Renaissance Man
First Post
This has nothing to do with my ability or willingness to adjudicate the situation. I am looking for innovation. But thank you just the same.LordAO said:
How do you challenge a flying PC?
- Thread starter Renaissance Man
- Start date
Renaissance Man
First Post
Re: Hey, PCs gotta have fun too!!
Thanks, IR. Yes, I appreciate that distinction.Irda Ranger said:
Hammerhead
Explorer
DocMoriartty said:
You're mistaken on some things.
1/2 celestial wings grant Good maneuverability. He can hover, fly backwards, and can turn with incredible rapidity. His flight ability is closer to an oversized hummingbird than to an eagle or condor.
If there are restrictions on flying and encumberence, I couldn't find them. However, it would be reasonable for weight to reduce his speed and maneuverability. I'd probably reduce the rating by one step for each encumbrence step. So with a medium load, he'd be flying at average ability. Then he'd want to drop his reserve fuel tank at the begining of a dog fight.
JacktheRabbit
Explorer
Thanks for the clarification. That makes the wings even more powerful than I first imagined. That means the character can fly over traps inside a dungeon.
Hammerhead said:
the Jester
Legend
Well, much like with high-level abilities such as teleportation, scrying, etc, instead of resisting the flying ability, _plan for it._ Make it essential to a situation once in a while, like the above-mentioned lava-filled trench. Only, as the half-celestial comes back with the second party member for dropoff he finds the first one fighting alone against heavy odds! Does he stay and fight or spend another few rounds getting another ally? Present him with tough choices.
Remember, though, that to make this work without making the other pcs feel useless you need to present them with similar opportunities from time to time: a door that only opens with a channelling check for the cleric, a hidden location that only the animals know for the druid or ranger, etc...
Remember, though, that to make this work without making the other pcs feel useless you need to present them with similar opportunities from time to time: a door that only opens with a channelling check for the cleric, a hidden location that only the animals know for the druid or ranger, etc...
Celebrim
Legend
I have to side with Irda Ranger on this, and though IR was tactful, I'm going to say this a little more forcefully (because I'm generally not tactful).
There is a vast difference between challenging your players and punishing your players. Many of the suggestions provided are unreaasonable, sadistic, cruel, unfair, arbitrary, and designed to kill enjoyment, not promote it. They bear all the hall marks of bad DMing. They suggest that the sessions have become adversarial DM vs. the Players, that the DM is having a hard time controlling his campaign, and that the DM enjoys stroking his own ego by showing how much more devious and cruel he can be in a contest that 1) isn't a contest and 2) isn't even remotely a fair contest and 3) isn't being run remotely fair by the referee even if it was.
Nowhere did RM suggest his campaign was out of control. He merely suggested that he was running out of original ways to challenge a player with a quite extraordinary ability - flight. The problem is of course, that there are a very limited number of things that specifically challenge flying creatures and you are better off focusing on original challenges for players in general (and there are arguably a limited number of those).
"Maybe make them make a check every so often to see if they can still keep flapping their wings amongst all the branches."
Do you make your PC's make a check every so often to see if they manage not to trip over the roots? Generally, either you should rule that either there is room to fly from A to B for a creature of a given flight manueverability or there isn't. Both are reasonable rulings depending on the type of forest, provided that you don't always rule that there isn't room when it would be particularly useful to the player for there to be flight room. Making arbitrary and onerous house rules to push perfectly reasonable activities isn't.
On the other hand, encounters with dangerous arboreal creatures in a fantasy forest or hitting a spider web designed to catch flying creatures are perfectly reasonable provided they don't happen every time the PC takes off the ground.
"He's always the first target selected by the enemy."
It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for foes to attack him first just because he flies and is obviously attention getting, just as it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for foes to flee just because he flies. But there are several problems with this. One, you are punishing the player. Two, you aren't necessarily playing the monsters intelligently. If the monsters _are_ unintelligent, fine, attack (or flee from or surrender to) the flashy target. But if the monsters are intelligent, attack the dangerous target - like his wizard friend. The point is, your choice of target as a DM should never be based on metagaming. You should be above that.
"When's molting season for a half-celestial. It's got to be at least once per year and should take several days for the new feathers to become air-worthy."
