A riding horse becomes frightened 4 and fleeing at the start of a combat. Mounts move the turn of the rider. Does this mean that the first action of the turn has to be a Command you Animal or it flees on the first action? Could the first action be to dismount?
If you have the ride feat and use Command an Animal to move does that mean it won't flee for the rest of the round or simply mean it moves forwards then tries to flee unless you use Command an Animal to make it not fleeing?
Ok lastly if you don't Command an Animal at all, and lets say you cast a spell (2 actions and seek) does the horse not get to flee as you've used your 3 actions already and it's a mount. Or would you cast the spell and the mount flees with a stride action for your last action? How does the action economy break down with a mount and rider?
The rules on this are not clear. There is some info in the 4th errata printing for the CRB. But the GM has to wing this.
Assume your minion has a turn that happens during its owners turn. Or other rules break. It doesn't say when. There are no timing rules here. So I'd let the player decide.
I wouldn't allow a frightened 4 minion to be commanded at all, if you tried it as a GM I would just say it fails and then move the minion according to its condition.
That's why you pay extra for a trained warhorse
A riding horse becomes frightened 4 and fleeing at the start of a combat. Mounts move the turn of the rider. Does this mean that the first action of the turn has to be a Command you Animal or it flees on the first action? Could the first action be to dismount?
If you have the ride feat and use Command an Animal to move does that mean it won't flee for the rest of the round or simply mean it moves forwards then tries to flee unless you use Command an Animal to make it not fleeing?
Ok lastly if you don't Command an Animal at all, and lets say you cast a spell (2 actions and seek) does the horse not get to flee as you've used your 3 actions already and it's a mount. Or would you cast the spell and the mount flees with a stride action for your last action? How does the action economy break down with a mount and rider?
Basically:
If you pay an action to Command an Animal, the horse will use these actions to flee (as they can't do anything else).If you don't command it, there's no definite answers, but minions use their actions for purely defensive actions when they are not commanded. So I think it's the proper rule to apply. If you don't command your horse, they'll use their actions (unstated number of actions, unfortunately) to flee at the end of your round.
Yeah rules aren't super clear.
I would suggest using a combat trained mount or animal companion. Honestly even combat trained mounts aren't great to actually use in combat because of the action cost, but at least they wont run away terrified.
Wow. That's an interesting question.
I'd probably rule that the steed bolts on its rider's next turn, with a check of some kind from the rider to determine whether they get to hop off safely or not.
Unless you have the Ride feat (or an animal companion), then mounts don't count as minions. They have their own initiative and will either spend actions as Commanded or flee if not Commanded. Because the text about Commanding to stop fleeing says "If the animal is attacked or damaged, it returns to frightened 4 and fleeing", I would assume this means that once you Command it once in combat, you won't have to worry about it fleeing until these happen.
For your example, if you don't have Ride, then the mount will flee on it's turn. If you do have Ride, then the rules are unclear, but I think it would spend it's own actions to flee (probably right at the end of your turn).
With non-war trained mounts at lower levels, you can get interesting situations where the mount will roll a higher Initiative and flee before it can get to it's rider's turn.
That is incorrect about a separate initiative.
From the Mounted Combat rules:
"You can ride some creatures into combat. As noted in the Mount specialty basic action (page 472), your mount needs to be at least one size larger than you and willing. Your mount acts on your initiative. You must use the Command an Animal action to get your mount to spend its actions. If you don’t, the animal wastes its actions. If you have the Ride general feat, you succeed automatically when you Command an Animal that’s your mount."
My mistake about mounts and separate initiatives. I was confused by the Ride feat saying they act on your turn like a minion and missed that text.
You can make a pretty good case that "wastes its actions" would mean spends all three fleeing if it has the fleeing condition. I think the most logical way to play it is you need to spend an action to successfully Command an animal on the first turn to stop it from fleeing, and you'll need to repeat that process again if it is attacked or damaged. I'd probably let the successful command move the mount as the player dictates as well, and of course the Ride feat would be an automatic success.
I feel like Ride should have been an acrobatics or nature based skill feat.
I would guess willing is probably not met and the animal is just going to act on its own initiative and do what its compelled to do.
This is what makes sense to me for how things would play out.
I think this is the kind of situation where you dont want to overly punish the players or let skill feats auto negate the situation since they dont really cover it. Its also a chance to let some skills shine if the player can meet the difficulty checks.
At that point the rider although sitting on the animal they are not working together and the command action wouldn't be applicable.
I wouldn't want the fear condition to be completely negated by the ride feat. Non war horses are just not trained to stay for a fight.
I would want a player to have an opportunity to roll a nature check though. That fear is do to not being trained for combat and nature is all about training animals so maybe at a certain difficulty nature check your basically spending your actions to train the animal for combat.
But initiative would still be separate and if the animal goes first the two of you are moving away from combat.
I think allowing a reaction use to jump off with a acrobatics check would be appropriate though.
If the player goes first they would have the chance at using an action for the nature check to train the animal out of its natural inclination to run. Or they can use the dismount action as normal since they got to act before the animal got its turn.
I would guess willing is probably not met and the animal is just going to act on its own initiative and do what its compelled to do.
This is what makes sense to me for how things would play out.
I think this is the kind of situation where you dont want to overly punish the players or let skill feats auto negate the situation since they dont really cover it. Its also a chance to let some skills shine if the player can meet the difficulty checks.
At that point the rider although sitting on the animal they are not working together and the command action wouldn't be applicable.I wouldn't want the fear condition to be completely negated by the ride feat. Non war horses are just not trained to stay for a fight.
I would want a player to have an opportunity to roll a nature check though. That fear is do to not being trained for combat and nature is all about training animals so maybe at a certain difficulty nature check your basically spending your actions to train the animal for combat.But initiative would still be separate and if the animal goes first the two of you are moving away from combat.
I think allowing a reaction use to jump off with a acrobatics check would be appropriate though.
If the player goes first they would have the chance at using an action for the nature check to train the animal out of its natural inclination to run. Or they can use the dismount action as normal since they got to act before the animal got its turn.
Just to clarify I dont mean that one skill check now means the animal is trained for combat, it just means that round at least the animal is calm enough to fight the urge to flee.