D&D 5E Aerial combat in 5e

[Nightfly]

I'm setting up to run a midair combat in my Dungeons of Drakkenheim game, and I'm struck at how little there is in the way of rules or even guidance in 5e. I've found some supplements that deal with Spelljammer combat, but that's not what I'm looking for. I need griffons vs. chimeras vs. gargoyles kind of stuff.

Anyone have a bright idea about where I might look? A third party supplement, or maybe an earlier edition? Or possibly even a different game? I'd like to somehow make it different and more interesting than a normal 2D fight.

 

[Nightfly]

Did you not take geometry yet?

That's a little harsh. I'm a geometry teacher and have been for more than 25 years, but I still take Stalker0's point. Whatever system I end up using, I won't be presenting the Pythagorean Theorem or any angles to my players. I might actually enjoy that kind of fussiness, but I assume most players would not.

 

[Nightfly]

I recommend the article “Aces High” from MCDM’s Arcadia magazine, issue 3, by Sam Mannell. It’s a simple system that abstracts enough but also allows your characters to use their abilities in a flighting encounter. It focuses on using flying creatures and even objects, so I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for. I think you can get the whole run of Arcadia for $30 on their website and they might offer smaller batches of issues for less—been awhile since I checked. Good luck! Sounds like a fun session!

Checked it out, and it's indeed very interesting. This article uses a weird dice mini-game which has nothing to do with D&D mechanics, so I'm not sure how I feel about that. It was still worth a read, though. Thanks for the tip!

 

[mamba]

Anyone have a bright idea about where I might look?

don’t know what their rules are, but this one has some rules for aerial combat

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dracostudios/dragonbond-endless-sagas/description

“Aerial Combat

Challenge your players' tactical prowess with aerial dogfights. Learn maneuvers such as the Underwhip, swinging beneath your mount to knock a rider from their saddle; the Skyslash, falling from above to score a grievous blow before being caught by your mount; and the Tail Launch, sending you soaring to decapitate a distant enemy.”

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'll think what I'd probably do is something along these lines:
1) Use a normal 2D map, and mark the altitude of participants
2) Each cube moved up costs 10', and each cube moved down costs 2.5'. Creatures that can Hover move up at full speed. (If you move in cubes like this, you don't need to worry about diagonals anymore than you would a 2D grid.)
3) Instead of a minimum forward speed, if a creature lacks the Hover feature and doesn't move at least 10' (or half of its speed, whichever is less) on its turn, then it takes Disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, and others have Advantage on their attacks rolls and opposed ability checks against it until the start of its next turn (it requires special effort to maintain it's position)
4) Most vehicles, and creatures that are specifically described as being really bad fliers, can't turn more than a total of 90 degrees after they start moving on their turn (we don't want to track facing, so we won't worry about the turning they can do at the very start/end of their turn), and take the movement reduction when climbing even if they can Hover.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean, it's 2 or 3 numbers you just type in an excel sheet whenever the question of "how far are they?". I have a hard enough time getting people to count 5-10-5-10 for diagonal movement, but luckily roll20 can do 2d distance calculations.

Which is my point - it’s just two or three numbers you square, add and square root. Typing stuff into a spreadsheet seems like a waste of time (not to mention setting it up in the first place).

 

[TheSword]

It’s a lot of complexity to add in for a single arial encounter. Make sure whatever extra rules you put in for simulationist reasons are worth it. There is nothing wrong with running 5e flight combats as written in 5e rules.

That said if you want more simulationist rules while keeping to the overall simplistic feel of 5e I would adopt the following.

- Flying creatures must move at least half their fly speed to remain aloft otherwise they fall. Creatures with the Hover trait are accepted

- Diagonal movement costs an additional 5ft for every 10ft moved.

- Descending 5ft costs half as much movement, Ascending costs double movement.

- if a flying creature’s move is reduced to 0 it falls

- If a flying creature takes damage it must make a DC 10 Con save or fall.

- A flying creature that falls, drops 200 ft at the start of each of its turns and if it hits the ground or another object takes falling damage.

- Hover: A creature with the Hover trait doesn’t need to move during its round to stay aloft.

- Fly By Attack: A creature with Flyby attack doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity provided it moves both before and after its attacks.

Personally I wouldn’t bother with maneuverability classes that becomes extremely difficult to track and doesn’t really fit in with the rest of 5e rules around facing etc.

Just my 2 pennies worth.

 

[TheSword]

One more thing is to have creatures take up 10’ squares as standard instead of 5’ squares and use a 10’ grid. It much easier to map the generally larger fly speeds on a 10’ scale rather than 5’ and diagonal movement becomes easier because it 10’ adjacent moves and 15’ for diagonal moves.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I recommend the article “Aces High” from MCDM’s Arcadia magazine, issue 3, by Sam Mannell. It’s a simple system that abstracts enough but also allows your characters to use their abilities in a flighting encounter. It focuses on using flying creatures and even objects, so I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for. I think you can get the whole run of Arcadia for $30 on their website and they might offer smaller batches of issues for less—been awhile since I checked. Good luck! Sounds like a fun session!

Edit: Here’s the link to MCDM’s store and that issue. $3.99 ARCADIA 3 | March 2021

I bought and played these rules when running the original Dragonlance modules (5E rules) as there was an epic dragonflight battle towards the last 3rd of the campaign. Because the ruleset was foreign and advanced, my players, and me, needed a cheat sheet (attached). Disclaimer: the players had Dragonlances that could deal insane damage to enemy dragons. This required me to use, as the modules did, more enemy dragons than usual.

Two caveats:

• Easy for players to track their own stunt dice, but insane for DMs to track more than a handful. I didn't have a hotfix and instead had a lot of d4 notes in my DM notes. Does not support combats where the DM is tracking 5+ enemies.
• If the enemy is dragons, breath weapons can and will wipe out your riders unless you perhaps rule the PC mount absorbs the damage first.

Otherwise, if you can handle lots of d4s as a DM, it's a creative and solid mini-game that my players managed to pick up quickly. They'd been waiting 12 levels for aerial combat as advertised in Session 0, so I had to make it unique.

 

[jgsugden]

The aerial combat rules kind of suck in 5E (2014 and 2024).

They're sparse. They don't cover a lot. And, there is one element in the rules that is absolutely friggin broken - prone makes you drop up to 500 feet. That is 20d6 damage if between 200 and 500 feet. That is horribly broken. It is like giving low level characters a disintegrate spell, often with no save. This can be horrible. My druid has obliterated a lot of foes by knocking them prone at 220 feet up.

Once PCs get more than 50 feet above the ground I go to theater of the mind. We don't use minis or specific measurable distances. Doing it 'right' would require too many rules, so we just make calls as we go along. This is the best approach I've experienced and I use it because developing more is not worth it.

 

[Stormonu]

If you want some pretty detailed flying combat and you're familiar with the X-Wing* game, Wizkids licensed a D&D version called Attack Wing (now out of print). This link goes to the web page where you can download the rules, this link goes to the wiki about the releases for the game and other information.

You might be able to pick up some of the minis, dials and turning templates pretty cheap, or just put some minis on 1 inch x 1 squares and make up/print some movement templates. If you don't have dials, you can just write down the speed and maneuver (some looking around will find you images of all the maneuvers on one of the model's dial).

Converting the creatures shouldn't be too difficult, and you could just use their D&D stats and use the maneuver dials and move templates to handle all the moving about in a dramatic fashion.

* Great game until FFG killed interest with a 2E version, and AMG cut its head off. It was based on Wings of War, which includes rules for climbing and diving.