Why is flight considered a game breaker?

[billd91]

(no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them).

Of course not. If the bats are attacking, they're within reach. If they're out of reach, they're not attacking and not so much of a threat. Why would the low level PCs want to go after them?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Why would the low level PCs want to go after them?

They might need more guano for a quest?

 

[Herschel]

Yep. And did he fight anything while riding a giant eagle? Using flight as a method of overland travel isn't overly problematic. It's combat encounters where things get ugly quickly.

I have yet to see a good and easy system to deal with 3d combat. We've had lots of combats involving flight in D&D 3e, but the flight rules aren't particularly good and are only easy to use if you ignore half of them.

In D&D 4e the designers continue to pretend that there's no such thing as flight. I mean, the pity excuse for rules the system provides is from a chapter about underwater combat!

Apparently, my Windsoul Genasi and Avenger aren't really flying then. Sure, they're limited and can't just hover around, not should they be able to. They're not birds or aberrations, they're humanoids that can only gain the ability for short distances without the aid of something that can actually fly (like the obsidian fly).

 

[MrMyth]

(no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them).

Well, the issue on either end of the equation (in terms of combat abuseability) comes up when flight is combined with ranged offense. A swarm of flying bats that shoot lasers from their eyes could well be a problem for a land-bound party.

 

[Celebrim]

The only AC my Wizard has is Fly. If my DM takes that away, he may as well take away Invisibility, Greater Invisibility and Mage Armor.

There are two basic problems with that set of statements.

First, the second sentence invalidates the first. If the only defence your Wizard has is Fly, what are invisibility, greater invisibility and mage armor?

You've contridicted yourself.

The second problem is more subtle but just as important. The problem is that one of those things you've listed is not like the others. One of those things just doesn't belong. Mage armor provides a relative advantage. It reduces the chances that you get hit. Fly and Invisibility usually - at the time that they are employed - provide absolute advantages. That is, either the foe has some way of dealing with your flight or invisibility, in which case, it provides no advantage to you, or else the foe has no way of dealing with flight or invisibility in which case it is now helpless. The problem with flight is that it is the equivalent of a spell that gave you a +100 bonus to AC vs. blunt weapons. The spell give absolute immunity on the one hand, and nothing on the other. That's IMO quite bad design. Sadly, 3e (and to a lesser extent 1e) is filled with these sorts of absolute immunities, of which flight is a relatively unegregious example.

Absolute immunities are in my opinion little fun for either the DM or the players. In the case of the players having an absolute immunity, they make problem solving trivial and tend to suppress creativity. In the case of the monsters having an absolute immunity, they tend to force one or more players to stand on the sidelines unable to effectively contribute.

While I do believe that flight and invisibility are 'undercosted' I don't believe either is inherently broken. They are reasonable tools to allow the players to have to occasionally solve problems. However, they shouldn't become skeleton keys used to solve every problem.

And Fireball and Empowered Scorching Rays, since those are his best weapons. Take away Fly, and you'll quickly have one dead mage.

It should be clear from the start that I'm not talking about taking away Fly. I'm talking about scaling the availability of fly appropriately to the level of the party. At lower levels it probably should not be available to allow players the enjoyment of finding creative solutions to mundane problems. As it becomes available, it should at first be available as winged flight with poor manueverability for relatively short durations and at relatively slow speed. As the power level of the campaign increases and mundane problems (having been experienced and overcome) become less and less interesting, better and better manueverability and longer and longer durations and higher speeds become balanced both with what the rest of the party can do, and what foes are capable of countering at least to some extent. That just basic balance considerations.

And again, you contridict yourself. Have you ever heard the term, "The best defense is a good offense"? Just because your Wizard has a poor defense (which he doesn't, but hypothetically) doesn't mean he's actually weak or unbalanced or at the mercy of his foes. Incinerated foes don't represent threats.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, the issue on either end of the equation (in terms of combat abuseability) comes up when flight is combined with ranged offense. A swarm of flying bats that shoot lasers from their eyes could well be a problem for a land-bound party.

Indeed.

