Why is flight considered a game breaker?

[Votan]

Re: Teleport. I use these house rules, which are designed to eliminate the tactical problems and mitigate the strategic issues without completely nerfing the spell.

They are pretty good rules. They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:


"Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport."

does a great deal to balance the spell (all by itself) by making relatively unsuitable for short duration buffs and "risk-free" surprise attacks. Add in the shorter range and the spell is much more difficult to abuse. It's probably a better fix than the AD&D 1E risk of death (as 1E did not have a "teleport without error" option in the PHB).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

They are pretty good rules. They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:


"Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport."

does a great deal to balance the spell (all by itself) by making relatively unsuitable for short duration buffs and "risk-free" surprise attacks. Add in the shorter range and the spell is much more difficult to abuse. It's probably a better fix than the AD&D 1E risk of death (as 1E did not have a "teleport without error" option in the PHB).

Those are pretty good rules. My hang up about them is that he put in nothing to make an exception for (comparatively) short ranged "combat" teleporting. Whether it's the core Dimension Door spell to get out of a grapple or the splat book Benign Transposition to swap two allies' positions, I don't think such spells should be affected by those rules, as they were written to prevent scry-buff-teleport, which the short ranged teleports can't be used for anyway. Well...maybe in very specific cases...

 

[Tuft]

Indeed.



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.

- You see a large cliff before you, barring you from entering the Forbidden Earldom.

- Ok, we want to proceed. Adventure awaits!

- Well, gang, that means it is skill challenge time! How do each of you want to get to the top?

- I want to climb.

- Well, that's a DC 20 climb check for you.

- I want to fly!

- Well, roll a DC 20 acrobatics to land safely among the trees at the top.

- I want to run the long way around.

- Hmmm, you stubborn dwarves... well, that is a DC 20 endurance check for you, my lad....

...

If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC. And if the flier does not roll for landing, he can roll Perception to find the party again, Insight to avoid the hungry giant eagle, Nature to avoid flying through the patches of levitating poison ivy, etc, etc... as long as you get any roll at all out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.

 

[Celebrim]

If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC.

I feel perfectly safe criticizing the design of 3e however I like, because I'm also one of its staunchest defenders.

You really don't want to hear my honest opinion of 4e or skill challenges. It would get the thread locked in a hurry.

Nor for that matter do I really want to hear, "Yeah, 3e sucks, but 4e is awesome sauce." I don't know why every EnWorld thread needs to transform into an edition war, but I assure you, my discussion of the flaws of 3e is not intended as praise of how 4e tried to address them.

...as long as you get any roll at all out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.

Errr.... exactly; I couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Kafen]

Re: Teleport. I use these house rules, which are designed to eliminate the tactical problems and mitigate the strategic issues without completely nerfing the spell.

I'd be tempted to remove Blink and shift all Blink like abilities on creatures to these rules. I like what you have here. Blink -> Teleport. It would solve both my Blink and Teleport issues.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC. And if the flier does not roll for landing, he can roll Perception to find the party again, Insight to avoid the hungry giant eagle, Nature to avoid flying through the patches of levitating poison ivy, etc, etc... as long as you get any roll at all out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.

IMO, this is a flaw, not a feature. The lack of meaningful difference in PC abilities in a skill challenge severely restrains how interesting having a skill challenge is. It's just not fun to do the same thing that everyone else does when I'm supposed to be different.

IMO.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to add something that I didn't see offhand in the thread. If it was and I missed it, sorry!

Suppose you do have a flying enemy lobbing ranged attacks at hapless enemies. As a DM, I'd say that the encounter no longer counts as a challenge, and doesn't net experience. After all, if there's no risk, why should it count? Heck, I wouldn't even bother running a combat; just say it happens and spare everyone some time.

A lot of people have posted about the meta-game and the DM adjusting encounters to deal with this. I would argue the converse is also true - as a player that gets boring, and they may adjust their play style to deal with it. The whole point of the game is to have fun, right? Last I checked, if combat isn't fun, the players tend to grumble. That's why there's so many posts about grind - meaningless repetition with no real challenge just isn't fun.

So in summary, I'm not sure flight or any alternative movement is really that much of a problem, in 4E or in any game. The meta-game is (usually) self-correcting. The mechanics leave a lot of room for counters. I'm not saying I think the mechanics are perfect. I think the concept is sound.

 

[Celebrim]

They are pretty good rules. They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:


"Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport."

does a great deal to balance the spell (all by itself) by making relatively unsuitable for short duration buffs and "risk-free" surprise attacks. Add in the shorter range and the spell is much more difficult to abuse. It's probably a better fix than the AD&D 1E risk of death (as 1E did not have a "teleport without error" option in the PHB).

They are interesting rules. If I might make a suggestion, in my game I also have the teleports are limited to 1 mile per caster level rule (though not the other interesting stuff that I have to think about). But, I also have 'Ley Lines', and when travelling along a Ley Line, you can travel from node to node at a range of up to 100 miles per caster level.

In my game, the locations of these nodes, and even to a certain extent the existance of the ley line network, is a closely gaurded secret of the highest level mages. They fear, given the general antipathy to magic users, that should the ley lines become widely known that steps will be take to make travel on the lines difficult or impossible. Of course, if you want to go with a more high magic Eberron style feel, you could go the opposite direction and make major cities built around ley lines and teleport circle networks.

What this lets me do is 'best of both worlds', so to speak. Teleport can be used as an emergency button to get out of a bad situation, but it can also be used as a mode of long range travel where I can a somewhat selective control over where you can go. It also adds IMO to the depth of the magicalness of the world to have all this arcane lore hidden underneath the surface.

 

[korjik]

Ah, the "DM-player arms race" approach.



Wow! This has led me to a great epiphany!

If my players always solve a problem in the most expedient way they can think of, that must mean they don't want to deal with problems, so I shouldn't put problems in my adventures. No challenges and nothing to do! The world is a utopia and the player characters lead lives of untroubled bliss! The perfect adventure!

Next time I run a game, I'm totally doing this. The whole session will consist of me and my players holding hands in a circle and singing.



I am not a slave to what is in the books. Therefore, I can strip out fly spells from my game with a clear conscience.

It really is sad that people like you got flight removed from the rules set because they could not figure this out.

It is also too bad that you cannot figure out that when your party flys over the chasm, then deliberately walks into a cave to whack a dragon, one of these situations is desired, and the other isnt. I will give you a hint:They probably want to kill things.

 

[Teemu]

Flight still exists in 4e, and you can still have the entire party fly over the chasm. It's just a higher level ability.