I got up one day and thought “okay, I need to prove that all of the problems I see with mounted combat are actually problems,” so I took the only subclass that’s even nominally about mounted combat (the Cavalier Fighter) and I wrote a handbook for it. I accidentally enjoyed myself, and I think you might, too.
Along the way, I did discover some interesting rough edges in the game related to mounted combat. For example: You can’t afford a warhorse until around level 5, warhorses cost twice as much elephants for some reason, the optimal cost/benefit pairing for mounts is actually a mule, barding is an expensive and largely useless item, and small races are objectively better jockeys than medium races in a way that medium races really can’t overcome.
