Pro's and con's of different classes and Mounted Combat

[Citadel97501]

Hello, I was hoping someone could help me out with their opinions on the different classes and their mounts? From what I understand the following are the primary mounted classes. If I miss one feel free to note it.

Base Classes

-Fighter, Cavalier: This is a tanky fighter with a high speed benefit who can keep their mount alive most of the time, and gets an extra feat or two which can make mounted combatant cheaper, and having access to Defense or Protection fighting styles is great early on.

-Ranger, Beastmaster: This is a high damage class, that gets good AC and buffs to their mounts due to adding their proficiency bonuses but is stuck with small races due to the pet's size limitation of medium.

-Paladin, Level 5 or Level 13: This is similar to the Cavalier but trades defense boosts for massive dpr spikes, and much better saves on the mounts, a tiny bit of spell support, and a summoned mount.

-Bard, College of Lore, level 6 or 10: Amazing grappling mounts due to Cutting Words and easier access to the same summoned mounts as the Paladin, and gets better spell support to the mount.

-Barbarian, Path of the Totem Warrior, Wolf totem: Free Combat Advantage for your mount vs any target within 5' of you during a rage.

-Barbarian, Path of the Totem Warrior, Elk Totem level 6: Doubles the travel speed of your mount and everyone near you this also doesn't require a rage. (Corrected)

Multi-Classes & Dips

I think those are the main mounted classes, and their primary benefits for the mounted combat stuff. Some of these combinations are pretty powerful with a dip of no more than 3 levels.
-Fighter, Cavalier works with all of these and especially well with a Barbarian due to the Constitution modifiers of Barbarians, although that would be very odd rp wise.

-Barbarian, Path of the Totem Warrior, works with all of these as well although the rage mechanic will be odd, especially bad for Bards though since they are primarily a spell caster. Strangely works fine with Paladin since Smite doesn't require spell casting.

Notable Guides
This guide is of great help to Bards, and has some notes for paladin as well.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?506610-The-College-of-Legendary-Steeds-A-Bard-Guide-by-StarStuff

[LudicSavant]

One of the great things about the Paladin is that not only can they get a pegasus straight from their class features, but they also can share their spells with it and keep it much safer than most mounted combatants.

This is one of the big things that the Cavalier is missing, IMHO: basically everything in the Cavalier's kit is geared towards conventional movement and attacks with attack rolls and direct damage. They're not really any tankier than any other Fighter when it comes to other forms of offense (and the same goes for their mounts).

Something I posted earlier when someone was asking how to make a single-classed Paladin competitive:



Example Build: Ride of the Valkyries
https://wiki.plarium.com/images/4/4a/Pegasus.png

Here's one that's strong at all levels. Basically your goal is to become an ultramobile living ballistic missile which is nearly indestructible and has tons of party support.

Vengeance Paladin 20
VHuman / Cha 20, Belt of Giant Strength, PAM, Great Weapon Master, Mounted Combatant, Inspiring Leader (Order in which you get the feats is optional, though I'd take PAM first).

High level strategy:
You use "Find Greater Steed" to ride a pegasus. At the start of your adventuring day you give a heroic speech about how much divine vengeance will rain down upon your foes today (which gives everyone and their familiar +25 hp / short rest), and cast Death Ward, which affects you and your pegasus. In battle, you cast Haste, which gets shared to it. Your pegasus now moves around the battlefield at 540 feet per round using the move action, dash action, and hasted bonus action.

This means that you will be in range when you want to be in range, and will be out of range of most of the nasty spells that you don't want to be affected by. When you feel ready after having surveyed your opponents on the battlefield, you do a flyby, cast Vow of Enmity if they're not already smaller than your mount, and then dive bomb them from orbit, doing approximately this much (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujC7rxFVZ18) damage with your full nova combo. (It's about 200DPR with a big giant's belt and a nonmagical weapon against a 20 AC target. That's not "200 damage assuming hits" it's "200 DPR vs AC 20").

Your Pegasus has some surprisingly good durability, with a respectable 84 hit points, Death Ward (and the ability to bring them back up to full instantly using Lay on Hands if they get to that gate), Haste (which gets +2 AC and advantage on reflex saves), good saves (thanks to your aura plus decent base values), Advantage on Reflex saves, and Evasion. Even if people can get in range of your hit and run tactics they've got their work cut out for them to chew through both you and your mount. If they actually have the movement speed to get close to you, they even have to make a save to avoid becoming Frightened. Even if they do kill your mount, you have a hasted fly speed on your own which lasts an hour without concentration.

