Mounted Warrior Builds

Given the importance of mounted warriors in historical and fantasy settings alike, I've been thinking about making a mounted warrior for my next PC. Having looked over the mounted combat rules, it seems like the choices are to make a charger (who gets one attack with a lance at the end of a charge) or a mounted archer (who runs the risk of mounted archery penalties, but potentially can get more attacks off per round).

The big problem as I see it is that medium characters need to ride large mounts, making them unweildy in indoor settings. In contrast, small characters can ride medium mounts, which can be brought into "normal" indoor settings (ancient dungeons, the royal palace, etc.). What mounts would folks recommend?

In the end, the obvious choice seems to be to make a halfling outrider, I think. But what classes should be used to meet the prereqs. Choices seem to be fighter (lots of feats), scout (hooray for skirmish damage), or ranger (arrows from above).

Any thoughts on the ideal mounted archer, or reasons I should abandon arrows for a lance? The goal of the build is to create a highly mobile combatant with a unique flavor.

go druid or ranger (if ranger pick up 'natural bond' feat and maybe even a few levels of beastmaster)..

this will at least allow your mount to survive, which can be important.

There should be ways for you to make your attacks and have your mount make attacks as well.

If you go druid you can spare a couple of levels for fighter (and/or psychic warrior) to fill up on the appropriate feats.. stongheart halfling gets you another feat and no worry about losing exp.

As for the actual builds in question there are quite a few different ones with different bonuses and penalties, if you can get a mount with pounce then you can both get full attacks on a charge, which can be very impressive.. especially since your mount should be getting feats with the bonus hd right?

A medium sized mount, or a mount with a permanent reduction in size item (I believe there was one in masters of the wild, maybe it was ported to the newer version), will allow you to go just about everywhere.. maybe even not have to get off of your mount! perhaps a wolf for tripping power?

Cavalier is also a great mounted combatant.

The Calvary Charger Tactical feat is good, although less so for a Small character

The Mounted Archery offsets some of the penalties from using a bow mounted

The Halfling Outrider looks like a great choice for a mounted archer

As for meeting the Prereqs, I would do it with Ranger. Fighter can do it too, but the Ranger gets spells and an Animal Companion (which could be your mount) at 4th level, the Outrider levels stack with Ranger for Animal Companion abilities. The ranger Ranged Combat Style bonus feats accentuate the Outrider's ranged abilities rather well.

While you can meet the prereqs and start the Outrider class at level 6 (Ranger 5, Outrider 1), you might want to hold off, or intersperse Ranger levels.

At Ranger 6, you get Manyshot
At Ranger 8, you get swift tracker and level 2 spells (assuming Wis 16+)
At Ranger 9, you get Evasion, which, combines with the 7th level Outrider Evasion to grant Improved Evasion ... Improved Evasion at level 16 isn't amazing, but at least you have it

Plus favored enemies can be very nice depending on the campaign.

That is assuming you don't want to pick up another Prestige class, like Arcane Archer or Order of the Bow Initiate

As an alternative (which happens to be great if you want to dip into arcane archer), start with Hexblade. At 6th level take the Improved Familiar feat and use your familiar as a mount. When you hit Outrider 7 (character level 12) you have Mettle and Evasion ... pretty nifty You only get a few first level spells, I would reccomend augment familiar

I'm not familiar with the scout, so I can't comment on it. (I only have Complete Warrior and Complete Divine ...)

oh right. Most important feat for the party archer is Precise Shot. Let's you shoot into melee without the -4 to hit. (In 3.0 it also negated the chance to hit your melee pals, but in 3.5 you can't hit them.)

The mounted archer probably will work better than the melee fighter since the ability to shoot on the move exploits the added movement capability of the mount and it works better than the lance fighter when you can't use a mount. Keep in mind though that depending on the size of your party a lot of the time you may have to be the one holding the line.

Complete Adventurer has an invaluable spell "Arrow Mind" for Rangers, which lets an archer threaten a normal area as if they were wielding a melee weapon. Arrow mind pretty much removes the only reason to take OoBI levels which is the "No AoO" ability you get at level 2. OoBI was pretty much nerfed in the CW version so I would skip it. Arcane Archer is not a great choice either as is. A lot of people add in some sort of spell casting progression to make the class worthwhile.

If you can talk your DM into it Deep Wood Sniper from the old Masters of the Wild Splatbook works well with a ranger base. Some people will try and tell you it's over powered, but in my experiences running one in several campaigns it works just fine.

Thanks for the input. I guess my concern is that archers are so feat dependent (PBS, PS, RS, MS, etc.) that fighter was the only way to go (especially as I will miss out on the starting human feat being, say, a halfing). The problem, then, is keeping the mount alive without animal companion or familar bonuses. Maybe I just need to work with the DM to use an advanced mount to make up the HD and stat deficiency.

Also, which book is the strongheart halfling from?

Warehouse23 said:

The problem, then, is keeping the mount alive without animal companion or familar bonuses. Maybe I just need to work with the DM to use an advanced mount to make up the HD and stat deficiency.

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This could help then:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a

But I would still definately suggest ranger or druid. Ranger will allow you to get the archery feats and you could pick up a few of the close combat feats as well so that you can be passable at both build types while druid would allow for a whole lot of extra buffing and a tougher mount to make up for certain feat deficiencies.

Warehouse23 said:

Also, which book is the strongheart halfling from?

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Forgotten realm I believe.. although I could be wrong. They fit well enough into any campaign that uses halflings though, they give up their +1 to all saves, and maybe something else, for the bonus.

Go Fighter for the feats, then take one level of Beastmaster and the Natural Bond feat, then go Wild Plains Outrider.

By the end of this, you'll have an animal companion that is the equivalent of a 10th-level druid. Go with a Horse to maximize the additional HD.

Warehouse23 said:

Thanks for the input. I guess my concern is that archers are so feat dependent (PBS, PS, RS, MS, etc.) that fighter was the only way to go (especially as I will miss out on the starting human feat being, say, a halfing). The problem, then, is keeping the mount alive without animal companion or familar bonuses. Maybe I just need to work with the DM to use an advanced mount to make up the HD and stat deficiency.

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Ranger gives you several of the feats you will want if you take the archery path. I've found two fighter levels provide a sufficient number of extra feats to make an archer work.

Fighter 1 - (1+1 bonus) Point Blank and Precise Shot
Fighter 2 - (Bonus) Mounted Combat
Ranger 1 - (1 Feat) Mounted Archery
Ranger 2 - (Bonus) Rapid Shot

Cabral said:

At Ranger 6, you get Manyshot

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I don't think Manyshot is a great feat for a Mounted character, since you can make a Full Attack while your mount moves. It's not bad, but less effective mounted than it is on foot.