Flying Friggin' PCs

[Fauchard1520]

The adventure design problems posed by flying PCs have recently cropped up again in one of my games. As such, I wouldn't mind reopening a discussion from an old comic. Ahem:

So there you are, running your no-nonsense game of gritty fantasy. Your players are miserable peasants and it’s amazing. They’ve got to choose between a hot meal and sleeping in an inn. Their horse is busted. Their weapons are scavenged pitchforks. Everyone is diseased, covered in , and can only dream of that distant day when they’re able to afford pants. In short, they might die from an encounter with a freaking cat, and everything is as it should be.


But then it happens. At long last, they’ve killed enough dire rats to hit third level. The wizard gets his invisibility spell, and now everything changes. The players can go wherever they want. They can sneak into the bandit king’s tent, the princess’s chambers, or the vaults of Ye Olde Banke. Soon their pockets are bulging with filthy lucre, and their swords are glowing with the blue light of a +1 enhancement bonus. A new way of playing the game has fallen at their feet.


Invisibility is, in my opinion, the first of three abilities that change the way the game is played. The third is of course teleportation, but it's the middle child that gets my attention today.

Flight is one of those abilities that your players have to have. At some point in a fantasy game, they WILL encounter harpies or winged demons or exceptionally mean canaries, and on that day they’re going to want a carpet/cape/cauldron/etc. of flying. After all, there’s nothing worse than straining your neck as you look skyward, watching as your buddies hog all the glory.


And so, because your players all can fly, you’re left sitting there as a GM with a pile of tear soaked campaign notes crumpled up on the table in front of you. All of a sudden you can’t put a mountain in their way, a pit trap, or a daring leap across a chasm. You can’t even give them ground-bound enemies sans projectile weapons. All of those game elements have gone away because the game space has acquired a third dimension. That’s what I mean when I say that flight changes the way the game is played. It’s a fundamental shift in adventure design and player capability.

My question is this: How do you plan accordingly? How do you accommodate the possibility of flight when you're designing obstacles and encounters? Should you?

 

[Arilyn]

Well....
If everyone in the party has some means of flight, absolutely design foes and obstacles with that in mind, as long as the players have some opportunities to shine with their flying. If only one player can fly, then they will often be caught alone, at the top of the mountain or the other side of the chasm. I had a player character with wings in one of my campaigns, and although the flight was certainly handy, it also caused problems or her.

As GM, you could also ban that type of movement magic. I have seen several campaigns, both published and unpublished, that have worlds where movement magic doesn't work, or is extremely hard to find, or has serious risks attached to it. As a GM who seems to prefer gritty settings, banning flight might be all it takes to remove your frustration.

 

[Shasarak]

My question is this: How do you plan accordingly? How do you accommodate the possibility of flight when you're designing obstacles and encounters? Should you?

I dont understand the problem with Flight. Dont you still have inside adventures?

Personally I always make sure that NPCs have a melee and a ranged weapon.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Outdoors, flight mostly means the party can bypass wild animals and bandits, who probably wouldn't want to mess with the party anyway.

Indoors, the size of the room is always a consideration, and few rooms are tall enough that the party can stay out of reach of enemies. Very large rooms usually have large enemies who can reach, or powerful enemies that have ranged attacks.

 

[adwyn]

First thing is to make sure you understand any restrictions the rules place on flight. That can go a long way towards dealing with the immediate combat problems.

Next decide how rare flight is for the campaign. For most it is rare enough people talk about seeing flying men in the distance, and if players are exposed to such gossip at low levels they are usually quick to remember when they have flight that using it may be a breadcrumb trail for their enemies. If they don't realize that let them find a list of places where they were spotted while zooming over the tree tops. If they are dense the list should be in an assassin's pocket.

Finally, flight is meant to elevate the players over petty problems, it is a marker that they have risen above so much of the mundane world. Let the players enjoy it and just anticipate needing fewer combats that are nastier.

P.S. introduce Hawkmen with nets.

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

There are several things to consider when dealing with flying as a DM.

[1] There are very few sources that provide players natural and/or permanent flight. Usually one needs to be of the right race or acquire a templet to achieve lasting flight. One of the few exception is using Permanency.
[2] The majority of flight provided by a spell or magic item comes with a limited duration and consumes some kind of resource.
[3] Almost every source of flight a player uses can be subject to Dispel Magic.
[4] Depending upon what edition you are running, there are spells for knocking enemies out of the sky.
[5] Unless a group of adventures are actively trying to hide their exploits, facts about them, including their inclination to use flight to overcome/ignore obstacles will become more common knowledge.

All of a sudden you can’t put a mountain in their way, a pit trap, or a daring leap across a chasm.

Mountains, chasms, cliffs and whatever else will fit in this category can still cause difficulties. Said area might be the favorite hunting grounds for an extremely powerful flying predator (like an ancient dragon) or a overwhelming number of a more common monster (like a few hundred wyverns). Either way, they would not take kindly to others invading their territory. Or said location is being watched by a minion of the adventure's enemy(s). Flying makes the adventures easily observable, allowing their enemy(s) time to prepare a welcoming comity; advance a timetable; change to secondary targets; go into hiding. Or any number of decisions that end up making the adventures lives harder. As for pit traps, they could easily have a secondary trap attached that attempts to dispel anyone/thing that crosses it.

You can’t even give them ground-bound enemies sans projectile weapons.

