Mounted Combat, Keep it Stupid Simple

[strangebloke]

So there's a long discussion going on about Mounted Combat and the associated feat and what the wording even means/should mean. I thought it'd be interesting to talk about people's houserules for mounted combat, because I imagine a lot of us have one.

In my games, mounting and dismounting is the same, but I replace the 'controlling a mount' bit (specifically the part about controlled mounts, lol) with this:


"You can control a mount only if it has been trained to accept a rider. Domesticated horses, donkeys, and similar creatures are assumed to have such training. While controlling the mount, you can use its movement on your turn and as a bonus action make it take the dodge, dash, or disengage action as part of its reaction. If a mount was controlled by any character since the end of its last turn it cannot move, take actions, or take reactions except as directed by its rider or by other abilities that force them to move or take action. (such as fear). Sometimes a DM might require a rider to make a Wisdom(Handle Animal) check to maintain control if the mount is particularly unruly."


To go into my logic here, I basically have three goals

make it so that mounts can be an option for every character with some tradeoffs.
don't allow/encourage extreme cheese
keep it intuitive


The tradeoffs here are pretty simply the risks inherent in riding a mount (vulnerability to spells like fear) and cost, along with mounts not being practical in some areas. I think this works pretty well at my table but then my players aren't exactly trying to break the game. The gamiest part of this implementation is how the mount gets 'stunned' as soon as its rider dismounts, but in most cases a character won't be dismounting intentionally in the middle of combat.

What do you all think?

[Mobius Twist]

I'm running a campaign in a fantasy Mongolia analogue, so horse-riding is a key part of, well, everything. Everyone who wanted one (as part of their character) got a mount for free from the start of the game. So far, combat required getting into dungeons, so I haven't had to put my mounted combat rules into play, but they will work like this:


If your mount is domesticated, but not combat-trained:


In-combat move as part of avoiding danger is free of Animal Handling checks.
In-combat move as part of an attack action is an Animal Handling check (DC 10)
Taking damage is like a Concentration spell check to maintain control (so DC 10 or half damage Animal Handling)



If your mount is domesticated and combat-trained (or intelligent):

In-combat move as part of avoiding danger is free of Animal Handling checks.
In-combat move as part of an attack action is free of Animal Handling checks.
Taking damage is like a Concentration spell check to maintain control (so DC 10 or half damage Animal Handling) with a bonus based on animal attitude*.



*In order to give some sense of differentiation between "horse X" and "horse Y" without training everyone in medieval horse breeding, I just break up the horses by a "blood temperature" concept:

Cold-blooded horses are of a slow-and-steady temperament. Good for basic transport and farm work. High endurance, low tolerance for sprints and high-energy activity. Basic fodder/feed meets their needs and they tolerate uncomfortable conditions.
Warm-blooded horses are a catch-all. Tend to be higher maintenance and require a more nutritious fodder and care, but can be used reliably in high-energy situations for periods of time prior to needing recovery.
Hot-blooded horses are exceptional racing and combat steeds, ready at all time to go all-out. Correspondingly high-maintenance.

Most riders have multiple horses that they take into battle as part of their logistics, such that the best-performing horses are reserved for tense combat and cooler-blood horses are used for transportation and caravan work. As a verisimilitude bonus, this is also pretty historically-accurate.

[Segev]

Were I writing a house rule for mounted combat, it would look something like this:


While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. When your mount takes damage, you may choose to take any number of the hit points dealt, yourself, but all other effects of any source of damage still affect your mount, and not you.

[quinron]

Were I writing a house rule for mounted combat, it would look something like this:


While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. When your mount takes damage, you may choose to take any number of the hit points dealt, yourself, but all other effects of any source of damage still affect your mount, and not you.

I would tweak that last bit - if you and your mount are both in range of an effect that damages and poisons, it sounds like this would poison the mount but not you. Though I'm not sure how I'd word it in that case. May also changes "any actions available to you or your mount" to "any actions or reactions," just to avoid people thinking they can move their mount as a reaction.

Otherwise, I think this gets the best mix of advantages and disadvantages for mounted combat. I'm probably going to steal this if my next game has someone focused on riding.:smallbiggrin:

[Segev]

I would tweak that last bit - if you and your mount are both in range of an effect that damages and poisons, it sounds like this would poison the mount but not you. Though I'm not sure how I'd word it in that case. May also changes "any actions available to you or your mount" to "any actions or reactions," just to avoid people thinking they can move their mount as a reaction.

Otherwise, I think this gets the best mix of advantages and disadvantages for mounted combat. I'm probably going to steal this if my next game has someone focused on riding.:smallbiggrin:

Nah, if you're both in range, you're both taking the effect. You can just choose to spend your hp to spare your mount's hp. This is actually a disadvantage to being in an AoE.

