Find Steed, Find Greater Steed, and Combat

[iserith]

I play a paladin with a mount and it hardly ever matters. Mounts are too squishy. Sometimes I’ll use it in combat and let it attack but only in an emergency because I don’t like when it dies because I don’t have the slot to recast it and it’s usually carrying most of my gear. (And sometimes the group’s loot). Now all my equipment and saddle are on the ground (or in the water in your example). Saddles are inconvenient to haul around.

A player in this West Marches style campaign I'm in is on like his seventh war elephant. He just keeps recycling the barding. I even took one of his elephants out once with a random encounter of griffons when I was DMing a game.

 

[jayoungr]

So, on further thought, I guess the question of whether a 6 intelligence is enough for an unsummoned steed to always act independently is a red herring, because the tweet makes it clear that both the controlled and independent options are available when the steed is summoned.

That still leaves me with questions, though.

In this case, the PC summoned the steed but chose not to mount it, so in that case, there is no way the steed is controlled. So it does whatever it wants to do. I need to figure out a system for deciding whether and when the steed is willing to put itself in danger to attack a creature that is not obviously threatening its master. I think it's a given that the steed would come to its master's aid if it saw the PC actually engaged in melee combat, but would it move to take out an archer who was shooting arrows at the PC? Would it do so without being asked? What about a sea monster that's currently just minding its own business, but which the PC wants to attack for fun and profit? What about a spellcaster who is creating dangerous terrain but not actually harming the PC? Should some sort of persuasion roll or charisma save be involved?

 

[Oofta]

So, on further thought, I guess the question of whether a 6 intelligence is enough for an unsummoned steed to always act independently is a red herring, because the tweet makes it clear that both the controlled and uncontrolled options are available when the steed is summoned.

That still leaves me with questions, though.

In this case, the PC summoned the steed but chose not to mount it, so in that case, there is no way the steed is controlled. So it does whatever it wants to do. I need to figure out a system for deciding whether and when the steed is willing to put itself in danger to attack a creature that is not obviously threatening its master. I think it's a given that the steed would come to its master's aid if it saw the PC actually engaged in melee combat, but would it move to take out an archer who was shooting arrows at the PC? Would it do so without being asked? What about a sea monster that's currently just minding its own business, but which the PC wants to attack for fun and profit? What about a spellcaster who is creating dangerous terrain but not actually harming the PC? Should some sort of persuasion roll or charisma save be involved?

This is not a normal pet. The steed is unusually strong and loyal with a special bond to the summoner. In addition, it never really dies ... it just gets sent back to their home plane.

 

[jayoungr]

This is not a normal pet. The steed is unusually strong and loyal with a special bond to the summoner. In addition, it never really dies ... it just gets sent back to their home plane.

Okay, so why would you ever want to control it? If it effectively gives you extra attacks that always benefit you unless something really unusual happens, under what circumstances would it be worth giving that up?

Do you think it's the intention that riding a summoned mount in controlled mode will be the exception rather than the rule?

Also, do you choose between the modes every time you mount? Can you switch from uncontrolled to controlled at any time? Does it have to be on your turn?

 

[iserith]

So, on further thought, I guess the question of whether a 6 intelligence is enough for an unsummoned steed to always act independently is a red herring, because the tweet makes it clear that both the controlled and independent options are available when the steed is summoned.

That still leaves me with questions, though.

In this case, the PC summoned the steed but chose not to mount it, so in that case, there is no way the steed is controlled. So it does whatever it wants to do. I need to figure out a system for deciding whether and when the steed is willing to put itself in danger to attack a creature that is not obviously threatening its master. I think it's a given that the steed would come to its master's aid if it saw the PC actually engaged in melee combat, but would it move to take out an archer who was shooting arrows at the PC? Would it do so without being asked? What about a sea monster that's currently just minding its own business, but which the PC wants to attack for fun and profit? What about a spellcaster who is creating dangerous terrain but not actually harming the PC? Should some sort of persuasion roll or charisma save be involved?

What do you suppose would happen to the game experience if the steed - without reference to some sort of intermediary mechanics - just did whatever the PC said it should do, even if that meant putting itself in danger for any reason?

 

[jayoungr]

What do you suppose would happen to the game experience if the steed - without reference to some sort of intermediary mechanics - just did whatever the PC said it should do, even if that meant putting itself in danger for any reason?

I'm not there yet. I want to understand the rule--what it says, what it doesn't say, and where its ambiguities are--before I think about what the various ways of applying or relaxing it would look like at my table. I want to know which things would be flat-out changes and which things are a question of interpretation.

My saying I need to figure out a system was, in part, a request for people to let me know if anything like this is already in the game.

 

[Oofta]

Okay, so why would you ever want to control it? If it effectively gives you extra attacks that always benefit you unless something really unusual happens, under what circumstances would it be worth giving that up?

Do you think it's the intention that riding a summoned mount in controlled mode will be the exception rather than the rule?

Also, do you choose between the modes every time you mount? Can you switch from uncontrolled to controlled at any time? Does it have to be on your turn?

The only reason I could see to control it is to go on the same initiative. However, after the first round or so it doesn't really buy much. Once the caster has had their turn the mount can always ready the dash action.

Like I said, we just house rule that in this particular scenario they go on the same initiative so it's never come up. If it was just a friendly intelligent mount, they would have their own initiatives and have to deal with the consequences.

 

[Blue]

The summoned steed is intelligent with a small "i," in the sense that it is much smarter than other creatures of its kind. A normal gryphon (or griffon, to use the MM spelling ) has an intelligence of 2. But it's not clear whether an intelligence score of 6 means it's smart enough to be considered a mount that always acts independently (expressed below as Intelligent with a capital "I").

Please show me any keyword of Intelligent with a capital I. The it shows up in mounted where it's the beginning of a sentence, where intelligence - with a little i - would be spelled with a capital anyway, bringing everything you are talking about into question. Same thing is ther is a sentence about "Intelligent undead...", where it starts the sentence. No where else in Intelligent capitalized to indicate it's a special game term that is different than intelligent.

No where else in the PHB is there any note of Intelligent as a keyword. There are plenty of examples of "intelligent". Under chosing a race (PHB 11) it's for an "intelligent humanoid", not an "Intelligent humanoid". Looking at the Antipathy/Sympathy spell (PHB 214), it talks about "Then specify a kind of intelligent creature, such as red dragons, goblins, or vampires." Notice that it's lower case intelligent, same as in the Find Steed spell. Also notice as you dragons and goblins are in the same breath, so the fact that they picked a dragon as an example of a intelligent mount does not mean that 10 is the minimum. The only cases where Intelligent is capitalized is at the beginning of a sentence where it would be capitalized due to standard English rules.

With absolutely not a single confirmed case, I have to say Intelligent as a specific keyword does not exist in 5e, and that there is only the natural language meaning of intelligent. Which is both (a) explicitly given in the spell in the same way it's used in other spells like Antipathy/Sympathy, and (b) shown numerically as it has an Intelligence ability score that is higher then some rolled PCs.

 

[jayoungr]

Please show me any keyword of Intelligent with a capital I.

There isn't one. I made it up for purposes of this discussion. I guess I didn't make that especially clear in my previous post, though, so sorry about that.

Anyway, I realized that it doesn't matter for the discussion, since this is a summoned mount, and the Crawford tweet shows that summoned mounts always have both options open.

 

[Yunru]

Why has no-one pointed out that an Int of 3 is intelligent?
Players can have an Int of 3, after all.