A better mounted combat system

[Sindeloke]

A major design principle of 5e, notably in opposition to 3e before it, is that anybody can attempt a thing and have a reasonable chance of success. Specialist feats and proficiencies then raise a character from a level of base competence to unusual excellence.

And they did this fairly well with skills, grapples/trips/shoves, breaking down doors and getting past traps. And then they turned around and did a complete and utter pratfall when it comes to mounted combat. Absolutely nobody in the game can do this with any level of effectiveness out of the box past about level 2; taking the associated feat gives a bare bones level of competence in some situations but ultimately still doesn't make mounted combat any more than a useless gimmick against anything with, oh, say, a fear aura or a freakin level 1 sleep.

So here's my crack at a set of mounted combat rules that attempt to meet 5e design principles: As simple as possible, allowing low CR mounts to perform meaningfully in combat at any level of play, and simulating the potency of cavalry in open-area combat situations without breaking the normal power curve of 5e.

Mounted Combat
There are two kinds of mounts, willing and unwilling. A willing mount is either a sentient ally who agrees to carry you and work with you, or a trained companion animal like a warhorse that's been conditioned to accept the direction of a rider. An unwilling mount is an animal that is scared, angry, or otherwise distracted and isn't interested in being told what to do or even letting you stay on top of it.

Getting on a mount and into a good riding position takes half your movement. If the mount is unwilling, this usually also requires an Animal Handling check.

Once you are on a mount, you and the mount are effectively considered a single creature. You have a single initiative (yours). You have a single action, bonus action and reaction, as normal; these can be drawn from any action or reaction available to yourself or to your mount (within reason; use your best judgement about attacking with a dagger from the back of an elephant, for example). You use your mount's movement types, abilities and speeds, and your own vision, hearing and other senses.

You are presumed to be protecting each other, and therefore share your hit points in a single pool. If an area of effect spell hits, you make one save and take damage to that shared pool once. If you are healed, the healing goes to the shared pool. If a condition like blindness or poison exists, it applies to you and your mount as a whole. If you use the Dodge or Disengage action it applies to you as a whole. If you have a beneficial spell or effect cast on you, it affects you both as a single unit. Any physical ability checks or saving throws (Str, Dex, Con) are made by your mount. Any mental ability checks or saving throws (Cha, Int, Wis) are made by you. Enemies make attacks against the lower of your two armor classes.

Controlling a mount is automatic if the mount is willing. You simply choose which actions, movement and reactions the two of you take on your turn or when a reaction is available. If the mount is unwilling, you must make an Animal Handling check (for rules purposes, treat this as an object interaction). On a failure, the mount moves and acts of its own volition, and you can only hold on until your next turn. On a success, treat the mount as willing until the beginning of your next turn.

Getting off a mount can be done voluntarily any time you are able to move; it costs five feet of movement. Enemies can also attempt to forcibly dismount you; this is effectively a special trip attempt that drops you next to your mount's space, but you defend with an Animal Handling check rather than Athletics. Proper tack/lack thereof may apply advantage or disadvantage, respectively. Whether you end up on your feet or your butt depends on how badly you boff the save.

Once separated, you may divide the shared pool of hit points between yourself and your mount as you please (so long as neither of you is left with more than normal maximum hit points or fewer than one). Your DM will decide, or determine randomly, which of you is subject to any conditions that you were subject to as a unit.

Then we replace the Mounted Combat feat with:

Cavalier
Prerequisite: Proficiency in Animal Handling
You have a deadly mastery of cavalry combat. You gain the following benefits:
You have Expertise with Animal Handling checks made to control or stay on a mount.
You spend only 5 feet of movement to mount or dismount.
If you direct a mount to move at least 15 feet in a straight line on your turn, you may add 1d6 bonus damage to the next successful melee attack you or that mount makes before the beginning of your next turn.
You use the higher of your two ACs while mounted, rather than the lower.

The idea is that, for example, you can't steer your horse if you're blind and it can't see where it's going if it's blind, so it doesn't really matter which one of you has a condition, it affects you the same. And said horse with its 11 AC can't really avoid a vampire that well, so even if you yourself could have dodged out of the way, all the vampire has to do to make life hard for you both is smack your horse's enormous butt as it passes, dealing 26 damage - a serious blow if it landed on your poor CR 1/4 mount. But since you're sharing HP, you can say that you kicked the vamp away from the horse and wrenched your foot slightly, protecting its 2d10 or whatever it has at the cost of some of your own 14d8. Likewise, even if your camel is terrified by the red dragon rearing up in front of it, you aren't scared and you're the one making all the decisions about what to do next, so the effect of the fear on the camel's ability to make choices is irrelevant.

