Mounts and initiative


Rules Discussion


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Is there much point in even attempting mounted combat without an animal companion and/or the Ride feat? Seems like it will just totally mess up any smooth three action tactics you might otherwise have had, since you have to spend actions to command the beast, wait for it to take its turn, and then in the next round you might be in a position to do what you want, provided the battlefield circumstances haven't totally changed by then (unlikely). It just seems fundamentally incompatible with the three action and initiative systems.

Also, under the Ride fear, what does "Any animal you’re mounted on acts on your turn, like a minion" mean precisely? Is my mount suddenly limited to two actions rather then three?


I don't think requiring a basic investment (a level 1 feat) is unreasonable for mounted combat. It can be difficult, and fighting while mounted definitely requires special training.

As to your second point, Ride doesn't say the mount becomes a minion, it just acts on your turn like a minion. It still has three actions.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I could see that being interpreted either way, tho.

It acts on your turn "like a minion" (does). If it acts like a minion, then a minion acts and gets two actions.
I don't know. I wouldn't be 100% sure on that one.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Here is my understanding of mounted combat on an animal that is not your companion.

If you have the ride feat, you do not have to make a check to command it, allowing you to spend actions 1 for 1 through your mount on your turn.

If you do not have the ride feat, you have to make a command animal check every time you want the animal to do something. If it is an animal that does not have the helpful attitude, this means having a fairly high chance of failure, and will probably not be worth the action cost. Even if you fail only on a 5 or lower, wasting 25% of your actions is a bad idea, and critical failures could get even worse.

However, if it is an animal that is helpful to you, you increase the result by one step, meaning you likely only fail on a 1.

When you are mounted though, the animal will always act on your turn. The obvious advantage here is movement. Between you and your mount, you will only have 3 total actions (or as many as you regularly have if you are slowed or hasted). If your hope was to ride an animal into combat and then it would start attacking enemies on its own, the rules are pretty much against you here. It would be up to the GM to decide just how much the animal likes you, and whether, if left to its own devices it would stick around and fight or run off on its own.

Shadow Lodge

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Salamileg wrote:
I don't think requiring a basic investment (a level 1 feat) is unreasonable for mounted combat. It can be difficult, and fighting while mounted definitely requires special training.

Calling Ride 'a level 1 feat' is a bit of an understatement, since the only way to actually take it at level 1 is to be a Human with the General Training Ancestry Feat or be a Goblin with the Rough Rider Ancestry feat.

Without taking one of these options, you can't take the Ride feat before third level, and it is one of only five general feats you can ever take.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Unicore wrote:
When you are mounted though, the animal will always act on your turn. The obvious advantage here is movement.

Ah yes, I forgot that the initiative rules changed when mounted.


Ravingdork wrote:

Is there much point in even attempting mounted combat without an animal companion and/or the Ride feat? Seems like it will just totally mess up any smooth three action tactics you might otherwise have had, since you have to spend actions to command the beast, wait for it to take its turn, and then in the next round you might be in a position to do what you want, provided the battlefield circumstances haven't totally changed by then (unlikely). It just seems fundamentally incompatible with the three action and initiative systems.

Also, under the Ride fear, what does "Any animal you’re mounted on acts on your turn, like a minion" mean precisely? Is my mount suddenly limited to two actions rather then three?

Minion Trait wrote:

Minion Source Core Rulebook pg. 634

Minions are creatures that directly serve another creature. A creature with this trait can use only 2 actions per turn and can’t use reactions. Your minion acts on your turn in combat, once per turn, when you spend an action to issue it commands. For an animal companion, you Command an Animal; for a minion that’s a spell or magic item effect, like a summoned minion, you Sustain a Spell or Sustain an Activation; if not otherwise specified, you issue a verbal command, a single action with the auditory and concentrate traits. If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please.

It's in the Minion trait. Under normal circumstances, commanding a non-companion animal would take 1 command an animal action to give the mount a single action (probably stride, but could be step or whatever). You'd have to spend two command an animal actions to stride twice.

With the ride feat, your mount now acts like a minion which breaks it from the 1 to 1 trade. On your turn you can issue a single command an animal action and it is at that moment when it gets 2 actions. You would still end up having your two remaining actions. Since mounts have higher speed than you probably, this means if you intended to stride even once in combat, commanding your animal will net you substantially farther movement for no net loss of actions.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

It sounds to me like my mount went from being able to stride three times to only being able to stride twice.

I understand that the net number of actions is higher, but my mount is still slower.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The rules for command animal explicitly say, "You can also spend multiple actions to Command the Animal to perform that number of basic actions on its next turn; for instance, you could spend 3 actions to Command an Animal to Stride three times or to Stride twice and then Strike.

All the ride feat says is, "Any animal you’re mounted on acts on your turn, like a minion." Not that it is limited to two actions.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The real question is whether an animal companion is limited to 2 actions per turn. I mean a galloping horse moves 100ft on 2 move actions, which is pretty tough to keep up with, even with three actions, but it doesn't seem right that a fighter on a war horse could move three times for 140ft (2 action gallop movements and 1 regular), but the champion with a mount is limited to 100ft.

