An important part of my solution is that it isn't allowing the
find steed spell to
summon anything it can't by the book. Rather, it is allowing you to use
find steed to bond with a creature you
meet or acquire on your travels, which is a house-rule that follows the same principle as the valid (and I find most compelling) interpretation of the MM described ability to bond with a familiar met in your travels by using
find familiar. (The argument for which is provided in the OP.)
My DM let me summon a pegasus with find steed by using a higher level spell slot. Can't remember if he ruled it had to be a 3rd or 4th level slot. It was one of those two.
That was what I was initially planning on doing, until the
find familiar valid concept precedent struck me one day. It completely eliminates all the work, because the paladin now has the same mount options as the rest of the party, his is just a bit better. In order for the paladin to have a griffon mount, the party has to get access to griffon mounts. He has no ability to summon up a griffon. However, once the party does have such mounts available to them, the paladin can magically give
his mount a boost using the
find steed spell.
Also, Jeremy Crawford has been answering questions about the find steed spell on twitter:
- "The mount summoned by the find steed spell serves the summoner. It isn't an independent creature."
- "The caster of find steed picks from the list of beasts in the spell, unless your DM says otherwise. Limit set by DM."
- "While ridden, the steed follows the normal mounted combat rules (PH, 198). Unridden, it has normal action options."
I think allowing setting specific mounts is fine except it should be very conservative. Some of the recent rulings by Crawford via tweet mean that Paladin mounts CAN attack and they do so sharing the same initiative as the paladin. With how smite spells also grant your steed extra damage, coupled with the mounted combat feat, I think you should really reconsider any increase in mount strength.
Mounts cannot attack if the paladin is mounted. Though they do get shared spells (something Beastmasters don't get until 15th level).
...
Mounts are not independent creatures, despite their intelligence and therefor are only capable of - on the paladin's initiative - Dash, Disengage & Dodge actions via mounted combat rules. However, unridden, it has normal action options, meaning it has it's own initiative, movement & attack.
There seems to be some disagreement as to what those tweets actually mean. Mr. Crawford rightly says that the DM can be more generous than RAW, but the other statements don't make any sense.
He says that the mount is not an independent creature, but that it follows the normal mounted combat rules. The normal mounted combat rules say intelligent mounts are independent creatures. Where is this exception coming from? Allowing an intelligent mount to act independently is generally preferable to controlling it. So not only is the spell providing an exception (supposedly), but it is a nerf-exception. This spell is supposed to be a benefit, not a hindrance.
The only thing I can think of is that he is getting the "not independent" idea from the "fight as a seamless unit." Let's look at the source:
"Your steed serves you as a mount, both in combat and out, and you have an instinctive bond with it that allows you to fight as a seamless unit." PHB p.240
By the tone of that sentence, I doubt anyone is going to interpret the intent of it being to nerf to your mount's features. It sure looks like it is supposed to be giving you some special benefit. But Mr. Crawford's ruling does the opposite. It says that your instinctive bond simply downgrades your intelligent mount to non-intelligent functionality in combat, and "fight as a seamless unit" apparently just means, "I do all the fighting, you do all the moving"--ie, a non-intelligent mount.
I have to reject that as an interpretation of the text. I doubt Mr. Crawford wrote that particular spell, or if he did he has forgotten the intent.
So what exactly does it mean? Well, we have no way of knowing as the text fails to tell us. I submit as
my suggestion, that it means two things. First: although the mount is intelligent and acts independently per mounted combat rules, it always acts in accordance with the paladin's wishes. Second: Acting as a seamless unit would seem to poorly fit acting on separate initiative counts, so I submit that it acts on it's rider's initiative.
My interpretation is therefore that the mount has all the actions available to an intelligent creature, yet follow the paladin's instructions and acts on the same initiative.
The problem is, this ruling makes an unmounted War Horse from Find Steed is dramatically better than any Beastmaster Ranger companion even at mid levels. Assuming you allowed a griffon or hypogriff, most definitely better even at higher levels. So I really hope they bring this up at the next Q&A and come to realize their own ruling as made a level 2 (non-slot) spell dramatically better than a beastmaster ranger. IMHO they need to rule that mounts from Find Steed can only Dash, Disengage & Dodge like any other 'normal' mount.
That apparently is the way Jeremy Crawford is seeing it, but he isn't seeing what is written in the book.
I also think the beastmaster ranger should be left out of considerations. It's clearly already below the curve. Heck, it's outperformed for the most part by simply taking the other ranger subclass and buying a dog. Or ten dogs.
The beast master ranger is a known issue for the designers. Mike Mearls said they're going to present some different takes on the ranger to see what people like. So as far as balance is concerned, we can and probably should ignore the RAW beast master.