Why does it 'got to be anything'. There is nothing to suggest that angels molt regularly. Celestials are not avians. Regular molting might be a welcome background aspect of a avian character - say an Aarakroka - and could be developed into a memorable RPing experience. Celestials molting for any reason short of an alignment change or similar cosmic reason is dumb and pays a unworthy ammount of attention to what it means to be celestial. If an Angel loses his wings (or even a SINGLE feather), he has more problems than a need for new flight material. If I were running a half-celestial, I would use the atmospheric of having a feather fall out as a warning that he was straying from his alignment principals. Molting would be a prelude to metamorphasis into a half-fiend. Any other use of molting in a celestial ought to be equally well thought out and tied intimately to the campaign concept, not some arbitrary reason to punish a player.
"Have a villian capture him and pluck his feathers?"
Ahh, now that's a great suggestion. Sure, take away your player's characters. You'll stay a DM for a long time. I'd suggest never doing anything so overtly brutal to a player without some sort of implicit consent from the player. In otherwords, make sure that your actions agrees with the player's sense of story. Don't maim, rape, alignment change, mind rape or otherwise torture the character unless the player agrees that this is an interesting and reasonable out growth of his own choices. And by the way, this goes for killing a character to.
"If the PC actually uses the wings to fly, it would be a great strain thus limit him to five minutes a day per constitution point if he's just normally flying from point A to point B."
It is reasonable to assume that thier are limits on how long a particular creature can fly per day, but 5 minutes per point of CON probably isn't a reasonable assumption. I would suggest that average birds, who haven't as much manueverability and don't have supernatural sources of power, can probably fly more than an hour (total) in a day - and that manuevarble and healthy birds can fly pretty much all day long. I'd assume that a healthy half-celestial can fly as well and as long as an eagle or condor, and is as manuevable (as the rules indeed suggest) as a hummingbird. I'd assume that most players that chose to be half-celestials would assume (based on the rules and their perception of the appearance of such a being) much the same thing, and I see no reason to disappoint them. So something along the lines of an hour per point of CON, half that if he is doing alot of high energy manuevering like hovering and flying down dungeon corridors. On the subject, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that flying creatures who aren't fully celestial need to consume very healthy quanities of food to power themselves - as long as you don't take this to extreme and insist that players eat 50 times thier own body weights just because 'hummingbirds do'.
"Force him to take additional feats, skill points in order to effectively use those wings in combat maneuvers. Fly-by-attack, airbourne combat, etc."
Well, yeah. But he's probably going to want to do those things anyway, and if he doesn't, don't force him. It is his character.
"Constantly have small avians dive attack him from the back."
Why? I admit I've often spent an hour watching a hawk get chased about and worried by various small manuevable nesting birds. It's quite amusing, and interesting instruction in aerial combat, but to do this constantly is just irratating and again arbitrary.
"If he asks why: the bird-god drove them to it to punish the interloper."
Oh sure. The bird god just hates flying things. Did you ever consider that maybe the 'bird god' is this guys patron?
"My players learned long ago, better to play a mistructed tiefling than a beloved celestial."
Sounds like you are in the camp of 'Evil is better than Good'. How tiresome.
"Of course, that one dragon with level adjustments for lots of races moved 1/2 celestials to a +5 Level Adjustment, IIRC."
Did they? Good. That's closer to fair. Too late now though.
"if he ever gets caught in a nasty trap in a dungeon I could see a flying character developing a nasty case of clausterphobia"
Probably no more so than anyone caught in a nasty trap in a dungeon. Unless the player put claustraphobia in his character concept, why assume he is prone to panicing or cowardice?
There is a vast difference between challenging your players and punishing your players. Many of the suggestions provided are unreaasonable, sadistic, cruel, unfair, arbitrary, and designed to kill enjoyment, not promote it. They bear all the hall marks of bad DMing. They suggest that the sessions have become adversarial DM vs. the Players, that the DM is having a hard time controlling his campaign, and that the DM enjoys stroking his own ego by showing how much more devious and cruel he can be in a contest that 1) isn't a contest and 2) isn't even remotely a fair contest and 3) isn't being run remotely fair by the referee even if it was.
Nowhere did RM suggest his campaign was out of control. He merely suggested that he was running out of original ways to challenge a player with a quite extraordinary ability - flight. The problem is of course, that there are a very limited number of things that specifically challenge flying creatures and you are better off focusing on original challenges for players in general (and there are arguably a limited number of those).
"Maybe make them make a check every so often to see if they can still keep flapping their wings amongst all the branches."