By the same logic, you could conceivably allow players to use Animal Handling checks in place of certain skill checks (to simulate an experienced rider guiding an uncertain but trusting mount up a slippery slope, for example), but since simplicity was a goal I left it with a simple mental-physical split. You could easily add it in under appropriate circumstances, though, it's not any more arbitrary and DM's-call focused than the rest of the skill system.

So ultimately you lose a bit of low-level power from all this, but a) it feels much better IMO to have a mount be a minor survivability and moderate mobility boost at all levels of the game than to have it be a major offensive, mobility and survivability boost for three levels and then useless thereafter [cf Moon Druid]; b) if you miss the offensive power it'd be super easy to give the "advantage against anything smaller than your mount" thing to the base rules.

Any thoughts? Does this seem effective, straightforward enough, easy to understand/implement in play?

[Tiadoppler]

I like a lot of the ideas, and may poach some of the high concept for my current campaign.



The Shared HP Pool is just asking to be abused.

A badly injured fighter (5/30 HP) needs some HP.
He mounts a 19/19 HP Warhorse (15' movement) and now has 24/49 HP.
He dismounts (5' movement) and is now at 23/30 HP. The Warhorse has 1/19 HP.



Personally, as a DM of a home campaign, I'd rather modify the HP/saves of well-trained and "experienced" mounts, along with armored barding.

Animal Handling can also have the effect of giving the mount advantage on saves (perhaps as a Reaction).

If the Mount is disabled by sleep, it just takes an Action to shake the Mount awake. There'd just be some sort of check to stay mounted when the Mount falls asleep.



I really like the Animal Handling skill as being a catch-all skill for getting the most out of a mount.

[Mith]

If I were to do "shared pool" it would be that the damage is divided as you see fit when dealt. So you can use your horse as a shield from the Fireball by ducking down the side or something. But if the damage reaches either mount or rider's HP, you are either incapacitated or your mount dies.

I think Barding works OK if actually used. As for HP, would it work to do a system where you have the base animal (Horse,Donkey,Bear,etc.) and then templates that would modify the creature based on training (with some exceptions likely) So a War Horse has higher physical stats, and maybe loer mental stats, but also depends on it's rider for saves due to being conditioned for following orders. Perhaps any less trained animal will attempt to throw the rider if they take a certain amount of damage. Make a short levelling system for mounts.

Now I want a War Bear...

EDIT: Also, Cavalier should allow a Handle Animal check (DC 15) for a flying Dismount that allows a rider to dismount without sacrificing speed, so long as they are dismounting in the direction of the mount's charge and are able to move 10' unimpeded. Attacks of Opportunity on the rider in the first 5' are made at Advantage and will knock the rider prone.

[Tiadoppler]

If I were to do "shared pool" it would be that the damage is divided as you see fit when dealt. So you can use your horse as a shield from the Fireball by ducking down the side or something. But if the damage reaches either mount or rider's HP, you are either incapacitated or your mount dies.

How about

"Whenever your Mount is the target of an attack, you can choose to make yourself the target of that attack. This decision must be made before the attack is rolled."

"When you are mounted, and you are the target of an attack, you may use a Reaction to make your Mount the target of the attack. This decision must be made before the attack is rolled."



I think Barding works OK if actually used. As for HP, would it work to do a system where you have the base animal (Horse,Donkey,Bear,etc.) and then templates that would modify the creature based on training (with some exceptions likely) So a War Horse has higher physical stats, and maybe loer mental stats, but also depends on it's rider for saves due to being conditioned for following orders. Perhaps any less trained animal will attempt to throw the rider if they take a certain amount of damage. Make a short levelling system for mounts.

I do this a lot. My current campaign includes some very senior, beloved pack animals (including a pair of cows with better backstories and much more combat experience than most level 2 adventurers). I have no issue with handing out extra hit dice to tame companion creatures who are not directly controlled by the players in combat. The thing I'm careful about is increasing the power of PC-controlled combatants.

[Mith]

How about

"Whenever your Mount is the target of an attack, you can choose to make yourself the target of that attack. This decision must be made before the attack is rolled."

