Is mounted combat just a waste of time?

[Emirikol]

Do any players in any of your groups use mounted combat much? Doesn't it seem like a waste of feats and resources in the average D&D game? (or perhaps, yours isn't an average D&D game).


jh

 

[blargney the second]

I see Small PCs on Medium mounts all the time. No Medium riders though.

 

[Crothian]

No, it is not a waste of time. While mounted combat characters are rare in my games when ever I have one I make sure that they can use it. It makes no sense for a mounted combat lancer to go into dungeons and places he loses his advantage.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

It's generally weak.

Spirited Charge looks weak when you realize what the restrictions are on charging. Plus it's annoying because the battlemats are rarely large enough to enable a mounted PC to use their speed properly. There's lots of extra rules to learn; did you know you could speed up your horse, but that causes you to inflict damage?

Without a feat like Mounted Cohort (which technically doesn't apply to warhorses), the mount is weak. PCs don't want to spend resources on buffing the mount, as they themselves don't want to die. (And your horse isn't always with you.)

Unless you're a fighter, you're probably giving up multiple feats: Mounted Combat, then either Mounted Archery or Ride-By Attack and Spirited Charge. Yet fighters don't have any ability to boost their mount. Paladins do, but not everyone wants a magical intelligent horse and they don't get bonus feats anyway.

Light fighters are weak within the rules, but if you wear heavy armor and carry a shield (like a real knight), you're going to take massive penalties to Ride checks.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Mounted combat is a powerful option for the character that invests in it.
That said, in most modules or a 'default' campaign, it would be a waste of time for medium characters that aren't Paladins. It's just not practical to take most mounts into a dungeon.

Also, at high levels normal mounts are unbelievably squishy. Unless your DM either has some houserules to make them cooler or allows you to acquire more powerful mounts, expect your highly trained war mount to die in the first round of combat.

 

[Stalker0]

It also depends on the level of the game. If the campaign is mainly low level, mounted combat can be absolutely devasting. At mid to high levels, only a paladin's mount has a enough hitpoints to stand its ground.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Light fighters are weak within the rules, but if you wear heavy armor and carry a shield (like a real knight), you're going to take massive penalties to Ride checks.

from the table under RIde skill
1 note - armor check penalty only applies to fast mounting and dismounting.

I think mounted combat is good at levels <5 the horses are soft targets, but their attacks and hp are decent fight. With mounted combat, you do ok until you get surrounded. A bunch of mooks can kill a horse pretty fast.

We had a lot of fun as 4th lvl characters as an all mounted party, of course when the horses went down it got ugly fast - only the druid (w/horse companion) survived the NPK.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In 3E I haven't seen people use mounts much. In 2E we used them much more frequently. Of course the campaign I am running at the moment is set in Freeport so horses aren't really useful. A lot of the others have been in dungeons which again makes mounts a lot less useful.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Victim]

Mounted Combat is potentially devasting if you can get it off, but it takes a significant investment to be able to do so. Cohort mounts, or disposable ones (like a wand of mount) are basically required to have a useable beast around.

But the ability to unload some huge attack that A) doesn't need a full attack action, B) punches through DR easily since all the damage in concentrated in one blow, and C) doesn't lose nearly as much damage against high ACs as conventional attacks will be worth it for many characters.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

from the table under RIde skill
1 note - armor check penalty only applies to fast mounting and dismounting.

Now he tells me. Really. See what I meant about the rules being complicated? I read all the rules twice and even put them in a text document and then printed it and still missed that