Playing the Mount: How is this Done?

[zoobob9]

I've heard a lot about playing as an animal to be a mount. How exactly is this done? Anthropomorphic kind of defeats the purpose, and there's nothing else I can think of that would allow this to occur. Any experience with this, is it even possible, and if it is possible, is it worth it?

[Chronos]

Be a druid.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I think you might be looking for a Supermount-Build. Essentially, you take classes and feats to boost your mount as much as possible and then play the mount as your main character with the actual character as a cohort.

[drack]

Well I tend to hover closer to the epic spectrum where we see people that like playing grotesque monsters. Do this and get a player to ride you and you're a mount. I figure intelligent mounts are about the same. The trick is just to have more then 3 int. :smallwink:

[CRtwenty]

Play a centaur and let one of the other PCs ride you.

[Metahuman1]

I've actually sorta gotten curious with the idea of an Uber mount who's rider is there to do a bit of talking, a lot of healing, provide levels and feats for the mount to improve with.


Anyone got any ideas?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Take a look at The Mount Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=auk6sjs20btq6u4bu43lurqun3&topic=25).
There's a few builds listed at the end, too.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

I've actually sorta gotten curious with the idea of an Uber mount who's rider is there to do a bit of talking, a lot of healing, provide levels and feats for the mount to improve with.


Anyone got any ideas?

I have done this, and I only did it because it was more fun (and complicated) to homebrew it than it would have been to homebrew a Wolf Familiar feat. The pair of characters were a half-warg half-something that was sentient and ill-tempered (we homebrewed a 20-level class based on Magical Beast Hit Dice (http://www.kobolds-keep.net/Progressions.pdf)), and a goblin sorcerer who the wolf picked up as a cohort with the Leadership feat. Basically the traditional goblin riding a warg, except the warg was two levels higher than the goblin. I'll tell you, it's a glorious thing when you can avert a TPK by kiting your enemies with scorching rays, lead them away from your downed comrades, then run back and heal all of them before they bleed out.

The hardest part to balance is the speed. Having a move of 50 or higher lets you trivialize certain encounters through kiting. You can run away and throwing ranged attacks over your shoulder until your enemies are strung out and half-dead, then come back around to wipe them all out one by one as they flee. This is highly dependent on the types of encounters you have and what people are in your party.

Combat capability is highly dependent on what kinds of natural attacks you have and how many you get. If you have a claw/claw/bite routine and your build is Strength-based you should do pretty well, though that amulet of mighty fists is mighty expensive. The pounce ability is excellent.

If your PC's rider is an NPC cohort, it's preferable to pick a cohort whose abilities compliment your own (standard practice for the Leadership feat). A cleric is probably best, but you could also do well with an archer or spell-slinger.

The progressions I linked above are very outdated. Here's a dragon one that you could use (http://www.kobolds-keep.net/smoke/Generic%20Dragon%20Progression.pdf) as inspiration for other things.