Flight and Teleportation in RPGs

[Zeybek]

In combat, flight is really just a way of getting out of attack range by using a third dimension. Its value as an advantage is inversely proportional to the efficacy of ranged weapons. If you want to have level 1 flyers, give everyone a decent ranged weapon that they can actually rely on to take on those flyers.

Flight as a means of transportation should become available to every PC at the same time, because splitting the party is a bad idea. Have everyone huddle on the same magic carpet at first, and then give the fighters access to pegasus breeding grounds at the same level the wizards get their flight spells.

[deaddmwalking]

I'm not proposing any changes to flight, but I will point out that in the real world, powered flight is a huge energy expenditure. There are not many creatures that fly more-or-less constantly. Most of those that do have ways of reducing the expenditure (like coasting on thermals). It isn't that Hawkmen can't conquer territory, or even that they can't kite from the air... The fact that they could fly every minute of every day when they aren't otherwise sleeping is the part that seems most likely to cause the game to break.

If you can land 8 hours away from your opponent, pick up a big rock, fly above their projectile weapons, drop your rock, fly 8 hours back to your starting position and sleep (repeat until the destruction of your enemy), flyers could dominate pretty effectively. If, on the other hand, sustained flight is difficult and they may be forced to land while fatigued, the land-bound opponents might have a better chance against them.

Modeling effective fatigue mechanics is difficult, and it usually ends up screwing the players.

If I were to take a stab at it off the cuff, sustained flight might require a standard action (or full-move) to sustain. Using a single-move action each turn would make flying more difficult, requiring a Fortitude save DC 0 +1 per round spent flying. The DC would reset after resting 1 hour (without flying). The DC would not increase on rounds you spend a full-move. Ie, if you fly and attack in Round 1, you make a DC 0 Fortitude save. If you fly with a double-move the next round, you don't need to make a save at all. If you make another attack in round 3, the DC would increase to 1 (etc). Setting the DC to 10+ instead of 0+ would result in significantly shorter aerial combats.

Roughly, that looks like it would lead to generally desirable actions. A dragon might fight you for 15-20 rounds before it needs to land and take the fight to the ground (earlier if it wants to be sure of avoiding fatigue).

A potential drawback - magical flight (which presumably doesn't cost energy in the same way) would become far superior to powered flight. Magical flight would be a good way to beat every flying creature that didn't also learn how to fly magically - once they wore out you could kite them mercilessly.

[Kaelik]

I really don't want people to beat Dragons because the Dragons get tired. That is . . . not my idea of an interesting fantasy world.

[maglag]

You can't conquer or secure anything by flying. As soon as you have to do that, at some point you will need ground troops.

So THAT'S why Brian Blessed and his army of hawk men couldn't get shit done until they recruited like ONE stupid American football player.

Or, to put it in other words. Your statement is blindingly stupid. OF COURSE your private army of hawkmen are allowed to conquer random shit, why the fuck wouldn't they? They just kill the things stopping them, then they land and strut around yelling out "Kyaaaah!" like screaming territorial peacocks until next time they have to take off and kill shit.

While there are edge case bullshit scenarios that flying guys (and inexplicably now also much weaker flying guys with suddenly poor time to kill) might struggle in, like "kill the hitpoint sponge that doesn't give a shit about you killing it's hit points before it does whatever"... concluding from that one edge case that flying characters can never conquer or secure anything is... breathtaking...

Actually, taking a look at the wars of the last century, we have plenty of situations where complete air superiority indeed isn't enough to conquer the land, because the land-bound side will just take cover underground whenever the flying enemy comes and dare you to come down as well to root them out.

Just look at Vietnam or all the sand freedom fighters/terrorists popping out in the middle east recently. The USA can send in high-tech airplans and battle chopters and drones that may as well be invulnerable, but unless you also bring ground troops to secure the area, they can't actually secure/conquer anything.

And as soon as you land the troops to check the buildings and tunnels, they're vulnerable to improvised mines and other close attacks.

Now the fliers could go for a "just raze everything to the ground". So that's why it's important to give reasons why you can't just nuke everything from orbit. Time/hostages/fragile important loot are all possibilities. The USA could just glass the whole middle east. But that would mean no locals to set up Mc Donalds and the oil wells ruined and other bad things.

[PhoneLobster]

REALIZMZ REALIZMZ REALIZMZ

Oh for fucks sake.

