D&D 5E Flight ability: Does this make the Aarakocra overpowered?

[MiraMels]

Does the condition of unconscious not incapacitate the character, which explicitly states that Dex modifiers to AC do not apply?

Not in 5th edition. "Incapacitated" just means you can't take actions, bonus actions, and reactions. When Unconscious, you automatically fail dexterity saving throws, and attack rolls against you are made with advantage, but your AC (and the role dexterity plays in determining it, if any) doesn't change.


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[R. Brent Clements]

Wow.

1) I absolutely stand corrected. The RAW do not state that the Dex bonus should be removed.

2) That is absolutely beyond stupid, and I will be immediately house-ruling that nonsense into oblivion in any game I may run in the future.

 

[GreenTengu]

To give a nuisanced opinion on this...

IF the DM is making all adventures from scratch or doesn't mind improvising on the fly, then you can effectively nullify the effect of the flight ability. You can avoid outdoor encounters and make sure combat tends to take place in places with 10' high ceilings, you can add ranged weapons to opponents who lack them, you can add an extra flying creature to each encounter and most certainly you will need to make sure that none of your plots can be resolved simply by taking to the air to retrieve an item. Forget any adventure that involves entering and traversing a tower to rescue someone on the top floor as you now have someone who can just fly to the top without entering, grab the target and transport them safely to the ground.

Half the issue here is that the new version of the Aarakocra have 6 limbs-- 2 arms in addition to the 2 wings which means that they are effectively permanently out of melee combat if they wish to be and can rain down arrows and spells from the sky with no fear of the enemy catching up to them unless the enemy itself has wings. That is a far bigger boon than anything that any other race offers, certainly as a permanent, ongoing benefit. It would require a mid-level character in order to replicate this effect and even then they would be very limited on the number of turns for which they could do it-- clearly demonstrating that the designers themselves thought that free flight was far too much of a boon to simply hand-out without drawback. The fact that you have a PC who is going to be permanently "out of range" of a melee-centric opponent no matter how fast that opponent is can be a major issue. Ogres, Trolls, Giants... so long as the battle is outdoors and the Aarakocra has a bow or a cantrip, they are guaranteed victory without question or effort, there is simply no way they can be touched or harmed.

And while you can render it fairly useless if you know for an absolute fact that you are going to be dealing with someone flying in your adventure, I can't think of any other ability attached to a race that may require the DM to consistently have to alter locations and encounters in order to adjust for the PCs having that ability. We can see on these threads people trying to desperately come up with work arounds, but it still stands that this is fundamentally is a PC ability that REQUIRES the DM to create work-arounds. Short of a survival campaign where thirst, hunger and heat exhaustion are meant to be the primary obstacles and the players choosing to play Warforged, I can't think of any other PC abilities that can just totally undermine a campaign the way flight does.

But none of that would have been an issue had it not been for the fundamental change to the race that gave them 6 limbs instead of only 4. If flying still meant your hands/arms were occupied and you couldn't functionally hold onto anything while flying, it would resolve the most serious issues this problem presents. Unfortunately, we kind of have incompetent munchkin players designing the game and, as a result, they decided to make the race intentionally broken to allow themselves to abuse it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Wow.

1) I absolutely stand corrected. The RAW do not state that the Dex bonus should be removed.

2) That is absolutely beyond stupid, and I will be immediately house-ruling that nonsense into oblivion in any game I may run in the future.

A reasonable house rule would be to say that paralyzed or unconscious characters have a Dex modifier of -5 in addition to the RAW "advantage to be hit". PCs in heavy armor will be unaffected, and clumsy PCs won't suddenly get harder to hit just because they are paralyzed.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And while you can render it fairly useless if you know for an absolute fact that you are going to be dealing with someone flying in your adventure, I can't think of any other ability attached to a race that may require the DM to consistently have to alter locations and encounters in order to adjust for the PCs having that ability. We can see on these threads people trying to desperately come up with work arounds, but it still stands that this is fundamentally is a PC ability that REQUIRES the DM to create work-arounds.

