Question on some Mounted Combat Cheese

[Cisturn]

Hey Playgrounders.

One of my PCs is playing a Cleric who specializes in riding combat. The PC has leadership, and the cohort is a warshaper with Morphic Reach. My PC wants to ride a Tiger into combat, pounce, and then attack with a lance for double damage. I'm pretty sure this works by RAW. But I wanted to ask the experts.

Also would there by any disadvantages, or bonuses to the cleric essentially hanging on to the tiger at is flips around during it's pounce?

And how would this combo work with Ride-By-Attack?

Thank you!

[Venger]

this works normally.

[Darrin]

One of my PCs is playing a Cleric who specializes in riding combat. The PC has leadership, and the cohort is a warshaper with Morphic Reach. My PC wants to ride a Tiger into combat, pounce, and then attack with a lance for double damage. I'm pretty sure this works by RAW. But I wanted to ask the experts.


This works, so long as you're talking about the tiger doing the pouncing. If the cleric wants to pounce, then it gets murky. A mounted rider cannot use the charge action because, since he's mounted, he can't move at least 10' directly towards the closest square where he can attack. He gets the same +2 bonus to attack that his mount gets, and likewise gets the same -2 AC penalty. If he's using a lance, he gets a damage multiplier. It's not clear if the rider still gets any other benefits from charging. If his mount moves more than 5', the rider can only make a single attack.

There are some odd quirks to this, however... if the rider uses a free action to dismount (say... to one of the squares diagonally behind his mount), he could proceed to charge his opponent once he's on the ground. Also, another quirk... since the cleric is riding another PC with presumably his own initiative count, the cleric could "delay" his turn until just after his "mount" finishes his turn. Since the cleric and cohort are acting independently, then there's an argument that the cleric can full attack because why the heck not? (The 5' movement thing is a dumb rule.) If you have issues with mounted riders getting to full attack, then you might declare that the cleric has to dismount first.



Also would there by any disadvantages, or bonuses to the cleric essentially hanging on to the tiger at is flips around during it's pounce?


Uh... the cleric might need to make a DC 15 Concentration checks? (Or maybe DC 10. It depends on whether you consider the mount to be "moving" or "galloping".) Maybe a Ride check to stay in the saddle if the tiger is doing something really wacky.



And how would this combo work with Ride-By-Attack?


It... doesn't. Ride-By-Attack is dysfunctional as it's currently written. It assumes the rider can use the charge action, but the rider can't charge, just the mount. The feat says you have to move in a straight line, but the charge rules say you have to move to the closest square where you can attack, and depending on how the creatures are arranged on the battlefield, that might prevent the mount from moving in a straight line, because the target is an obstacle, and you can't charge through obstacles. The charge rules also require that the mount has to make a single melee attack at the end of its movement, but if that movement carried it away from the target and outside its threatened area, the mount can't attack. The Ride-By-Attack rules are also somewhat unnecessary: a rider can direct his mount to move/charge as a free/move action, and then use the Ready An Action rules to ready a standard action to attack when his mount brings him into melee range.

Basically, the mounted combat rules require a few tweaks to talk over with the DM before they become functional. Ask the DM how delayed/readied actions work while mounted, and ask him how Ride-By-Attack should work.