Realizmz argument. A shit typical one at that. You are wrong about reality. You are more wrong than that about fantasy. You are more wrong than even that about fucking TTRPGs.

I don't want to get into this shit because it's less funny than when someone else tried realizmz and told us that wasps aren't allowed to own nice stuff.

Simple fact is the Realizmz argument is, as usual shit at every fucking level. Its a shit slog that shouldn't be shitting up this or any discussion. If YOU cannot bring your stupid fucking argument back to actual D&D you can go fuck yourself.

[MGuy]

While I don't mind the idea of birds all the way up to dragons not being able to flap their wings to fly all day and night without pause. Trying to cram in a fatigue system into combat is not how I'd go about 'fixing' this particular problem. Besides I assume that a bit of magic could be used and bam you have the same issue all over again. I'd prefer to make it possible that a good blow from someone or something (preferably that is actually a challenge) on the ground can knock a target our of the sky or disrupt whatever the target is doing with a bit more ease than doing so on the ground. I think having a high risk/high reward trade off for flight is a better solution. That way you don't get bogged down by stuffing in an extra system, realism arguments and focus more on balancing options. Making big or flying things fall go boom is a pretty classic way to defeat stuff and you can inch away from realism arguments and start worrying more about balancing options.

[zugschef]

REALIZMZ REALIZMZ REALIZMZ

Oh for fucks sake.

Realizmz argument. A shit typical one at that. You are wrong about reality. You are more wrong than that about fantasy. You are more wrong than even that about fucking TTRPGs.

I don't want to get into this shit because it's less funny than when someone else tried realizmz and told us that wasps aren't allowed to own nice stuff.

Simple fact is the Realizmz argument is, as usual shit at every fucking level. Its a shit slog that shouldn't be shitting up this or any discussion. If YOU cannot bring your stupid fucking argument back to actual D&D you can go fuck yourself.

Realizms is not the same as verisimilitude. And now go fuck yourself.

[Mechalich]

While I don't mind the idea of birds all the way up to dragons not being able to flap their wings to fly all day and night without pause. Trying to cram in a fatigue system into combat is not how I'd go about 'fixing' this particular problem. Besides I assume that a bit of magic could be used and bam you have the same issue all over again. I'd prefer to make it possible that a good blow from someone or something (preferably that is actually a challenge) on the ground can knock a target our of the sky or disrupt whatever the target is doing with a bit more ease than doing so on the ground. I think having a high risk/high reward trade off for flight is a better solution. That way you don't get bogged down by stuffing in an extra system, realism arguments and focus more on balancing options. Making big or flying things fall go boom is a pretty classic way to defeat stuff and you can inch away from realism arguments and start worrying more about balancing options.

A D&D stinger missile is certainly a solution. I'm not sure how it functions as a solution though. Magical superman flight - which is what D&D has - doesn't come with any special vulnerabilities. Superman's not any more vulnerable in the air than on the ground, and nothing immediately comes to mind for me when it comes to D&D fliers.

Vague Hypothesis: you could allow sunder attacks to be applied against Flight, with a success disabling flight for 1d4 rounds or something and imposing some sort of status penalty - I want to say like entangled because that feels appropriate. This makes a certain intuitive sense for winged creatures in that it represents attacking the wings directly, and the size modifiers would still apply - making big fliers harder to knock out of the sky (big fliers are less common overall and particularly less common at the lower levels before D&D transitions into superhero mode anyway). It doesn't exactly interface with magical flight all that well though or vaporous creatures like air elementals or incorporeal undead (who wouldn't fall anyway, so...yeah).

Alternative Question: are there any good anti-flight spells out there? Especially ones that are lower level than Fly. I'm specifically imagining something like this. While such a spell would be situational and would be of little use countering big fliers like dragons, having the city guard keep a few wands of it around would go a long way to dealing with the army of invading Wyvarans or Hawkmen or whathaveyou.

[maglag]

Another alternative may be to buff the heck out of ground cover.

If taking cover behind a solid rock/wall can actually offer meaningful protection from arrows/dragonbreath (instead of a pathetic +4 AC/+2 reflex saves), then archers on a fortress will beat the crap out of archers in the air. So you need to get close and personal to smoke out enemies out of a strong defensive position unless you have massive dakka advantage.

Plus the problem of just making ranged ground-air more viable is that ground melee still becomes obsolete awfully fast.