Do you make your PC's make a check every so often to see if they manage not to trip over the roots? Generally, either you should rule that either there is room to fly from A to B for a creature of a given flight manueverability or there isn't. Both are reasonable rulings depending on the type of forest, provided that you don't always rule that there isn't room when it would be particularly useful to the player for there to be flight room. Making arbitrary and onerous house rules to push perfectly reasonable activities isn't.
On the other hand, encounters with dangerous arboreal creatures in a fantasy forest or hitting a spider web designed to catch flying creatures are perfectly reasonable provided they don't happen every time the PC takes off the ground.
"He's always the first target selected by the enemy."
It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for foes to attack him first just because he flies and is obviously attention getting, just as it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for foes to flee just because he flies. But there are several problems with this. One, you are punishing the player. Two, you aren't necessarily playing the monsters intelligently. If the monsters _are_ unintelligent, fine, attack (or flee from or surrender to) the flashy target. But if the monsters are intelligent, attack the dangerous target - like his wizard friend. The point is, your choice of target as a DM should never be based on metagaming. You should be above that.
"When's molting season for a half-celestial. It's got to be at least once per year and should take several days for the new feathers to become air-worthy."
Why does it 'got to be anything'. There is nothing to suggest that angels molt regularly. Celestials are not avians. Regular molting might be a welcome background aspect of a avian character - say an Aarakroka - and could be developed into a memorable RPing experience. Celestials molting for any reason short of an alignment change or similar cosmic reason is dumb and pays a unworthy ammount of attention to what it means to be celestial. If an Angel loses his wings (or even a SINGLE feather), he has more problems than a need for new flight material. If I were running a half-celestial, I would use the atmospheric of having a feather fall out as a warning that he was straying from his alignment principals. Molting would be a prelude to metamorphasis into a half-fiend. Any other use of molting in a celestial ought to be equally well thought out and tied intimately to the campaign concept, not some arbitrary reason to punish a player.
"Have a villian capture him and pluck his feathers?"
Ahh, now that's a great suggestion. Sure, take away your player's characters. You'll stay a DM for a long time. I'd suggest never doing anything so overtly brutal to a player without some sort of implicit consent from the player. In otherwords, make sure that your actions agrees with the player's sense of story. Don't maim, rape, alignment change, mind rape or otherwise torture the character unless the player agrees that this is an interesting and reasonable out growth of his own choices. And by the way, this goes for killing a character to.
"If the PC actually uses the wings to fly, it would be a great strain thus limit him to five minutes a day per constitution point if he's just normally flying from point A to point B."
It is reasonable to assume that thier are limits on how long a particular creature can fly per day, but 5 minutes per point of CON probably isn't a reasonable assumption. I would suggest that average birds, who haven't as much manueverability and don't have supernatural sources of power, can probably fly more than an hour (total) in a day - and that manuevarble and healthy birds can fly pretty much all day long. I'd assume that a healthy half-celestial can fly as well and as long as an eagle or condor, and is as manuevable (as the rules indeed suggest) as a hummingbird. I'd assume that most players that chose to be half-celestials would assume (based on the rules and their perception of the appearance of such a being) much the same thing, and I see no reason to disappoint them. So something along the lines of an hour per point of CON, half that if he is doing alot of high energy manuevering like hovering and flying down dungeon corridors. On the subject, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that flying creatures who aren't fully celestial need to consume very healthy quanities of food to power themselves - as long as you don't take this to extreme and insist that players eat 50 times thier own body weights just because 'hummingbirds do'.
"Force him to take additional feats, skill points in order to effectively use those wings in combat maneuvers. Fly-by-attack, airbourne combat, etc."
Well, yeah. But he's probably going to want to do those things anyway, and if he doesn't, don't force him. It is his character.
"Constantly have small avians dive attack him from the back."
Why? I admit I've often spent an hour watching a hawk get chased about and worried by various small manuevable nesting birds. It's quite amusing, and interesting instruction in aerial combat, but to do this constantly is just irratating and again arbitrary.
"If he asks why: the bird-god drove them to it to punish the interloper."
Oh sure. The bird god just hates flying things. Did you ever consider that maybe the 'bird god' is this guys patron?
"My players learned long ago, better to play a mistructed tiefling than a beloved celestial."
Sounds like you are in the camp of 'Evil is better than Good'. How tiresome.
"Of course, that one dragon with level adjustments for lots of races moved 1/2 celestials to a +5 Level Adjustment, IIRC."
Did they? Good. That's closer to fair. Too late now though.
