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[JoshuaFH]

Fine, seatbelts then.

[Neonivek]

Fine, seatbelts then.

You would have to put a seat on that creature.

[JoshuaFH]

Those chairs menace with spikes for a reason damnit!

[CobaltKobold]

i'd say up at the neck with legs hooked under the wings where they meet the body, or some sort of saddle that you can grip with your legs. that goes around th neck and loops around the body behind and in front of the wings. though control might be a problem.

Wouldn't giant bird riding be better with a sort of laying position? You could be laying on birds back, between the wings, in some sort of harness armed with a crossbow.
Smaller air resistance, better weight distribution and less risk of falling down. Imagine eagle with a backpack, where the flyer lays down. Once the bird lands, it will be upright, so you could slide of to your feet. I think shooting would be easier too, as most birds keep their head at level or pointed down.

Where are you going to brace the crossbow though? A lot of them have quite a kick.

If you lie on the back of the bird, you could fire it against your shoulder much like modern firearms. loading may require a crossbow with one of those crank box type loaders, unless you are able to turn your back against the bird.

windlass?
Anyway, stirrups would help you brace, if you weren't strapped in in the first place.

[Typoman]

Maybe we can have saddles to make it easier?

i'd say up at the neck with legs hooked under the wings where they meet the body, or some sort of saddle that you can grip with your legs. that goes around th neck and loops around the body behind and in front of the wings. though control might be a problem.

Wouldn't giant bird riding be better with a sort of laying position? You could be laying on birds back, between the wings, in some sort of harness armed with a crossbow.
Smaller air resistance, better weight distribution and less risk of falling down. Imagine eagle with a backpack, where the flyer lays down. Once the bird lands, it will be upright, so you could slide of to your feet. I think shooting would be easier too, as most birds keep their head at level or pointed down.

Where are you going to brace the crossbow though? A lot of them have quite a kick.

If you lie on the back of the bird, you could fire it against your shoulder much like modern firearms. loading may require a crossbow with one of those crank box type loaders, unless you are able to turn your back against the bird.

windlass?
Anyway, stirrups would help you brace, if you weren't strapped in in the first place.
[/quote]

to these 1 elves use bows not crossbows 2 my whole idea was a saddle

[Quatch]

Nono, THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VklTs-Tid_I is the youtube video to prep for giant eagles.

Be warned, if you like goats...

[Shoku]

Watching it carry that to it's nest gave me a different expectation for how much they can carry.

Laying down and bracing a crossbow against your hips or shoulder would still be dangerous though. The point of bracing various firing weapons against solid parts of your body is to distribute the force evenly (impact force is much nasty because the gun gets to build up velocity and then transfer it through whatever point it comes into contact with first,) but I still picture this more like sitting on top of a hang glider than on a horse.

Bound down onto the bird should be steady enough and the recoil isn't so extreme that it would take the bird into barrel rolls or anything but it does wreck the epic feel of that little story we were fed before we started puking up all of this eagle talk.

[Neonivek]

Gameplay wise this gives us two-four mechanics for people ontop of mounts.
1) Natural Aim difficulty for attacking while on mounts
2) Bodyplacement for mounting, hands required
3) Movement alterations for body placement
4) Chance movements (moving the mount in specific ways to improve aiming but little else)

maybe more

[Mandaril]

Gameplay wise this gives us two-four mechanics for people ontop of mounts.
1) Natural Aim difficulty for attacking while on mounts
2) Bodyplacement for mounting, hands required
3) Movement alterations for body placement
4) Chance movements (moving the mount in specific ways to improve aiming but little else)

maybe more

1)If I'm moving with mount, it doesn't mean automatically that it's harder to aim than when standing still. If I'm in a car and have to shoot someone from inside the car, it'll be fairly easy if I can stand trough the roofhole & car is going towards the person. It may actually be easier since there's some support for my hands to lie on. Besides even if it's bit harder with training that "on mount" -handicap could be negated completely. Besides not all mounts are like horses - jumpy and unsteady.

2)As in, you can't use hands while mounted? Nah you don't really need that. Like I said earlier, not all mounts are unsteady and jumpy. And you can very well hold yourself on horse with legs alons. No "hands needed" requirement for mounting, please.

The points of 3-4 are bit odd, but overall, the idea of "mounting handicaps" does not really sound good to me.