Well one could always make sustained flight really hard to maintain, with bonus for large size. So a random rock would be enough to drop the flying wizard to the ground. But the colossal dragon would take some serious hits to drop from the skies.

[PhoneLobster]

Realizms is not the same as verisimilitude.

Really? Because you sure as hell can't seem to tell the difference.

[zugschef]

Realizms is not the same as verisimilitude.

Really? Because you sure as hell can't seem to tell the difference.

What a witty response.

If flyers conquer something (which is a normal ground-based civilization) without ever landing this does break verisimilitude unless they use some powers which actually involve being able to interact on the ground, such as mind-control (which actually means that flying alone didn't do the trick). The point is that flight is a tactical advantage that you can't break in most rulesets but you can always make it strategically insufficient to completely own the setting.

The question remains if that is a viable balance point, and I don't think it is. One owns everything in the open and the other everything underground, has the same problems as less power now for more power later. There either has to be a counter (or drawback) to tactical flight (that doesn't involve hiding until they have to land) or everybody has to fly.

[maglag]

The question remains if that is a viable balance point, because I don't think it is. This one owns everything in the open and this one owns everything underground has the same problems as less power now for more power later. There either has to be a counter to tactical flight (that doesn't involve hiding until they have to land) or everybody has to fly.

Why is "this terrain situation is disadvantageous to me, I'm moving to a better position" not a viable solution?

If a bunch of trolls find themselves above ground facing fliers with longbows/fireballs, do you think they'll just stand there shaking their fists while they're killed, or run for the nearest cave and set up an ambush?

Put into simple terms, why is alright for a flier to take off to the skies when a troll charges at him, but is wrong for the troll to go into hiding when the flier starts raining arrows on him?

[zugschef]

Put into simple terms, why is alright for a flier to take off to the skies when a troll charges at him, but is wrong for the troll to go into hiding when the flier starts raining arrows on him?

It's not wrong to do so. But a bunch of trolls is not the adventuring party.

[FatR]

Yeah. Sure. Whatever you think. Good luck with your game that apparently only has humans and humans in furry suits in it.

Everyone's games only have humans and humans in X suits in them. And only stupid people delude themselves otherwise.

Also, you should probably find yourself a good group of players or drop RPGs entirely, before you have a stroke.

[FatR]

The point is that, because dragons are able to fly, all sorts of other things are able to fly in 'its magic!' ways. As a result, D&D doesn't have tissue-paper-thin fliers in the way many games do. However, because being tissue-paper-thin is the natural balance against the advantage of flight, flight in D&D is therefore inherently unbalanced.

There are two problems with flight (teleportation as well, for that matter):

(1)Strategic mobility that demolishes most fantasy settings, including specifically DnD settings. Particularly in combination with small numbers higher-level combatants being disproportionally useful, so your 500 griffon knights are the true bulk of your fighting force, not your 20 or 30 thousands of common fooltsoldiers. But many creatures fairly common in fantasy have useful flight. The only solutions are to keep those creatures rate or to segregate your setting into different-level zones.

(2)Tactical advantage. This is relatively easy to deal with. Just make most low-to-mid level big flyers have the flight maneurability rating requiring them to blow standard actions to keep themselves in the air. So you won't need bigger hordes of archers than can be viably mobilized on the local level to deal with monsters like manticores and chimeras and wyverns that aren't supposed to be society-crashing threats. High-level threats, like adult dragons, should of course have better maneurability, allowing them to strafe cities and armies, because they are high-level.

[PhoneLobster]

What a witty response.

And considering your continuing post amply demonstrated no understanding or relevance to verisimilitude a witty response that continues to be all too accurate.

But for everyone else watching what I suspect is now an inevitable REALIZARMZ wank degeneration that this thread will become, as a general rule when someone starts trying to use the word "verisimilitude" in their realizarmz wank as part of an elaborate RPG design argument they almost inevitably are full of shit. The thing you see, about verisimilitude is that when it's working you don't need fucking elaborate explanations about how the fuck it's realizarmz versimimilimimimizz.

The moment you need to say it's name to explain some crazy piece of bullshit you inserted in your game to someone, verisimilitude has left the fucking building.

Everyone's games only have humans and humans in X suits in them.

You rather specifically ruled out suits that give actual major physical abilities (because they were too hard!) and defined an ideal high priority setting with nothing but suits that give you a furry appearance as basically their most notably and pretty much only physical ability.

