessary, helpful, or useless outside encounter mode? Without it do you have to roll to Command your horse to keep going every once in a while in exploration mode? I'm trying to figure out whether a character who'll dismount to fight ought ever to take it.

EDIT: I'm thinking of a normal riding horse or warhorse here, not an animal companion, if it matters.

[ofMars]

This seems like one of those GM Fiat things. I personally wouldn't think so, I'd put a significant penalty on the will DC of a creature commanded to do a thing it was specifically domesticated and trained to do.

[Ubertron_X]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Is the Ride feat necessary, helpful, or useless outside encounter mode? Without it do you have to roll to Command your horse to keep going every once in a while in exploration mode? I'm trying to figure out whether a character who'll dismount to fight ought ever to take it.

EDIT: I'm thinking of a normal riding horse or warhorse here, not an animal companion, if it matters.

Well I don't think it is necessary for normal riding, however the GM could always call for checks, e.g. when you want to pass an obstacle, jump over a crevice or need to cross a ford.

[Captain Morgan]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Is the Ride feat necessary, helpful, or useless outside encounter mode? Without it do you have to roll to Command your horse to keep going every once in a while in exploration mode? I'm trying to figure out whether a character who'll dismount to fight ought ever to take it.

EDIT: I'm thinking of a normal riding horse or warhorse here, not an animal companion, if it matters.

I'm sure there's no intention that you need the ride feat to maximize the benefits of just riding to travel, no. Though I'm sure someone can make a very silly case for how it might by RAW.

However, I'm a little unclear on whether a horse acts on your initiative by default. If it doesn't, there's a chance a horse without combat training gets spooked and carries you away from the fight before you get a chance to act.

[ofMars]

Captain Morgan wrote:

However, I'm a little unclear on whether a horse acts on your initiative by default. If it doesn't, there's a chance a horse without combat training gets spooked and carries you away from the fight before you get a chance to act.

That would be pretty funny, you'd have to spend all your actions on your turn to command an animal to get back.

For Initiative, I don't think it would be unbalanced to just have the animal take the actions on your turn because without the minion trait, commanding it is a one-to-one thing. If it didn't act on your turn, it would make it really fiddly, to be able to ride into battle and attack, you'd have only one action to spend commanding it, then the other two to ready an action to attack after it moved. I like the ride feat as a way to make mounted combat better, rather than a way to make mounted combat at all possible

[Saros Palanthios]

Captain Morgan wrote:

However, I'm a little unclear on whether a horse acts on your initiative by default. If it doesn't, there's a chance a horse without combat training gets spooked and carries you away from the fight before you get a chance to act.

The general Mounted Combat rules on page 478 say "Your mount acts on your initiative."

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Hmm, the general Mounted Combat rules say "If you have the Ride general feat, you succeed automatically when you Command an Animal that's your mount." OTOH the Ride feat says you auto-succeed at Commanding it to take a move action. I wonder which one is the mistake? If I made a mounted warrior it'd be nice not to have to roll to get my warhorse to Strike, if I ever wanted it to for some reason.