Bone knight mount help

[willaayy]

I’m making a new character at level 13 for an upcoming evil campaign. Haven’t rolled stats yet. My build will be: Goliath, cloistered cleric 4/ ordained champion 3/ prestige paladin (paladin of Tyranny variant) 2/ bone knight 3. Deathbound, Knowledge, War and Undead domains.
I will be using the feat “holy mount” from DMag#325 that stacks all of my divine classes with paladin to determine the stats of my mount.
I also intend to use an alternative mount instead of a horse. I want to use a warbeast rhinoceros, just like the one used on the warbeast template example. The rhinoceros comes at a -2 to my effective paladin mount level.
My question is how do I stat up this mount? Obviously the mount will have the skeleton applied to it from boneknight. I’m confused on what it’s intelligence will be, skills, saves, pretty much everything.

[liquidformat]

First verify with your dm that warbeast template is allowed and confirm what if any adjustment that template would have to the effective level of your mount. After that apply warbeast template followed by skeleton (see if your dm will let you switch this out for swift skeleton or another alternate from BoVD) and finally add the appropriate benefits as defined in the paladin's mount section of the PHB based on your effective level for your skeletal mount.

[willaayy]

The warbeast will be a freebie. Dm figures since I’m a cleric of war and will use my mount a lot for war that I trained the mount myself for free.
I didn’t think of using a different skeleton template, got any good suggestions? I’ll go ahead and start looking in Bovd.
When I’m adding the paladin mount bonuses, which saves do I use? Do I change all saves from all HD over to magical beast? Or do I just adjust the saves that come from the bonus HD from paladin? Same thing with the skills. Skeleton takes away skills while paladin gives them..

[liquidformat]

The warbeast will be a freebie. Dm figures since I’m a cleric of war and will use my mount a lot for war that I trained the mount myself for free.
I didn’t think of using a different skeleton template, got any good suggestions? I’ll go ahead and start looking in Bovd.
When I’m adding the paladin mount bonuses, which saves do I use? Do I change all saves from all HD over to magical beast? Or do I just adjust the saves that come from the bonus HD from paladin? Same thing with the skills. Skeleton takes away skills while paladin gives them..

Ok cool it is always nice to get warbeast, if your dm is super lenient then taking magebred warbeast on the original rhino would be very powerful. I am away from books right now but in the back of BoVD I think there are 2 or 3 alternate skeleton and zombie templates that you might be able to use if your dm is agreeable.


At 2nd level, you gain the services of a skeletal steed: a heavy warhorse with the skeleton template applied (or a war pony with the skeleton template applied for Small bone knights). You may call this steed in the same fashion as a paladin whose level equals your paladin level plus your bone knight level, and the steed gains the same special abilities as a paladin's special mount at the same effective level.

Highlighted the important line for building your skeleton mount by RAW you would go purely based on special mount for all hd, bab, saves, feats, and skill points. However, given that RAW for skeleton and undead conflict with mount RAW it is probably best to go through your dm to confirm, but I standardly go with the following: D12 hd (since you have no fort save, 3/4 bab, unsure on saves, keep the base skills of the rhino, feats however you want. The mount is more or less an awakened skeleton so it does gain skill points and feats accordingly.

[willaayy]

Yeah he’s decent when it comes to character options but I won’t even ask about magebred because I know the answer already. He likes warbeast because that’s something my character could have done on his own. While I don’t imagine in Goliath society that they magebreed rhinos haha. Doing a necromancer war cleric with DMM persistent is already a lot for this dm. But he might let me use a different template for the skeleton part as along as it’s mild. I’m in the process of asking to spellstich my mount. Seeing as that’s something I might be capable of, if he lets me to it with divine spells. The paladin spell rhinos rush on a rhino? :)

Thank you very much for pointing that line out. Seems I just glanced over it without really paying attention. That gives me a good base to work off of so my question is answered.

Do you have any thoughts on some good undead for me to have? With animate dead I can control up to 36HD. Ideally I want 2 big undead guys. Thoughts?

[liquidformat]

So just to point out, battle blessing feat plus prestige paladin questionably means you can cast all of your standard action spells as swift action spells. Also if you do spellstich your mount think over what is important to give it, for example since you already get share spell with your rhino mount, any spell you cast on yourself also applies to your mount while mounted. If you aren't an undead yourself getting tomb tainted soul is probably a good idea.

Shadows, greater shadows, wraiths, and dread wraiths are always good options. Checkout slaymate from Libris Mortis they are pretty amazing to just have one follow around at your side. Things with subtypes like fire giants are a great choice for skeletons.