Mounted Archery Balanced?

[Artoomis]

Unfortunately for the mounted rider, no. From the SRD:

"If a combatant's mount moves more than 5 feet, the combatant can only make a partial melee attack. Essentially, a combatant has to wait until the mount gets to the combatant's enemy before attacking, so the combatant can't make a full attack."

This description (the same as in the PHB) raises an interesting point for mounted archers and mutiple opponents. For archery, you obviously don't need to wait until you "get to the combatant's enemy before attacking," so one might think you get to use a full attack while your mount is moving.

For melee, if you have a line of opponents, it implies you could swing at them as you go by, using a full attack. Of course, they would all get an AoO on you as you go by unless you have reach, like from a lance.

I think neither of these were intended, but both are very plausible readings of the mounted combat rules.

 

[Darklone]

Uhoh

Well... I agree to the tactic of shooting as fast as possible while riding... as long as your horse does not "run".

Riding by a line of footmen... Or using a reach weapon from horseback in any other direction as front... NO PLEASE. Both. Riding by a line of footmen... hacking and slashing left and right... You see this in every movie.

What you don't see: Someone sticking a spear between the horses legs. Or something similar.

Btw: If you got problems with a rider: do as proposed and use cause fear on the horse. THAT will give him ride checks to think about.

Or what about some undeads? Not even a trained warhorse will go closer than 30 ft to a rotten corpse.

 

[Psyduck]

Don't forget this!

Another great mounted feat is mounted combat. Once per round, you can negate a hit to your mount with a successful ride check.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Y'know, there's a simple house rule to fix the problem of mounted archers firing in melee:

Put the archer at the "front" of the horse. IOW, when the horse's front 5' square is threatened, so is the rider. Now firing that bow draws AoO unless the character is an Order of the Bow Initiate.

It also makes real-world sense. In order for a person to fire a bow forward from horseback, he effectively needs to lean around the horse's neck. This makes him almost exposed to damage as the horse itself.

If you want to, you could give the archer partial cover (+4 AC) against all AoO originating from in front of the horse.

 

[SableWyvern]

Nothing new to add.

Just like to let you all know its been a real eye-opener of a thread for me.

Haven't had any use of mounted combat yet IMC (only 2 sessions so far), so I haven't paid a lot of attention to the relevant rules.

Now I'm looking forward to some nasty mounted NPCs, and seeing the paladin with his mount (no-one else seems too interested in mounted combat at this point - woe to them. )