[Saber Cherry]

Gameplay wise this gives us two-four mechanics for people ontop of mounts.
1) Natural Aim difficulty for attacking while on mounts
2) Bodyplacement for mounting, hands required
3) Movement alterations for body placement
4) Chance movements (moving the mount in specific ways to improve aiming but little else)

maybe more

1)If I'm moving with mount, it doesn't mean automatically that it's harder to aim than when standing still. If I'm in a car and have to shoot someone from inside the car, it'll be fairly easy if I can stand trough the roofhole & car is going towards the person. It may actually be easier since there's some support for my hands to lie on. Besides even if it's bit harder with training that "on mount" -handicap could be negated completely. Besides not all mounts are like horses - jumpy and unsteady.

2)As in, you can't use hands while mounted? Nah you don't really need that. Like I said earlier, not all mounts are unsteady and jumpy. And you can very well hold yourself on horse with legs alons. No "hands needed" requirement for mounting, please.

The points of 3-4 are bit odd, but overall, the idea of "mounting handicaps" does not really sound good to me.

A legendary mounter might not have handicaps, but a dabbling mounter certainly would.  Not everyone can mount successfully on their first try, let alone do so hands-free! 

But enough innuendo...  more to the point, firing while mounted is much more difficult than stationary, and I challenge you to find a counter-example - some animal that improves its riders' performance in archery competitions, compared to being on foot.  Even modern cars with shock-absorbing suspensions and wheeled locomotion (as opposed to n-pedal) on modern smooth roads, when going straight rather than maneuvering as in combat, are still going to mess up your aim!  The vibrations, airspeed, parallax, and just generally more complicated dynamic projectile ballistics all conspire to make it really hard.  Add in moving evasively on a rough battlefield and using a relatively slow projectile, and it becomes a nightmare even if the mount is docile - which it won't be, after adorning its flanks with a couple hostile shafts.

Shooting while moving is inherently more difficult even under ideal circumstances with a perfect mount.  No mount is perfect, and combat circumstances are rarely ideal.

[Shoku]

Gameplay wise this gives us two-four mechanics for people ontop of mounts.
1) Natural Aim difficulty for attacking while on mounts
2) Bodyplacement for mounting, hands required
3) Movement alterations for body placement
4) Chance movements (moving the mount in specific ways to improve aiming but little else)

maybe more

1)If I'm moving with mount, it doesn't mean automatically that it's harder to aim than when standing still. If I'm in a car and have to shoot someone from inside the car, it'll be fairly easy if I can stand trough the roofhole & car is going towards the person. It may actually be easier since there's some support for my hands to lie on. Besides even if it's bit harder with training that "on mount" -handicap could be negated completely. Besides not all mounts are like horses - jumpy and unsteady.

2)As in, you can't use hands while mounted? Nah you don't really need that. Like I said earlier, not all mounts are unsteady and jumpy. And you can very well hold yourself on horse with legs alons. No "hands needed" requirement for mounting, please.

The points of 3-4 are bit odd, but overall, the idea of "mounting handicaps" does not really sound good to me.

What kind of an example is that? People shooting from a car don't usually aim so much as try to throw out a line of bullets.

[Mandaril]

What kind of an example is that? People shooting from a car don't usually aim so much as try to throw out a line of bullets.

Oh yeah, I forgot outside my country assault rifles and such weapons are everyday life. Here no-one outside army or police has other guns than single shot handguns & hunting rifles.

The point was, I don't think it's a good idea to assume that all mounts make aiming harder. Who knows if some animal is very smooth in movement? Birds gliding for example. *points at Giant Eagle mounts* It's a very simple task to aim then. Or a mount that is stationary. I may agree that a mount that moves may make it harder simply because of movement, but a mount that is NOT moving is equal to standing still without mount.

But if you go and make mounts have archery penalty, then there better be one for shooting at targets which are moving. It's the VERY same thing

[Footkerchief]

The point was, I don't think it's a good idea to assume that all mounts make aiming harder. Who knows if some animal is very smooth in movement? Birds gliding for example. *points at Giant Eagle mounts* It's a very simple task to aim then.

If that eagle's moving, yes, it's going to be harder, because the arrow has momentum in the direction of the eagle's flight.  This requires the archer to aim their shot in a way that your typical archer has absolutely no familiarity with.  This can also result in sideways drag on the missile, which could do who knows what do its aerodynamics.   So aiming from a moving platform generally requires you to take extra factors into account.  Additionally, the more sharply downward you aim, the smaller the silhouette of a given humanoid becomes.

[Neruz]

Shooting while moving is always harder than shooting while stationary.

Shooting while on a flying Eagle, assuming it's gliding, is probably substantially easier than shooting on a galloping horse (and the Mongols showed us how dangerous horse archers can be), but its still harder than doing it while standing still.

And if the Eagle is flapping to gain height, you've got no chance at all of getting a straight shot.

[CobaltKobold]

I'd think you'd do a divebomb run- add momentum.