Which could permit them to swap the position of two willing creatures. Her guards basically saw her turn into a horse, then vanish from existence a few seconds later. They were really confused for a minute. With a good enough deception bonus I bet I can sell steeds for profit and skip town before dismissing it. I won a dance-off with Find Steed Dressage. It's Horse Ballet, yes it's real, it's even an Olympic sport.
- Chinese Café/Unchained Melody;
- Is "Find Steed" useful at all? Any good stories where you used it to your advantage? : dndnext.
- dnd 5e - Alternative Underdark Mounts - Role-playing Games Stack Exchange.
- Effacement de Dieu (SPIRITUALITE) (French Edition);
It's a mobility option, the telepathy makes it a scouting option, and if your GM gives them a good personality, it's a great roleplaying tool. Also, you can use it as a trap-finding tool. If it dies to the trap, summon it again. One session a player could not make it so we came up with an errand to send his character on. I am on Wolf IX because of precisely this reason. My oath of the ancients paladin was falsely imprisoned, and being the chaotic good person he was decided it was high time for him to return to nature. He prayed and prepared his spells. Dotsk woke up the next morning and was ready.
He cast command on the guard to bring him close to the gate. Grabbed him and knocked him out against the bars, making sure to snag the prison keys. The other guard came in to see what was wrong and then felt compelled to dual Dotsk. Dotsk overpowered him and knocked him out. He switched clothes with one guard and put him in the cell, while stashing the other guard out of sight. He should have enough time now. It looks like it was designed to bring carts down the halls. I spent the next 10 minutes summoning my spectral warhorse. Climbed atop my mount. Grabbed the small forked twig he kept in his hair, which he then used to locate his equipment.
Surprisingly, the paladin spell choices are fairly good for breaking out of prison.
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Players tricked hill giants looking for food into taking the paladin's horse, and then when demanding more he "went to find another horse". He did it until he was out of slots and placated the hill giants who left. The Hill Giant would put it in his bag, then the Paladin would dismiss it and resummon the horse. It's actually one of the reasons I object to the spell producing a flesh and blood animal instead of a spectral horse.
Hmm that gives me an idea, the next time the players ride into town I'll have someone ask the Paladin what his horse's name is. Maybe that will help. But if they tried to eat the horse, it would disappear, and the giant would know they've been cheated or maybe not, they're not very bright. The fact that it's the same spirit every time is actually kind of horrifying. The poor creature is living in a Sisyphean nightmare of being brought into servitude, dying painfully, and then repeating it over again. Using it now to have a griffon and having a little bit of fun with my normally less than mobile dwarf.
Why do you have to prepare it? Cast it once and your horse sticks around forever. It's a badass spell that doesn't use a spell slot. I wouldn't walk around ready to summon a horse, I would ride around with my horse summoned yesterday. It does use a spell slot? Find Steed is not a ritual. Unless you mean because the horse persists, it doesn't use spell slots every day? I used it to summon a mastiff because I needed someone to watch out for me and the druid while we slept. Saved us from getting curb stomped by a gnoll ambush. Using a ring of spell storing my paladin once gave a mentally challenged NPC a guide dog.
He was being unfairly treated by people in the village he lived in and our party felt that we couldn't leave him alone once we left. So we told him we could give him a friend, he just had to focus on this ring and think about what kind of pet he wanted.
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He chose a mastiff and when it appeared he started crying. It's one of my favorite moments with that character. I wrote a massive post here about Find Steed about 2 weeks ago: My goal was a bit more specific than "is Find Steed good" since I was specifically working on getting my mount to attack. So to supplament that or you can just not read it if its too long , Find Steed is very good for, at minimum, out of combat transportation. A Warhorse is useful for getting across land, and can carry a lot of weight.
Although you could also choose, say, a mule purly for the weight. The advantage Find Steed has over "normal" mounts to this end is that it is intelligence, can understand your telepathic commands and understand a language, choose common and it might even be able to eavesdrop outside. In combat, I'm going to assume that the mount is not getting attacks. Still, the boost to movespeed is very nice.
The horse can also disengage and dodge, potentially helping you get around the battlefield, and help keep the mount alive Which brings us to the biggest problem with mounted combat in 5e: Warhorse is the most durable, you can get them armor, with some downtime you can spam Find Steed for a max hp one, and it can use Dodge every turn, your Aura of Protection is a useful boon, but even with all that it's pretty squishy. Mounted Combatant can help a ton And of course, compared to a normal mount, you're not shelling out cash whenever your mount dies, just recasting Find Steed. It would be OP if paladins could ritual cast it, but of course that's impossible.
Def cast it during downtime, but don't necessarily have it prepared every day.