That is rather a different kettle of furries and you know it.

[FatR]

Bolding mine.

You rather specifically ruled out suits that give actual major physical abilities (because they were too hard!)

Stop lying.

and defined an ideal high priority setting with nothing but suits that give you a furry appearance as basically their most notably and pretty much only physical ability.

Just stop.

[PhoneLobster]

Stop lying.

Now you are just getting bizarre.

You totally did exactly what I said. On this thread. Two pages ago. I mean to the degree that I did NOT expect you to just flat out dispute it with crying about lies and slander.

Or what? Does your additional suit of "small child" need a shout out or everything is unfair and wrong with the world?

[zugschef]

But for everyone else watching what I suspect is now an inevitable REALIZARMZ wank degeneration that this thread will become, as a general rule when someone starts trying to use the word "verisimilitude" in their realizarmz wank as part of an elaborate RPG design argument they almost inevitably are full of shit. The thing you see, about verisimilitude is that when it's working you don't need fucking elaborate explanations about how the fuck it's realizarmz versimimilimimimizz.

What the fuck are you on about? You are taking shit out of your ass and pretend it's an internet win. Dude, you are degenerate in this thread. Now either start contributing anything but insults in order to gather internet wins in your imagination or fuck off.

[PhoneLobster]

Dude

Dude. I'm responding to people that are seriously suggesting things like...

If a race ability is at all hard to design or at all treads on the fingers of dumb melee only characters you should just cut it from the game and focus exclusively on cosmetic furries and midgets.

I actually think wasps can't control territory. Therefore... conclusions about game design!

I actually think aircraft are pretty much useless in wars. Therefore... conclusions about game design!

There isn't really much room to respond in the same terms or even respectfully to such positions and attempts to do so, especially for the second two, WILL bog your thread down in realizmz arguments. If that's what you want, go ahead, but you're better off calling it out and shutting it down because realizmz based threads go nowhere.

The whole POINT of calling out realizmz arguments and deriding them with the term is to tell people to fuck the hell off with their stupid irrelevant and wrong fucking arguments about modern military aircraft and utterly imaginary ideas about the interactions of real world animals. And to TRY and just get back to something actually relevant to game design instead.

Do you KNOW how much fucking drivel people will spout about modern military aircraft if you encourage them? Do you? On the fucking internet? You could be here for years.

[Kaelik]

Alternative Question: are there any good anti-flight spells out there? Especially ones that are lower level than Fly. I'm specifically imagining something like this. While such a spell would be situational and would be of little use countering big fliers like dragons, having the city guard keep a few wands of it around would go a long way to dealing with the army of invading Wyvarans or Hawkmen or whathaveyou.

If you are facing someone with wings you can throw bolas at it, and then it can't fly. If you are facing something with a minimum flight speed, then you can toss up a Solid Fog, and it will not reach the minimum distance, and it will plummet to the ground. If you are facing something that cast the fly spell, you can dispel it.

There is no way to cause Allips and Air Elementals to come crashing to the ground with any regularity, but then again, their goddam shouldn't be. There is a Fort Negates Earthbind but it's also Fort negates, so you could just take away their actions or kill them instead.

[Lokey]

Fort save and doesn't affect objects, Allip is still the apex predator. Might fall under elemental immunities too, forget. Tangleroot bag worth a shot?

Always watch what you call things, because if it's an English word, there's probably 5 ways to be entirely immune to it somewhere

PhoneLobster, you realize that these are different people posting and they have nothing to do with the silly post on the last page that seems to have you awesomely unhinged? (I couldn't make any sense of it either, but let it go.)

[Kaelik]

Fort save and doesn't affect objects, Allip is still the apex predator. Might fall under elemental immunities too, forget. Tangleroot bag worth a shot?

Uh... Yes. You fucking idiot? Did anyone say that Allips could be dropped? Because last I checked, I specifically said there isn't and shouldn't be.

But again. Allips are so far from the Apex predator that you have to be a goddam idiot to think that.

MOD EDIT: Wishing death and/or suicide on another poster is forbidden.

[Lokey]

Hah, misread. Isn't too much in the monster manual a couple Allips can't take down when you provide them with tactics though.

[Korwin]

At least, that is the actual military experience of the past century.

But thats only because our airplanes are not transformers who can land and walk around!
Eh, what I'm trying to say. How is the actual Military experience applicable to an Fantasy world, where the flying things also might be tanks?