You may have noticed that I jumped right into the class abilities of the cavalrist rather than take a look at the basics. I did so with the temporary assumption that these basics would be very similar to those of a fighter - d10 Hit Dice, good BaB, Good Fort, 2 skill points per level. Class skills Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), and Swim (Str).
For various reasons, at least the skills would be disappointing if they were exactly the same. A cavalrist certainly wants Ride, and probably Handle Animal. Add to that the fact that we'd want a few other skills so that the cavalrist can fulfill a few more roles, and the skill budget becomes tight, especially since they'll probably be cross-class skills under this assumption.
Let's build the list of class skills first - Handle Animal and Ride are musts. Craft and Profession are commonl found with most classes. That's four skills compared to the fighter's seven skills. To add a bit flexibility, I'll say that the cavalrist may choose three additional skills as class skills. That should give a bit of role flexibility.
But how many skill points should the cavalrist have? 2, like the fighter? As said earlier, that would be a tight skill point budget. An idea that would help with that would be virtual ranks - when interacting with his special mount, the cavalrist is treated as having level +3 ranks in Handle Animal and Ride. That would allow the cavalrist to skimp a bit on these two skills, and empathise the special bond between mount and rider. But it would become odd when the cavalrist has to change mounts, and appears to be a bumbling fool around horses!
Of course, there would be the solution to say that the cavalrist has full ranks for his special mount, and half ranks for other mounts (or whatever ranks he actually has). But honestly, this would be rather silly - at that point we could just as well remove the Ride skill from the class skill list. The solution seems to be to increase the number of skills to 4 per level. This needs to be kept in mind for class balance later on.
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How about giving Ranger-favored-enemy-type bonuses for interacting with the special mount? Possibly example:
The cavalrist gains a +2 bonus on Handle Animal, Ride, Listen, and Spot checks when using these skills against his special mount. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon damage rolls when mounted on the creature.
At 5th level and every five levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th level), the bonus increases by 2.
That could be too powerful, I'm not sure. It might also give you the possibility of having multiple mounts.
... Which I honestly haven't considered before now. A high level character needs alternate movements, doesn't he? Gaining a flying mount at level 15 or 20 would be neat. There could be a burrowing or climbing mount at level 10, maybe.
Or, the mount could get bonuses, and get a fly speed at level 20.
The cavalrist will definitely get some bonuses with his special mount. You're looking into the right direction regarding that.
Funny you should mention having multiple special mounts... ;)
I'm not going to grant a mount speeds that it did not previously have, though - if a cavalrist wants a flying mount, he needs to find a mount that can fly on its own, such as a pegasus (which, similar to a druid's animal companion, would reduce the benefits the mount would get).
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