The Strength of Lances

[Darklone]

Just a little comment for the ones who think Spirited Charge is not really worth it...

The interesting thing about it is not only the big damage with one hit, but the fact that your opponent won't be able to perform full attack actions.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Hmm
I didnt mean to insult you Pen, I have alot of time for how you play paladins. What I ment was that in many cases griffons are taken as a twinky mount. Maybe not all, but in many. Which is why griffon mounts seem to turn up more often than actual horses.

Oh, no worries I wasn't insulted at all. I was merely pointing out that there are other reasons why someone might take a griffon mount, and using myself as an example. To be honest, your comment has gotten me curious. I never went through the other alternate paladin mounts as listed in Defenders of the Faith. I merely looked for something that flies, then ruled out the pegasus and hippogrif as being to horselike. Now I want to go back and see if the griffon really is the twinkiest possible mount available.

Edit to add: Looking over the list, the twinkiest mounts seem to be the unicorn, the griffon, and the dire lion. For sheer melee power, the dire lion has all the griffon's tricks, plus a massive 25 base strength. The griffon only has an 18 strength, but can fly. And the unicorn only has 3 attacks and can't pounce, but in exchange grants its rider access to four healing spells per day, neutralize poison once per day, and a continuous Magic Circle Against Evil effect.

Im not 100% convinced about the mount thing. My gut feeling is that it will be abuseable. But the rules seem to be with you. Ill fall back on the spirited charge wording only indicating that when the mount charges you can attack at any time, which may still allow pounce and a lance.

But isn't my interpretation less abusable than yours? I my case, you can't get a Pounce in while using a lance. In yours, you can.

Failing that, drop your lance and wield a great sword. Sprited charge will let you deal double damage and your mount gets is pounce attack routine.

This is very true. Indeed, I've run numbers on damage potential, and Sword+Pounce is stronger (assuming all the attacks hit) than Lance alone. I tend to like this. It means that if you want to close with your opponent and stick, go with sword+pounce. If you want to engage in a series of ride-by attacks, go with the lance. It means that both the sword and the lance have valid uses, rather than one being always the better choice.

The interesting thing about it is not only the big damage with one hit, but the fact that your opponent won't be able to perform full attack actions.

I agree 100%. However, you also have to take into consideration the fact that if you can't be full-attacked, someone else will be. In a party where the mounted character is one of the party's main tanks, this could be a disastrously bad tactic a great deal of the time.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

For what it's worth, I do agree that a griffon mount is probably too good an option for an 8th or 9th level paladin. According to the MM entry, a griffon is a 7 HD creature with a LA of +3; effectively the equivalent of a 10th level character in itself even before the extra benefits of higher HD, Strength and natural armor from being a paladin's special mount. In my campaign, I would probably houserule that a griffon mount is only available to a paladin of 11th or higher level, and the mount's special abilities would be 2 "steps" worse than that of a regular warhorse mount (since the special mount progression doesn't scale nicely with level).

How do you feel about the Dire Lion then, FireLance? It also has Pounce and Rake, +1 HD, and 25 strength instead of 18. The only thing it doesn't have that a griffon does is flight.

We'll have to see how things go. I've got 3 more levels before I can pick up my griffon, so after that I'll have a better feel for how powerful I think it is.