I’d like to apologize to the Paladin in my current D&D party who, upon reading the title of this article, is going to think this is a personal attack. Please understand that your unicorn mount is a beloved and essential part of our troupe. I just fucking hate how Dungeons and Dragons handles mounted combat. Every time you ask me to remind you how it works, I want to throw a chair.
The D&D Player’s Handbook only dedicates a small portion of its pages to explaining mounted combat. Many of the rules that interact with this section are then found in completely different parts of the DnD book. Even after some significant back-and-forth, the rules are so unclear that it’s easy to make critical mistakes.
It turns out that I’ve been running mounted combat wrong for years. Part of that time was out of confusion, and the other part was a deliberate protest, where I gave up on trying to find answers in the book and began making up my own rulings. But now that I’ve set the record straight, I’m going to explain exactly how this works – and angrily point out the flaws in the system.
The actual rules
First, let’s look at the Mounted Combat section, as seen in chapter one of the 2024 Player’s Handbook:
“During your move, you can mount a creature that is within 5 feet of you or dismount. Doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your Speed (round down). For example, if your Speed is 30 feet, you spend 15 feet of movement to mount a horse.”
So far, so easy to understand.
“You can control a mount only if it has been trained to accept a rider. Domesticated horses, mules, and similar creatures have such training.”
This will be down to the judgement call of a DM, but it’s also not particularly confusing. Now, however, we get into the weeds.
“The Initiative of a controlled mount changes to match yours when you mount it. It moves on your turn as you direct it, and it has only three action options during that turn: Dash, Disengage, and Dodge. A controlled mount can move and act even on the turn that you mount it.
In contrast, an independent mount-one that lets you ride but ignores your control-retains its place in the Initiative order and moves and acts as it likes.
This, in isolation, doesn’t seem too difficult to grasp. Your mount only has three possible actions it can take, which it takes at your command any time during your turn. It also has a movement speed it can use, which is decided by its stat block.
The problem is that there are often other things in this stat block that seem to contradict the rules for mounted combat.
Find Steed complicates things
If you’re playing a Paladin 5e, you’ve got easy access to a mount thanks to the Find Steed spell. In the updated 2024 rules, this summons a creature with a unique stat block to act as your ally.
Your special Steed has one unique action and, depending on the creature type you chose when casting the spell, one bonus action. This seems to directly contradict the rules on mounted combat that only let a mount use Dash, Disengage, or Hide.
In fact, it doesn’t. The spell description states the following:
“The steed is an ally to you and your allies. In combat, it shares your Initiative count, and it functions as a controlled mount while you ride it (as defined in the rules on mounted combat). If you have the Incapacitated condition, the steed takes its turn immediately after yours and acts independently, focusing on protecting you.”
Essentially, your mount can only use the above three actions while you’re around to direct it. Only when you’re incapacitated can it act independently and use its more interesting abilities. You have to be paralyzed, petrified, stunned, or unconscious before your mount can do anything other than ferry you back and forth across the battlefield.
Otherwise, you’ll have to get off the horse and just let it act on its own. There’s some debate to be had there whether your mount’s actions are then decided by the player or the GM.
In game design terms, this makes a bit of sense. A mount would otherwise allow a player to have double the usual actions and bonus actions on their turn, which gives them an immense combat advantage.
However, in-game, this logic makes zero sense. If your horse is powerful enough to attack an enemy, and it’s intelligent enough to make that decision when you’re not around, why would it lose that ability the moment you sit on its back? Especially when you’re able to communicate telepathically with that mount at no extra cost?
When the rules for mounted combat actively defy logic -and you must check two different chapters of the handbook to understand them – you can see how easy it is to get things wrong.
For a long time, I have mistakenly assumed that my Paladin’s horse could perform helpful actions on their turn, however overpowered that initially seemed. Instead, it turns out that they are a glorified trolley on wheels until their insurance policy activates.
Greater Find Steed is even worse
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, an additional sourcebook, adds more fuel to this fire by introducing the spell Find Greater Steed. This spell hasn’t been updated for the 2024 rules yet, which means it subscribes to the logic of the 2014 mounted combat rules.
These are largely the same as the 2024 rules explained above. The primary difference is that Find Steed and Find Greater Steed summon creatures from the Monster Manual rather than a creature specific to the spell. Plus, there are some differences in how spell targeting and opportunity attacks are handled. We won’t go into those here, because if I do, I will throw another chair.
All you need to know is that Find Greater Steed gives you the power to summon far more powerful creatures to act as your mount. Your options include a Griffon, a Pegasus, a Peryton, a Dire Wolf, a Rhinoceros, or a Saber-Tooth Tiger.
(You might be a lenient DM who allows a player to choose something that better fits their character, but dear god make sure to nerf their mount if they pick something with a higher CR rating. Say, for example, a unicorn.)
Find Greater Steed states that “you control the mount in combat”. That means it follows the rules for controlled mounts, so it still can’t use any unique abilities from its stat block. These more powerful creatures will have even more interesting abilities, but they’re not available to you until you almost kick the bucket. The extra power from this spell seems to come from the fact that some of its stat blocks feature alternate movement speeds or passive abilities.
It’s an even more extreme example of the flawed logic behind mounted combat. Confusion and frustration continue to be my constant companions when this spell gets cast.
Don’t forget about saddles!
There’s one last part of this rant I need to address, and it’s a neat little section in chapter six called Mounts and Vehicles. Here, you’ll find rules for barding and saddles. The first is armor for your mount, and the second is a piece of equipment that can give you advantage on ability checks to stay mounted.
There’s nothing in the mounted combat rules that says you have to use a saddle for a regular mount, but you are required to provide an Exotic Saddle for an aquatic or flying mount. That means that, if you want to summon a Pegasus with Find Greater Steed, you’ll need a saddle.
When a steed disappears, for example when you die or it drops to zero HP, “it leaves behind anything it was wearing or carrying”. That means that, when your Pegasus isn’t around, it’s on you to carry around the 40lb Exotic Saddle. You’ll also have to lug around any barding you bought, which can weigh up to 65lbs.
It’s awkward. It defies logic. And it’s so, so easy to forget about when you’re juggling the rest of the D&D rules.
That’s the problem with mounted combat in a nutshell. It’s a deceptively simple ruling that, due to a lack of clarity and an avalanche of edge cases, is constantly problematic. I haven’t even gone into the rulings about dismounting, falling off your mount, or attacking and defending while riding.
Frankly, I don’t want to. I don’t ever want to think about D&D’s mounted combat rules again, but I’ll have to when my Paladin player turns up to our session next week.
Got your own D&D troubles you want to rant about? Come rage with us in the Wargamer Discord. Or, if you want to roll up one of those pesky Paladin characters, here’s all you need to know about DnD classes and DnD races.