If I wanted to get more complicated, I would actually group the mount's and your hp, and let you count as one creature for taking AoE damage, and decide how that splits when you separate, but that's getting fiddly. The three things that being mounted "combine" in this conception are: your movement, your space, and your action sets. Everything else treats you as separate creatures, as normal. (The "spend your hp to spare your mount" thing is mainly a quality-of-life add-on to keep your mount from dying horribly when you get to high enough levels that his hp are a single average hit away from death.)

[strangebloke]

Were I writing a house rule for mounted combat, it would look something like this:


While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. When your mount takes damage, you may choose to take any number of the hit points dealt, yourself, but all other effects of any source of damage still affect your mount, and not you.

This is pretty simple, I have to admit! Definitely one of the better takes I've seen, addressing almost all the major issues without making any new ones.

[MaxWilson]

So there's a long discussion going on about Mounted Combat and the associated feat and what the wording even means/should mean. I thought it'd be interesting to talk about people's houserules for mounted combat, because I imagine a lot of us have one.

In my games, mounting and dismounting is the same, but I replace the 'controlling a mount' bit (specifically the part about controlled mounts, lol) with this:


"You can control a mount only if it has been trained to accept a rider. Domesticated horses, donkeys, and similar creatures are assumed to have such training. While controlling the mount, you can use its movement on your turn and as a bonus action make it take the dodge, dash, or disengage action as part of its reaction. If a mount was controlled by any character since the end of its last turn it cannot move, take actions, or take reactions except as directed by its rider or by other abilities that force them to move or take action. (such as fear). Sometimes a DM might require a rider to make a Wisdom(Handle Animal) check to maintain control if the mount is particularly unruly."


To go into my logic here, I basically have three goals

make it so that mounts can be an option for every character with some tradeoffs.
don't allow/encourage extreme cheese
keep it intuitive


The tradeoffs here are pretty simply the risks inherent in riding a mount (vulnerability to spells like fear) and cost, along with mounts not being practical in some areas. I think this works pretty well at my table but then my players aren't exactly trying to break the game. The gamiest part of this implementation is how the mount gets 'stunned' as soon as its rider dismounts, but in most cases a character won't be dismounting intentionally in the middle of combat.

What do you all think?

I'm a little bit more restrictive. My favorite rule variant is just "while mounted on a controlled mount, you can spend your mount's movement instead of your own, to move both yourself and the mount." Goal: make mounted kiting less ridiculously easy while also making it slightly more realistic (riding a galloping (Dashing) horse should require some effort!).

As usual as with many of my houserules, I'm trying to keep melee PCs as relevant as possible by closing some of the loopholes that make bringing a knife to a gunfight even worse than in real life. Eliminating the option to get a free Disengage or Dash every round plus 60' to 100' speed means you're more likely to wind up in melee over several rounds of combat.

P.S. I don't have to worry about the "stun" thing you're talking about, because I run combat round-by-round and not turn-by-turn. Movement consumed by one rider would simply not be available to another rider on the same turn.

[DwarfFighter]

Were I writing a house rule for mounted combat, it would look something like this:


While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. When your mount takes damage, you may choose to take any number of the hit points dealt, yourself, but all other effects of any source of damage still affect your mount, and not you.

I think this is the main reason a player would want to avoid relying on horses: The horse is too fragile if it is a target that is separate from the rider.

PC logic: "That knight is pretty tough, but if I kill his horse first he will lose a lot of his advantages. It is smart for me to kill the horse."

Also PC logic: "Enemies will just kill my horse."

Any house rule that removes concern for the horse from the equation is good for both PCs and GMs if they want to encourage mounted combat.

Also, change the grid size to 10 ft per square :)

[Jerrykhor]

I think this is the main reason a player would want to avoid relying on horses: The horse is too fragile if it is a target that is separate from the rider.

PC logic: "That knight is pretty tough, but if I kill his horse first he will lose a lot of his advantages. It is smart for me to kill the horse."

Also PC logic: "Enemies will just kill my horse."

Any house rule that removes concern for the horse from the equation is good for both PCs and GMs if they want to encourage mounted combat.

Also, change the grid size to 10 ft per square :)

That is the purpose of the Mounted Combatant feat.

[strangebloke]

I think this is the main reason a player would want to avoid relying on horses: The horse is too fragile if it is a target that is separate from the rider.

PC logic: "That knight is pretty tough, but if I kill his horse first he will lose a lot of his advantages. It is smart for me to kill the horse."

Also PC logic: "Enemies will just kill my horse."

Any house rule that removes concern for the horse from the equation is good for both PCs and GMs if they want to encourage mounted combat.

