Making indoor mounted combat on a roc feasible (PF only)

[Carth]

My DM is a stickler for verisimilitude, and inevitably isn't going to like allow only the narrow frame feat to allow my roc to fly around indoors with me mounted on it. He'd probably allow reduce animal to be comboed with permanency, so I could use that and reduce person to get back down to a medium roc

Playing as a lancer ranger with the trapper archetype. I traded my human feat for a second ability score bump, and have mounted combat, ride by attack, and spirited charge already. This isn't an immediate issue, I'm at level 3 and still on a mundane horse, and will be until level 7 when my roc finally becomes large. However, my level 5 and 7 feats are almost certainly going to go toward boon companion and leadership, so I'd prefer the roc take feats, and not my character.

[Deaxsa]

even if you make it smaller somehow, you'd better hope you have a gigantic room, because rocs can't hover (unless you found some way to make it do so) and will thus run into walls (also, unless it has a massive fly check)

wait, rocs have AVERAGE maneuverability? WHAT? also, that'ts a no on the fly check, just checked and they have +7 at 16 hd

edit: wait, hovering is a DC 15 fly check? are they insane? that's saying that an eagle (which cannot hover irl beyond lifting off directly upward) can hover 70% of the time (+8), when it tries. what. WHAT.

Edit2: it looks like, by the book, this would be completely possible. but these rules ARE completely unrealistic.

[Carth]

You can allocate your animal companion's skill points as you wish, at level 7 when I start mounting my roc it'd be possible to get it to +14, if I have it take skill focus (fly), put its ability bump into dex, and max its fly ranks. I'm not necessarily going to do that, the bigger issue is that my DM is going to be a stickler about the roc's wingspan not allowing it to fly in confined spaces.

[Deaxsa]

You can allocate your animal companion's skill points as you wish, at level 7 when I start mounting my roc it'd be possible to get it to +14, if I have it take skill focus (fly), put its ability bump into dex, and max its fly ranks. I'm not necessarily going to do that, the bigger issue is that my DM is going to be a stickler about the roc's wingspan not allowing it to fly in confined spaces.

i see, so that's good for you. yea. just make sure it's a large room, your roc is going to have a 40ft wingspan even reduced. he'll(assuming it's a he(assuming you know what gender it is)) be able to hover no problem(grumble), so that's covered. i would honestly think this would cover it. i do not think there is any "reverse animal growth" spell, although you could ask about that.

[Carth]

Reduce animal (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/reduceAnimal.html).

Also, I think you're not working off of the animal companion version of the roc. The animal companion version starts off as medium, and becomes large at 7th level, which I'd then shrink back down to medium. Scroll down to the bottom of the roc's page (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/roc.html).

With the narrow frame feat, I'd figure a 7' wingspan for a medium roc. I arrive at this assumption by looking at what Wikipedia says is the average wingspan range of a red-tailed hawk, using the low end of that number (42") to account for the narrow frame feat, then doubling that number to account for going from medium to small, because Pathfinder says hawks are small creatures (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/animal-companions#TOC-Bird) (along with eagles, owls, and so forth). Seem reasonable? It's things like turning that I'm more worried about, even with that small of a wingspan.

[Xerxus]

Cheesiest title of the day.

[Carth]

I don't really see what's cheesy about it. D&D combat is already wholly unrealistic. From a gameplay perspective there's nothing broken going on.