An issue came up during our playtest, regarding Paladins and mounted combat that I think reveals a fraught issue with making rules more specific. One of my players decided to lean fully into the new Find Steed spell, and to make the most of it. This included pulling a lot of rulings from the following RPGBOT blog post.
https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/mounted_combat/
Before we get into it too far, I feel like purely Rules as Written (RAW) interpretations of the rules are quite silly, and do not make the most fun at the table. To that end, I try to make table rulings that are the best for the fun in the moment, rather than trying to obtain an ideal RAW.
However, these playtest rules have been written with a lot more specificity in mind, taking a queue from PF2e’s conventions in several areas.
With all that in mind, I see the above contents of the blog post as basically RAW in 5e… Until you encounter the specific rules for Find Steed.
Combat. The steed is an ally to you and your companions. In combat, it shares your initiative count, and it functions as a controlled mount while you ride it (as defined in the rules on mounted combat). If you have the Incapacitated condition, the steed takes its turn immediately after yours and acts independently, focusing on protecting you.
In my read, the problem arises in trying to adjudicate what occurs when a rider dismounts their Mount willfully, in order to take advantage of the ‘intelligent mount’ capabilities as laid out in the aforementioned blog article. The spell specifies exactly how it behaves when you are riding it, and what happens when you are incapacitated. But it says precious little about if it is not being ridden, and the rider is not incapacitated. It clears the bar for 6 intelligence on the intelligent mount rules, so does it get to attack on your turn, effectively? Can you just ride up to an enemy, dismount, attack yourself, and have your mount attack? Can you then mount up to ride to the next enemy, and then dismount? I think RAW yes, but that is tremendously silly to a point that I think it’s not Rules as Intended.
Additionally during combat, if you are incapacitated until the end of your turn (By say, the breath of a Sapphire Dragon Wyrmling, which I was running) what happens? We’re taking RAW as far as we can go with it to allow for the potential attack of an intelligent mount just because you aren’t riding it. RAW, it will act after your turn if you are incapacitated in order to protect you. But the Incapacitating Breath lasts until the end of your turn. So RAW, does the summoned steed go to take its action, and then the condition required for it to do so directly after your turn (incapacitation) is no longer there, so it now isn’t able to act at all?
I feel like this example reveals a big issue with trying to make rules more specific, in that you have to write a tremendous amount of rules to cover every situation. And even PF2e doesn’t accomplish that (e.g. There’s no RAW way to target an empty square with a splash weapon to hit adjacent enemies. I have gotten a Family Feud number of responses on how that should be ruled).
I maintain that ‘rulings, not rules’ should be the guiding light for DMs in D&D, and that if you don’t like Rulings not Rules and would prefer a game closer to 3.5e, you should find another system that fits your style better. I think the level of specificity here, and in the stealth rules perversely introduce more vagaries that hurt the ‘rulings, not rules’ playstyle more than it helps empower DMs to make rulings.
Oh btw the Paladin is fun and it looks neat having a toolbelt of neat riders on your attacks per turn that isn’t just raw damage is fun.
As with many other posts, this has been crossposted to the /r/onednd subreddit. Please feel free to upvote it there to boost visibility.
Find Steed needs some polishing, but I have to push back on the ‘don’t write rules that mean anything’ position. Content that gives no guidance on how things are supposed to work is a stone nightmare when edge cases and interactions come up. This is just a bad first draft, not a bad idea, and half of what makes it bad is that it references and doesn’t update the mounted combat stub.
The amount of specificity of rules is not binary, it exists on a spectrum.
I think that the amount of specificity we’re seeing in the Playtest rules are beginning to encroach on an unsung virtue of 5e, with allowing for ‘Rulings, not Rules.’ Several times I have found that these specificities put more work on me, the GM, to sort out if a situation is clearly defined and doesn’t require my ruling, as opposed to just entirely requiring me to make a ruling in the moment.
To this end, PF2e does say this quite often. Where a situation that has many vague outcomes the rules will state ‘the GM will determine the outcome.’
It has felt like in 5e, that could be a general guideline in almost all cases without being explicitly stated. It feels like that’s being chipped away.