What is the "BEST" Flying Mount?

[CrazyYanmega]

I've been thinking of purchasing a flying mount, and it has occurred to me that there are quite a few. I want to know which one the Giants think is the BEST flying mount. If possible, please use the following format to judge your submission for "Best Flying Mount"

1. Speed: How fast can the mount travel?
2. Maneuverability: How good is it at outmaneuvering enemies and environmental hazards??
3. Attack: What damage, poisons, and offensive special abilities does it provide?
4. Defense: How good are its Saves, Hit Points, and AC? Also factor in any defensive Special Abilities
5. Cost: How much would raising or acquiring one of these creatures cost?
6. Rarity: How often would you be able to come across such a creature and raid a nest for a potential mount?
7. Accessibility: How optimized do you have to be to use this creature as a mount? The less the better.
8. Carry Capactiy: How much can this mount carry? The more the better.

I personally think that the Spider Eater is one of the best flying mounts out there:

1. Speed: At 60 ft Fly speed it's not too shabby, and 30 Land speed has its uses.
2. Maneuverability: Good maneuverability means that it can easily navigate forests and dogfight.
3. Attack: Negligible at only +8 for the sting. It's poison is pretty awesome, but it takes a while for it to take effect.
4. Defense: A tad delicate, with only 14 AC and 42 HP. Freedom of Movement is nice, and it gets the Dodge feat as well as good Spot and Listen checks.
5. Cost: 2000 GP for an egg seems pretty standard for the flying mounts.
6. Rarity: These things seem common enough. Heck, you could probably steal some from the local bandits.
7. Accessibility: All you need is a point in Ride and an exotic saddle. Maybe 3000 GP for training if you don't want to do it yourself.
8. Carry Capacity: 306 lbs. is not too shabby.

So, anyone got a better mount?

[NoACWarrior]

Dragon - even though its not easy to get one, the abilities of a dragon is well worth the cost.

Speed: depending on the dragon and age around 120
Maneuverability: not that great at maneuvering, but why bother when you can smash through things
Attack: Massive attacks, up to 7 attacks per round, breath weapon, SLAs, and spells
Defense: SR, high AC, good saves, good HP
Cost: prohibitively expensive, but why bother with a 3k mount when you can spend 1 mil and get a better mount.
Rarity: dragons are not that rare - they are random encounters in games at times, and most campaigns have at least one or two
Accessibility: you don't have to be optimized at all to ride a dragon, if you are really worried about a dragon, make sure you don't have to breath and get acid protection and have him swallow you
Carry Capactiy: Gargantuan Dragons have a 64 multiplier for load capacity.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Get Wild Cohort and you can get one for free, plus it gets stronger as you level up.

If you're at least 7th level, you can get a Dire Eagle (RoS) as your wild cohort at 'level -3' and use Handle Animal to give it the Warbeast template (MM2). Give it Improved Flight (RotW) as one of its feats gained for its additional HD for good maneuverability.

[Morrolan]

I suggest a skeletal nightmare. A properly set up lesser planar binding and animate undead, easy enough.

1. 90 ft.
2. Good Maneuverability.
3. Ok so this is not a strong point of a skeletal nightmare. Hooves and bite with a bit of bonus fire damage.
4. AC or saves are not very high, but being a mindless undead it is going to be immune to a lot lot lot of annoying effects. As undead it gets 6d12 hit points.
5. Depends if you can cast the above mentioned spells yourself or if you have to hire someone. If cast yourself it only casts a bit of material component cost. You do need to do the animating yourself or be able to rebuke/command undead or something.
6. Since you're planar binding it you can get it in your living room if you would want to. (carpets will burn, mind you)
7. How optimized do you have to be...? Not very I guess, you just need a means of controlling said undead beasty.
8. Never bothered much with carrying capacity, so not sure if I am calculating this right, but light load should be 300. (large quadruped with 18 strength) Also note that undead do not sleep/get tired/need to eat or drink.

You should add a 9th question about the mounts: how awesome is it?
Because this one is pretty awesome in my book. I mean: A flaming skeletal horse!

And if you happen to be a necromancerish guy with corpsecrafter or anything, it will apply to your mount for extra awesomeness. We are talking more hit points per HD, more strength etc.

Also at high levels replace it with a cauchemar nightmare (needs greater planar binding). Upgrade to 15d12 hp and a carrying capacity of (I think) 1350+ lb (huge quadruped with 31 strength, and the damn chart only goes up to 29...)

[Lightlawbliss]

Best: the one that gets you from point A to point B without spending longer to find it than the time saved.

[Keld Denar]

Desmudu Hunting Bats are pretty awesome at their CR. They aren't the best, but they are pretty much the best for their HD. Don't have the stats off the top of my head, but they are large and have a great speed and blindsight.

[Snowbluff]

Succubus!

[Seerow]

Desmudu Hunting Bats are pretty awesome at their CR. They aren't the best, but they are pretty much the best for their HD. Don't have the stats off the top of my head, but they are large and have a great speed and blindsight.

The Hunting Bats are actually medium (I just checked). Guard Bats however have the same speed and blindsight as the hunting bat, but are large. (And make the expected trade-offs of being a little lower dex, less good at hiding, higher damage. And an unexpected one in trading out the trip ability hunting bats get for a bleed effect on the bite).


Edit: Apparently advancing the hunting bat's HD even by 1 gets it up to large, so you may as well go up to an 8HD CR4 hunting bat if that's what you want.

Or for a really big mount, you can advance one of the Warbats, 18HD gets you a CR7 Gargantuan flying bat. Only 40ft fly speed instead of 60ft like the others, but if carrying capacity is a concern, or you happen to be a huge creature looking for a mount, that's a really great deal.

[Slipperychicken]

Not quite a mount, but in PF, I think the Gyro Copter is really cool (also, here are PF's vehicle rules for reference). It has that mad max feel, and you can even mount a gun on it. The copter-blades take up a lot of space (20ft radius), but for 100 max speed which never tires, it's a bargain at 3,000gp. It's beefy with the primary rotor having 64 hit points and 8 hardness. and can serve as a good firing platform. Its maneuverability ultimately depends on the users fly/know(engineering) check, though.

[MadGreenSon]

I've always thought it would be cool to get a Mercury Dragon as kitted out and buffed up as needed to break the sound barrier and have that as a cohort/mount/buddy.

Nothing says "Dynamic Entry" like breaking a Mach cone on the way in.

[Darrin]

Stone Flyer (FR Underdark). Because nothing makes the DM cry like unlimited Earthglide.

[Coidzor]

Probably the "World Record Ubermount," but that's unlikely to fly in the vast majority of games.

A Supermount is probably the best mount one has a reasonable chance of getting in a game.

If you're just using gold usually the Warbeast template applied to any given flying animal is the best way to go about buying one. Warbeast and Magebred can make a fairly hardy and durable mount despite it not being from class features, though the options are thinner for flying mounts.

[Werephilosopher]

Succubus!

Heh heh

Not the best, but the dragonhawk is pretty good with Wild Cohort. Especially with Warbeast, Magebred etc.