The Stig - building the ultimate rider?

[Flickerdart]

"Some say that he has a digital face, and his heart ticks like a watch. All we know is, he's called the Stig."

There are loads of Super- or even Uber-mount builds that squeeze as much build resources as possible into producing a powerful mount with a "character" attached helplessly to the top. But is it possible to produce the opposite - a rider that can empower his mount to perform as many incredible stunts as possible? Ideally, such a character would be able to boost the top speed of the mount as well as grant it some cool movement tricks.

Classes like Ashworm Dragoon which focus on a specific creature are fine, but ideally this guy would be able to take anything from a stock horse to a dragon with a second dragon grafted on top, and squeeze extra performance out of the mount.

Thoughts so far:

Spoiler: Feats

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The Shared Fury feat shares your rage with your animal companion. Are there variants or feats for rage that increase your speed or improve your movement in other ways?

The Silverwood Outrider PrC turns a Wild Cohort into a better mount, but its benefits seem kind of mediocre compared to even what a paladin's Special Mount gets.

Talenta Dinosaur Bond gives (admittedly minor) bonuses, but a +4 to Ride checks is nice if we can find something that uses them.

Saddleback lets you replace Reflex saves with Ride checks for you and your mount. Get Evasion on the both of you and suddenly enemy casters need to do more than just fireball you to get rid of your mount.

Knight of Lolth lets you easily stay on top of a monstrous vermin climbing walls or ceilings, and give your mount a bonus to attack and damage.

Tremendous Charge lets you get the most out of your mount's obscene Strength score by applying it to your lance attacks.

Valenar Trample makes trample slightly useful by granting you an attack against the trampled foe, but you have to be using a Valenar horse, which means you can't use a cheetah's awesome charge speed (or I guess flight or whatever). Naturally, one could use liberal spells, grafts, and classes to "upgrade" a Valenar horse into something better.

Cavalry Charger grants you the ability to overrun more than one opponent, making it even more slightly useful! Combined with Valenar Trample, you could charge around the battlefield and get two attacks against everything you run through.

Smiting Power lets you add your attack roll boost from Smite to your overrun check, and your damage bonus is dealt as damage. Handy.

Swiftness of Orien lets you do a speed boost based on your dragonmark, but I don't know that much about how these work.

Chariot Trample lets you overrun enemies with a chariot, and then every steed pulling it gets a hoof attack. This brings up the issue of how feats that let you overrun stuff interact with mounted overruns.

Horse Nomad grants some proficiencies, but more importantly a +3 on Ride checks that would stack with SF.

Dinosaur Wrangler gives a +4 to Ride when riding dinosaurs. Is it possible to make a Valenar horse also a dinosaur? Hmm.

Daredevil Athlete gives +5 on a bunch of checks as an immediate action 3/day, including Ride.

Spoiler: PrCs

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Halfling Outrider is chock full of goodies. Net +10 to Ride, defensive riding that gives the mount a speed boost, a free attack on a free action dismount (which, combined with a free action mount, is theoretically infinity free attacks as long as you can keep hitting Ride DC20), evasion for you and the mount, full attacks after the mount has moved, and sweet drifts while charging.

Dragonrider gets +10 to Ride on dragons and a better flight maneuverability. He can also make the dragon go 50% faster for 5 rounds with a DC20 Ride check.

Ashworm Dragoon lets you negate as many hits as you like with Ride checks, trample foes extra-hard, burrow underground, make full attacks after moving, and dealing slightly more damage with charge attacks.

Cavalier confers some bonuses a few times per day, specifically more damage and charges that are twice as fast.

Shaaryan Hunter gets a +8 Ride bonus, and can spur the mount to move twice as fast. Notable is a 1/day feature to replace any attack roll, skill check, or save with a Ride check.

Waverider gets a bunch of maneuvers while mounted underwater, but the Stig has a cousin for driving boats.

Aglarondan Griffonrider gives your griffon some upgrades.

Skylord gains some minor benefits when fighting on a flying mount.

Kishi Charger gets the Ride-check-for-everything ability, the spur-but-deal-damage ability, and the full attack after movement ability, except there's no restriction on how far the mount could have moved.

Wild Plains Outrider is a 3-level PrC that gives the mount a permanent speed boost, can make a full attack as long as the mount takes but a single move, and gets +3 to Ride checks. It also stacks for special mount or animal companion levels.

Windrider can bond to anything after 3 days, and make it a tougher mount. It can also aid that creature in combat or boost its speed or saving throws. Also, bonus feats for the mount (and spells and feats for the rider).

Battle Maiden has a predetermined special warhorse and can make it less crap.

Knight of the Flying Hunt gets a free pegasus, but its abilities never improve.

Knight of the Iron Glacier gets a war megaloceros, which can be treated as the base creature of a paladin special mount. Everything else is unrelated to riding.

Crinti Shadow Marauder can do a bunch of teleport stuff, most importantly shadowpouncing. Can you say dimensional drift?

Knight Phantom gets an honourary mention. The horse is fake, but it's got some cool tricks.

Knight of the Blue Moon is insignificant except that it lets you call a paladin-style special mount that stacks paladin and sorc/wiz levels.

Drow Judicator gets some exotic spiders (like the phase spider) as companion choices.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Maybe a typical arcane gish with Phantom Steed?

[Flickerdart]

Maybe a typical arcane gish with Phantom Steed?

Ehh, I guess, but knights phantom are just spellcasters who happen to cast a spell that makes a horse. While effective, they're kind of missing the point of a skilled rider.

[Sewercop]

Isnt there a share soulmeld feat that makes you able to share your incarnum melds?

They also give alot of bonuses to various skills, riding being one.

[SimonMoon6]

I don't know any way to make a rider better, but this makes me imagine a PC who turns into a horse (or other steed) via wildshape (or other methods) and then uses Leadership to get a cohort with all the "make my steed better" tricks.

[Emperor Tippy]

Let's see, a Gray Elf Factotum 3/ X 16/ Exemplar 1 with 36 Int and 30 Dex along with maxed ranks can take 10 on ride and (without any items) make a 58 skill check (Take 10+23+13+10+2). Throw in Skill Focus and you can auto make the highest Ride DC (60).

Marshal 1 with the Motivate Strength Minor Aura would let you add points to your mounts jump check.

IIRC there is one class that can share skills with the rest of the party but I don't remember the specifics.

[Blackhawk748]

Well i believe Wild Plains outrider lets you make your mount stealthier, and its a short PrC so you can still do virtually anything else.

Edit: Tippy you really love Factotums dont you? lol

[Emperor Tippy]

Edit: Tippy you really love Factotums dont you? lol

On any build that wants to max Dex or Str based skill checks it's a god send.

[Blackhawk748]

Eh valid point lol

On topic id prbly play a Fighter/Wild Plains Outrider/Cavalier.
Lots of buffs? eh not really, a lot of damage on the charge? oh hell ya