"if he ever gets caught in a nasty trap in a dungeon I could see a flying character developing a nasty case of clausterphobia"
Probably no more so than anyone caught in a nasty trap in a dungeon. Unless the player put claustraphobia in his character concept, why assume he is prone to panicing or cowardice?
thundershot
Adventurer
I did this many years ago under 2nd Edition to a Sylph PC (When are they going to be done in 3E?). It turned into a storyline...
She ended up losing her wings, and had surgery (by Drow) and had metal wings grafted onto her back (kinda like how Angel used to have in X-Factor and X-Men). She became very dark and brooding, and only after a long time did she accept the new wings.
After a few years, something happened (can't remember the details right now) and she lost the wings, and was totally wingless. She was delighted, however, when a Xixchil (mantis people in Spelljammer) agreed to give her her old wings back... naturally, there was a bit of a price, since Xixchil like to "show off" their abilities.. she ended up with little antennae and other assorted additions.
I'd love to see Sylph officially converted so she could return to the campaign... Hm...
Chris
She ended up losing her wings, and had surgery (by Drow) and had metal wings grafted onto her back (kinda like how Angel used to have in X-Factor and X-Men). She became very dark and brooding, and only after a long time did she accept the new wings.
After a few years, something happened (can't remember the details right now) and she lost the wings, and was totally wingless. She was delighted, however, when a Xixchil (mantis people in Spelljammer) agreed to give her her old wings back... naturally, there was a bit of a price, since Xixchil like to "show off" their abilities.. she ended up with little antennae and other assorted additions.
I'd love to see Sylph officially converted so she could return to the campaign... Hm...
Chris
Reply to Celebrim
"Sounds like you are in the camp of 'Evil is better than Good'. How tiresome."
There is huge difference between playing good characters and playing a paragon of holiness. In a world of evil, non-adventuring entities look to such heros with elevated expectations. Saints are followed for days by small adoring crowds, getting in the way of them doing even a simple task, especially one where discretion is required. They essentially become targets because of hero worship.
Better to remain anonymous and as unrespected as a tiefling. For when your enemies underestimate you, it's an advantage. Alas, subtlety is usually not a winged celestial.
"Sounds like you are in the camp of 'Evil is better than Good'. How tiresome."
There is huge difference between playing good characters and playing a paragon of holiness. In a world of evil, non-adventuring entities look to such heros with elevated expectations. Saints are followed for days by small adoring crowds, getting in the way of them doing even a simple task, especially one where discretion is required. They essentially become targets because of hero worship.
Better to remain anonymous and as unrespected as a tiefling. For when your enemies underestimate you, it's an advantage. Alas, subtlety is usually not a winged celestial.
Squire James
Explorer
Mostly, just run your encounters as normal. If the encounter has no reasonable way of harming the half-celestial, reduce its EL by 1. If it isn't a challenge, it isn't worth as many XP. I feel the same way about flying invisible mages (I'd knock off 2 for that!), so it isn't anything against half-celestials in particular.
This probably doesn't matter, but the Monster Manual clearly states that a creature cannot fly with more than a medium load. I would probably extend that enough to say heavy armor can stop one from flying too. As I said, it probably doesn't matter, because most winged folks tend to go the high-Dex low-armor route anyway. Only a strong flier can carry another person and still fly.
"Confined spaces" occur annoyingly often. A human-sized avian has a wingspan of about 15-20 feet (reasonable to assume a half-celestial would have the same), and anything less than that is a "confined space".
Some enemies can jump. A few can jump really high. If your half-celestial thinks hovering 20-30 feet above a Dire Tiger is safe, demonstrate the errors of his ways! Think "huge tiger standing on his hind legs" (35' long remember), add in his 10' reach, then consider his +11 Jump skill. Up to 50' is probably within reason! Then brush up on those grapple rules... because that's what just about any animal (and many more intelligent foes) is gonna be thinking of!
Flying foes going after the flying PC is normal behavior. After all, they'd want to deal with the guy who's negating THEIR flight advantage, wouldn't they? Obviously, things like wizards throwing Fireballs may adjust their targeting priorities somewhat.
This probably doesn't matter, but the Monster Manual clearly states that a creature cannot fly with more than a medium load. I would probably extend that enough to say heavy armor can stop one from flying too. As I said, it probably doesn't matter, because most winged folks tend to go the high-Dex low-armor route anyway. Only a strong flier can carry another person and still fly.
