Spell Spotlight: Find (Greater) Steed

Author: pandaniel

We are finally releasing our second part to our mini-series of articles on the “find” spells of D&D 5E. We started this off with an article describing find familiar, with tidbits on find traps, and find the path. We are now going to describe both find steed, and find greater steed, which are closely connected not just in name, but also mechanics. They both summon a mount that you can use, with the limitation that you can only have one from both.

A big part of this article will go into the rules of mounts in general, as they are quite a mess. After this, we will detail the spells themselves, so that the full picture of the mechanics surrounding them can be presented. 

Mounting and dismounting your mount

As part of your movement, you can mount (get onto) a creature that is within 5 feet of you, or dismount (get off of) a creature you’re currently mounted on. This costs you movement which is equal to half your speed. In other words, you cannot mount or dismount if you have less than half of your speed worth of movement left. Additionally, you cannot mount (or dismount) a creature if your speed is 0.

While the matter of where you get mounted on your steed is not important while playing with Theater of the Mind, it is on a grid. The rulebooks are unclear on this subject, or rather literally do not say anything about it anywhere, but Jeremy Crawford has clarified it in an episode of the Dragon Talk podcast, one which we’ll reference multiple times throughout this article, as the rules often lack details.

This seems to be an exception to the rule that you normally cannot end your move in the space of another creature.* 

While your mount moves you stay mounted on it. The rules are not explicitly clear on this, as the rules on “facing” are optional, but you are supposedly sticking to the spot you chose to move onto. Even if your mount were to “turn around,” you would not “rotate.” If you were in its bottom left space looking from top down, this stays the same until you move on your mount itself. This would count as difficult terrain, as you are moving through a creature’s space**.

Getting Dismounted Forcefully

There are a few ways that you can be forcefully dismounted and placed in a space within 5 feet of your mount.

• You land prone if an effect moves your mount against its will and you fail a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw,
• You fail a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw when you are knocked prone,
• Your mount is knocked prone. You land prone if you do not use your reaction.

Of course there are a multitude of other miscellaneous ways you and your mount could get separated, e.g. through a casting of scatter or vortex warp directed at you. Lastly, while the rules fail to mention what happens when your mount dies, it is fair to assume that its corpse falls prone.

Controlling Your Mount

As a preliminary, while the rules don’t say a rider needs a saddle to ride their mount, aquatic or flying mounts do need one, as detailed in our non-magical items guide.

This means while you are mounted on your steed, you can either have it act independently or control it. Additionally, intelligent creatures, like dragons, always act independently. Keep in mind that a mount can only be controlled if it has been trained to accept a rider, such as domesticated creatures.

Once combat starts, you roll for initiative as normal, and you or your DM roll for your mount. If you were to mount your steed during combat, and decide to control it, its initiative changes to match yours, allowing it to act at the same time as you while your turns overlap. (This might mean it has two turns if it has previously acted before you mounted it.) If you later decide to let it act independently, its initiative does not change back.

A controlled mount and an independent mount differ in a few ways:

• A controlled mount will move as you direct it. Its actions are limited to any one of Dash, Disengage, and Dodge. 
• An independent mount has no such restrictions, and can move and act as it wishes. It has the potential to act against your wishes.

Finally, if the mount provokes an opportunity attack while mounted by you, the attacker can target either you or the mount. As you are not using your own movement, action or reaction, you do not provoke an attack of opportunity and thus cannot be targeted if your mount uses the Disengage action before leaving a creature’s reach sans a few specific abilities (e.g. Sentinel).

While these rules work… they are not perfect to say the least. It does not seem to be the intent that your initiative only matches that of your steed if you mount it in combat, or that you can switch from it being independent or controlled on a whim. A way to fix this would be to change “While you’re mounted, you have two options.” to “When you mount your steed, you have two options.” and “The initiative of a controlled mount changes to match yours when you mount it.” to “The initiative of a controlled mount changes to match yours.” This would bring the choice of controlling a mount or not to the moment you mount your steed, and have your steed’s initiative match yours at the start of combat if you had mounted it previously, and also if you mount it during combat. Even only adding one of these two would clean up the messy rules of mounted combat quite a bit.

The Mounted Combatant Feat

There is one feat that is specifically tailored towards mounted combat, and that is Mounted Combatant. 

The feat gives three different benefits while mounted (and not incapacitated): 

• You have advantage on melee attacks against creatures smaller than your mount.
• You can redirect any attack against your mount to hit you instead.
• Your mount gets the equivalent of the Monk or Rogue’s Evasion feature. 

One interesting aspect of the part about redirecting attacks is that if you are playing on a grid, and you are out of range for the incoming attack on your mount, you can waste any of those attacks without a cost.