Flight combined with melee is usually a disadvantage unless the melee attacher has perfect manueverability. Flight+melee tends to be very ineffective because manueverability restrictions tend to limit you to attacking only every 3-4 rounds, during which time the foe can pummel you with ranged weapons.

However, while I agree that the combat problem comes with the absolute advantage of flight + ranged in an open environment, too little focus is given to the utility of magical flight relative to the alternatives like climb, balance, jump, move silently, and even (at times) trap finding. One of the easiest ways to demonstrate this is to run ToH with a party that can't fly and one that can. A flying party renders the problem solving in probably 75% of ToH trivial. You just don't even set off the traps, and the only reason that the flying party is likely to die is the overconfidence such a strategy tends to cultivate. Which incidently is one of my main problems with flight and its ilk - it a crutch and players that depend on it tend to be helpless when its removed because they aren't used to problem solving. Flight is effectively a very large blunt instrument for dealing with problems.

 

[Janx]

I didn't say they had no place in the game, I said they were too low level for the benefit/advantage they produced.

As for Teleport & Raise Dead specifically:

Teleport - while you can deal with it, you can only do so to a limited degree. Once you've invaded the BBEG fortress, say for recon, you can teleport at will (barring ridiculous provisions against it) for hit and run tactics. It's cool the first time PCs do it. It becomes tedious the sixth or seventh. It also feeds the "you must pick these spells" meta-game approach. Finally, while your suggestions are good, a real issue for me is that once I spend more time planning around the PCs abilities rather than working on adventures & NPCs, my fun-quotient as a GM goes into the crapper.

Raise Dead - cheapens the whole experience. Raise Dead shouldn't be equivalent to a heal spell. The death of a character should be a big deal. There are a variety of additional mechanics available ranging from Action Points, to Fate Points, to Cheating Death rules that are more thematically appropriate to thwarting a bad roll than the following, all-too common scenario:

<Distraught PC> Sniff. "Bob's dead!"
<Unconcerned PC> "Medic! I mean, cleric!" Looking at Distraught PC, "Seriously, don't sweat it. He's just dead. He's died like 5 times already..."
<Distraugh PC> sniff, sniff "REALLY?!?"
<Cleric PC> "BE HEAAAALED-AH!!"


Bringing back the dead should be 7th level or higher spell (3.x/PF). Raising the dead shouldn't be something that someone at the high-end of MID-LEVEL (and that's pushing it) should be able to do. IMO, obviously.

Well, my main point is that Raise Dead doesn't really break the game/GM's adventure. In most cases, the GM didn't even plan for a PC to die. So it ultimately gets the party back to normal.

Bear in mind, I don't disagree with making Raise Dead a rare event. But on the other hand, countless video games (even Oblivion, ultimate CRPG sandbox) have pretty much gotten most people over the curve of dying just means you respawn back at the save point.

But it's just not a game breaker. In fact, statistically, if you took out Raise Dead, your party would be lower level, because eventually each PC would hit a fatal encounter, and have to roll up a new one.

From my perspective, your beef with Raise Dead is a flavor issue. Just as some folks have a beef with Superman flying PCs.

I'm not concerned with Flavor, because if the rules have the game element, then that IS the flavor.

I am concerned with game balance, including as you allude to not over-nerfing something that really is a good idea.

I don't want to have to build every encounter to negate a list of game breakers. But I do want tools to fairly negate them at times.

Here's some more Negators I just thought of, BTW:

Teleport negation:
enemy location is mobile

Flight negation:
enemy is also flighted
enemy has longer range weaponry


For myself, Flight or Teleport hasn't come up as a problem in the games I've played or run. Maybe my group just isn't that clever. I'll talk to my GM, and see what he's seen, as I'm curious.

What I hope to get out of this discussion (and I have) is a list of these "game breakers" and some ways to negate them when it is fair to do so in order to raise the challenge level.

 

[CleverNickName]

While I do believe that flight and invisibility are 'undercosted' I don't believe either is inherently broken.

(snip)

It should be clear from the start that I'm not talking about taking away Fly. I'm talking about scaling the availability of fly appropriately to the level of the party. At lower levels it probably should not be available to allow players the enjoyment of finding creative solutions to mundane problems.