The Mobile feat is basically the same as flying in terms of its effect on how you have to design adventures. Better than flying in some ways (against ambushes), worse in others (against hordes)--but a first level human wizard with the Mobile feat and Longstrider cannot be killed by a CR 16 Iron Golem* and can therefore kill the golem with the right cantrip, and that illustrates the basic similarity between Aarakocras and Mobile humans. A party of all-Mobile PCs is crazy strong in certain ways.

* Longstrider is for keeping out of range of the 15' breath weapon. If the terrain is sufficiently open, or if it's a different kind of golem like a stone or flesh golem, Longstrider is unnecessary.

Furthermore, any PC with a 60 gp horse (or a goblin, gnome or halfling on an 8 gp mule) can accomplish something similar under many circumstances without any class or racial features at all.

 

[GreenTengu]

The Mobile feat is basically the same as flying in terms of its effect on how you have to design adventures. Better than flying in some ways (against ambushes), worse in others (against hordes)--but a first level human wizard with the Mobile feat and Longstrider cannot be killed by a CR 16 Iron Golem and can therefore kill the golem with the right cantrip, and that illustrates the basic similarity between Aarakocras and Mobile humans.

Furthermore, any PC with a 60 gp horse (or a goblin, gnome or halfling on an 8 gp mule) can accomplish something similar under many circumstances without any class or racial features at all.

Well, those things may save you from an opponent whose movement speed is 30 or lower, it doesn't offer any protection against things that have a movement speed of 40. And while it does work relatively effectively against the Iron Golem in your example, I imagine any circumstance in which you are going to be fighting an Iron Golem, I feel one should also note that the locations to which you can move exactly 40' away and still have a clear shot are going to be limited. On the other hand, an Arakocra is simply never going to run out of sky so long as you are outdoors and thus will always having a clear shot unless the enemy does and can hide under good cover.

It is one thing to say "my mobile character can infinitely move out of range while still blasting the slowest creature in the monster manual" and quite another to say "regardless of how fast the opponent is, it can literally never catch me and has to rely on any ranged attacks it might have at its disposal".

Mounted combat offers all sorts of unreliability into the mix depending on your Handle Animal checks and just how much perfect command the DM is willing to allow you to have over your mount as free action.

The Aarakocra, for example, even at level 1 presuming it has enough arrows, can eventually kill a CR14 Ice Devil whose movement speed is 40 without the Ice Devil being able to do anything in retaliation. Even if it takes 180 rounds to do it due to the Ice Devil's damage reduction, the Aarakocra has a guaranteed victory.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, those things may save you from an opponent whose movement speed is 30 or lower, it doesn't offer any protection against things that have a movement speed of 40. And while it does work relatively effectively against the Iron Golem in your example, I imagine any circumstance in which you are going to be fighting an Iron Golem, I feel one should also note that the locations to which you can move exactly 40' away and still have a clear shot are going to be limited. On the other hand, an Arakocra is simply never going to run out of sky so long as you are outdoors and thus will always having a clear shot unless the enemy does and can hide under good cover.

(1) If you're outdoors with plenty of sky for the Aarakocra, it's probably also good terrain for the Mobile human too.

(2) You can attack the Iron Golem before you move (e.g. with Booming Blade), so you're not constrained to only locations where you "have a clear shot" after moving. (And besides, so what if you don't get a shot off every single round?)

(3) Nitpick: if you move only 40', you are dead. You need to move 45' to wind up 50' or further away from the Iron Golem, or it can kill you.

(4) If you really want to kite, you can always combine Longstrider + Expeditious Retreat, for 100' of movement after a Booming Blade. That lets the first-level Mobile wizard kite even the fast creatures like griffons--something which a typical Aarakocra cannot do. As I said, better in some ways, worse in others.

It is one thing to say "my mobile character can infinitely move out of range while still blasting the slowest creature in the monster manual" and quite another to say "regardless of how fast the opponent is, it can literally never catch me and has to rely on any ranged attacks it might have at its disposal".