Or do, since most of your spell slots go to Smite anyway probably , you can prepare niche spells. While ridden, the steed follows the normal mounted combat rules PH, Unridden, it has normal action options. So it acts as a controlled mount when you're riding it. When you're not riding it, it functions as an independent creature, and follows your commands to the best of its ability.
RAI it can't get attacks while mounted. JC has said that summoned creatures cannot be independent then he contradicted himself by saying the Find Steed can get attacks while not mounted. The long text dump I linked in my original comment explains the interaction of all the rules, as I see them. Technically, intelligent creatures are always independent.
Find Steed is heavily implied to be intelligent, but that is loosely defined. If it is considered intelligent, then the paladin cannot control it, and its actions are in the hands of the DM. Which means it can make attacks, but won't necessarily do what the Paladin or the Paladin's player wants. This falls in line with the optional mounted rules avalible for all mounts, except the Find Steed has to use them.
Most people just control the mount using the normal mounted combatant rules, which means the Find Steed can only take the Dash, Disengage, and Dodge actions. Yeah I remember that post about the mount getting attacks while unmounted, so we've been playing it as the paladin can ride up to the target, dismount, then both can attack. Find Steed is maybe not the most "optimal" spell ever, but mounted combat is fun, and the heroic knight in shining armor upon a mighty warhorse is a classic image.
Also gives you a good excuse to use a lance. The steed lasts forever, or until it's killed. The only reason to prepare it would be to re-summon your horse if it dies. You might want to do that to avoid having to carry or leave the barding and saddlebags, but that's no worse than a regular horse. Also, remember that any spell you cast on yourself also affects the steed for free. As a vengeance paladin with haste, you can travel " per round on a hasted horse while attacking three times, which is pretty freaking sweet.
It was great because in one turn, I could reach virtually anywhere on the battlefield and didn't have to concern myself with AOOs. I also once jumped with the horse off a bridge to attack some gargoyles a hundred feet below that were about to kill a party member, and the falling horse instantly crushed one of them to death. I play a unicorn paladin and my fellow players keep trying to convince me to use it to find a mate Even given citizenship, but they can't talk to any except their bonded riders or Magi. One of them bonded with a Champion the series equivalent of Paladins and as a consequence ended up becoming a Champion himself.
Inverted in The Belgariad with Hettar, a Horse Lord, capable of speaking to horses and understanding them in return. Since it's not tied to a specific mount, he can do it with any horse he happens to be riding. Garion also figures out how to do it, though the horse he tries it on is young, and not too bright, so it doesn't work too well. Hettar's ability is akin to telepathy.
He tries it once with the steeds of the bad guys. It turns out they just look like horses. He's able to contact them, but really wishes he hadn't. Faran in The Elenium is a foul-tempered warhorse who only Sparhawk can ride. He's very intelligent, but also highly opinionated and quite fond of showing off.
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Aphrael once told Sparhawk the main reason Faran acted the way he did was because Faran knew that's what Sparhawk wanted in his steed. Cohen the Barbarian has a talking horse in the Discworld short story "Troll Bridge". He hadn't known it was magical when he got it, and if he'd known it was going to complain all the time, he wouldn't have bothered.
He's got rid of it by Interesting Times. Binky, Death's Horse might be up to this level, but it's never actually stated just how much more intelligent he is than normal. He doesn't talk, though. Camels, even if they can't talk, are still brilliant mathematicians and intelligent enough to pour disdain on their owners.
In Eragon , dragon-riders can talk to their dragons. Dragons can also talk to other people if they connect to that person's mind. Anna and her descendants in Leo Frankowski 's Conrad Stargard series are guessed to be about as intelligent as a year old. Within the books, it's indicated that they might even be smarter than that, but have been hiding their abilities since they're essentially genetically engineered slaves. The titular alien dragons of the Dragonriders of Pern series are telepathic and intelligent.
They can speak to other dragons, fire lizards their genetic precursors , their own riders, and the very rare humans with greater telepathic potential who can communicate with all dragons. One difference in dragon and human mentality is that dragons don't have a very strong grasp of the past or the future and mostly live in the here and now.
The Titanides of the Gaea Trilogy do not mind being ridden.
Weöres Sándor: The dragon – steed (Sárkány-paripa in English)
Especially when the alternative is checking their speed on behalf of the slowpoke humans. The Skybax in Dinotopia , although you have to either speak their language to communicate, or have a translator Protoceratops around. And a ton of other dinosaurs in the series as well. Used a few times in Animorphs , when Cassie morphs horse. Once, she's in horse morph with Tobias in Hork-Bajir morph on her back. The protagonist's, as well as other characters of the same creed , bond creature is a giant fictional lion-tiger hybrid called a sha'um, which is bigger at the shoulder than a clydesdale horse!
