You are a dangerous foe to face while mounted. While you are mounted and aren't incapacitated, you gain the following benefits:
You have advantage on melee attack rolls against any unmounted creature that is smaller than your mount.
You can force an attack targeted at your mount to target you instead.
If your mount is subjected to an effect that allows it to make Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.
Mounted Combatant: HORSE!
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The mounted combat rules in 5e are like the light version of the older edition rules. To make up for this, it feels like they moved some of the inherent advantages to having a steed to a feat, making the whole process feel unrewarding. If you are dedicated to playing a cavalier or panther-riding wild halfling, Mounted Combatant is nearly necessary at making that fantasy happen in the upper tiers.
Like other feats that use niche game mechanics a lot of players aren’t particularly familiar with, I’ll quickly go over how mounted combat works.
A character can spend half their movement to mount a larger creature. While mounted, you can either control your mount if it's been trained, or let it act independently.
Controlling your mount moves its initiative to your turn, and functionally allows you to use its speed (even the turn you mount it) to maneuver as you please. It gets all of its regular turn parts in yours, but can only take the dash, disengage, or dodge actions while controlled.
Letting your mount act independently has it retain its initiative, and works as you’d expect. The mount moves where it pleases, spends its actions as it likes, and may or may not do what you want it to.
If your mount's movement would provoke attacks of opportunity, they can target you or the mount.
That’s basically it. Mounted Combatant adds on to this more advantages outside of speed by granting you advantage on attacking smaller adversaries than your mount. Additionally, it takes a mount's largest weakness, a low HP pool, and offers you tools to mitigate that issue as the game progresses. Paladins in particular like this feat, as with their Find Steed and Find Greater Steed, you can consistently keep your summoned companion alive using your robust hit point well and high AC. Plus, the evasion effect can keep them alive even through some of the highest damage saves simply by defaulting to half or no damage when it's Dex based.
I don’t want to say Mounted Combatant is mandatory for the rider fantasy, but it helps tremendously. It's hard to do the mounted combat thing when your mount dies, and this helps keep it alive in a real way. Advantage on melee attack rolls is a nice bonus, too, especially on paladins who love critting with smites. While I don’t think the fantasy is all that powerful, nor that easy to pull off in a lot of environments, I think if it appeals to you you should try Mounted Combatant out. I just wish some of these mechanics were baked into the base rules instead of requiring you take a feat to unlock them.
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