virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1204848322[/unixtime]]
Except that you don't have to just plain drop. You can just grab a hefty rock that you could throw, dive and release.
Still unless you've got something like a flying giant, it can't exactly throw giant boulders or anything. And you can just rule that ranged attacks from flight dont' work so well.
Imps and mephits very much do have ranged attacks, because of that thing called hands, much like harpies & sprites (of various types), another one you conveniently forgot about.
Only these races don't have much in the way of technology, so their melee weapons tend to be clubs and the like. And again, a rule preventing ranged attacks while in the air would fix all those problems. you need it for the pegasus archer, so might as well apply it across the baord to everything wtih hands.
Arrowhawk, gargoyle*, succubus, genies*, ghost* (those with TK and those with bows), certain half-fiends, ogre mage * (oni and miscellaneous eastern demons), ravid (stay out of reach while the environment attacks is equivalent to ranged attacks), vampires* (D&D vamps can still use dominate while in cloud form, and other types of vampires in myth can fly in human form, and spider climbing w/shifting works too), ythark
Gargoyles don't really use weapons, at least not the conventional gargoyle monster. Again, preventing concentration abilities while flying kind of handles the SLA based guys.
As far as the arrowhawk and the Ythark, they were just obscure monsters that I pretty much forgot about entirely. Don't think I've ever used them in a campaign before or ever fought one. But I suppose they technically count as core ranged + flight monsters even though they're very obscure.
Even in your appreciation for 4E, we have the spined devil. A level 6 flying monster with a ranged attack. So obviously they're still making monsters do things drastically before the PCs (which was the point of this thread I believe).
Well hopefully they don't allow flight + ranged. I mean, there may be some rule preventing that. In the new DDM, you actually can't fly inbetween rounds. flight all has to happen in your round then you land again.
And, like it or not, it is an established archetype for there to be archers on flying mounts. It's not a fact that they are stupid, it's your opinion, and one I disagree with. *I* would rather see the stupid swordsman be removed rather than the archer with flight, since those two cannot work together (though a smart swordsman can).
I'd prefer the heroic archetype kept and the guy who exists solely to cheese people out and kite them be removed. I always like flying mounts to be ultra rare and something you get for like one adventure or something, then they go away, at least until you're epic.
You speak of the vaulted ceilings as being more common than the 10' tall ones, and not dependent. Even then, we're going to have climbers & people standing in doorways partway up the wall on another level, all using ranged attacks; screwing the stupid swordsman as readily as a flier.
Well nothing stopping a swordsman from climbing.
This seems like a contradiction in your general attitude throughout this thread. When we have the archetype evolve to include new abilities & it's still the archetype, then that ability isn't something that breaks the archetype; thus having flight enter the scene at an earlier level wouldn't harm your 'archetype'.
Well yeah it would. Because I want a game about heroic fantasy and I want a place for classical fantasy as well as superheroic fantasy. I'd play Mutants and Masterminds or BESM if I wanted to play superman from low level on.
Flight comes WAY too early.
While there's a place for high powered fantasy where the PCs are fighting gods, flying about like dragons and the like, it isn't 5th level, that sounds high or epic level to me.
Seriously, huh?
