I read through character building options on my tablet until I fall asleep at night. I'm always looking for P1 style hacks to explode power or provide cool, unexpected benefits with class and archetype combos. Horses are a clunky accoutrement to try to lug around everywhere adventurers go, so I never paid them much attention. I got pretty excited when I re-read the Horse Animal Companion entry's Support Benefit and finally paid attention to it:
Support Benefit:
"Your horse adds momentum to your charge. Until the start of your next turn, if you moved at least 10 feet on the action before your attack, add a circumstance bonus to damage to that attack equal to twice the number of damage dice."
The description has no requirements although it's a safe assumption you must be mounted on the horse (previous threads concur). What's nuts about this is a lack of restriction on the type of damage other than it must be "an attack." I almost can't believe it and that there's no errata mentioning it.
This means it works with Attack trait spells! And spells do a lot of dice! +2 damage per die?!? Just for 1Action commanding your mount to move 10'? This is super awesome for spellcasters.
Here are some (ab)uses:
0 - Ray of Frost and Telekinetic Projectile - Each +2 circ dmg per spell level.
1 - Hydraulic Push - 3d6 at L1 is +6 dmg! And +4 more per spell lvl = +22 at L9!
3 - Searing Light (omg) - L3 spell with 10 dice (+20) grows to +68 dmg at L17!
The list goes on. There aren't many Attack trait damage spells, but this is such a huge benefit that it has a significant impact even on ones that do 1d4 per spell level.
Let's address the last line of the Support Benefit. I know this will come up:
"If your weapon already has the jousting weapon trait, increase the trait’s damage bonus by 2 per die instead."
This is a ruling for a common scenario where the Support Benefit potentially interacts with a jousting weapon and explains how to combine effects. It's not a requirement that your attack use a weapon. Of course, if you read it that way and adamantly interpret that to be the case, that knocks out most spells.
I haven't seen this discussed, and I don't mean to say I think this actually "breaks the game." It's just one of the largest, impactful class-archetype combos I've found so far. What do you think? Nuts or silly?
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Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.
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Support Benefit Your horse adds momentum to your charge. Until the start of your next turn, if you moved at least 10 feet on the action before your attack, add a circumstance bonus to damage to that attack equal to twice the number of damage dice. If your weapon already has the jousting weapon trait, increase the trait’s damage bonus by 2 per die instead.Weapon attack required.
Normal weapon, 1 extra circ damage per die.
Jousting weapon, 2 extra circ damage per die.
Are you sure about that damage there?
"Add a circumstance bonus to damage to that attack equal to twice the number of damage dice"
So, 1d8 -> 1d8+2
"If your weapon already has the jousting weapon trait, increase the trait's damage bonus by 2 per die instead"
1d8+1 -> 1d8+3
Is how I read it.
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"Your horse adds momentum to your charge."
While the above is flavor text, it is the lens through which I would evaluate the reasonableness of the ruling either way.
First, I do believe the rules as written allow for spells to work with the horse support benefit. The rule isn't really "ambiguous" so much as it is not written to support its clear intent to work only with actual weapons.
For this reason I would find a compromise with a caster trying to use this combo, and I would start by requiring the attack spell to interact with momentum in some way. I could see this being used with acceptable in-world flavor with something like Telekinetic Projectile. Picturing here a battle-wizard hurling a rock with their magic in a similar fashion to how another person might hurl a javelin.
This leads me to a quick conclusion: You can only use this on attack spells that also deal bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing damage.
I would then expect this to get an errata or something because of how clearly the intent is to work with weapons.
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Also note that effects that rely on the number of weapon damage die only apply to the base die and those from striking runes, not any other die you may roll as part of the attack (like Power Attack or Flaming Runes). So charging with a Horse and a Lance you would get at max 8 additional damage. Honestly not that good since the die drops to a d6 from a d8. You could use other weapons for the up to 4 damage though.
Since it does not specify that these are fundamental damage dices of the weapon but instead of the attack would the ones coming from property runes/energy mutagen would also count for the boost?
Weapon damage dice are specifically the ones the weapon does base, including those gained from Striking. Flaming, Frost, energy mutagens, etc are all Additional Damage, and so wouldn't add to the bonus damage from jousting.
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Good research, PawnJJ. Mark Seifter seals it as pre-errata. It was a fun one though.
