3.5E caused your own problems with flight.

[RandomCasualty]

All that still avoids the fundamental question.

What good does flying bring to the game?

Why have flying PCs at all?

[Neeek]

Seriously guys, what is the advantage of flying again?

Well, you listed a few of them:

1114366135[/unixtime]] There's so many plot ideas that utterly get tossed out the window when everyone can fly.

It can be as simple as the rickety bridge over the chasm to having to navigate the deep dark forest.

Not to mention as stated earlier, terrain just goes out the window. Flyers don't worry about cover or any of that crap they just exist in the featureless void of being airborne.


Random encounters and bandits and all practically don't exist, because you can just fly over em.

Most of the plots that go out the window, frankly, suck. They're boring, trite and have been done to death. And you can still do them at low levels without any problems. Flying opens up as many plots as it eliminates(I would say more, but since both are literally infinite, the distinction is irrelevant), and allows for much more epically scaled campaigns, since you can actually get from point A to point B without worrying about being attacked on the way.

And at the same levels you are able to fly, creating terrain in the air is certainly possible.

[User3]

Hi, I've been reading these boards for a little while and decided to start replying to topics. (Very nice boards, by the way, Mr. Fbmf.)

1114364490[/unixtime]]And, of course, it bears mentioning that a lot of modern fantasy--relayed through comic books and cartoons as such--is chock-full of "flying archers."

While one could certainly hold his or her nose high in the air, sniffle, and then declare that only fantasy novels count, that would be a very, very cheap way of trying to sidestep the prevalence of flying fantasy characters with ranged attacks.

Well, yeah, it is true that it is somewhat "cheap" to dismiss fantasy comic books altogether.

However, some people might argue that D&D origionally wasn't intended for that sort of audience, it was directed towards audiences that read more traditional forms of literature. (I'm not myself sure whether that arguement is true or not.) So while comic-book type fantasy might be a perfectly legitimate form of fantasy, D&D was meant for book readers, so the game stlye shouldn't be changed in order to appease comic fans if that's going to change the nature of the game from what people have always bought if for. Personally I still prefer D&D games with Tolkienesque races to games featuring "Cat Girl" and "Fox Man" player characters.

I do agree with the notion that flying is a little bit too ubiquitous at higher levels. Flying is just too frequent in higher level games. Sometimes you want to run a campaign that has lots of flying adventures, but sometimes you want a campaing that has only a few flying adventures, and sometimes you want a campaign with almost no flying adventures. The campaign that's all about adventurers that fly around on their magic carpet is fine, but the campaign that focuses more on the adventurers and the magical golem that serves them instead should be just as possible. I think that flying is fine as an option, but it shouldn't be a necessary part of the D&D experience. Perseus flew around a lot, Ulysses didn't. The game should allow you to to play through Ulysses's adventures just like it will let you play through Persues's adventures.

As for trying to acheive this by trying to make it more difficult for character to use ranged attacks when flying, well I'm afraid that idea is all washed up. How can you rule that an archer can shoot just fine from horseback when he's galloping over rough terrain, but when he's riding a hippogriff through the air firing his bow becomes inexpliciably more difficult? Penalizing characters because they're in the air instead of on the ground just doesn't make a bloody lick of sense.

[Username17]

However, some people might argue that D&D origionally wasn't intended for that sort of audience, it was directed towards audiences that read more traditional forms of literature.

Well, I'm going to take issue with your use of the word "traditional". The Tolkinian and Howardian fantasy that you seem to be referencing as "traditional" only goes back to the 1930s. And while that's before the birth of the vast majority of the people reading these boards, that's still not very long ago in terms of fantasy tradition.

The flying archer heroes I mentioned earlier: Aladdin, Belepheron, Perseus... these guys were chosen for a reason. That reason is that these guys have stories which are over a thousand years old!

D&D has a lot of "recent" monsters built into it. The Displacer Beast is less than 80 years old, the Mind Flayer likewise. But a lot of the creatures are hundreds or thousands of years old, the Peryton, the Manticore, the Dragon, the Gryphon, the Chimera, the Pegasus, the Minotaur... these are guys who date back a long long time.

The monsters in D&D are manifestly based on legendary creatures from a damned long time ago to a very great extent. And these creatures often correspond to the famous heroes who interacted with them in stories. And a damned lot of those people were flying archers!

The Pegasus exists so that people can ride on its back and shoot arrows at monsters. That's what it is for. It corresponds to a single specific creature which served that exclusive purpose in the original legend.

