Ogrork the Mighty said:
Yup, sometimes it does. Especially when that certain flavour occurs with every character, over and over, ad nauseum.
But heh, that's just my 2 cents.
I find myself agreeing
As for the initial question - what a GM should keep in mind with a (now) aerially mbile group is, that especially cover and delaying obstacles loose their potency against the PCs, the layout of dungeons and locations may now need to take aerial shot-cuts into account (or use some sort of countermeasure to foil these ) or the PCs will just simply fly up to the highest tower outside the haunted castle instead of fighting their way up through the castle (as the plot supposes ). Several trap and mechanisms will have only limited capability against fliyers, too (Trapdoors ? Pits ? Things triggered by tripwires ?). Many standard beasts and less intelligent opposition will become far less of a nuisance, too, but at least to some degree this is to be expected due to superior tactics.
As for other disadvantages - flying, besides exposing PCs from their fellows protection, also highlights them for spotting purposes by the enemy (much easier to spot the fellow 20' of the ground then his partner(s) skulking below in the undergrowth ), makes them vulnerable to new dangers and you might even introduce hazards ground-hugging folks would never encounter such as say, swarms of aerial predators.... or mere wind... 20 mph winds ( Beaufort 6, strong wind, not even anything like a storm or worse ) will take a severe toll on characters with an airspeed of 60' (6mph) or 90' (9mph traveling speed ) simply through compensating for the drift... Fog, mist or even a strong glare over water may cause navigational difficulty/disorientation for a flier at some altitude or break his LoS for casting purposes. Flying about (over forestsm mountainsides or badlands style borken terrain ) at night can be especially daunting, when your average forward speed is greater than the range of you (dark)vision's limit...(some refelx saves or tumbling checks for hazardous terrain may be due ). And when relying on dark or low-light vision, you may want to stick very close to the ground for navigational purposes on cloudy, moonless or ocluded nights.
BTW, if targeting spells from high altitude (we had a mage with a fireball-fixation doing it from 800' up in a camapign ) "bombing" straight down, mostly out of range for any humanoid portable missile weapon, lets see some nice spotting checks for picking and properly identifying targets before placing their spells or missiles... "Friendly Fire" dangers adds some necessary drawbacks to high-altitude firepower.
i like this one