"Confined spaces" occur annoyingly often. A human-sized avian has a wingspan of about 15-20 feet (reasonable to assume a half-celestial would have the same), and anything less than that is a "confined space".
Some enemies can jump. A few can jump really high. If your half-celestial thinks hovering 20-30 feet above a Dire Tiger is safe, demonstrate the errors of his ways! Think "huge tiger standing on his hind legs" (35' long remember), add in his 10' reach, then consider his +11 Jump skill. Up to 50' is probably within reason! Then brush up on those grapple rules... because that's what just about any animal (and many more intelligent foes) is gonna be thinking of!
Flying foes going after the flying PC is normal behavior. After all, they'd want to deal with the guy who's negating THEIR flight advantage, wouldn't they? Obviously, things like wizards throwing Fireballs may adjust their targeting priorities somewhat.
Irda Ranger
First Post
RM,
I am glad you notice the distinction. It seems that a lot of posters don't, and I didn't want you to get caught up in the hoo-rah.
Well, there are two things I like to do when the inspiration spigot is running dry.
1) Read the rules again. (The rules dealing with what Aerial creatures are capable of is in the beginning of the Monstrous Manual, under types of movement.) It helps to get the creative juices flowing to see exacly what the PC is capable of. "So he can hover and fly backwards, huh? Maybe there's a Mirror of Life Trapping somewhere that can be approached from the air. But you have to fly backwards without actually flying into it. Could the other PCs direct you from the ground? Things like this get me thinking. How long does it take his feathers to dry out after swimming? What does swimming do to the other PC's equipment? Knowing the rules is a good idea in general, but using them is a suble art, not a sledge hammer.
2) The other is to list all the variables in my "formulaic approaches" and then change a few of the variables at random. Change the race, the spell selection. Add a new element. High winds. Reverse gravity. Strap human babies to the shields of the enemy Orcs (blatanly stolen). The enemy is on a magical Pogo-stick of Jump and Dimension Door and has the Spring Attack feat. The enemy has magical armor that causes anything that strikes it to stick until a command word is spoke. Reflex save to not lose your weapon. Anything that would make a situation memorable to a regular group of PCs will still be memorable to a flyer half the time.
Lastly, and this is more a state of mind than a piece of advice, is to always look at something from as many points of view as possible. How would I use this against someone? How would I defend against it? If the court Jester got a hold of this, and price was no object, what kind of pranks would he pull? If I could see in colors others couldn't, how would that change the way I marked where the trap triggers were? What is a Wizard who has used all his spells for the day magnaminmously allows you to live in return for a small favor (Bluff check anyone?). Always be thinking.
Irda Ranger
I am glad you notice the distinction. It seems that a lot of posters don't, and I didn't want you to get caught up in the hoo-rah.
Renaissance Man said:
Well, there are two things I like to do when the inspiration spigot is running dry.
1) Read the rules again. (The rules dealing with what Aerial creatures are capable of is in the beginning of the Monstrous Manual, under types of movement.) It helps to get the creative juices flowing to see exacly what the PC is capable of. "So he can hover and fly backwards, huh? Maybe there's a Mirror of Life Trapping somewhere that can be approached from the air. But you have to fly backwards without actually flying into it. Could the other PCs direct you from the ground? Things like this get me thinking. How long does it take his feathers to dry out after swimming? What does swimming do to the other PC's equipment? Knowing the rules is a good idea in general, but using them is a suble art, not a sledge hammer.
2) The other is to list all the variables in my "formulaic approaches" and then change a few of the variables at random. Change the race, the spell selection. Add a new element. High winds. Reverse gravity. Strap human babies to the shields of the enemy Orcs (blatanly stolen). The enemy is on a magical Pogo-stick of Jump and Dimension Door and has the Spring Attack feat. The enemy has magical armor that causes anything that strikes it to stick until a command word is spoke. Reflex save to not lose your weapon. Anything that would make a situation memorable to a regular group of PCs will still be memorable to a flyer half the time.
Lastly, and this is more a state of mind than a piece of advice, is to always look at something from as many points of view as possible. How would I use this against someone? How would I defend against it? If the court Jester got a hold of this, and price was no object, what kind of pranks would he pull? If I could see in colors others couldn't, how would that change the way I marked where the trap triggers were? What is a Wizard who has used all his spells for the day magnaminmously allows you to live in return for a small favor (Bluff check anyone?). Always be thinking.
Irda Ranger
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