-Username17

[erik]

1114369136[/unixtime]]All that still avoids the fundamental question.

What good does flying bring to the game?

Why have flying PCs at all?

Since people have already answered these questions, it really becomes tedious to read them again.

Flight isn't fantasy, it's reality. It must be included as much as walking must.

In combat, flight is mechanically identical to simply being out of reach of melee, and this condition can be achieved without flight anyway.

Well, just because you can fly doesn't actually mean you have to be able to attack while flying

Yes, yes it does. If you can fly, and you can carry something, then you can drop it, and harm whatever it falls upon. This is so frickin simple that it's insulting to have to even respond to it.

If flight exists, then there can be flying combatants.
If ranged combat also exists, then there can be flying ranged combatants.

It doesn't matter that there are examples of heroes not flying. Boo hoo. Conan doesn't cast spells either, but that doesn't negate magic spells from being included in the rules.

In LotR the characters aren't flying around often (barring eagles, nazgul, dragons), but they aren't often doing anything fantasical. Much of what they do is fairly mundane. And there are plenty of low-level fantasy things that they never do. They aren't polymorphing or healing wounds with a simple touch, they aren't spiderclimbing, rope tricking, or summoning outsiders.

The idea is to have D&D be able to do cool stuff that is seen in fantasy, and not just a pathetically limited scope of fantasy either. If you wanted to play a low power game where options aren't available, then that's your low level game. It doesn't forbid the rules from allowing high-level play. When discussing what the rules should allow, then the discussion is going to cover all levels of play.

The rules cover play all the way up to nigh-godhood. And being able to fly had best be covered in that spectrum.


So far, your only tenable point has been that the rules don't allow for good use of the 3rd dimension. And that's something we can all agree upon anyway.

You can make the weak argument that flight should be only accessible by humanoids at a slightly higher level, but this 'flight is the devil' crap has got to stop.

[Oberoni]

1114376279[/unixtime]]However, some people might argue that D&D origionally wasn't intended for that sort of audience, it was directed towards audiences that read more traditional forms of literature. (I'm not myself sure whether that arguement is true or not.) So while comic-book type fantasy might be a perfectly legitimate form of fantasy, D&D was meant for book readers, so the game stlye shouldn't be changed in order to appease comic fans if that's going to change the nature of the game from what people have always bought if for. Personally I still prefer D&D games with Tolkienesque races to games featuring "Cat Girl" and "Fox Man" player characters.

Well, see Frank's response, prior to this.

However, I will also (strongly) argue that D&D, like any form of entertainment ever, needs to change with the times. Not just rules-wise, but flavor-wise as well.

Does that mean I want it to become a supers game? No, of course not! However, it does mean that I (and, moreso, a lot of the kids that are in their middle and late teens) am quite comfortable with heroes that can fly. Peter Pan can do it, Starfire can do it, and so can my wizard. Good times.

--------------------

Even if I hated flight, I'm pretty sure it would be nearly impossible to remove from D&D. In order to do so, you'd have to kick out:

1. All magic that directly allows flight.
2. All shapechanging magic.
3. All flying monsters.
4. The ability to create technology that allows flight or gliding.

And probably some other stuff, too. I see it as a fool's errand, so I'd rather just deal with it.

[User3]

If you don't want to allow PC flight, just ban the spells, don't give out the items, and don't let the PCs near any trainable flying creatures.

Hell, there have been campaigns where I've banned over half of the powers in the psionics handbook for flavor reasons alone, and then banned about 1/2 of the spells in the PHB for the same reasons. You don't need a balance reason to dissalow something.

But just because you don't want flight doesn't mean you should go and ruin things for everyone else.

So just run your campaign right, and/or keep it at low levels.

[PhoneLobster]

Personally I still prefer D&D games with Tolkienesque races to games featuring "Cat Girl" and "Fox Man" player characters.

Restricting yourself to the Dread Lord Tolkien as your one true fantasy master means limiting yourself in more ways than you might think.

A little bird whispers in my ear that Tolkien utterly despised the concept of fiaries for instance. He felt that Shakespears depiction of them as small puckish fey critters was "unforgivable". So no fairies, and probably no Shakespear referrences allowed.

Not to mention all the various things that appear in D&D that are totally NOT tolien. Wizards and Clerics (certainly as D&D knows them) for one, flying carpets and greek monsters for another.

Indeed restrict yourself to Tolkien and you even end up with a frighteningly racist/sexist subtext where basically all the heroes are automatically limited to being white males.

