With the dedication, can one only choose companions with the Mount special ability?
Can you chose any companion, which then gets the mount special ability?
Or, can you chose any companion but it doesn't get the mount special ability?
AFAIK, only the horse, riding drake and monitor lizard have the Mount special ability, but the Cavalier Dedication has a provision that makes companions that are normally small in size , medium sized instead.
That provision seems to eliminate the "companions with Mount only" option.
So do you get to add Mount to your companion, or is the mention of Mount just to allow you to take companions that happen to have that trait already?
You gain a young animal companion that serves as your mount. You can choose from animal companions with the mount special ability, as well as any additional options from your pledge, as determined by your GM. You must choose an animal companion that's at least one size larger than you, but if the animal usually starts as Small, you can begin with a Medium version of that animal (changing no statistics other than its size).
Seems clear to me.
The potential Size increase might just be to cover any potential future companion options which are small and come with the mount ability.
Speaking of this dedication. Do we imagine the dedication feat grants access to the riding drake which is otherwise uncommon?
Speaking of this dedication. Do we imagine the dedication feat grants access to the riding drake which is otherwise uncommon?I imagine "as determined by your GM." is the provision for that.
No that clause is specific to your pledge. The question of access to uncommon animal companions with the mount is an independent part of the dedication feat.
You can take animal companions without the Mount special ability if they are from your pledge. But if you instead pick from the generic list, you then need them to have the Mount ability.
The question is really does the sentence which says "You gain a young animal companion that serves as your mount. You can choose from animal companions with the mount special ability, as well as any additional options from your pledge, as determined by your GM" give access to uncommon animal companions with the mount special ability. The only extant example of which is the Riding Drake.
We're talking past eachother Shroud. Yes, you can take things that don't have the mount trait. That is subject to the GM.
My particular question is about choosing an animal companion which DOES have the mount trait, and whether that option gives you access to uncommon animal companions like a riding drake.
I'm pretty sure you don't have access to uncommon options unless it says you do.
I'd argue that the cavalier dedication tells you choose from an animal companion with the mount trait (no qualification on access or rarity).
A seeming design philosophy of the game is to call out when options are limited to common options (all spell casting class features callout common cantrips and spells when leveling, adopted ancestry calling out common ancestries, etc.) or uncommon options (see multilingual). It is also explicit that common options can grant access to uncommon ones without saying you get access to them (see bard focus spell cantrips). The few times where access is explicitly granted (like deity favored weapons for clerics, human's unconventional weaponry) it's because the class features doesn't give you the item outright. Nowhere in the CRB does it explicitly state not gaining access to uncommon options from class feats except in the spellcasting areas.
Interestingly enough some animal companions have an access condition like the Arboreal sapling (leaf order). But the riding drake doesn't have any such access condition. Making it very odd indeed. There is a distinction between uncommon and rare availability in the CRB. Typically uncommon options are granted by class or ancestry feats, whereas rare ones are always by a GM rewarding players.
So if the riding drake is uncommon, and should be available via feats. Which ones?!