There are many ways to make the cost-benefit ratio of these spells to balance out in the game (even one as "elegant" as 3.5E). So let's summarize all of the solutions. What would you recommend? Here are a few suggestions that we seem to be kicking around.

0. Do nothing. Problems arise, and are dealt with on a case-by-case basis...sometimes easily, other times not-so-easily.

1. Ban these spells outright. Easy for the DM, not very much fun for the players.

2. Change all adventures to accommodate for flying, invisible* characters. A lot of fun for the flying, invisible characters, a lot of extra work for the DM, not fair to the other characters.

3. Change the spells (shorten the duration, increase the spell level, etc.) Extra work for the DM, slightly unfair to the flying, invisible characters.

4. Replace the spells with rituals. Extra work for the DM, allows all characters to use them, severely limits the use and utility of these spells.

Any other ideas?

-----
*and teleporting, and wishing, and dead-raising, etc.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Absolute immunities are in my opinion little fun for either the DM or the players.

Yeah, I've been noticing problems with binary abilities for some time, and you're right that D&D has a lot of those. Many of them are cleric spells. For example, if the PCs have protection from evil they're safe from a vampire's charm. If they don't they are totally hosed.

Binary abilities put a heck of a lot of power in the hands of the GM. Whether the party lives or dies could be dependent on a decision about a spell's duration. Has it run out or is it still up? GM decisions about whether the opposition have ranged attacks means the difference between an encounter and a non-encounter.

I'd reached the same conclusion as KM, that a flyer with ranged attacks versus a 'melee brute' is simply a non-encounter. Which kind of sucks when some people at the table are expecting an encounter. Non-encounters are not particularly fun.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, I've been noticing problems with binary abilities for some time, and you're right that D&D has a lot of those. Many of them are cleric spells. For example, if the PCs have protection from evil they're safe from a vampire's charm. If they don't they are totally hosed.

The biggest problem it creates in my opinion is the presence of the absolute defence disguises the problems in the math. If the PC's are totally hosed by a vampire's charm attack without protection from evil, it implies the vampires charm attack is not well thought out. In particular, 3e saving throw DCs tend to scale too fast - scaling for example with both HD and charisma (which tends to go up with HD in most 3e monster designs) - with the result that it outstrips the ability of PC's to defend against it. This problem is disguised by answers like, "Well, the PC's can just use 'protection from evil'.", but the problem with that answer is it means that the PC's must at all times have Protection from Evil up, and Death Ward, and Freedom of Action, and Mind Blank, and have eaten recently from a Hero's Feast, etc. or else they are hosed. On upshot of this is that non-spellcasters lose the ability to protect themselves. They still might be quite capable damage dealers, but without support from a spellcaster they are helpless to defend themselves. Spellcasters by contrast can both deal damage and defend themselves. IMO, this is the biggest source of caster/non-caster imbalance at 11th level and higher.

Another problem is that if you have a absolute immunity like the immunity to fire damage which is so common with creatures with fire subtype is that this absolute immunity doesn't always seem to be so absolute after all when you think about it. Sure, a fire elemental ought to be immune to fire, but is a fire elemental immune to being burned up by a fire deity or the wellspring of utter fire itself? That is, when you think about it, most immunities of this sort actually only mean 'immunity to normal stuff of this type'. Is it really the intention of the Freedom of Action spell to give you immunity to the God of Wrestling? What happens this is that you start creating absolute attacks that overcome absolute defences. The most obvious example I can think (though probably not the worst) of is the rule that things with Improved Grab don't draw attacks of oppurtunity when they initiate a grapple, except when the target has Close Quarters Combat in which case they absolutely do.

This is all just bad design in my opinion.

Flight is much less of a problem. It's biggest problems in my opinion are out of combat. The fact that it puts a burden on design that says things like, "Tyrannasaurus Rex is almost never an appropriate encounter, because at low levels its grapple/bite/swallow whole attack is too strong, and at high enough levels that the PC's could fight it they will just fly up and pound from an absolute secure positions." is a much lesser albiet still highly annoying problem.