Cavalier Fighter

The Cavalier is a Fighter subclass which supposedly “excels at mounted combat,”  and while detailing the whole subclass would be a bit much for this article, we can summarize its issues: most of its features have little to do with being mounted, the features often include a limitation of having to be within 5 feet of a creature, which is actually quite a small amount of space playing on a grid!

If you use a Large mount, which you probably will be, there are only 5 spaces beyond those occupied by you and your mount left! If your mount is larger than that, you are even worse off.

The Usual

A mount can also be used to travel. The table below shows the details of how far creatures can normally travel in different periods of time at different paces, where a day is seen as 8 hours. (Yes, the rounding is weird, we know.) For any hours traveled beyond 8 hours a Constitution saving throw has to be made at the end of the hour, with a DC of 10 + 1 for each hour past 8 hours, against levels of exhaustion. You can look at the distances shown in the Hour column to see how far such a creature can travel in these additional hours.

A mount can also gallop for an hour, allowing it to travel twice the distance of a fast pace. Presumably this counts as going at a fast pace for the effects of travel. The rules sadly lack any information on when a mount can gallop again, but once per long rest probably is a reasonable assumption.

If you travel through difficult terrain, your distance traveled is halved.

The Unusual

Creatures that travel with a flying speed (like a griffon or pegasus) or with a speed granted by magic (for example through wind walk), an engine, or a natural force (such as wind or a water current) have different rules for travel rates (Dungeons Master’s Guide p. 242). 

For a fast pace you can multiply your distance by 4/3, and for a slow pace by 2/3.

Phantom steed is called out as an example for using these rates too, but it is unclear whether creatures from find steed and find greater steed also use them.

An additional limitation on creatures that travel using a fly speed (sans ones that don’t tire, like a flying construct) is that they must rest 1 hour for every 3 hours they fly, and also cannot fly for more than 9 hours per day (Dungeons Master’s Guide p. 119). 

On Steed Types

A find steed or find greater steed has all the statistics of your chosen form, which are described below, besides its type. You instead get to choose one of celestial, fey, or fiend. In general, this choice will most likely not have much consequence in your game. One thing worth mentioning is that many different Paladin subclasses have a Channel Divinity that affects specific types of creatures. Communicate with Paladins in your party for this choice to make sure you pick a type that won’t be turned by them.

On Find Steed and Find Greater Steed Uses

Now that we are done explaining the rules for mounts, we can finally get into the good stuff: how to use find steed and find greater steed.

As a thing of note, a wonderful part about find steed and find greater steed is that even when they act independently, they can do exactly what you want them to do, as you and your steed fight as a seamless unit and can communicate with each other. This means you can get a lot more options if you have them be independent, and not just restricted to Dash, Disengage, and Dodge. 

Of course, many of the following uses can be generalised towards any mounts so feel free to reference this even if you bought a mule. (This is a possibility that makes picking a Small race really interesting!)

Enhanced Movement

A mount should not be thought of as merely a way to get into melee faster. Movement is king in this game, and the difference between 30 and 35 feet can often mean that an enemy is unable to attack you at all (being required to use its action to Dash instead). If you even add the ability to fly, a majority of monsters won’t be able to touch you at all, allowing you to win fights for your party on your own. This is why, even with all the features associated with mounted combat being primarily about melee, a ranged character would still benefit the most from being mounted.

Carrying your Stuff and Things

Maybe not the most important of uses, but it is a possibility nonetheless. Medium creatures can carry 15 times their Strength in weight, and Large creatures double that. A warhorse, griffon, or pegasus can carry a whopping 540 pounds, or push, drag, or lift 1080.

Find Greater Sword

While you might be more attached to your steed than a beast from summon beast, it can serve a similar purpose without concentration and you can cast it with yesterday’s spell slots. A warhorse, as will be shown down below, does similar damage to a greatsword, but it will probably die rather quickly. Mounts from find greater steed, on the other hand will do quite a bit more, but you will probably be stronger at range by then.

This is like a spiritual weapon that can actually move to the enemy, and doesn’t tax your action economy at all.

Duplicating Spells

Both find steed and find greater steed allow you to have a spell you cast that targets only you to also target your steed. You can get into many shenanigans as a Bard or Paladin with this spell already, but if you get your hands on a ring of spell storing, your whole party can.

Some strong examples of “twinning” in this way are:

• Smite spells, which allow your steed to put in some hefty damage, or add some control to the battlefield (like with wrathful smite). However, your DM might rule that these target more than just you.
• Death ward, which now safeguard two for the price of one, giving your rest casting session some extra efficiency.
• Absorb elements, which protects both you and your mount from elemental damage instances, making your steed a bit more sturdy. Of course the same holds for shield.
• Simulacrum, which if you target yourself doesn’t just give you a duplicate of you, but also of your steed which now follows your verbal commands and acts on your turn. This works because while you cannot have more than one mount bound to you by the find steed or find greater steed spell, this is not that spell. Additionally, active duplicates for simulacrum are only removed if you cast the spell again, which you do not.
• Holy aura, which can benefit from an “aura enlargement”, as a 30 foot radius around a steed that is Large is a bigger area than around a Medium creature. This one might not come up much, but it is nifty.