(never forget that when you worship at the alter of Tolkien you keep company like these fellows... [counturl=13]over here[/counturl])

Making Tolkien the arbiter of D&D is like deciding to eat nothing but dry flavourless bran flakes for the rest of your life and simultaneously dressing up as a "ghost" ala Cartman from south park.

There are a lot more limitations sticking to Tolkien cannon bring in, but thats more than enough.

[Wrenfield]

For those of you who abhor the 3.5 flying rules and flavor, you can still use flying concepts, just modify its game mechanics to simulate gliding or limited-maneuverability flying. Such game tweakage may introduce another level of tactical complexity and rules ajudicating, but it may be worth it to retain flight without letting its massive game-altering effects make certain combats so one-sided.

Does anybody have any gliding or lower-maneuverability rule sets that could lend this alteration to less-abuseable play?

[Murtak]

It can be as simple as the rickety bridge over the chasm to having to navigate the deep dark forest.

Yep. Of course it does open up navigating windswept mountains or flying cities, so it is not about losing options - the options just change.

Not to mention as stated earlier, terrain just goes out the window. Flyers don't worry about cover or any of that crap they just exist in the featureless void of being airborne.

Whoa, wait a second there. How do fliers ignore cover? Ground-based terrain, yes. But cover?

I mean at that point you might as well just have no walking form of movement and just say everything flies. I mean who gives a fvck if the PCs are playing superman and wonder woman, then your dire bears might as well be super bear too. And your bears need to be if the want to compete.

Or they need to live in caves. Those giant prehistoric cave bears lived in caves too, which was probably the only reason they ever got to eat a caveman instead of getting slaughtered without putting up a fight. Big target + not faster then opponent + open terrain = death. Flying takes it one step further then mounted archery, but that is all that happens.

You've forced three dimensional combat on a system designed for two

Yep. This is not a fault of flying however, but the fault of a system based on two dimensions. Which, I might add, already has problems handling elevations, much less actual 3-dimensional dungeons.

you've totally eliminated terrain, and you've turned every character into superman. Random encounters and bandits and all practically don't exist, because you can just fly over em. By making flight common, you eliminate ground movement, and ground movement is by far the more fun and interesting of the two. That's the kind of movement that takes you past the old graveyard, or allows for you to meet the halfling traders on the way. In the air you either get attacked by a Roc or dragon or you get to your destination. And either way it's boring as hell. Doesn't matter what terrain you're travelling over, you're fvcking superman.

So you have a world in which everyone above, say level 7 can fly. And what does that mean? That means that there are going to be flying castles, griffon-mounted highwaymen, rogue wind mages or fly-dispelling spirits. Why the heck would a sky in world where everyone can fly be featureless? Oh, you would also get underground civilations, simply to negate the flight advantage of the more magically inclined races. All you need to do when you give fly to everyone is to actually give fly to the NPCs too, and of course to have everyone be aware of the fact that everyone can in fact fly.

I look at all the things that you have to give up in order to have common flight

That amounts to a total of: a 2-dimensional playmat.

and I look at the benefits. When you add it up, there just damn well aren't any benefits to common flying. It doesn't make the game any more fun and I'm ok with not allowing concepts that require flying because they're just flat out not compatible with ground concepts, and there are a heck of a lot more ground concepts than flying ones.

Seriously guys, what is the advantage of flying again?

Getting to have a world that is actually different from ours in some ways beyond people having more firepower on an individual scale? A world where dwarfs and humans live underground because of flying gnome marauder tribes? Where halflings live in the forests? Where elves build flying cities and pirates use skyships and griffons instead of ships? Where the orc mystics are feared because of their flight-dispelling spirit allies?

Is there anything wrong with this scenario?

[User3]

One reasonable way to cut down on flying in wide open spaces is to have your battles take place dramatically in...Storms!

Storms affect fliers long before ground-based characters, as well as making missile weapons much less effective. And if your players don't get the point, make the storm get worse. Or make it a lightning storm.

[User3]

1114380876[/unixtime]]Well, I'm going to take issue with your use of the word "traditional". The Tolkinian and Howardian fantasy that you seem to be referencing as "traditional" only goes back to the 1930s. And while that's before the birth of the vast majority of the people reading these boards, that's still not very long ago in terms of fantasy tradition.

Actually by traditional literature I meant more traditional forms of literature, ie books versus comics. Traditional literature is text with few pictures, comic books have lots of pictures with much less text. So comic book stories tend to be a lot flashier in a lot of ways, because they are more visual.

I certainly don't think that everything in D&D is or should be based on J R R Tolkien & company.

