Paladin Horse Optimization?

[Santa Claus Jr]

So, second time playing this. first time i took weapon bond on Seelah which is... practical but boring. I decided f*ck it, gimme a horsey this time. and so far Artax kicks ass actually. Are there any feats on Seelah or the horse I should make sure to take? Does the horse benefit from the mythic stuff later on? Good spells to cast on him?

[gmwaddington]

I personally have found Seelah to be much more effective on a horse, due to the superior mobility.

You want to increase the horse's intelligence to 3 to allow it to learn teamwork feats. All other stat increases go to strength.

Have the horse advance Perception and Mobility at each level.

Buff the horse with Mage Armor and Barkskin, and later Shield of Faith Animal Growth and Magic Vestment. Barding is not necessary IMHO, even on Unfair.

Horse build:
Archtype: none

Feats:
1. Combat Reflexes
3. Weapon Focus (Bite)
5. Shake it Off
7. Seize the Moment
9. Outflank

Seelah can take Mythic Beast later on.

Make sure to take Shake it off, Seize the Moment and Outflank with Seelah as well.

[Santa Claus Jr]

How do teamwork feats work with mounted animals? Ive never bothered with them, like... EVER cause it seemed too situational for the dual requirements but in the case of mounts it actually makes sense.

[gmwaddington]

When she's mounted, Seelah will always be adjacent to her horse.

I have these three teamwork feats on ALL my melee characters, and I have Shake it Off on everyone.

[Razer]

Outflank and Combat reflexes are always good.

[PradaMeinhof]

checkout the guides section, Mounted Combat 101

[Randolph Carter]

Originally posted by gmwaddington:

Have the horse advance Perception and Mobility at each level.

Can you explain why you choose Mobility and Perception? Afaik you should get Mobility to 3 for Defensive Fighting Bonus (I picked Crane Feats, too) but otherwise it doesn't really matter in which skills you invest, or did I miss something? (apart from Persuasion if you go Dazzling Display route, but im not sure if this is possible/viable with a pet in the first place)

[gmwaddington]

High mobility helps when you want to move past enemies, and perception helps you spot things.

I wouldn't want to lose out on the horse's offense by fighting defensively. It gets AoOs whenever Seelah scores a critical hit. On any case, I've found the horse to be plenty survivable.

I just finished Enigma (20th lvl) on Unfair, and appreciated the horse's damage contribution.

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Santa Claus Jr:

So, second time playing this. first time i took weapon bond on Seelah which is... practical but boring. I decided f*ck it, gimme a horsey this time. and so far Artax kicks ass actually. Are there any feats on Seelah or the horse I should make sure to take? Does the horse benefit from the mythic stuff later on? Good spells to cast on him?

Horse is the weakest of the pets with very poor AC and very poor damage output. In general, you never want to ride a horse, especially with a paladin who can get brilliant energy weapon buff from her divine weapon bond, which allows the paladin to ignore pretty significant armor AC bonuses on endgame enemies.

If you really want to squeeze everything you can out of your horse and make it less bad, you will need a brownfur transmuter for all the buffs. Otherwise your horse will not be able to tank the endgame even on core.

[Drake]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Originally posted by Santa Claus Jr:

So, second time playing this. first time i took weapon bond on Seelah which is... practical but boring. I decided f*ck it, gimme a horsey this time. and so far Artax kicks ass actually. Are there any feats on Seelah or the horse I should make sure to take? Does the horse benefit from the mythic stuff later on? Good spells to cast on him?

Horse is the weakest of the pets with very poor AC and very poor damage output. In general, you never want to ride a horse, especially with a paladin who can get brilliant energy weapon buff from her divine weapon bond, which allows the paladin to ignore pretty significant armor AC bonuses on endgame enemies.

If you really want to squeeze everything you can out of your horse and make it less bad, you will need a brownfur transmuter for all the buffs. Otherwise your horse will not be able to tank the endgame even on core.

I made 3 playthoughs with seelah on horse as main frontliner on core. She "tanked" (*) the endgame just fine with the horse feat (mounted combat, mounted shield etc.).
I used bulwark as archetype and the horse had heavy barding.
The horse was usually buffed by arue or camelia and nenio or woljif with the standard animal growth, shield of faith, barkskin and the regular party buffs (with seelah on enlarge of or size buff to add more reach for attacks of opportunities).

(*) I don't used tank heal dps approach. My main defence is crowd control and my main source of physical damage are series of attacks of opportunities through teamwork feats, the frontliners just soak whatever passes through the net, which is usually not much.

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Drake:

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Horse is the weakest of the pets with very poor AC and very poor damage output. In general, you never want to ride a horse, especially with a paladin who can get brilliant energy weapon buff from her divine weapon bond, which allows the paladin to ignore pretty significant armor AC bonuses on endgame enemies.

If you really want to squeeze everything you can out of your horse and make it less bad, you will need a brownfur transmuter for all the buffs. Otherwise your horse will not be able to tank the endgame even on core.

I made 3 playthoughs with seelah on horse as main frontliner on core. She "tanked" (*) the endgame just fine with the horse feat (mounted combat, mounted shield etc.).
I used bulwark as archetype and the horse had heavy barding.
The horse was usually buffed by arue or camelia and nenio or woljif with the standard animal growth, shield of faith, barkskin and the regular party buffs (with seelah on enlarge of or size buff to add more reach for attacks of opportunities).

(*) I don't used tank heal dps approach. My main defence is crowd control and my main source of physical damage are series of attacks of opportunities through teamwork feats, the frontliners just soak whatever passes through the net, which is usually not much.

If you have a dedicated DC caster-disabler in your party in the form of either MC or Nenio, you don't need a super optimized tank, but I'm talking about the general case.

And the real endgame now is Inevitable Excess. Inevitable Darkness will tear any horse into pieces.