Portable Cover

As with any creatures, and specifically summons, they can be used as cover. Getting +2 to AC and Dexterity saves from half cover, or even +5 from three-quarters cover in certain circumstances can be incredibly useful.

The Dreaded Skirmishing

While we by and large believe “skirmishing” is not something worth undertaking, a steed with a speed above 70 (this is limited to flying mounts from find greater steed, or a warhorse with the effects of longstrider) can safely go in and out of melee range using the Disengage action, allowing their rider to attack in melee without being stuck there. With their speed they can always end their turn more than 30 feet away from enemies, which is normally enough for enemies to be unable to ever catch up without using their action to Dash. Of course, if a weapon with the reach property allows you to attack enemies beyond their reach, the Disengage action is not required, and a mount with a lower speed works perfectly fine.

In general, this is a convoluted way to “make attacks from range”, however, a smite can sometimes go a long way, which is limited to melee weapon attacks. Make sure to think this one through, as melee is a dangerous place to be stuck in.

Everything Else

We could ramble on about different things your mount can accomplish for pages upon pages, but we won’t. If you want to find out more uses we have written about what familiars can do here, which is often generalizable to work the same with mounts. Use your brain!

This header might be a little misleading, as we aren’t actually rating the different steeds. We believe that the choice of this steed is not very impactful, but we have listed out the most important differences here so that you can make an educated decision. Within our typical rating scheme, they would all have the same rating.

We have listed out the average hit points, speed, size, and damage vs. different ACs. We assume enemies have a Strength saving throw bonus of 4, and that all steeds that can charge the enemy for benefit charge. These calculations intentionally don’t look at the damages when your steed cannot charge, as we expect it to be dead by the time it is stuck in melee, which to be fair has still wasted an enemy’s attack.

Upon casting find greater steed you get the choice of 6 creatures to serve you as your mount. There is one additional optional steed with your DM’s permission. 

There are upsides and downsides to each of these summons, with some making it out better than the others. This section will rate these different steeds against each other, and we will note the option that is usable with DM’s approval with ^Optional.

Dragonnel ^Optional (★★★★★)

The dragonnel is an optional greater steed from Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, originally introduced in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Its damage is in the upper half among the options for find greater steed and it has Flyby, which can be useful, but it shines in that it has a fly speed, a respectable amount of hit point and a Blindsight of 30 feet.

Griffon (★★★★★)

This avian-esque monster has great fly speed at 80 feet, and a nice chunk of hit points. It also has a high passive Perception of 20 for sight related checks with its Keen Sight and the second highest damage of all the steeds here. 

Pegasus (★★★★★)

The one and only… wait not here, sorry purists. The pegasus has the highest fly speed of all the “greater steeds” and a good amount of hit points. This is probably the best you can get, even if its damage is on the low side.

Peryton (★★★★☆)

This might seem like a cool option with its resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks, but it also has half the hit points of any of the 5 star options, so that doesn’t really help it one bit. It has Keen Sight and Smell (which would give it a passive Perception of 20), a fly speed, and Flyby, which together with Dive Attack allows it to surpass the other steeds in damage, but it is also Medium which makes it do a shabby job at being a mount except for Small creatures.

Dire Wolf (★★★☆☆) 

We have arrived at creatures which are stuck on the ground… which is sad. None of these mounts are awful, but the dire wolves’ damage kinda sucks compared to the others.

Rhinoceros (★★★☆☆)

This is landwalker number two, better damage this time, but nothing special.

Saber-toothed Tiger (★★★☆☆)

We finish off with a blast of the past, everyone’s favorite character from Ice Age, and the best option among the steeds that are stuck on the ground. This tiger has a nice amount of hit points, Keen Smell (for 18 passive Perception), and proficiency in Stealth.

As with familiars, there are many ways to increase the survivability of your mount. The big one being barding, which can allow you to increase the AC of what is otherwise quite an easy to hit creature. Keep in mind that the cost of this armor is four times the equivalent armor made for humanoids, and it weighs twice as much, but at least the weight should be quite doable for most mounts with their high carrying capacity.

For more information on how to make sure your summons don’t get insta-gibbed, check out the section on survivability in our find familiar guide here.

Both find steed and find greater steed are staple D&D 5E spells which, while popular, aren’t well explored within the community. We are big fans of the spells, showing off find greater steed in both our article on wish and Magical Secrets for Bards, and picking the spells in a variety of our builds.

We hope that by showing both the intricacies of these spells and common inquiries surrounding their usage, we’ve equipped you with the required knowledge to use mounts more effectively. 

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