1114380876[/unixtime]]The flying archer heroes I mentioned earlier: Aladdin, Belepheron, Perseus... these guys were chosen for a reason. That reason is that these guys have stories which are over a thousand years old!

I do agree that flying archers are there in the source material D&D draws upon, and the game should absolutely allow them to be played. The problem is that D&D doesn't just allow characters to fly, it pretty much demands that they do. You're pretty much a sucker if your high level character doesn't have any way to fly.

The problem is, while there are a lot of flying heros in mythology and such, there are also a lot of heros who do [not fly around very often. Perseus and Belepheron flew on their adventures, but Ulysses and Jason didn't fly too much as far as I know. D&D tells you that you've got to play Perseus; there's no room for Ulysses because he doesn't fly.

In order to rectify this, you've got to come up with alternatives for characters who don't care about flying that are just as good as flying. Flying is actually really good, so giving up flying also has to somehow ensure that you'll get something else equally as good. Unfortunately, the game doesn't do this, and I'm not sure if its even feasible. I still think that it's worth a try though.

However, I will also (strongly) argue that D&D, like any form of entertainment ever, needs to change with the times. Not just rules-wise, but flavor-wise as well.

While that's certainly a valid point of view, a lot of people out there like more "classic" sorts of D&D games, and while they're happy to incorporate better rules, they don't necessarily want to change the flavor. Changing with the times is good and all, but I still want to retain things I liked about the original.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually by traditional literature I meant more traditional forms of literature, ie books versus comics. Traditional literature is text with few pictures, comic books have lots of pictures with much less text. So comic book stories tend to be a lot flashier in a lot of ways, because they are more visual.

Well here is someone who did their reading long after the demise of the good old days of prolific fantasy literature.

Sorry to point it out but "fantasy literature" is not a direct linear progression between Tolkien and Robert Jordan and they are not the only two fantasy authors ever to exist.

I call Moorcock and thereby with "traditional literature", literature on which parts of D&D were probably originally based no less, justify giant flying pink flamingo riding air borne knights.

Hawkmoon, woooh!

[User3]

1114399724[/unixtime]]
I call Moorcock and thereby with "traditional literature", literature on which parts of D&D were probably originally based no less, justify giant flying pink flamingo riding air borne knights.

In fact, the first three books of "Hawkmoon" were explicitly cited in the 1E DMG as an influential source.

I tend to agree with New Guy, though, on the substance, or at least on this part of the substance: Flight is right behind Polymorphing on the list of things that a 3E character really, really, really has to have if he doesn't want to suck. And that's dumb. Being The Guy Who Can Fly should be like being The Guy Who Can Turn Into A Dragon -- cool enough to be worth making a character point, not so astonishingly awesome you have to have it.

Now, that's a curable problem -- we can cure it by putting less emphasis on land-bound, non-missile-using monsters in outdoor encounters. (If you play almost your entire D&D career in a dungeon, you probably won't actually notice a problem, because having flight when your altitude ceiling is usually 10 feet or less off the ground isn't all that and a bag of chips.) And I really don't care if ordinary animals can't present a worthwhile challenge to intelligent and well-equipped characters. But being able to r0xx0r the Tarrasque if you catch it out in the open with a couple of hippogriff-mounted archers does bug me, although I'm pretty sure the solution isn't "ban flying".

--d.

[Josh_Kablack]

So far, your only tenable point has been that the rules don't allow for good use of the 3rd dimension. And that's something we can all agree upon anyway.

Agreed

You can make the weak argument that flight should be only accessible by humanoids at a slightly higher level, but this 'flight is the devil' crap has got to stop.

I'll gladly make that arguement.

I'll go out on a limb and say that flight should not be expected from PCs (The DM can still use plot device flight like airships or Gandalf's deus ex eagle) until at least 5th level (where Fly shows up on the spell list) instead of the 1st-3rd level where it's possible at now. I'll even go further out on a limb, and say that at whatever level flight is introduced to one class, pretty much everyone should get it within a few levels. Wizards really shouldn't have Fly for very long before paladins get pegasi or monks get to leap into the clouds. If you choose to make Fly available at 5th level, then by 14th level at the latest, everyone should be able to fly absolutely as much as they want to (or possibly negate flight as much as they want to instead). A 14th level guy no longer gets any XP for beating any number of guys with Fly, so that power really should not be a notable problem for any 14th level character.

