A Little Rider

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! Today, our party's paladin/warmage fell to a nasty beast and the shapeshifting druid (PHB 2 variant) used Last Breath before dealing with the enemy.

After the battle, the dice were rolled. The table was checked.

The once human paladin is now a goblin.

As a warmage, being a goblin works: He's small and gets a Dexterity bonus, which assists him in shooting orbs. As a paladin, he loses nothing or gains nothing, except for a +1 to hit and AC, should he ever want to get into melee (after this event, probably not).

Now here comes the question.

The goblin wants to ride on the druid's back when he shapeshifts to his aerial form (namely a medium sized eagle, I believe)

Can the druid, with a 16 str. in aerial form carry him on his back or lift him with his talons?

I don't think the paladin ever placed ranks in ride, using a few paladin levels to increase his warmage abilities.

Thank you in advance.

[Marnath]

Greetings! Today, our party's paladin/warmage fell to a nasty beast and the shapeshifting druid (PHB 2 variant) used Last Breath before dealing with the enemy.

After the battle, the dice were rolled. The table was checked.

The once human paladin is now a goblin.

As a warmage, being a goblin works: He's small and gets a Dexterity bonus, which assists him in shooting orbs. As a paladin, he loses nothing or gains nothing, except for a +1 to hit and AC, should he ever want to get into melee (after this event, probably not).

Now here comes the question.

The goblin wants to ride on the druid's back when he shapeshifts to his aerial form (namely a medium sized eagle, I believe)

Can the druid, with a 16 str. in aerial form carry him on his back or lift him with his talons?

I don't think the paladin ever placed ranks in ride, using a few paladin levels to increase his warmage abilities.

Thank you in advance.

Yeah, sure. You can only fly with a light load, but that should be 76 pounds for your druid, and a goblin only weighs 40-45. As long as the paladin isn't too weighed down with stuff it should be easy.

[AlanBruce]

That's what I thought. I didn't have the exact numbers on the goblin's weight.

The druid's armor fuses inside him when he shapeshifts, so I doubt that counts as extra weight when flying.

Now to convince the druid to have an exotic saddle placed on him...

[Ubercaledor]

Do you need to "ride" an intelligent creature? Or are they simply capable of "carrying" you?

[Doorhandle]

I image both would be possible, but riding him would allow you to use various feats, and the druid would be impaired by carrying him around. (He would have only 1 claw to cast with, for one.)

Also, try to convince you D.M to let you use Ant haul. It triples you capacity and should thus remove all doubt on weather or not you can be carried around.

[AlanBruce]

The druid uses the Shapeshifting variant from PH 2, which allows the druid to shift to an animal form as a swift action at will, but cannot cast spells while so transformed.

So far, the druid can turn to a wolf, brown bear, eagle, and some form of treant.

Very useful forms, especially the bear with 3 attacks, but he isn't too focused on casting, except for healing and, in this case, Last Breath.

The paladin asked if he could ride the druid when shifted to an eagle. The druid would prefer carrying him with his talons to fly away.

The image of a goblin paladin warmage tossing orbs of death below as he rides an eagle is too good to pass, but without any ranks in riding, I don't see how that will happen.