Creating companion magic item that grants feat to hero
 

Hello. I am trying to create a magic item for an animal companion that does the following...

This ornate military saddle, tooled with an elaborate equine motif, grants the mount’s rider a +5 competence bonus on Ride checks and the benefit of the Mounted Combat feat. If the rider already has the Mounted Combat feat, she instead gains the benefits of Ride-by Attack feat. In addition, the mount gains a +5 competence bonus on Acrobatics checks and the benefits of any teamwork feats possessed by its rider.

My problem is two-fold.

First, how do I grant the feats to the hero (rider), and not to the animal companion to which the magic item is equipped. "...grants the mount's rider...the benefit of the Mounted Combat feat"

Second, how do I write an eval script for "If the rider already has the Mounted Combat feat, she instead gains the benefits of Ride-by Attack feat."

You can't set up a bootstrap on one character that is generated from another character. I'd create an adjustment that the rider can add that grants them the feat (and a second adjustment that requires mounted combat and grants ride-by).


It is possible to have a bootstrap permanently on EVERY character using a Mechanic pick, and then set up the live state of that bootstrap to check for a Custom.XXXXX tag assigned by the minion, but that requires extra copies of Mounted Combat and Ride-by-attack on every single character, just in case the minion of one of them adds an ornate military saddle - much simpler to just create the adjustments - I really don't feel this is worth it.

Thank you Mathias