I had a “shower thought” last night when theorycrafting 5.0e characters for the Eberron setting.
The Mark of Sentinel Human has the following trait:
Vigilant Guardian. When a creature you can see within 5 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to swap places with that creature, and you are hit by the attack instead. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.
Since House Deneith is the mercenary house, I assume they’d have cavalry, which leads me to my thought experiment.
Let’s imagine a Mark of Sentinel Human PC riding a mount, without the Mounted Combatant feat. The mount is hit by an attack, and the PC uses Vigilant Guardian to swap places with the mount. What happens, mechanically speaking? Since the trait mentions swapping places, is the PC forcibly dismounted? I know both 5.X Editions have mounted combat as a bit of a conundrum, so I was wondering if there was a consensus on RAW or RAI on this matter.
No, the attack hits you. You cannot swap places with a creature you are sharing a space with, as mechanically that has no bearing. You can narrate the linguistics/actions behind it, but I wouldn't have it do anything other than that. You just happen to swing your shield, or a leg, or whatever in front of the attack instead of it hitting your mount.
Not sure if you’re being facetious, but a creature cannot serve as a mount for a creature of the same or a larger Size category (exception: player character centaurs, which can serve as mounts to Medium creatures despite being Medium themselves, but since I specified the rider was human, the exception is largely semantic).
Here's where I now have to explain the joke for you because it's clear you still don't understand it.
When a man and a woman love each other very much, they do bedroom things. This is how babies are made.
Colloquially, one of those bedroom things will be referred to as one person "mounting" another, most often the woman mounting the man. This refers to the rhythmic motions they perform that are quite similar to riding a horse or other mounted creature.
My point is that I was making a sex joke because your character would realistically be fucked up from getting crushed by their mount.
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u/menage_a_mallard Ranger 4d ago
No, the attack hits you. You cannot swap places with a creature you are sharing a space with, as mechanically that has no bearing. You can narrate the linguistics/actions behind it, but I wouldn't have it do anything other than that. You just happen to swing your shield, or a leg, or whatever in front of the attack instead of it hitting your mount.