"When you are mounted, and you are the target of an attack, you may use a Reaction to make your Mount the target of the attack. This decision must be made before the attack is rolled."




I do this a lot. My current campaign includes some very senior, beloved pack animals (including a pair of cows with better backstories and much more combat experience than most level 2 adventurers). I have no issue with handing out extra hit dice to tame companion creatures who are not directly controlled by the players in combat. The thing I'm careful about is increasing the power of PC-controlled combatants.

If one steals from TSR era design, give "levels" to a base mount: Wild, Tamed, Trained, Skilled, Master

These are arguably templates, with a Warhorse fitting in the Skilled category modifying the base Wild Horse. While I stated a decrease in mental stats, that doesn't have to be the case. Perhaps the horse gives the rider 1d4 morale boost to Mental effects such as Fear. The Horses you hear legends of are the Master category.

After this, the only thing that increases is the mount's hit dice. It moves just as fast and hits just as hard as a war category mount, but it has survived for so long that it has learned to survive damn near anything!

[Sindeloke]

The Shared HP Pool is just asking to be abused.

A badly injured fighter (5/30 HP) needs some HP.
He mounts a 19/19 HP Warhorse (15' movement) and now has 24/49 HP.
He dismounts (5' movement) and is now at 23/30 HP. The Warhorse has 1/19 HP.

Eh, this strikes me as a bag-of-rats or heal-by-drowning thing. Yeah, technically the rule permits it, but the solution from my perspective is less "add needless complication to/delete an otherwise useful mechanic" and more "throw a d4 at your player and tell him to cut that sh*t."

Both of you mention templated mounts, and in honesty that was my first solution to the problem, too. But ultimately it's too limiting for the kind of sandbox I want to provide; it means you can't just hop on one of the pack horses when the wagon you're escorting gets attacked, or shanghai some passing dolphins for an underwater chase. It's not reasonable for every animal the party ever meets to be somehow at a reasonable challenge parity with them, even the random dire deer and nesting hippogriffs they pass on their way to Cloud Giant City at level 18. But it's equally unreasonable for a fighter to be substantially more powerful when he gets on the mayor's old warhorse at level 3 and yet substantially less powerful when he gets on that very same horse at level 16. The same horse should always be a benefit over going on foot in the same situation, just as the same masterwork dagger is always a benefit over punching a dude. At high levels the 1d4 is much less important, sure, but even if you made it to 28 it would still be measurably better than the 1 damage you get without it. But at high levels the horse becomes an actual liability due to how vulnerable it is; losing an entire action to wake it from a sleep in a fight that may only last three rounds is an atrocious expense that means you would never in a million years bring the animal in the first place.

Plus, if you scale the horse enough to not be a liability, you basically get a fifth party member, and while yes, you can reserve authority over it for yourself as an NPC, I have enough to keep track of already. The paladin can manage his own damn horse. :smallannoyed:

The only way I've been able to find to make the mount always useful, just as the dagger is, free of mandatory scaling or DM headache, is to treat it just like the dagger: an extension of the player character using it.


If I were to do "shared pool" it would be that the damage is divided as you see fit when dealt. So you can use your horse as a shield from the Fireball by ducking down the side or something. But if the damage reaches either mount or rider's HP, you are either incapacitated or your mount dies.

This works, but it seems like it could bog things down, if every time you get damaged (or healed) you have to stop and mess with two separate health pools.


EDIT: Also, Cavalier should allow a Handle Animal check (DC 15) for a flying Dismount that allows a rider to dismount without sacrificing speed, so long as they are dismounting in the direction of the mount's charge and are able to move 10' unimpeded. Attacks of Opportunity on the rider in the first 5' are made at Advantage and will knock the rider prone.

Seems like something you should just be able to try anyway. I'd let you, at any rate. Especially if you're a gnome or a halfling and you weaponize yourself into a bad guy at the end of the flight.:smallbiggrin:

[Unoriginal]

A major design principle of 5e, notably in opposition to 3e before it, is that anybody can attempt a thing and have a reasonable chance of success. Specialist feats and proficiencies then raise a character from a level of base competence to unusual excellence.

And they did this fairly well with skills, grapples/trips/shoves, breaking down doors and getting past traps. And then they turned around and did a complete and utter pratfall when it comes to mounted combat. Absolutely nobody in the game can do this with any level of effectiveness out of the box past about level 2; taking the associated feat gives a bare bones level of competence in some situations but ultimately still doesn't make mounted combat any more than a useless gimmick against anything with, oh, say, a fear aura or a freakin level 1 sleep.