Also, change the grid size to 10 ft per square :)

To be fair, a 19 HP warhorse with plate barding that's constantly dodging is actually somewhat hard to kill even into t2, and if you layer some investments on top of that (aid, inspiring leader, mounted combatant) you can turn them into a pretty unattractive target, especially if you use your (excellent) movement to stay out of reach. At higher tiers you'd need more expensive and powerful mounts, ofc.

HP damage is relatively easy to mitigate for mounts, saving throws are the far more annoying problem since all mounts have crappy mental saving throws. This is why Paladins are pretty much the only people consistently assumed to be mounted.

[Segev]

That is the purpose of the Mounted Combatant feat.It's decent for what it does, though the fact that saving throw effects still target the mount and the best you can do is make "save for half" effects become "save for none" without any real means of boosting the mount's saves (unless you're a paladin) means one fireball still takes it out.

Unless you're Small and riding a Medium creature, mounted combat is already a tricky thing that is usable only some of the time. Mounts, themselves, can be an investment (ironically, for a Small creature, the BEST mount early game is a donkey, and it's the cheapest, too).

My proposed change regarding simply letting the rider always spend his hp instead of his mount's means that you don't have zero reason to armor your mount (as Mounted Combatant currently causes you to) nor have any "gaps" in your mount's defense. You find AoEs to be more painful as a mounted combatant, and the "save for nothing" bullet point in Mounted Combatant is still therefore attractive even if it's not crucial. And your mount's hp are still there to soak some of the damage coming for your mount, but you are able to use your own je ne se qua that prevents you from taking a lethal injury to also protect your mount.


To be fair, a 19 HP warhorse with plate barding that's constantly dodging is actually somewhat hard to kill even into t2, and if you layer some investments on top of that (aid, inspiring leader, mounted combatant) you can turn them into a pretty unattractive target, especially if you use your (excellent) movement to stay out of reach. At higher tiers you'd need more expensive and powerful mounts, ofc.

HP damage is relatively easy to mitigate for mounts, saving throws are the far more annoying problem since all mounts have crappy mental saving throws. This is why Paladins are pretty much the only people consistently assumed to be mounted.This is definitely true. The existing rules aren't unusable, and this is roughly how I'd play it if I were using the RAW for 5e mounts: armor up the mount and have it dash to get into melee range, disengage if that will let me zoom in and out, and dodge if I'm sticking in combat.

Dashing and moving to within 10 feet for a rider to lance the target and then move away without ever entering the enemy's reach seems like something that would be surprisingly effective.

[quindraco]

I was wondering how people house rule saddles, which RAW do nothing - it's a dex save to stay on your mount and saddles give you advantage on ability checks to stay on your mount. How do people house rule saddles in their games?

[Segev]

I was wondering how people house rule saddles, which RAW do nothing - it's a dex save to stay on your mount and saddles give you advantage on ability checks to stay on your mount. How do people house rule saddles in their games?

I mean, the RAW may be broken, here, in a literal sense, but the intent is pretty clear, so I'd just rule that you get Advantage on the Dex Save to stay in the saddle.

[Zhorn]

I was wondering how people house rule saddles, which RAW do nothing - it's a dex save to stay on your mount and saddles give you advantage on ability checks to stay on your mount. How do people house rule saddles in their games?
As a house rule: work backwards from the military saddle. so:

Military Saddle: Advantage on checks to remain mounted
Riding/Exotic Saddle: Normal roll on checks to remain mounted.
No saddle: Disadvantage on checks to remain mounted


Exotic military saddle as a homebrew item for 100 gp (usually as a custom job requiring special measuring and fitting)

[quindraco]

As a house rule: work backwards from the military saddle. so:

Military Saddle: Advantage on checks to remain mounted
Riding/Exotic Saddle: Normal roll on checks to remain mounted.
No saddle: Disadvantage on checks to remain mounted


Exotic military saddle as a homebrew item for 100 gp (usually as a custom job requiring special measuring and fitting)

Why would you want three different saddle types (including unsaddled) that all do nothing? Or are you house ruling that saves to remain mounted are now a check? If so, which check?

[Yakk]

War trained:
A war trained mount can use its action to make a single attack on the rider's turn. If the rider expends a bonus action, they can instead take any action (including multiattack) on the rider's turn.

(Paladin summoned steeds are war trained. War training a mount is much harder than training a creature to be mounted.)

Mounted Combatant:
If your mount is war trained, it can substitute your proficiency bonus for its own for attack rolls and DCs.

[Zhorn]

Why would you want three different saddle types (including unsaddled) that all do nothing? Or are you house ruling that saves to remain mounted are now a check? If so, which check?

Sorry, assumed some common knowledge and missed details (was late at night here :smalltongue:)

first the military saddle is just as described in the book

Military Saddle. A military saddle braces the rider, helping you keep your seat on an active mount in battle. It gives you advantage on any check you make to remain mounted.

