D&D 5E Dropping Flyers Cheese

[Werebat]

PHB, page 191, under "Flying Movement":

"If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of its ability to move, the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as the fly spell."

There has GOT to be a way to cheese this up such that an encounter with a dragon or some other foe that is supposed to be a challenge can be trivialized with a tanglefoot bag or something. What have we got?

 

[DaveDash]

Time to send in the flying enlarged grapple bards.

 

[Stormonu]

summon Air Elemental and have it trip the flying dragon?

 

[DaveDash]

Hire 20 1st Level Clerics and have them spam the "Command" spell "Go prone" ?

 

[Rlyehable]

Isn't Command limitedo to one word?

 

[DaveDash]

Isn't Command limitedo to one word?

Grovel, good enough.

 

[Rlyehable]

I don't have the book in front of me, but anything that causes the grappled or restrained condition. Web spell? Power word stun? Net?

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'd say your workhorse would be the enlarge person spell, which puts huge creatures in the range of a lot of nice tricks (which often limit effect to target on size category larger than you): shoving a creature, grappling and possibly nets. If the DM rules that a Large net can restrain Huge creatures you've got an instant effect on hit.

If my is correct (big maybe) an enlarged fighter with a jump spell up and 20 Strength can hit around 25-30 feet on a vertical leap. That's enough to knock a low-flying dragon out of the sky with a shove a creature action and still get the rest of your attacks in on the way down. Or you could grapple it and drag it down to a similar effect.

That's something that's very easy for a lot of parties to set up from 5th level on.

 

[jrowland]

in a 4E game, I managed to "trip" a flying dragon. It fell at...uh I forget the speed, but we were on top of a 1000' cliff and long story short, kept failing its save until it hit the ground and died. DM walked away in disgust with 4E. I thought it was great fun.

 

[Paraxis]

Well if it's a young dragon a battle master fighter can just shoot him down using a bow and the trip attack maneuver.
An oath of ancients paladin or ranger with ensnaring strike can also shoot them out of the sky.