Mounted Mastery
Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of Extraordinary Feats, where we bring you new feats to outfit your PCs and NPCs alike with some cool new defining aspects. It’s Mount Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and some of you may remember an article I did a few weeks ago that provided feats designed to make mounted combat more fun. Since we just recently talked about mounted combat, I wanted to talk about the art of riding outside of a martial context.
Expert Jumper
Practice jumping fences and low logs has allowed you to leap further and higher than less experienced riders.
Prerequisite: Ride 1 rank.
Benefit: Whenever your mount would make an Acrobatics check to jump, you may choose to make a Ride check. If you do, use the result of your Ride check as though it were the result of your mount’s Acrobatics check to determine the result of its jump.
Hobbling
By carefully controlling the pace of your mount, you can maintain overland journeys for much longer than normal.
Prerequisites: Handle Animal 1 rank, Ride 1 rank.
Benefit: When traveling overland while mounted, if your mount would suffer the penalties of making a forced march, you may make a special Ride check with a DC equal to 10 + the number of hours traveled overland so far. If this check is successful, then for the next hour of travel, your mount does not suffer the negative effects of a forced march, although its speed is treated as 10 ft. less than it actually is for the purposes of how far you travel during that hour. You may continue to make this check each hour until you either stop travelling or you fail the check (and your mount begins to suffer the penalties of a forced march). Your mount might still suffer similar consequences from environmental conditions, starvation, sleep deprivation, or similar circumstances.
Mounted Mobility
An expert rider, you can execute dramatic turns at high speed, even reeling about at a full gallop.
Prerequisite: Ride 1 rank.
Benefit: While mounted, you can make a single 90° turn while making the run action.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times; each time you do, you may make an additional 90° turn during your run action. You must move at least 10 feet between turns, and you cannot make 180° or 270° turns, even if you would be allowed two or three 90° turns.
Mounted Surge
You can push your mount to achieve great bursts of speed, but doing so tires your mount.
Prerequisite: Ride 5 ranks.
Benefit: As a full round action, you can make a DC 20 Ride check to push your mount to new heights of speeds. If successful, your mount can make 2 run actions as part of this Ride check. Neither you nor your mount may make additional actions or substitute actions when you use this ability, and even if you fail the check, your mount cannot take additional actions. Your mount only suffers the penalties for taking the run action once. After the action is complete, if you succeeded the Ride check your mount becomes fatigued. If your mount is exhausted, you automatically fail this check.
And what would Mount Week be without some feats for mounts? The following feats were designed for mounts, and thus are considered monster feats. As monster feats, players should check with their GM before choosing these feats for their character.
Accustomed Mount (Monster)
Having served as a mount for some time, you have grown so accustomed to the weight of a rider that you no longer even feel it.
Prerequisites: Quadrupedal, Strength 12.
Benefit: You may ignore the weight of one living creature you carry when determining your load. You still cannot carry creatures that are too large to ride you.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times; each time you do, you may ignore the weight of one other living creature you carry.
Aid Rider (Monster)
You know that your rider’s health is directly related to your own survival and will go out of your way to keep him safe.
Prerequisites: Intelligence 5 or combat training.
Benefit: You may choose to suffer a penalty to your own AC in order to increase the AC of your rider by the same amount. You may choose to suffer any amount of penalty, up to your base attack bonus.
Extra Breath (Monster)
You can keep up sprints even longer than other animals of your kind.
Prerequisite: Constitution 15.
Benefit: You can run twice as long as you would ordinarily be able to before you need to start making Constitution checks.
Grazing (Monster)
You can find food on the go, if it’s there, and eating doesn’t slow you down much.
Prerequisites: Animal or magical beast, Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You may move at full speed while using Survival to forage for food. Additionally, you may choose to move at half speed in order to take 10 on Survival checks made to forage for food.
Yoked Titan (Monster)
Pulling is in your blood, and while you may not serve as a mount, you can carry chariots and even whole wagons by yourself.
Benefit: You may pull and drag twice the amount of weight you would ordinarily be able to.