A base check roll is called for in the on


Mounting and Dismounting
...
If an effect moves your mount against its will while you're on it, you must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw or fall off the mount, landing prone in a space within 5 feet of it. If you're knocked prone while mounted, you must make the same saving throw.
To which I extend to also be if the mount is moving against the will of the rider or just without their directing (eg: independent mount, or a frightened mount moving away from the source of fear, etc).

Finally getting training in riding is an option (not a house rule, just an extrapolation). Storm King's Thunder for example has a trainer in Fireshear that trains characters to ride griffons. This gives an avenue for characters without dex save proficiency to add their proficiency bonus to such saves to remain mounted if they want.

edit: also in this area have not been overly focused on save vs check. It's a roll to remain mounted, apply whatever bonuses are relevant.

[quindraco]

Sorry, assumed some common knowledge and missed details (was late at night here :smalltongue:)

first the military saddle is just as described in the book


A base check is called for in the on

To which I extend to also be if the mount is moving against the will of the rider or just without their directing (eg: independent mount, or a frightened mount moving away from the source of fear, etc).

Finally getting training in riding is an option (not a house rule, just an extrapolation). Storm King's Thunder for example has a trainer in Fireshear that trains characters to ride griffons. This gives an avenue for characters without dex save proficiency to add their proficiency bonus to such saves to remain mounted if they want.


Dexterity saves aren't checks.

[greenstone]

War trained:
A war trained mount can use its action to make a single attack on the rider's turn.
That one worries me. I'm not sure I want a player to only have to spend 400 GP to get Extra Attack.

Maybe "A mounted character can use one of the mount's single attacks in place of one of their own."?

[Zhorn]

Dexterity saves aren't checks.
cheers for the catch. edited

and ok, I now see what you were getting at. advantage on check vs remaining mounted is a save.

As I was saying in the other thread; the RAW for mounted combat is a mess, so house ruling past it it's easy to forget all the small instances where the wording is lacking.
I play we've just been going with "is this bonus applicable to this situation" and have not been overly pedantic on the save/check aspect

[MaxWilson]

That one worries me. I'm not sure I want a player to only have to spend 400 GP to get Extra Attack.

They can already spend 400 gp to buy 16 mastiffs, attacking for at +3 for 16d6+16 (72) total and a DC 11 Strength save vs. prone on each hit. It's "balanced" the same way other minions in 5E are balanced, which is to say "mostly by the player reluctance to play that way, and partly by the minions' fragility against AoEs."

[strangebloke]

They can already spend 400 gp to buy 16 mastiffs, attacking for at +3 for 16d6+16 (72) total and a DC 11 Strength save vs. prone on each hit. It's "balanced" the same way other minions in 5E are balanced, which is to say "mostly by the player reluctance to play that way, and partly by the minions' fragility against AoEs."

But if melee characters outpace the baseline established in the PHB, they'll be overpowered! My ranged caster might feel upstaged!!!

Its been this way since 3rd edition, we never learn :smallbiggrin:

[quinron]

But if melee characters outpace the baseline established in the PHB, they'll be overpowered! My ranged caster might feel upstaged!!!

Its been this way since 3rd edition, we never learn :smallbiggrin:

In terms of the horse, that's fair. In terms of the mastiffs, there's nothing stopping a caster from pulling those shenanigans - I don't have the spells for it off the top of my head, but I'm sure you could find a way to pack up 16 dogs and literally pull them out of your pocket at a moment's notice.

[DwarfFighter]

That is the purpose of the Mounted Combatant feat.

To point out the obvious: It is a feat.

If your character does not already have a plan for mounted combat, taking that feat alone makes little sense compared to all the other feats that give immediate and widely applicable benefits to the character.

If the GM and Players want to make mounted combat a thing in their campaign, then giving all PCs the Mounted Combatant feat for free! would go a long way.

-DF

[HPisBS]

Were I writing a house rule for mounted combat, it would look something like this:


While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. When your mount takes damage, you may choose to take any number of the hit points dealt, yourself, but all other effects of any source of damage still affect your mount, and not you.

Which space(s) are you supposed to occupy according to RAW? My guess / extrapolation would be the center / cross-section, therefore ¼ of each of the Large mount's 5-ft spaces, and therefore all 4 of them.

[Segev]

Which space(s) are you supposed to occupy according to RAW? My guess / extrapolation would be the center / cross-section, therefore ¼ of each of the Large mount's 5-ft spaces, and therefore all 4 of them.

Your mount occupies a space. If your mount is Large, that space is a square ten feet on a side. You occupy that same space while mounted. If your mount is Huge, it occupies a square 15 feet on a side. You occupy that space, too, while mounted. "Occupy" not meaning you're that big, of course, just that anything that targets any part of your mount's space targets you. This rule is meant to simplify and abstract, so trying to track where you are on your mount is more complication than it is designed to deal with.