One thing it seems hasn't even been touched on anywhere in Edge of the Empire that I've noticed is the subject of riding mount animals.

We see this in the films, with dewbacks and varactyls, the underwater things they ride on Kamino, and it seems like a very common part of the culture of the Star Wars galaxy. I especially liked The Clone Wars' episodes with the big flying mounts on Onderon.

If there IS stuff on mounts in any of the books, I have missed it but would love to have it pointed out so I can check it out!

Has anyone featured mounts in their campaigns at all? I imagine Piloting (Planetary) would probably be the relevant skill.

How does it differ from speeders? Obi-Wan was able to keep up with Grevious' wheel bike riding on his varactyl. Do you just assign a max speed and handling to the beast and do it basically the same?

I believe the book mentions that you actually use Survival when dealing (and "piloting"/riding) with beast mounts. There are more than a few animal stats out there, so you'd pretty much go off of that for stats when riding them - I'd imagine movement speed, at least for most mounts, wouldn't exceed 1.

If I remember correctly, the Dewback says something about adding a Setback die to Survival Checks when using it as a mount.

In my games I use the vehicle rules for mounts, using Survival instead of Piloting, and adding a Handling stat (positive or negative depending on how easy or difficult the beast is to control), which adds Boosts or Setbacks just like vehicles. (So the Dewback would have Handling -1)

Setback for Ranged attacks from a mount but Bonus die for Melee attacks? Perhaps even +2 damage to Melee attacks if performed after a Maneuver? How would you incorporate the Survival skill into affecting those bonuses? As in, a skilled handler should gain advantage upon a mount in melee combat, but perhaps an unskilled one shouldn't. Perhaps treat the mount like any vehicle, but adjust the pilot actions to make sense for a mount:

Damage Control becomes Calm Mount. Used to calm a frightened mount or to remove Setback die caused by an animal's negative handling (see Grimmshade's post) before taking a subsequent ranged attack. A.i. a mount of handling -1 gives 1 Setback to ranged attacks while mounted. The Calm Mount action using your Survival check can remove that Setback when taking a shot the next round.

Gain the Advantage becomes Charge with a bonus on the following round's melee attack. Not sure how to mechanically make this work since the target would probably just run away from the charge during their action. The attack would gain a bonus depending on the Charge action - success equals a bonus to attack, failure means a setback. Advantage can be converted into bonus melee damage on a successful subsequent attack.

We use mounts occasionally in our game. How our GM has done it so far and has worked well for us is...

Survival for riding

Boost die for each rank of Hunter

Allowed to use Outdoorsman for removing setback

Setback added to Ranged attacks (amount depending on mount)

In the scenes that we have used this, it really was fun to see our kick butt pilot have issues with the mount and the survivalist hop on and give chase without much effort.

We use mounts occasionally in our game. How our GM has done it so far and has worked well for us is...

Survival for riding

Boost die for each rank of Hunter

Allowed to use Outdoorsman for removing setback

Setback added to Ranged attacks (amount depending on mount)

In the scenes that we have used this, it really was fun to see our kick butt pilot have issues with the mount and the survivalist hop on and give chase without much effort.

This is excellent. I'll have to remember this for when it comes up in my campaign.

wouldn't it be pilot planetary for riding something?

wouldn't it be pilot planetary for riding something?

By RAW I think it is that way. He wanted to do it his way to allow the Survivalist spent XP be important and our Pilot thought it made more sense that way. There are 100s of other vehicles covered by Pilot (Planetary) that he will be able to drive better than the Survivalist. He could suck it up.

According to the CRB, Survival is the skill used for riding. Although the basic rules provided are mostly for an untrained mount. This is about the extent of the rules as they stand so far, although the Age of Rebellion Beta book included a Dewback, and indicated that Survival is the skill used ride beasts.