Fly is out?

[Sitara]

So in the q&a session Xath had with Rouse and another deigner, they state that DDI will support some housrules; since it doesn't have a Z-Axis yet it wont support flying.

Can we hopefully take that to mean flying (spell, power, etc) is not in the core rulebooks?

I personally truly hope so, since fly has always been a sucky spell which causes problems with combat, and other issues. i also dislike it flavorwise.

OTTOH this does bode ill for any future wildshaping druid might do. Also, what about flyingmosters such as dragons, and/or flying mounts?

 

[Khuxan]

We know hippogriff can be purchased for 1,000gp, so there's sure to be flight as an option. It's probably unsupported on the online tabletop, however.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Yeah, it would be a bit odd if dragons couldn't fly.....

 

[Aeolius]

It's probably unsupported on the online tabletop, however.

Which also means no swimming... I'm out. Granted, as I use a Mac, I was never in.

 

[Li Shenron]

Can we hopefully take that to mean flying (spell, power, etc) is not in the core rulebooks?

Natural flight of course cannot be out of the game...

Magical flight is not 100% necessary, but it's such a fantasy standard that it will be a big blow not to have it.

Either way, I think it will be a very sad scenario if a technical problem in the realization of a secondary gaming aid would dictate the removal of an important part of the game! I really don't think this is ever going to happen.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Flight is a paragon tier ability, judging by these magic items.

* slippers of spider climbing (7th)
* Rope of climbing (10th)
* Boots of levitation (13th)
* Flying carpet (18th)

 

[Atlatl Jones]

Flight is a paragon tier ability, judging by these magic items.

* slippers of spider climbing (7th)
* Rope of climbing (10th)
* Boots of levitation (13th)
* Flying carpet (18th)

The AiCN playtester review also said that characters don't get to fly until they're in the paragon tier. 10+ levels without any flying is a lot more satisfying to me than 3e's 4 levels without flying.

 

[Cadfan]

I think the reference to the DDI simply meant that they hadn't programmed the online gaming table to track altitude- that the software assumes everyone is on the ground level. Kind of like a... real table, actually.

While it would be nice if it could track altitude, especially at higher levels, I wouldn't read anything into it beyond that.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Since the VTT doesn't calculate distance and apply modifiers to attack rolls for you, the lack of Z axis only matters in the sense that:

a) It won't allow two creatures to occupy the same space, one airborne above the other

b) The DM will have to track and communicate height - not any different than I have to do using minis on the battlemat. On the physical tabletop we either write the height on the battlemat or use a die to show the number of feet above in 10 ft. increments.

What would be a simple solution for the VTT would be to allow digital minis to be flagged with a small text box or something similar where the DM can input a short note so height could be input and everyone can see it.

 

[Jhaelen]

Of course, flying is still in. I just hope they managed to come up with easy-to-use rules for aerial (or underwater) combat. I mostly handwaved the 3E rules since I found them to be too much of a hassle.