I'm going to be playing a dragon (from battlezoo) that can turn Large (later up to Gargantuan) and having a high strength combined with the bulk conversion for size I can easily carry my team.
The book suggests that when using allies as mounts, both the mount-character and the mounted-character should burn an action to coordinate.
Would you allow a third character to climb on, and if so, would you simply have the mount-character burn a second action?
Can you think of ways that this could be abused, or is it pretty innocuous and sub-optimal as I think it is?
I'm going to be playing a dragon (from battlezoo) that can turn Large (later up to Gargantuan) and having a high strength combined with the bulk conversion for size I can easily carry my team.
The book suggests that when using allies as mounts, both the mount-character and the mounted-character should burn an action to coordinate.
Would you allow a third character to climb on, and if so, would you simply have the mount-character burn a second action?
Can you think of ways that this could be abused, or is it pretty innocuous and sub-optimal as I think it is?
Honestly, it would depend on how awesome I thought it would be as a thing in the campaign, and (by extension) how much I wanted to encourage it as a GM. "Two riders on one mount" is already in unexamined territory, and "players riding on each other" is pretty clearly defined only as a "you want rules? Fine. Here. Technically, you can do that thing." So it's not really a "balance" thing per se at this point. It's fully a GM call, and it depends on what they want.
If I wanted to strongly discourage it while technically permitting it, I'd go with your plan - each rider loses one action, and subtracts one from the actions available to the mount. Even the one-rider one-mount version in the book is punitive enough to only be viable for niche cases. If I wanted to leave it at about the same level of "bad idea" as the original, I'd probably only make the mount pay once, as long as they really could bear the weight. If I wanted to make it a Thing That Your Character Can Be Awesome At, I'd probably try to homebrew a couple of archetypes - one for mount, one for dragonrider - that would let each character ditch their own part of the action cost either in the dedication or as a level 4 feat that required the dedication. Of course, I wouldn't do that unless I was actually totally on board with having "mounted on my dragon" be something that the characters were strongly incentivized to be in every fight. Still, a campaign about dragonriders riding dragons certainly has the potential to be cool... if that's something that I wanted to make that campaign be about.
Personally, I'd suggest discussing it with your GM. Talk between you about how much both of you want this to be A Thing, and then figure out between you what kind of a ruling would encourage that level of usage.
Sanityfaerie is correct in that there are no rules to govern multiple riders to one mount. If the point is to ride during encounters, I think the action tax might be needed, but there may be something in that book to cover it (I haven’t read the Battlezoo books). If it’s just for travel, then I don’t see any problem with it and would just let as many on the dragon as could reasonably fit.
If I wanted to strongly discourage it while technically permitting it, I'd go with your plan - each rider loses one action, and subtracts one from the actions available to the mount.
That is a reasonable extention to the existing rule for just 1 rider.
However I find the existing rule to be in the same strongly discourage it while technically permitting it box. Which to me is unsatisfactory.
I don't like it when the rules to support a playstyle basically rules it out. Maybe there should be a feat cost to allow this to work with less penalties.
The main thing to consider IMO is that the mount can effectively supply movement actions to the passengers. The base rule of each losing an action balances that out, though it also penalizes when the mount's not moving. So one had better make good use of movement for it to pay off. But it can pay off. And like many things in PF2, the balance curve aligns with PCs making best use of an ability, perhaps adding Haste to the mix or simply tremendous movement that now both PCs can take advantage of.
When adding more PCs it gets messier, since that second lost action for the mount-PC is even more severe. Yet more shenanigans become possible (even if inaccessible to many PCs or beyond a player's intentions). It becomes difficult to discern how well that works out.
Thinking about Master-Blaster, the warrior mount was quite limited in combat, lumbering, so this kind of makes sense. Imagine him tumbling around. How functional would that rider be? A typical high-level fantasy PC though dodges, weaves, or performs fantastical actions that make it hard to believe one could simply mount them like a horse. And the rider will want to fight too, right? (And with zero control of the mount flinging their limbs in who knows what directions.)
Plus with a dragon we're getting into territory where it's providing flight to its passengers, something PCs can't access via their own mounts until the highest levels (barring allowance by purchasing griffons, etc.).
That's quite strong, even if simply for overland travel (if that's important at all which isn't a given).
So yeah, messy business I'd rather avoid in a regular game, though sure, go for it in a looser playstyle. As for the rules, I'm not sure it handles having passengers at all, even a second rider on a horse.
How are us knights supposed to ride off into the sunset with the pretty royalty rescued from a tower?!
Would you allow a third character to climb on, and if so, would you simply have the mount-character burn a second action?
The rules say the rider and the mount burn an action so I'd say that that applies to every rider plus the mount: so everyone marks off an action and of course everyone rolls initiative and they all take the worst roll.
I don't like it when the rules to support a playstyle basically rules it out. Maybe there should be a feat cost to allow this to work with less penalties.
How about the mount gets two actions but can only take move actions? Or two actions but cannot use their hands?
That would also encourage using the mount mobility to its fullest instead of just taking advantage of the unit stacking.