During mounted combat, I understand there are two possible options:
- You can control your mount, in which case your mount cannot make an
attack, or - You can opt to leave it independent (and controlled by the DM) in which case it can attack, but may do things you don't expect.
The text of find greater steed contains this excerpt:
Your steed serves you as a mount, both in combat and out, and you have an instinctive bond with it that allows you to fight as a seamless unit.
Does this phrase imply that there is some special way to control the steed beyond the above two normal options for mounts? Are steeds summoned in this way special in regards to the control rules, or is that just flavor text? It seems to me that an independent mount which can take actions that I cannot predict is not fighting as a seamless unit with me. Am I misunderstanding something?
The question here certainly provides an answer, but it's not satisfying since it assumes that the mount has to use one of the two above options and does not consider that there may be alternatives.
Best Answer
Yes, the summoned mount follows the normal rules for mounts
Per the description of find greater steed:
As you said, mounts can be handled in one of two ways: you can control the mount or you can allow it to act independently (per the rules for mounted combat):
The summoned steed is a mount and thus follows this rule unless something else says otherwise. The spell actually says:
Which means that you have full control over the animal if you wish. Jeremy Crawford says that you can even choose to let it act independently if you wanted:
There are no other passages from the spell dealing with control of the steed and certainly nothing that would imply a special method of control that was unique to your summoned steed. Remember, spells do only what they say they do. There are no secret rules. If there was some special method for controlling the steed, the spell would say so and detail how it worked.
So, the spell grants no special control method for summoned steeds.
There is also nothing in the description of find greater steed that has any friction or conflicts with the normal rules for mounted combat.
Only find steed says anything about fighting as a seamless unit
Contrary to your question, only find steed has the following passage:
The only thing like it that find greater steed says is the quote about controlling the mount which I quoted above.
However, even if that text was in find greater steed, fighting as a seamless unit is exactly what the controlled mount option is. Controlled mounts normally have to be special creatures that were trained to accept a rider.
Jeremy Crawford has clarified and made it clear what that passage was intended to mean:
Your bond with your steed allows you to fight as a single unit with it (controlled), but "allows" does not mean that you always have to be fighting as a single unit. Hence you can still have the mount act independently and be two individual fighters as opposed to (essentially) one.
Regardless, the conclusions for find steed are the same as for find greater steed: they follow the normal rules for mounts.
The mount only acts "randomly" if you let it act independently
You control the mount when you want to. When you control it, it doesn't act randomly. If you don't want the mount to act in a way that you as a player don't control, then you should choose to always control it. However, it is worth noting that even when the DM is controlling the creature, it is not going to be acting randomly. It is still going to act according to it's intelligence and what its and possible your best interest.
Having a summoned steed has plenty of benefits over a normal horse
The spell itself grants many advantages to using the spell to summon a steed as opposed to buying a horse:
The first bullet alone is huge for spellcasting and allows for some really neat synergy in battle. But as a whole the summoned steed is unambiguously better than mounts you can find or buy.
Form matters a lot
Not only do the mounts here have better stats than a common horse, some of them have flight which is a huge benefit in many cases. Having at-will flight is so good it is often seen as being over-powered and ways to get it are very limited.
Not only that, but the cosmetics matter. Being able to choose the form of your steed is an advantage in and of itself. Where else are you going to find a tame saber-toothed tiger to ride? Or a rhinoceros?