It takes progressively more time and energy to gain altitude the more of it you already have. There are some birds that can only fly a few meters above the ground - famously chickens and peacocks can fly up into a tree but can usually be held in an open topped courtyard by a wall that's 4-5 meters tall.Thaluikhain wrote:Surely that's because they don't have any reason to, though, and would fly higher if they (or their riders) were aware of arrows likely to come up at them?FrankTrollman wrote:Another thing to remember is that while migratory birds can fly at high altitude, most birds fly at lower than 150 meters.
Putting a really low ceiling would help game balance immensely, but (excepting the Underdark), would seem hard to justify in universe.
The question then is why you would think that a winged horse with an armored rider would be able to fly like a goose and not like a pheasant. From a realizarm standpoint, obviously a winged horse shouldn't be able to fly at all, but obviously it should be able to fly from a "rule of cool" standpoint. Still, that argument doesn't specifically make a case for it being able to ascend like a vulture and hover like a hummingbird. It would be completely cromulent for it to make short, fast, low altitude flights like a finch. Or flocking and swooping at 80 meters like a crow.
The core issue is that there's no particular reason that flying monsters should be able to fly higher than archers can shoot. And for the purposes of a Mass Battle game the general rule that archers can fire upon flyers makes sense and is much better for game balance than assuming that Doom Bats can drop bombs from 6000 meters or whatever.
And the second thing to remember is that there's already a totally mundane non-fantasy military unit that uses archery and mobility to stay out of melee range. It's called the Horse Archer. And it's genuinely incredibly devastating to infantry not backed up by high quality archery of its own. There's no reason for Manticores to be the equivalent of World War 2 fighters and bombers, because if their maximum altitude is similar to that of bees they can be worked into a war framework that still has room for swordsmen.
-Username17