There are plenty of monsters that can cast spells or use spell-like abilities. There are magic items aplenty that can either harm or annoy opponents whether they are on the ground or flying. In a forest areas, you can give a thick canopy for cover, limiting how high the adventures can fly without breaking line of sight/effect for spells and providing their enemies a cover bonus to AC. You can also provide the bad guys with weaker targets to attack/kill whenever the adventures don't want to come down and play. ("Welp, might as well finish assassinating the crown prince since those annoying adventures won't come down and fight fair.")

Several of the things I, or the active DMs I've played with, has done to deal with the over use of flight are as follows:
* Dispel someone's flight. Have them crash land almost right next to something lethal, like an outcropping of jagged rocks. The more dice you can roll when you do this the better. Let the players see you with a ton of dice, but don't let them see the results. Keep the damage you deal low, but up-play how badly things could have gone, especially with those rocks... and then remind them that someone just took one of their's out of the sky.
* If your players try to use melee attacks while above their opponents, throw some grapple and disarm experts their way.
* A group of enemies caring a tarp over their head by 4 poles breaks line of sight.
* Players flying over the potentially trapped floor? They moving are regular or faster speeds due to not fearing triggering those possible traps... Well they just missed out on a major clue to a later puzzle that flight can't solve.
* The players like to fly everywhere... well now their enemies always seem to know generally where they are. Constantly try harrying them, especially when they try to rest.
*Throw enough traps, chasms, etc in a mine/dungeon to consume a full wand of Fly. Space each of these obstacles far enough apart (or other time wasters like combat and puzzles) that it would be unwise to attempt the crossing without another charge. With four players, if they have to take the same path out as in, you only need 7 of these obstacles; otherwise you need 13 total.
* Permanent anti-magic fields around the balconies of the villan's tower.
* None magical weather. Nothing like heavy fog, strong winds, torrential rainfall and/or hail to slow, harm and/or separate adventures.

 

[GMMichael]

OPXP for a wall of text that I actually read through.

How do you plan accordingly for flight? Well I could be wrong, but doesn't it start small - with just one character able to pull it off? Or is it like in Final Fantasy 4: when one person learns Float, no one touches the ground ever again? If the former, you have time to adjust to it.

If the latter, not only had you better learn to deal with flying PCs fast, but your NPCs should start learning fast as well. I'm pretty sure rumors will spread quickly about a group of flying "heroes," and armories of crossbows will be emptied quickly.

Or, just start putting traps on the ceilings as well as the ground. "What are all those tripwires on the ceiling for...?"

Finally, flight is meant to elevate the players over petty problems, it is a marker that they have risen above so much of the mundane world. Let the players enjoy it and just anticipate needing fewer combats that are nastier.

P.S. introduce Hawkmen with nets.

Well said. Both points.

 

[cmad1977]

When has this ever been a problem?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Fauchard1520]

When has this ever been a problem?

Example time? Sure. Imagine Balin's Tomb from Fellowship of the Ring. The place has a fairly high ceiling:

https://cdna.artstation.com/p/asset...ge/chris-mcgill-balins-tomb-02.jpg?1486580356

Now imagine if Legolas has boots of flying. If he hugs the ceiling he can solo the encounter without much trouble. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing (Legolas gets to feel like a badass), but it does represent a shift in thinking for a GM trying to design a challenging encounter.

 

[jimtillman]

The adventure design problems posed by flying PCs have recently cropped up again in one of my games. As such, I wouldn't mind reopening a discussion from an old comic. Ahem:

So there you are, running your no-nonsense game of gritty fantasy. Your players are miserable peasants and it’s amazing. They’ve got to choose between a hot meal and sleeping in an inn. Their horse is busted. Their weapons are scavenged pitchforks. Everyone is diseased, covered in , and can only dream of that distant day when they’re able to afford pants. In short, they might die from an encounter with a freaking cat, and everything is as it should be.


But then it happens. At long last, they’ve killed enough dire rats to hit third level. The wizard gets his invisibility spell, and now everything changes. The players can go wherever they want. They can sneak into the bandit king’s tent, the princess’s chambers, or the vaults of Ye Olde Banke. Soon their pockets are bulging with filthy lucre, and their swords are glowing with the blue light of a +1 enhancement bonus. A new way of playing the game has fallen at their feet.


Invisibility is, in my opinion, the first of three abilities that change the way the game is played. The third is of course teleportation, but it's the middle child that gets my attention today.

Flight is one of those abilities that your players have to have. At some point in a fantasy game, they WILL encounter harpies or winged demons or exceptionally mean canaries, and on that day they’re going to want a carpet/cape/cauldron/etc. of flying. After all, there’s nothing worse than straining your neck as you look skyward, watching as your buddies hog all the glory.


And so, because your players all can fly, you’re left sitting there as a GM with a pile of tear soaked campaign notes crumpled up on the table in front of you. All of a sudden you can’t put a mountain in their way, a pit trap, or a daring leap across a chasm. You can’t even give them ground-bound enemies sans projectile weapons. All of those game elements have gone away because the game space has acquired a third dimension. That’s what I mean when I say that flight changes the way the game is played. It’s a fundamental shift in adventure design and player capability.

My question is this: How do you plan accordingly? How do you accommodate the possibility of flight when you're designing obstacles and encounters? Should you?

in nearly 40 years of dming flying has really never been an issue in a game that i have run.
best plan is ask your self..does my game get broken if the party can by pass a pit or the like?
do i have enemies that could deal with flyers in some way?
really thats it
flying, jumping, spider climbing while all useful should never break a well done game.
physical obstacles should rarely if ever be particularly large challenges, facing heroes