Summary

• Don't use mounts solely for transportation; they can add complexity and excitement to encounters.
• Make the Mounted Combatant Feat baseline to ensure all players can fully utilize mounts.
• Keep track of items that are left on the mount; it adds realism and prevents players from exploiting the convenience of mounts.

While having a mount isn’t mandatory in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, these creatures can aid your players greatly and make e🔥ncounters more complex, some having abilities beyond carrying the party around. Mounts can allow for access to unreachable places and, at times, force players to think in more than just grounded combat.

Yet they can be a lot to handle, with some parties having trouble even remembering they’re around and sometimes feeling like they’re a chore to take care of. If you want your mounts to be a core part of your experience and for players to form a bond with them, follow these tips and ride🐼 on.

8 ♈ Don’t Use Mounts Just For Transportation 🀅

They’re More Than That

Having a mount should be as exciting for all players as it is for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rangers when they get their Companion. If all you want mounts for is to make travel easier, having the players travel with merchant carts ꦗor the like fits way better.

If you give players a set of tools that you don’t fully understand, they might end up unbalancing your whole campaign or derailing it in search of a better saddle. There’s nothing wrong with not having mounts in a campaign, so if you don’t feel like committing to them, you might as well ♏not have them.

Here are some s🌌ample scenarios and how they change with mounts:

• An ambush deep in the forest, enemies on both flanks. Players inexperienced with mounts will likely need to get off them but risk losing their hard-earned horse, while players used to them will have to navigate the trees chasing their fleet of foot enemies.
• A sudden rockslide threatens your players; without a mount, you can simply roll away, but when mounted, you're at the mercy of the creature you're on.

7 ✱ Make The Mounted Combatant Feat Baselওine

Everyone Is Going To Get It Anyway

For those unaware, the Mounted Combatant Feat gives 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:c♐ertain bonuses when a character is mount🍸ed, like advantage against creatures smaller than your mount and defensive measures for it to survive higher levels. It’s a must-have Feat for players looking to use⭕ mounts, so much so that if everyone has a mount, everyone will get it.

If you’re planning a campa🔯ign w꧑here everyone has a mount, this Feat ends up hurting more than it helps since anyone not taking it will feel left behind. Making it baseline for everyone allows players to bring their own builds into the game while still being great mounted combatants.

6 🌞 Keep Track Of Their Items𒅌

What They Left On The Mount Stays On The Mount

One hard-to-solve issue when dealing with mounts is inventory management. Even if you’re someone with relaxed rules when it comes to weight ❀limits anཧd arrow counting, some key items are still important to keep track of, and players rarely do so.

A mount is a great way to keep all your equipment with you without needing a massive backpack, but if a player left the key to the vault on their horse, it shouldn’t magically appear on their hand once the heist is underway. It can be a bit of a chore, but if you don’t keep track of it, players certainly won't.

5 Create Setpiec💎es That Highlight Mounts 𓆏

These Hooves Were Made For Running

Once you have all your players 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:outfitted with some mounts, you can start preparing encounters that make the most out of them. Not every printed adventure has moments that make the most out of them, so you’ll likely have to come up witꦅh it yourself.

There are plenty of ways Mounts can be useful, even key to an encounter, so here are some ideas to get you st♏arted:

• Chase Scene: Your players are either pursuing someone or being pursued, making the whole encounter happen at lighting speed. You can even use the rules for chases in the Dungeon Master’s guide, chapter 8.
• Big Monster Fight: Think something like Shadow of the Colossus, where massive enemy creatures are treated like moving buildings. Depending on how you design it, it could be more of a puzzle than a fight.
• Open Field: Sometimes, you don’t have to overcomplicate things. Just make an encounter happen in a large area with other mounted units and overall fast creatures.

4 Give 🎐Mounts Personality

Make Them Characters Instead Of Tools

A mount can mean more to the party than any treasure they find, but only if they build a relationship with it. You’d be surprised at how little roleplay is needed for♐ players to be so attached to their camel that they’d risk their lives for it.

This attachment works best if you’re not planning on h🃏aving them change their𝔍 mounts for better ones throughout the adventure since, at that point, they’ll treat the creatures just like any other piece of equipment. If you want some exotic creatures to be in the hands of your players, it’s better to give them to them sooner rather than later.

3 🦹 Force Players Off Their Mounts

You Don’t Want Them On Their Mounts All The Time

When players are getting too comfortable with any gameplay mechanic, it’s good practice to take it off their hands from time to time to keep them on their toes, if nothing else. If players have 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:mounts with pa💧rticul🧸arly useful abilities, it’s ideal to ಞforce them off th༒em sometimes, like with rickety bridges or small entrances.

Social gatherings are another way to get players off the saddle since those rarely involve being on horseback. ✤This will make t𒆙hem think twice before defaulting to violence, or at least give them a hard time getting away once things inevitably go wrong.

2 ༺ Be Careful With Flying Mounts

It’s Best When Players Are Grounded

Flying mounts are a big deal in Dungeons & Dragons since any encounter they’re in now needs to account for altitude on top of everything else. While it might not seem like that big of a deal, in TTRPGs, it can get hard to keep track of where everyone is, particularly when gauging dis🃏tance for ranged attacks.

Beyond that, there’s also 🎀the freedom they give to players, something that might entice them to explore too far from the beaten path. While this is great if you want to encourage exploration, having players wander too far off can also bring complica🍰tions, especially if they start splitting the party while airborne.

Now, if your party is already filled with flying creatures, you'll have to condition your campaign to account for that. The best bosses for these situations are gargantuan enemies that can attack at different altitudes; this way, you can still have combat happen on a "flat" surface since how high your players are only matters when considering falling damage.

For everyday encounters, you can use a die next to a unit to determine how high that creature is. So, even when two creatures are next to each other, you can still see at a glance how high one is compared to the other and if they're adjacent or not.

1 ♛ Use Underwater Mounts For Travel Only

No One Wants To Be Sunk For Too Long

You mig𒀰ht think that unde🦩rwater mounts would behave just like flying ones, but each biome works fairly differently. When characters are underwater, certain rules work differently than on land, requiring far more preparation than when taking flight.

If you want your players to experience these underwater segments, avoid mounts since otherwise, they’d be𒅌 tempted to skip most of the exploration. If, instead, you just want them to get to a given island quickly, then mounts like S🐭harks and Seahorses are great for skipping the trip, maybe adding a single encounter along the way.