Replying to Jacob's kibitzing about mounted combat:

Personally, my first instinct was that the whole "directing the warhorse to fight" thing was dirty pool -- I mean, you don't see the horses going at each other in Ivanhoe or whatever. The horses rear up sometimes and windmill their front hooves, but they never hit anything, as far as I can recall.

I can totally imagine some nasty robber baron knocking over some poor peasant with his horse, and maybe the peasant could get whacked with the horse's hooves. I kinda figure the trample feat would cover that, though.

So having horses (that you're riding on) fight just seems weird. With wolves and other possible mounts, it makes more sense, but even then, the idea of a full attack is kinda weird, and surely various feats like Improved Trip or Improved Grapple shouldn't work as well if the mount isn't free to roll around or use both forelegs at the same time. And lions have Pounce, where they can do damage with their hind claws, which seems like the rider should have to make another Ride check for the Leap or something.

I guess that if you were going to go with the "everybody can attack anybody" concept, you can pursue the notion that a round is a very busy 6 seconds, and that's enough time for critters to rear up and fall back down, so a horse can rear up and clock an opposing rider with its hooves, then fall to earth and its rider can poke a sword in the other mount's ribs. This would work a lot easier if the horses are in a T-shape, rather than head-to-head, but horses aren't 5 feet across either, so we can just assume that's part of the simplification of the combat system.

[Hm. I see now that the example DCs given in the 3rd ed. DMG for some skills don't match up with the DCs in the v.3.5 PH. Sigh. Why didn't they just call it version 4 and put me out of my misery? Interesting thought for later: D&D is like Open Source Development.]

Anyhow, the DC to get a combat-ready mount to fight in addition to your attack is 10, the same DC it takes to tie a firm knot or find out the current gossip -- in other words, something any old peasant can do right at least half the time. You can view this in two ways. The more charitable approach is to suppose that "battle-ready" means the mount is like a guard dog, and will practically fight on its own anyway, so directing them to attack one target while you attack the other is a piece of cake (maybe it bites the leg of the rider or something). The more bitchy approach, which I naturally favor on principle, is that the DC for this is obviously too low, unless you put serious restrictions on what the mount's attack can be.

Such restrictions could include:
- the mount can only make a single primary attack, not a full attack
- the mount can attack with its teeth, but not an attack that requires its feet
- the mount can only attack other creatures on the ground, not mounted creatures
- the mount can attack with its feet, but such attacks can only be upon creatures at least one size category smaller than it
- the mount cannot make any special attacks (Improved Trip, Pounce, etc.)
- a mount provides its rider with cover from other mounts
- the mount can't attack in a way that the DM thinks is unfeasible.

The last one always applies, I suppose. I also wouldn't mind distinguishing horses (which essentially never bite in a combat way) from other mounts (I have no idea what a griffon would usually do.)

We are near two issues, one of which D&D developers have always tried to ignore and the other they've started to devote some energy to. The second issue is size: an itty-bitty rider should make little difference to a mount (would a red dragon really be much restricted because someone was on his back?), but a warpony with a fully armored dwarf on its back (for example) can't really be expected to do more than carry him around. Although D&D has all kinds of size modifiers and stuff, when it comes to this kind of thing, I think they're hoping to ignore it -- the little critter in each case isn't going to make that much difference to the battle, so why make an exception in the rules?

The other part, which D&D mostly abhors, is wound location and direction of attack. A wolf could easily bite at a rider's leg, but getting a horse to do damage with its hooves takes some gymnastics. And should a chain shirt's AC count for an attack on a leg? Dropping a rock on someone's head is a lot more likely to knock them out than throwing it at their chest. A knee-high fence between combatants shouldn't really offer much cover -- it's not like you're aiming at their feet. Should it be as useful (+4 to AC) as a chain shirt? Maybe if you crouch behind it -- but surely that would give a penalty to your attack bonus, no? Clearly, this starts a nightmare of complexity that is better left alone. There's no obvious place to draw the line.

From that perspective, 'twould be better to just accept the somewhat funny looking rules, and hope that the weird cases don't come up much -- either from DM/player choices (the current campaign mostly has mounts fighting each other, and riders fighting each other) or from strategic issues (if a mount can do damage to the mount, but the AC of a rider is generally too much for it, the "smart thing" is also the most "realistic").

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