Iron Golems aren't the slowest creature in the MM. (That might be the Gibbering Mouther.) They have a fairly typical speed. Most of the really fast things have a flying speed as fast or faster than an Aarakocra anyway, so the overall effect is similar: if the DM builds a standard adventure expecting a melee-centric party, it will fail in approximately the same way for Mobile humans and Aarakocras. And most of the DM-side countermeasures against one work against the other: cage matches, locked doors, ranged weaponry on opponents (goblins, gnolls, hobgoblins). If you've built your adventure to be secure against Mobile humans and Mounted Combatant humans, it's probably going to work fine for Aarakocras too.

The Aarakocra, for example, even at level 1 presuming it has enough arrows, can eventually kill a CR14 Ice Devil whose movement speed is 40 without the Ice Devil being able to do anything in retaliation. Even if it takes 180 rounds to do it due to the Ice Devil's damage reduction, the Aarakocra has a guaranteed victory.

How's that? The Ice Devil can just form a dome over itself, or a wall for cover.

 

[Ovarwa]

Flight in D&D isn't nearly as good as it is in real life.

D&D doesn't give you any advantages for ranged attacks from above. Your targeting has the same rules. Your range has the same rules. Your opponents also don't take massive penalties to range, to damage and to targeting for ranged attacks to targets in the sky.

Meanwhile, a flying character probably lacks cover. Everyone can see him, and a human in the air is kind of noticeable. If hit, he is likely to fall.

Any mobile character with room to maneuver and ranged attacks has a vast advantage against slow, short-ranged opponents.

Flying remains a great feature, but in D&D it isn't all that. Most of the time, it is awesome for utility but not so useful in combat. Tavern brawl? Useless. Dungeon crawl combat? Useless, except in the rare cavern. Against combatants with great ranged attacks? Useful, but mostly to retreat.

Of course, some of the time, it wins an encounter flat out. That still seems kind of reasonable: Every now and then, flight will win the day, and every now and then, you'll find yourself splattered on the ground after being shot out of the sky unexpectedly. It's your one racial feature.

So, now you have an Aarakora with flight, the usual 2 stat bumps and nothing else. Having nothing else is fair, because flight is excellent. But if you don't have feather fall, flight is risky, and you are likely to use it carefully. If you do have feather fall, it is because you have invested significant resources to have it, either your 4th level feat or levels in one of the very few classes that offer it, and none of these are based on Wisdom, so you have either settled for pessimal attribute bumps or are willing to wait for level 3 in a Dex-based archer EK, or something like that.

It's still very very good. But Variant Humans are usually better. Half-elves, elves, halflings, gnomes and dwarves are all better at many different things.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[Werebat]

Because flight just isn't all that powerful

Prove it. It is clearly more powerful than a permanently active 3rd level spell that would ordinarily require Concentration (because it doesn't require Concentration). How many other racial abilities are clearly that potent?

 

[jgsugden]

Flight is a nice ability. Clearly, in some ways it is very strong. Being able to blast from the sky without fear of melee reprisal is pretty awesome... but let's break it down. This is based upon what I observed as a player in a game with an Aaracockra rogue.

At levels 1 and 2, flight of any type is extremely rare. However, both of these levels are very short: If you look at the recommended encounter building and XP requirements to advance, players will be at these levels for only a few encounters each. So, if you decide that Birdbrains are overpowered at levels 1 and 2, it is a short lived concern. In our game, the entirety of levels 1 and 2 were in dungeons where flight was meaningless. The DM built the adventure before we had PCs made, so it wasn't even a 'countermeasure'.

Once you hit level 3 there are more options for getting off the ground. Levitating. Magic items. Birdy flight is strong, but not off the charts by the time you hit level 3. My gnome enchanter had winged boots at 4th level. It was nice, but not overwhelming. It keeps me safe from some targets, but I tend to draw ranged attacks to me as I often can't get cover in the sky easily.

Once you're 5th level, the flight is a solid ability, but as well noted it matches up to spells that are available and it compares to a few magic items.

By 7th, it starts to fall off and become a less 'defining' ability.

I'm sure that it could be a problem in some games, but in my experience it was far more interesting thematically than it was from a power gaming perspective.