[3.5] Jousting/Mounted Combat

[Thidrek]

Greetings fellow Playgrounders.
Recently I tried to figure out how to realistically integrate the concept of jousting into D&D 3.5 but I couldn't come up with a good solution.
Problem is this: D&D handles combat turn-based, so two mounted knights riding against each other won't hit the same time. The one with better initiative will win and hit, presumably taking the opponent out of his saddle and even if not, with ride-by-attack he will be long gone before the opponent can react.
This means it's pointless being good at mounted combat if all it depends on is initiative.

Same goes with open battlefields. Two guys on horses, one with a sword, the other with a lance. Realistically the one with the lance should be in advantage since he can strike first. But if the other one wins initiative he can hit and escape without facing the other's charge. Theoretically he could ready his lance against the charge but that's not the point I'd guess.

So the question is: Are there any rules, homebrewed or official, that account for situations like this?

[Eldariel]

Jousting, specifically the impact, could just be handled as a Bull Rush-check to knock opponent off their saddle. And you can handwave the turn-based movement by just stating initiative merely matters for whose attack resolves first.

Like with all sporting combat (e.g. Iaijutsu Duel from Oriental Adventures), you should use a bit different rules to describe that the combat has rules both sides abide by.


And the guy with Lance has reach so of course he hits first; he gets an AoO if the sword-guy moves first and has reach not to provoke AoO if he wins the Initiative, so that's taken care of by the rules.

[Goldfly]

There are rules for jousting on page 130 of Complete Warrior.

[Anxe]

I believe there were jousting rules in an old Dragon issue as well. I would just use Bull rush or Trip to decide it. The problem is that it doesn't take into account that lances often broke in Arthurian legends. You could solve that by flipping a coin to see if it breaks.