The sha'um, though extremely loyal, are also quite picky on who gets to ride them outside of their bonded, and will get insanely jealous if their selected bonded rides another without their permission. As a bonus though, they can lend their physical strength to their riders when separated in time of duress. The horse ridden by Xuanzang in Journey to the West. However, it is no ordinary horse but a dragon who is the son of a sea god doing penance for his earlier errors. The girl's wild magic means that the pony has become much more intelligent than a normal steed, able to strategize like a human and understand language.
Over time, every horse well, animal around Daine also changes in this way. Eventually the palace's horses are basically seen as equal partners to most knights and soldiers. Valadan in many of Susan Dexter 's books. Capable of communicating telepathically, immortal, and chooses his own rider. Incredibly fast, reasonably enough, as he's only half-horse — the other half being wind.
Rhyshadim in The Stormlight Archive are stronger, faster, and bigger than regular horses, and a whole lot smarter. They pick one human, who is the only one that gets to ride them, and will not tolerate any other rider except under the most bizarre circumstances. When Adolin's Rhyshadim is killed by Voidbringers in Words of Radiance , it is treated exactly like losing a very good human friend. Animals in Oz are established as sentient and able to speak.
This also applies to animals entering Oz and other fairy lands, for instance Jim the cab-horse in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. The animated Sawhorse is also sentient and can speak; he has a debate with Jim as to which of them is superior. This does not apply to Wicked , which was not written by Baum. The telepathic horse Maureen rides in the short story " Maureen Birnbaum on the Art of War " based on the Horseclans series.
Because she can communicate with it, she names it Mister Ed. The Electric Monk's horse in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency doesn't talk, but does have some well-thought out and deeply cynical opinions on life in general and the Monk in particular. The novel states this is actually perfectly normal for horses: In the Merlin miniseries, Merlin has a horse named Sir Rupert. This is not explained in the show itself, but if you read the novelization it'll tell you why. Mister Ed is a horse, of course. In both cases the horses are significantly smarter than their riders. The Dragonlance setting has many dragon riders whose dragon mounts can talk.
Inverted in one short scenario from Dungeon Adventures magazine, in which an evil spellcaster used a feeblemind spell to render a centaur druid mindless, then hitched him up to pull a wagon. The PCs must rescue this unlucky sentient being from the fate of an unspeaking beast of burden. Paladins' mounts have an Intelligence of at least 6 not as smart as the average Humanoid 10 but smarter than any animal 1 or 2 , and they get smarter as the Paladin gains levels.
Given that Intelligence is about the only Dump Stat that Paladins have, it is relatively common for a mid-to-high level Paladin's mount to be smarter than they are. There are quite a few creatures — most commonly worgs or nightmares — that are smart enough to be considered sapient or even learn to speak intelligibly but traditionally serve as mounts for other creatures. Rifts took it a step further with Blood Lizards and Psi-Ponies, who were not only intelligent, but you could even use them as a Player Character. In Ars Magica it is entirely possible and not uncommon for supernatural horses Divine, Faerie, Infernal, or Magic to be both as intelligent as their riders and possessing various magical powers Aeolus, a sample character from 'Realms of Power: Magic' is a good example.
Magi tend not to rider animals due to the effects of The Gift, but they make entertaining characters in their own right. The Legend of Zelda: But he is actually the King of Hyrule In Twilight Princess , Midna treats Link like this whenever he is a wolf. In other words, you are her Sapient Steed. True, but not really of the most talkative kind. While she doesn't have much to say, Epona is able to speak to Link while he is a wolf. The Oracle games feature some rather unusual mounts in Ricky, Moosh, and Dimitri, who are a kangaroo, a flying bear, and a dodongo, respectively.
All of them can talk. In the background the Drakes, Hippogryphs and Wyverns players can fly in World of Warcraft are all sentient beings. Drakes in particular are as intelligent as humans and can even speak. However ingame they act like all other mounts. However there are a few quests where the player flies on a Drake or Dragon that does speak.
Yoshi of the Super Mario Bros. In his first appearance he can speak and seeks out Mario as an ally. His later appearances alternately depict the Yoshi race with a distinct language that the main Yoshi translates, or a shared common language. They've also been shown to have some culture, and build shelters as well as monuments. According to the first Super Smash Bros. The Elder Scrolls In the backstory, Morihaus, an Aedric demi-god who took the form a "winged man-bull ", appeared as an answered prayer of St.
Alessia as part of her Bargain with Heaven to aid her armies in battle against the Ayleids. It is said that Alessia rode and flew atop him. The Senche and Senche-raht sub-species of Khajiit can be as tall as two men and weigh as much as four tons. They are built like apes and move as quadrupeds, and will allow their kinsmen to use them as steeds in times of war. This has led to Imperial soldiers who have faced them in battle giving them the nickname 'battlecats. In Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere you turn out to be one. In Gunnerkrigg Court , the Model H's can be chatty.
One of them in particular recites Paradise Lost while transporting the girls to the barbershop.