Best Flying Mount for a Long-Distance Route?

[Palanan]

Let’s assume you’re a courier who needs to fly a regular long-distance route among a number of remote outposts, across rough and unpopulated terrain.

If you had access to anything from Bestiaries 1-6, what would be the best mount in terms not only of speed, stamina, and reliability, but also ease of training, ease of maintenance, and overall economics?

[Maat Mons]

Since ease of training is a requirement, I suppose we’re restricted to things with Int 1 or 2, since smarter things can’t be “trained” as such. Large or larger size would allow it to bear medium characters. Checking the spreadsheet on d20PFSRD.com, 20 creatures fit that description. But a Shadow Dire Bear is incorporeal, so let’s rule that one out too. Expanding the search to include Medium creatures doesn't turn out to add any more options. So it looks like the list is Dire Bat, Doombat Bat, Giant Falcon, Giant Stymphalides, Giant Vulture, Gloomwing, Gloomwing, Hippogriff, Jubjub Bird, Juvenile Rukh, Lurker Above, Lurker Above, Oma, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus, Roc, Rukh, Skrik Nettle, and The First Owlbear. Of those, only Giant Stymphalides and Oma are faster than the classic Hippogriff. Giant Stymphalidies have razor sharp steel feathers covering their bodies, which would make handling them awkward. Oma are 20 HD, which puts the Hande Animal checks to rear them at DC 40. They’re also colossal, which could be inconvenient. The old standby of Hippogriff is looking pretty good, with the lowest rearing DC of any of the creatures I’ve listed, at 23, and a fly speed of 100 ft. I guess if you're willing to use only Small riders with the Undersized Mount feat, you can add Blood Hawk, Chickcharney, Clawbat, Cockatrice, Darkmantle, Eagle, Giant Flying Piranha, Great Horned Owl, Gryph, Gryph, Leaf Ray, Mythic Cockatrice, Trumpeter Swan, and Vulture to the list. Trumpeter Swan is just as fast as a Hippogriff and much easier to rear, with a DC of 16, but it wouldn't be able to carry all that much weight.

[Seerow]

Worth mentioning, a 1/day item of CL14 Phantom Steed (for 100ft move speed and flight) costs 15,120gp and has no requirements for rearing/training or feeding. But if you have the time/ability to do the training yourself, 200gp for a hippogriff egg is going to be really hard to beat even after you account for the various upkeep costs.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Maat Mons
*all of it*

Superb analysis, thank you. Really appreciate the thought and effort here. Several of these beasts I haven’t seen before, so this is tremendously helpful.

Originally Posted by Seerow
Worth mentioning, a 1/day item of CL14 Phantom Steed (for 100ft move speed and flight) costs 15,120gp and has no requirements for rearing/training or feeding.

Also helpful, thanks—should be a good point of comparison.

.

[Maat Mons]

I just noticed a mistake in my earlier analysis. Hippogriff has special text saying you get to ignore the normal +5 DC increase for it being a Magical Beast if you start training it before it reaches adulthood. That means the DC to rear one is only 18.

[aglondier]

Sounds like you may actually just need a zeppelin...