I don't understand what you're saying is a problem.

Anybody can do mounted combat with a reasonable chance of success, and there are options to become more competent.

I especially doesn't get the "nobody in the game can do this with any level of effectiveness out of the box past about level 2" comment.

[Tiadoppler]

Eh, this strikes me as a bag-of-rats or heal-by-drowning thing. Yeah, technically the rule permits it, but the solution from my perspective is less "add needless complication to/delete an otherwise useful mechanic" and more "throw a d4 at your player and tell him to cut that sh*t."

Yeah, but you still get the situation of "an injured rider gets on an uninjured mount, then has to redistribute HP when he dismounts". Can a pre-injured rider take any HP from the Mount? Can the Mount be injured by having a wounded rider? If the answer is no, for either, then you have to track the individual HP separately anyway (for when they dismount), so making the Shared Pool is extra work, not less work.



Both of you mention templated mounts, and in honesty that was my first solution to the problem, too. But ultimately it's too limiting for the kind of sandbox I want to provide; it means you can't just hop on one of the pack horses when the wagon you're escorting gets attacked, or shanghai some passing dolphins for an underwater chase. It's not reasonable for every animal the party ever meets to be somehow at a reasonable challenge parity with them, even the random dire deer and nesting hippogriffs they pass on their way to Cloud Giant City at level 18. But it's equally unreasonable for a fighter to be substantially more powerful when he gets on the mayor's old warhorse at level 3 and yet substantially less powerful when he gets on that very same horse at level 16. The same horse should always be a benefit over going on foot in the same situation, just as the same masterwork dagger is always a benefit over punching a dude.

Hmm. I disagree for a few reasons:

> You can still hop on a pack horse or a dolphin for a movement speed boost, but those creatures are unarmored, scared and confused by combat. They aren't going to be as tough and reliable as a trained steed, and that should be represented.

> A warhorse at level 3 should feel powerful and useful, especially in an open field battle (where you're moving more than a few hundred feet). At level 16, the PC is engaging in combat so deadly, with opponents so dangerous, that that same warhorse might be a liability. Think about how cavalry charges went out of style when machine guns came around. I want a player to be able to train a mount for the toughest of combat, but it shouldn't be a 100gp mount from the super-store.

> A masterwork dagger is not always a benefit over a punch. Monks, Any Casters, Shapeshifters, Grapplers. By high level, your class features will be much more effective than a nice piece of basic equipment in many circumstances.

[strangebloke]

First off, you should absolutely add in mounts up the CR chain a little bit. Legendary Stallion, that kind of thing. Makes for a fun mini quest and/or something to spend that gold on, and it's a very memorable piece of 'loot,' as well as being something you'd definitely see in the source material. Aragorn didn't ride Lousy the packhorse into battle, he rode Brego, the horse of Theodred.

Secondly, I usually allow my PC to make a handle animal check in lieu of the animal making a save. So they cast fear on the horse, but his master is handling the horse so well that the fear effect doesn't cause him to buck his rider. The caster throws a fireball at the horse, and while the rider, with his crappy DEX save, takes full damage, the horse is steered in such a way that the worst of the blast is avoided. It's kinda BS, both in the sense of being overpowered and in the sense of being kind of silly at points, but then, fundamentally, the horse should not be a liability. I included a clause that if the mount was intelligent, they wouldn't just do exactly whatever their master told them and so this ability doesn't work on them. (need to prevent the halfing rogue from jumping on the barbarian's back and giving him expertise in all saves)

The feat you listed works very well in conjunction with this rule, by granting expertise in handle animal.

Thirdly, add in Barding that grants the mount temp HP and/or AC. That way the PC can keep their crappy mount alive more easily for a small investment. Something like: AC:16, Temp HP:10. Takes ten minutes to repair the barding and restore the temporary hit points to max.

It sort of doesn't matter how resilient you make the mount, since at a certain point everyone will just attack the guy on the horse's back. Which is how you wanted to do things anyway.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This works, but it seems like it could bog things down, if every time you get damaged (or healed) you have to stop and mess with two separate health pools.
Honestly, I think "you can take damage instead of your mount" is cleaner and simpler than mucking around with a shared pool that needs to be reconsidered every time you get on or off your horse.