Mounted combat.

[joah_from_Alberta]

Does anyone feel like helping me verify mounted combat

1) Rider does ride check, mount does move, rider does full-round attack (rider does ride check), mount does move. Does this check?

2) Rider does move (equivalent), mount does standard (equivalent), rider does standard (equivalent), mount does move (equivalent). Does this check? And not necessarily in that order.

Thanks,

 

[Nebten]

Pages 201 and 202 of the Core Rulebook addresses mounted combat.

Guiding with knees is a free action DC 5 Ride check.

If the mount moves more then 5 feet, the rider can only make a single melee attack action. A PC cannot move mount, melee attack, move on a mount unless you have a special ability or feat that allows this (ie Ride-by attack).

You can make a full attack used ranged weapons. If the mount does only a single move, the attacker has no penality. If the mount does a double move, there is a -4 to all ranged attack rolls. If the mount is running, there is a -8 penalty.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

Pages 201 and 202 of the Core Rulebook addresses mounted combat.

If the mount moves more then 5 feet, the rider can only make a single melee attack action. A PC cannot move mount, melee attack, move on a mount unless you have a special ability or feat that allows this (ie Ride-by attack).

I have been thinking about this one (oh-oh) and yeah, I have the first printing of the core and unless I'm missing an faq or something ... page 201 talks about quantifiers for mounts in combat and seems to address untrained mounts specifically. They really should use the colon but meh.

Page 202 addresses combat while mounted. I just can't find anything that states a mount only gets one move action while its rider attacks.

The way I see it is in the case of two PCs. One is the mount and the other is the rider. It's okay that they move on one initiative. But if the player that is the mount makes a move and then the player that rides attacks, does the player that is the mount lose his move/standard due to mechanics? And if not, then can we assume that a mount is an NPC (some horses have more personality than some people I swear) and if the mount is an NPC than shouldn't it receive same mechanics as PC?

 

[Epametheus]

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, but the Ride Skillprovides that it is a DC 10 ride check for the rider to be able to attack if the mount attacks.

Note that you suffer armor check penalty on ride checks unless you're a cavalier, so it can be tricky to have both mount & rider fight if the rider's in heavy armor.

If the mount has to move more than 5 feet, than mount and rider only get 1 melee attack each. If the mount & rider don't need to move farther than 5 feet and the rider passes his DC 10 ride check, both can take full attack actions.

Also, Nebten hasn't phrased things quite right - You can actually have your horse walk to something, stab it, and then the horse use its other move action to walk away. You're just going to eat an AoE for it, and unless your mount is awesome enough to shrug off hits you really don't want that.

Ride-by attack feat allows your mount to go barreling right past your victim without provoking an AoE, which keeps the mount safe and makes it easier to charge again the next round.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, but the Ride Skillprovides that it is a DC 10 ride check for the rider to be able to attack if the mount attacks.

Note that you suffer armor check penalty on ride checks unless you're a cavalier, so it can be tricky to have both mount & rider fight if the rider's in heavy armor.

If the mount has to move more than 5 feet, than mount and rider only get 1 melee attack each. If the mount & rider don't need to move farther than 5 feet and the rider passes his DC 10 ride check, both can take full attack actions.

Also, Nebten hasn't phrased things quite right - You can actually have your horse walk to something, stab it, and then the horse use its other move action to walk away. You're just going to eat an AoE for it, and unless your mount is awesome enough to shrug off hits you really don't want that.

Ride-by attack feat allows your mount to go barreling right past your victim without provoking an AoE, which keeps the mount safe and makes it easier to charge again the next round.

The rule that the rider gets only one attack while the mount takes a greater than 5' move action is consistent with the rule that a character gets only one attack when moving more than 5'. So yeah, thanks for helping Epa, I think this will open up a lot of playability for the mount.

You prob know that a large creature can squeeze in a small space, so theoretically a mount and his rider can move in a dungeon. They would suffer -4/-4 squeeze penalty (and movement penalty), but maybe to some this would be worth not loosing their horse at the entrance all the time or forgetting their horses (like my players like to do). I'm going to make an encounter with four evil horselords that live mounted in a dungeon. They sleep with their horses. When they have to get up in the middle of the night to raid the fridge, they ride their horse. They ride to check the upper levels and they ride down the stairs to check the catacombs.

We have played the rideby attack and I find it limiting in its linear restriction. It can be easily thwarted if you know how to put a wall at your back. I believe it would have more impact on a large battle field.

Cheers,

 

[Pielorinho]

I wrote up a cohort for another player who wanted a mounted Warlord (Adamant's version of the class, available at d20pfsrd.com). The guy is pretty decent at making us better at hitting, but oh my lord, does he ever pack a wallop himself! At sixth level, if I give up the mostly-flavor Dazzling Display feat (basically, cause enemies within 30' to be shaken), he could take power attack, and ON AVERAGE deal 58 points of damage with his lance. And this isn't even an optimized build: it's just taking the standard mounted combat feats, plus a lance, with a 16 str and a +1 lance. It's pretty insane.

 

[gamerprinter]

Rite Publishing is introducing a new feat in our upcoming Way of the Samurai supplement for Kaidan (PFRPG) that might be helpful...

Armored Horseman (Combat)
Many hours in the saddle, combined with your physical strength, allow you to more easily wear armor when on horseback.
Prerequisite: Strength 13, 5 ranks in Ride.
Benefit: You may reduce your armor check penalty by an equal amount of Strength bonus when making a Ride check. You may not reduce your armor check penalty less than 0, when using this feat.

So if you're strong enough, you can do amazing things on horseback while wearing heavy or other armor.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

I think this is simply amazing. The potential of the mount is very underplayed imo in D&D. Can you believe that for one entire year my group lost their horses on five different occasions. They just plum forgot about them ... rather just leave out the back door on a long stroll back to town.

It is difficult to play accurately with a mount and rider in d&d for we are limited by our table edges. I like to think about a mountain lion chasing a deer and the deer running and meandering through an expanse of wilderness.

There is no feeling for the need of a mount to hustle you to the blacksmith or carry you to the next town. Sadly, given the choice a player would rather trade his mystical horse for a magical sword. It reminds me of the question, which would you rather have, the millennium falcon or a lightsaber.

Cheers,

 

[Pielorinho]

Armored Horseman (Combat)
Many hours in the saddle, combined with your physical strength, allow you to more easily wear armor when on horseback.
Prerequisite: Strength 13, 5 ranks in Ride.
Benefit: You may reduce your armor check penalty by an equal amount of Strength bonus when making a Ride check. You may not reduce your armor check penalty less than 0, when using this feat.

On the one hand, that's a great feat, inasmuch as it allows the heavily-armored horseman archetype to be playable.

On the other hand, I have a couple of criticisms of it:
1) The ranks in ride make it inaccessible to players at a low level, meaning that they can't really work this archetype if they start playing at first level. I'd change the "ranks in ride" requirement to be instead be "mounted combat," adding it to that feat tree.
2) It's significantly worse than the first-level samurai's ability to ignore armor-check penalties entirely (based on the Ultimate Combat samurai class).

When I was making the aforementioned cohort PC, I ended up taking a single level in samurai, specifically to gain that power. I couldn't figure out otherwise how to make a heavily-armored mounted warrior make sense. (edit: FWIW, the game has a feudal Japan setting, so that's not an entirely minmax decision!)