D&D 5E FIND STEED: Your Pony Has Opinions

[MarkB]

While I appreciate it may not have worked out very well in 5e, I kind of miss the good old days of living steeds and familiars. If it dies, it's dead, and you have to find a new one (which was either impossible or very difficult for paladins).

Nah, who am I kidding. Nostalgia is great, but permanent companion death rarely if ever contributed to my fun even back then.

It did make a difference in how we viewed the mount, though. I recall a 3e game in which I played a half-orc paladin called Grudnuk whose steed was a dire weasel named Fluffles. When the party was captured by a large hunting party from an orc tribe, the only way he could dissuade them from killing his mount was to swear on his honour as a paladin that he would make no attempt to escape as they were transported back to the tribe's stronghold.

When the hunting party stopped to rest that night, the escape was on. Fluffles, without any prompting from Grudnuk, wriggled loose from his bonds and nibbled the ropes from the captured party members. While a diversion was created on the edge of camp, Grudnuk helped his companions aboard his steed - and ordered Fluffles to run off into the night. Then he went back and sat down in the centre of the camp, and waited for the orcs to come back.

Sure, it left the party split, and led to the rest of them having to sneak back in the next night and rescue Grudnuk without waking him up, but it was a cool bit of tension that resulted from the mount being mortal.

 

[Oofta]

They're actually not. Unlike certain other similar spells, Find Steed does not specify that the steed obeys to the best of its ability. It is able to disobey orders if it feels a need to, especially if the player decides to make the PC abusive with commands. It's easy to mix up Find Steed with spells like Conjure Fey and Conjure Minor Elementals that DO specify that the summoned creatures obey commands. Find Steed is special in that the steed has a level of autonomy and an instinctive bond with the caster that allows the two to act as a seamless unit, but does not remove the steed's ability to disagree and disobey in extraordinary circumstances nor prevent it from acting on its own.

I guess I failed my "humor" check. He made the analogy of steeds being cylons which of course were referred to as toasters ... get it? Steeds are toasters? Ha ha?

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I once played in an adventure where the Steed summoned the Paladin (and the rest of the party) to his home in the Beastlands. There the party had to help the Steed and his herd defeat an invasion of trans-dimensional industrial robots, who were clear-cutting the forests and polluting the rivers.