4 full levels without flight is 20% of your expected adventuring career and an expected 50+ encounters, there's plenty of game to fit in there. I can see an argument for even pushing flight a little bit higher to fit in some other stuff or simulate certain types of fantasy.

But in order to do this, you need to implement all of the following:
flying mounts should be made more expensive or come with a steeper Ride requirement.
Flying animal companions, familiars, and summoned creatures should be restricted,
Certain magic items need to be made more expensive or removed,
Form-changing and size-changing magic needs to be more tightly restricted
Psuedo-flight spells like Levitate should be examined closely.

But being able to r0xx0r the Tarrasque if you catch it out in the open with a couple of hippogriff-mounted archers does bug me, although I'm pretty sure the solution isn't "ban flying".

Right. The solution is to give the Tarrasque ranged attack and an aerial manuever. Being the Godzilla fan I am, I suggest a city-length cone of radio-active fire and a jumping power-bomb tail spring move, but that's just a matter of taste.

[User3]

]

The thing is, that's not a problem with the game rules, that's a problem with the logical consequences of being able to fly. You can do whatever you want to flight, but as long as it's available and allows some form of environment manipulation, every high-level character is going to have it. That's not a mechanical problem, it's a problem with the fundamental nature of the universe that we live in.

The solution to your dilemma is to realize that, as far as D&D is concerned, Ulysses and Jason were low-level and/or didn't have very good equipment, while the opposite was true for Perseus and Bellerephon. The good news: the DM can control these things, and thus allow characters to play U. and J. effectively; the bad, of course, is that the player cannot make these decisions alone.

Oh, and, hello to everybody.

[MrWaeseL]

Hiya, Super. Glad you could join us.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1114390702[/unixtime]]
(never forget that when you worship at the alter of Tolkien you keep company like these fellows... [counturl=14]over here[/counturl])

Wow, the "Since youdon't agree with me, you're a racist!" argument. Never thought I'd see it here.


You know, I heard those white supremecists eat too. If you eat too much, you might become one.

I also ehar-tell they like to breath.

Now, I agree that limiting yourself to only Tolkein's writings is severely limiting and probably wouldn't be very enjoyable, but I don't call people I disagree with racists.

[Username17]

It's actually a lot more reasonable of a comparison than you are makin it out to be. Science Fiction and Fantasy were quite often tied up with various parts of the Nazi movement in the early part of last century. H. P. Lovecraft was actually employed by the Nazis to write propaganda for them. Tolkien was a romanticist and a white supremist. And while he was violently opposed to the Nazi party in particular, it caused him no end of personal agony that they actually accepted most of his views about just about everything.

Remember, The Lord of the Rings is supposed to be an anti-Nazi allegory. Not an anti-fascist allegory, not an anti-racist allegory, just anti-Nazi in particular. Sauron is supposed to represent Hitler's personal form of tyranny, but in that saga Hitler is defeated essentially by white aristocrats and ubermenchen, and not by the forces of modernity and technology, which are depicted in strictly less than glowing terms by Tolkien.

Hitler harked back to a mythical past free from the woes of modern industrial society and foreign people, and so did Tolkien. Their advocated policies were virtually identical - except when it came to actually throwing Jews live into ovens.

---

Remember, in Tolkien, the heroes are the gentry and those of good blood. The modern indusrialism and powered forge is not the salvation of the world (as it actually turned out to be), but rather a twisted and futile power-grab that is ultimately a pawn for evil. Saruman is a villain in Tolkien's world, just as he would be in Hitler's. Aragorn is the rightful heir of the world and the hero who saves it - just as Hitler would have proclaimed.

Tolkien was deeply troubled throughout his life that he couldn't draw a clear line where his philosophy ended and Hitler's began. And I can't do it either.

-Username17

[User3]

Tolkien in fact explicitly denied that LotR was an allegory for anything in particular, and he is supposed to have disliked allegory in general. Whether this says anything to the fundamental truth of the allegation is an entirely separate question; while he disliked allegory he was big on "applicability", and the line between the two is narrow and easily crossed. My opinion is that Tolkien was much more of a Luddite than he was a racist (one characteristic Saruman, Sauron, and Morgoth share is their insistence on creating "new" things other than those ordained by God, etc.), but it's pretty hard to escape the fact that, intentionally racist or not, much of LotR drew on a heavily and unquestioningly colonialist worldview.

Spinrad's "The Iron Dream" is sort of a half-funny, half-sobering take on the whole SF&F/Nazi connection, if you can stomach Spinrad.

--d.

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
We are waaaaaaaaaay off topic here. I'm shutting it down.
[/TGFBS]