On top of all of this, you have access to things like Misty Step, Banishment, Scrying, Hold Monster, and Dimension Door with a full 20 casting stat. Lich king wants to use Forcecage? No problem, you've got Misty Step, the highest Charisma save around, and can move about 200 feet without your mount. You're still coming for them.

Lower level strategy:
At level 1 you're a martial with Polearm Master. What more do you want? You even have the versatility to use a quarterstaff-and-shield instead of a glaive if you like (though for the later levels of this build we'll be using a glaive).

By level 3, you've got Hunter's Mark, Vow of Enmity, 2-3 attacks in a round, GWF, and smites. You hit like a truck. You also have stuff like Bless and Lay of Hands which does a lot to help out your party (and also make it even harder to ignore you in favor of going after squishies). Command is nice too.

By level 6, you're a monster. You've got either Mounted Combatant or Great Weapon Master (which synergizes well with your ability easily grant Advantage) and Find Steed, which very importantly gives you a mount that can act independently from you. This means that not only does it boost your mobility substantially (a pretty big deal given how effective kiting is against many of 5e's martials), but it can knock your enemies prone and attack, granting a substantial DPR boost (unintelligent mounts can't do this). Most importantly of all, you've got That Aura.

At this point your non-smite DPR is something very scary and your critfishing smite DPR makes things disappear in a puff of holy vengeance. Add to that the fact that you're pretty durable against almost all forms of attack, and do a lot to support your party to boot, and you're in really good shape.

By level 9, you start sharing Haste to your steed, which makes them more durable, significantly faster, and more offensively deadly than they already are... not to mention buffing yourself while you're at it so that you're getting 4-5 polearm attacks a round, with advantage and all of your riders and possibly GWM. You also get Relentless Avenger, which synergizes neatly with PAM.

By level 13 you get a damage boost on all your attacks and Find Greater Steed, which is a big deal for reasons given in high level strategy. Also, unlike those multiclassing chumps, you've got 4 feats/ASIs by this point. You also should probably have found a strength item by this point barring an unusually low magic campaign (and you easily have the Charisma to just find one to buy using the XGtE magic item economy rules, if your game uses that).

___

Variants:
- Inspiring Leader and GWM are replaceable, especially if you have certain magic items.

Worth noting that this Paladin's mount can tank multiple meteor swarms to the face. Which is good, because Meteor Swarm is one of the things that has the range to actually hit it (1 mile).

How many Meteor Swarms does the Valkyrie's mount take to the face, you ask? Well, let's see. Thanks to Mounted Combatant it takes only half damage from Ref save effects, or no damage if it makes the save. It also has a +11 to Reflex saves, 84 hit points, and an extra death gate (because of Death Ward).

Even if you failed every save, it takes three meteor swarms to take out your pegasus (two to break 84 hp at half damage, and a third to get over the Death Ward gate to reduce it to zero hit points). But you don't fail every save. So let's say you are up against a DC 19 Meteor Swarm... your pegasus has about a 65% chance to make that save and take zero damage. This drops the DPR of meteor swarm down to about 24, which means it takes an average of four meteor swarms to break the Death Ward... and then you need to land another one on top of that (with only a 35% chance of doing so, meaning it takes about 3 more) to take out the mount, let alone the actual Paladin. That means that you basically expect to use another 3 meteor swarms trying to grab that last point of hp. If, at any point in this process, the Paladin decides to use Lay on Hands, it can go right back up to full health. Honestly the mount might as well just read "functionally immune to reflex-based AoEs."

The Valkyrie's pegasus actually has pretty good saves across the board when sitting in the aura, at +9 strength, +9 Dexterity (11 when sharing Haste), +8 Constitution, +5 Intelligence, +9 Wisdom, and +8 Charisma. That's better than the majority of level 20 characters. It's also got a decent AC at 20 (or 22 when sharing haste) since you put barding on it.

The fact that your mount shares spells that target only you also means that when you Misty Step, it can also Misty Step. When you Tree Stride (as an ancients paladin) it also charges straight out of a tree with you.

Note that by contrast, a Cavalier's mount has a good chance of dying to a single meteor swarm, even with Mounted Combatant.


-Barbarian, Path of the Totem Warrior, Elk Totem level 6: Doubles the speed of your mount and everyone near you doesn't require a rage.

Elk level 6 doubles your travel pace, not your movement speed.