My guess would be that the 2 action limit is only supposed to apply in a round when you do the special command action that gives you two minion actions for the cost of one, and should not apply if your character is exchanging actions 1 for 1.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

That sounds hella' complicated.


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Ravingdork wrote:
That sounds hella' complicated.

You're trying to do Mounted Combat. I don't know what in the last 10+ years of Pathfinder gave you the impression that even a streamlined version wasn't going to have some wonk to it.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

the basics of riding animals is pretty easy: You are one unit, you act together with one set of actions, you can be targeted separately. With the ride feat that really is all there is to it.

It is the riding animal companions that starts getting pretty weird.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

During the playtest I figured that with Ride and an animal Companion you could use command a minion go give it to actions, then a second action to Command an Animal and give it a third. But then they added the Companion's Cry Ranger feat that basically lets you do that, which implies that you can't do it otherwise. I probably wouldn't charge someone a feat to do that, still.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I tried to "ask Mark" on Discord about this very conundrum, but was unsuccessful in getting any meaningful answer. I think many people fail to see the problem generated by conflicts between mounted combat and the minion rules.

The trouble isn't in sharing MAP, that is clear. The trouble comes when you try to count master and mount actions separately.

The mounted combat rules only make sense if you consider the mount and rider as a single entity with three actions to spend, each action requiring the player to choose between a mount action (stride or strike) and a rider action (usually strike, but could be almost anything except movement). Without the ride feat, you're stuck making a skill roll for each mount action. With the ride feat, you need no roll, but still have to spend the action.

Needless to say, this doesn't interact well with the minion rules. Since the minion rules were designed with the express purpose of limiting the number of actions available to a PC with one or more companions, the easiest thing to do would be to state that the mounted combat rules supercede the minion rules for companions used as mounts.

Unfortunately, we have no extant rules governing the specific interaction between minion rules and mounted combat. So there are widely varying interpretations on this subject.


Captain Morgan wrote:
During the playtest I figured that with Ride and an animal Companion you could use command a minion go give it to actions, then a second action to Command an Animal and give it a third. But then they added the Companion's Cry Ranger feat that basically lets you do that, which implies that you can't do it otherwise. I probably wouldn't charge someone a feat to do that, still.

Companion's Cry works whether or not you are mounted. While mounted, Companion's Cry is redundant with the Ride rules. It's okay to have different ways to do very similar things.


Seems to me that you should be able to seperate the possiblilities into: A) treat it as a minion - use 1 action to give it 2 actions (or 3 with Companion's Cry), you keep the rest of your actions), or B) you can trade your actions on a 1-1 basis and get 3 (or 4 with haste) moves on your mount. You still get the action economy boost of minion if you want, but retain the ability to move 3 (or more) if that is what you want/need.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
jplukich wrote:
Seems to me that you should be able to seperate the possiblilities into: A) treat it as a minion - use 1 action to give it 2 actions (or 3 with Companion's Cry), you keep the rest of your actions), or B) you can trade your actions on a 1-1 basis and get 3 (or 4 with haste) moves on your mount. You still get the action economy boost of minion if you want, but retain the ability to move 3 (or more) if that is what you want/need.

I'd like to see this codified in the rules. I think there probably needs to be a different term/action for commanding an animal as a minion and using it as a mount to move on a 1 action for one action basis. Having both be "command animal" feels more confusing than it does removing any of the clutter of using the nature skill to do different types of things with animals.

Horizon Hunters

After frequently considering myself to be on the wrong side of this issue and needing to change my position I have given this one a lot of thought. The best and most consistent conclusion I can really come up with is something that can be inferred but is never explicitly stated in the rules (so I'm sure some will still disagree) which is this: Any animal that is trained to serve (allies or enemies) or fulfill a specific function should be granted the minion trait (by the GMs discretion).

Source Core Rulebook pg. 634
Minions are creatures that directly serve another creature. A creature with this trait can use only 2 actions per turn and can’t use reactions. Your minion acts on your turn in combat, once per turn, when you spend an action to issue it commands. For an animal companion, you Command an Animal; for a minion that’s a spell or magic item effect, like a summoned minion, you Sustain a Spell or Sustain an Activation; if not otherwise specified, you issue a verbal command, a single action with the auditory and concentrate traits. If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please.

This makes having a horse animal companion a bit more consistent whether mounted or unmounted and also addresses the problem of how you should treat enemy or friendly mounts.

Minions don't automatically listen to animal commands so the Ride feat is still necessary for a guaranteed success, when commanding a non animal companion mount. There could be some weirdness if say a druid manages to talk a hostile/wild creature into allowing hin to mount it temporarily and that druid also had the ride feat (does it still gain the minion trait? Or does it get 3 actions to use) but that's an edge case that I would feel ok letting a DM handle situationally. The rest turns out pretty smoothe in my humble opinion.

(It still doesn't address the vagueness of the wording in mounted combat rules and in the example but that's a whole separate can of worms)

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