D&D General How early is too early for flight?

[TaranTheWanderer]

is the Paladin part of an organization? The other option is to sell them one. Maybe there’s an organization that breeds pegasi or hipogriffs or manticores or griffins whatever and will grant or sell one to the Paladin. Maybe they send him on a quest with the payment being a steed. When they get the spell later, they can do a ritual to magically attune their steed to the spell so they get the effects of the spell (essentially making their steed immortal- if I read the spell correctly )

To answer your question, I don’t think a flying steed is super powerful. It’s not like it’ll be useful in a cave. At least not the flying part.

 

[Horwath]

That's the beauty of D&D. We can customize it.

For instance - I would never allow my players to play a fairy.

why not, but there would be odd phenomenon that lots of +3 longbows appear in inventory of enemies around the world as soon as one PC picks fairy to be played.

 

[Umbran]

Flight is pretty far down the list as to why I wouldn't allow it

For the edification of the audience - fairies are Size small, get flight speed equal to their walking speed, Druidcraft cantrip at 1st, Fairie Fire at 3rd, and Enlarge/Reduce at 5th. And that's it. IMO: Mechanically, with the exception of the flight, they are pretty innocuous.

Totally unrelated, but Harengon is another race that I wouldn't allow.

So many of the new options are just too goofy and whimsical for my pallet, but they obviously appeal to others.

To each their own. I don't find D&D to be, at its heart, a deeply serious endeavor.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm working on some homebrew and I'm trying to decide how early is too early for PCs flying around.

For context, I'm trying to make a Warlock pact that revolves around the Find Steed spell and I'm realizing that the paladin would have to wait until 11th level for a flying mount while a warlock would get that 60 ft. fly speed at level 7. On the other hand, the Fly spell is 60 ft. of movement and accessible by level 5 by full casters but is limited duration. This is really showing my that spells of equal level really aren't equal in power since they're assumed to belong to certain classes.

So, would you be cool with a 7th level character casting Find Steed with a 4th level slot and getting a flying mount or should it be something that waits till 11th level?

It's never too early, so long as it is compensated for in the rules. I'm down with flying heritages.

 

[Bushviper]

To each their own. I don't find D&D to be, at its heart, a deeply serious endeavor.

I prefer campaigns that are stylistically closer to Dragonlance or Dark Sun than Monty Python.

 

[Umbran]

I prefer campaigns that are stylistically closer to Dragonlance or Dark Sun than Monty Python.

I would say kender and tinker gnomes are far more intrinsically goofy than fairies or harengon. Goofy lore and behavior trumps goofy outward appearance every time.

And, to me (and I wanna emphasize this is to ME. You get to like what you like, obviously) Dark Sun is serious only in a very 90s edgelord kind of way. It tries so hard....

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would say kender and tinker gnomes are far more intrinsically goofy than fairies or harengon. Goofy lore and behavior trumps goofy outward appearance every time.

And, to me (and I wanna emphasize this is to ME. You get to like what you like, obviously) Dark Sun is serious only in a very 90s edgelord kind of way. It tries so hard....

Everyone has different preferences. IMO the tone of Dragonlance is suitably epic and grand most of the time, with the stuff you mention mostly inserted for comic relief (which I have no issue with occasionally, but to each their own)

And a goofy visual (to you) can absolutely make a difference and affect your feelings about it.

 

[Stormonu]

Flying PCs isn't an issue at any level, unless you fail to account for it's presence. More often than not, a single PC with availability to flight (or any special movement type really) gets themselves into situations that get them into trouble (usually via scouting) far more often than not.

 

[Bushviper]

I would say kender and tinker gnomes are far more intrinsically goofy than fairies or harengon. Goofy lore and behavior trumps goofy outward appearance every time.

And, to me (and I wanna emphasize this is to ME. You get to like what you like, obviously) Dark Sun is serious only in a very 90s edgelord kind of way. It tries so hard....

Some people love them, but I find Kender to be insufferable. However, I think they serve as a levity pressure-valve in an otherwise somber setting. Tinker gnomes are goofy, too and I never liked the contamination of technology in fantasy. Fortunately, they're not particularly common in Krynn's lore.

I genuinely don't understand how you could come to that conclusion about Dark Sun. Well, I do, but it's not relevant. Regardless, Dark Sun was incredibly popular and still is because it does a fantastic job at capturing the essence of life being cheap in a harsh, broken world and those in power will do anything to achieve their goals. Including destroy the world itself.

Just standing outside too long can kill you in Athas and that's a refreshing change of pace away from modern D&D where it's almost impossible to truly die.

 

[Stalker0]

there are two factors here:

What level of carrying capacity does the flyer have? Take that fairy we noted before…might be able to carry a rope to a key spot but not lugging party members around. That’s not as strong as a flying mount that can carry other PCs and heavy equipment. The first case one PC can bypass a lot of terrain but the party still deals with it, in the second the party can often bypass certain obstacles if they have a bit of time with no checks.

How much do you want traversing terrain to be a factor in your game? As others have mentioned, the combat aspect of a single flyer isn’t too bad, you just have to modify encounters to include more ranged attacks. However, jt can have a notable impact on classic terrain hazards. If in this game you don’t really care, it’s just A to B for the next fight or social scene or mystery, etc…then flight won’t change much. If the journey is as important as the destination…,it might have quite a noticeable impact