[Citadel97501]

Excellent Response Ludic, thank you. I included your correction for the Elk Barbarian ability. About the only thing I can note, is that any ST that lets players have Variant Humans should be smacked upside the head...I love the fact that you took Inspiring Leader and made it not crap, I hadn't thought of giving the buff to your mounts and other long term summons.

[strangebloke]

Ludic hit the nail on the head. Find Steed is the most key piece for any mounted build, since normally available mounts cap out at CR 1/2 and can't be replaced mid-adventure. This also improves their saves and mental stats and allows you to buff them cheaply.

After find steed, your most important resource is the paladin aura. A dead mount sucks, but a dominated mount sucks even more, and most mounts (especially ones that you didn't get via find steed) tend to have sucky saves.

Mitigating HP damage is the easiest part of running mounted combat. Just have your mount take the Dodge action each turn, give them armor, and get the Mounted Combatant feat. A mount with 18 AC that's always dodging and has advantage on all reflex saves and has evasion and has a rider who can tank hits for her is not dropping easily. In fact, in such a scenario, you probably want to let people hit your mount, since any damage to the mount is damage not dealt to you.

My list of other classes that can sorta do mounted play:

Bard: Complain to your GM until he lets you take find greater steed as your secret at level 6. Use bardic inspiration on those key rolls to ensure that Featherwing doesn't fail. At level 10, whine at your GM again and pick up Tenser's Transformation. Or pick up spirit guardians and hit everyone you ride past twice.

Rogue: Mounted Combatant gives advantage, and you deal crazy damage even off your turn. Pick up Sentinel and wield a whip and between your reach and the mount's large size you're nearly guaranteed to get an AoO off each round. Good pick if your DM likes calling for lots of animal handing checks, too. No find steed, which is a serious liability. 5 levels of paladin? Very strong at low levels, less strong later.

Ranger: You got most of the right ideas here.

Paladin: By far the most consistently good, with only the Bard offering a real challenge at every level. The Rogue is probably better before level 5, though.

[MaxWilson]

-Paladin, Level 5 or Level 13: This is similar to the Cavalier but trades defense boosts for massive dpr spikes, and much better saves on the mounts, a tiny bit of spell support, and a summoned mount.

-Bard, College of Lore, level 6 or 10: Amazing grappling mounts due to Cutting Words and easier access to the same summoned mounts as the Paladin, and gets better spell support to the mount.

Do note that sorcerers and wizards also get eventual access to Find Greater Steed via Wish.

[Merudo]

The Cavalier ability "Unwavering Mark" is unfortunately anti-synergistic with Mounted Combat.

If you are on a mount, you definitively want to use a lance as your weapon(s). This allows you to substantially increase your damage compared to using a d8 weapon.

However, "Unwavering Mark" works poorly with Reach weaponry. A marked enemy can just move 5 feet away from you and attack someone else, avoiding the disadvantage they would otherwise get. Because you are using a reach weapon, you won't get an OA on them either.

I personally believe a Cavalier is best suited to non-mounted combat, as ironic as it seems.

[ImproperJustice]

I don’t suppose you would consider allowing the Artificer in this mix, as their mechanial servant can often be mounted and comes bundled with a reaction ability.

Mine currently uses a Giant Spider.
But other options include the Giant Eagle and Allosaurus.

Worth noting that the Robe of Useful items they get at 5th level can often produce a riding horse.

Gunsmith has an excellent ranged combat option, and Alchemists can heal their mounts via healing draught, or boost their mount’s speed by 20’ with the speed draught.

Revivify can get a mount back on it’s feat, and infused Expeditious retreat potion supplied to your mount allows a dash option. Could be combined with Longstrider or Haste.

[LudicSavant]

Excellent Response Ludic, thank you. I included your correction for the Elk Barbarian ability. About the only thing I can note, is that any ST that lets players have Variant Humans should be smacked upside the head...I love the fact that you took Inspiring Leader and made it not crap, I hadn't thought of giving the buff to your mounts and other long term summons.

Happy to help :smallsmile:

In addition to the melee types, you might also want to consider kiting types, such as warlocks who just ride away and fire knockback blasts, or horse archers.

Also, note Phantom Steed. You can cast rituals while moving, so Wizards or anyone with the Ritual Caster feat can just outfit the entire party with 100-foot-move mounts all the time. Sure they go poof in one hit, but that's enough time to give a considerable advantage when it comes to positioning at the start of an encounter.