Riding [s]with[ / s] on the Dead

[pad300]

Ok, situation,

Evil Cleric has ride skill, and animate dead. He wants to animate and ride a dead critter (Skeleton or Zombie - mindless undead from animate dead spell) around.

I don't see animal training working with the undead. Can he use ride skill with said critter?

[Kitty Catoblepas]

A horse is suitable for riding, so your corporeal undead horse should likewise be suitable for riding (and actually seems to be a pretty common mount among players with looser morals).

It has no Int score, so it cannot be taught tricks with Handle Animal (also, it is not an animal). It loses the Docile special quality since it is not an "...extraordinary special (quality) that improve(s) its melee or ranged attacks." It is not subject to fatigue, and can be the target of Spur Mount until it falls apart.

If you want to be technical, it cannot be guided with your knees, since it only obeys verbal commands. Consequently, though, you do not need hands to guide it.

If you want to be absolutely "WO-HO-HO-HO! GOTCHA!" technical, it cannot be combat trained. Mind you, it doesn't make sense for undead to be spooked in battle and war- or combat-trained only is mentioned in respect to Animals.

[RAWmonger]

You absolutely *can* ride them, it just becomes a question of how adequately you can ride them. They will certainly not be as effective as just using a normal mount which has been trained for the purpose of mounted combat...

Immediately you take a -5 to ride checks because they are "ill suited as a mount." Regardless of what undead creature you're riding. It's literally a mindless creature, and on top of that, it's either all bone or bone and rotting tissue... making it rather ill suited for use as a mount. Then I would imagine you *probably* don't have a saddle for this. Even if you had a saddle, a normal horse saddle on an undead horse *wouldn't* function correctly, since there's no longer the muscle/tissue of the horse there reliably enough to secure the saddle. So if you're going to claim to make a saddle, it would be quite the engineering feat, since you would have to nearly permanently secure it to the undead creature's bones. No saddle puts us at another -5 to ride, for a total of -10.

Then you verbally command them and they obey "to the best of their abilities." Undead are not meant to be given complex commands, which leads me to believe their capability of comprehending commands is about the same as a simple machine given "if>then" commands. The RAW examples given are "follow me" and "guard this area," with other simple things like "attack this type of creature if you see it," and obviously a shrill "kill him" when you want it to attack something. Mounted combat is slightly more complex than that. It would become *very* situational on the actual verbal commands you start giving your mount. This mount simply would not have the same intuition on how to act as a combat trained mount would, since this mount is literally brainless.

Even just generally travelling would be a nuisance with this mount. Your best bet is to ride behind one of your teammates and then say "follow him" so that you don't have to keep on telling your mount where to walk to. Then you have to say "stop" every time you want it to stop.

Or you're currently going through a dungeon and there's a lot of stopping and starting and listening and stealthing, and all the while the necromancer is going: "walk to that corner." "stop." "turn me around." "follow the fighter." "stop."

Not to mention the mount *has no idea* how fast you want it to go (which trained mounts learn through your body language and nonverbal cues you give them), so if you don't specify for it by saying "take me to x quickly" your undead mount either runs as fast as it possibly can at them, as slow as it possibly can at them, or some randomly rolled speed determined by the GM. Mindless Undead also do not fall under the "you cannot command them to hurt/kill themselves" rule like other compulsion-ish spells (as far as i'm aware). So if you're chasing something that succesfully jumps a gap that your undead creature can't, or flies over a chasm, or you're going down a steep pass, you better think to tell your undead mount to stop, because if not, he's going to keep on chasing it, because you told him to.

This would be much more like setting a launch path for your rocket flight to the moon than it would be taking the horse into town casually.

Of course if you're just trying to have some fun little thing for your character, talk to your GM about it. He may overlook some of the specifics/technicalities of undead (like the way every non-evil creature will immediately take up arms against you or bow to your will if you're alone seen riding into town on an undead creature...)

TL;DR

[LordKailas]

I agree with RAWmonger as far as the rules go. I disagree that it's automatically an "ill-suited mount". I think it's only ill-suited if the non-undead version would be ill-suited. What is and isn't ill-suited is left completely up to the DM's interpretation though because we are not given a definition or even guide of what ill-suited means.

As for having a saddle. I think it's fair to require an exotic saddle for an undead mount for the reasons RAWmonger specified. But I see no reason why you couldn't have an exotic saddle for it. Exotic saddles cover a massive range of creatures and I don't see why one couldn't be created for an undead mount. Alternatively, if you're making say a skeleton horse. I could see a normal saddle working so long as it's on the horse at the time of animation. I mean the thing already breaks the laws of physics by walking around without muscles and ligaments. I see no reason why the magic couldn't also apply to the saddle allowing it to sit correctly "because magic".

For simplicity I would just use the normal ride rules for the undead mount. It's just that thematically instead of applying pressure to leave your hands free it's all about precise verbal commands and balance. You would have to familiarize yourself with how it responds to various commands same as you would any creature type you've never ridden before. I mean, riding a gryphon is different from riding a horse. Both of which are likely quite different from riding a giant squid. In each case you'll need to spend a little bit of time "figuring out the creature" even if it's well trained and you are an experienced rider (iow multiple ranks in the ride skill).

As for the mount not being considered combat trained. I think this depends entirely if the creature was combat trained prior to becoming undead on the basis that skeletons keep abilities they possessed in life that improve their combat prowess. Assuming that it's even applicable in the first place. Since, if not being combat trained means the mount tries to bolt during combat. Well, as pointed out earlier this doesn't make sense for a creature that if left to it's own devices would calmly stand there doing nothing while a battle rages around it (so long as nothing was actively trying to harm it).

Of course coming into town with undead under your control (regardless if you're riding said undead or not) depends on the town and your character's reputation. Most towns that don't know you will assume that you're up to no good and will probably want you to leave ASAP assuming you made it past the front gates to begin with (and weren't simply shot on sight).