Immobilising flying creatures

[MacavityCat]

As the rules appear to stand an immobilised flying creature that can not hover will descend its movement distant and then crash if it has not reached the ground. A crashing creature falls upto 100 squares per round unless they can make a DC 30 athletics.

In many cases flying creatures do not have hover and do not have the kinds of athletics skills that will permit a DC 30 save. Furthermore few have an ability to immobilise other flying creatures.

Thus my PCs have worked out they can fly at height 150 and use fairly low level powers to cause high level creatures to crash and sustain 20d10 damage. Of course there is always a reciprocal risk but the odds are stacked massively in favour of the PCs.

Am I missing something or have the game designers provided a simple way of inflicting 20d10 damage against flying creatures?

As the rules are written most flying creatures would be stupid to fly above more than about 8 squares. This seems daft.

 

[Nytmare]

This leads me to other interesting questions, like:

Where are these low level characters getting high level sustainable flight?

Why are they being pitted against high level fliers?

Why are they getting into encounters 150 feet up in the air?

 

[ki11erDM]

Was this different in some other version of D&D that I don’t know about? If any creature stops flying and starts falling it always took damage… lots of it… its… well its logical. What did you want them to do? Should flying creatures be immune to immobilizing effects?

 

[Bagpuss]

Knocking flying creatures Prone is far more effective than Immobilized and pretty easy to find powers that do that as well, it even works on hovering creatures.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, "Fight In The Skies" 4e is not... lol. The rules they do have are mostly logical, but a DM is going to have to reasonably extrapolate a bit. There are a lot of powers/effects/whatever that just don't make sense in the air in any case, so that helps. You cannot really create terrain, so that obviates a bunch of spells that might cause someone to fall prone. likewise it is going to be, at best, exceedingly difficult to stay close to an enemy in the air, unless you both desire that, so a LOT of melee attack based ways to knock people over are gone or much less important.

And lets face it, if you're fighting 100's of feet up in the sky, it is going to be pretty darn dangerous and pretty easy to end up falling to your kersplat. Which is pretty much why there is rather a hint of relegating PC flying to high levels where there is some decent chance of survival. The relative ease of bringing flying creatures DOWN to the ground is also a big advantage in the more likely scenarios where the PCs are being straffed by some monster. It isn't all that fun to be a helpless target, and even if your party has a couple ranged strikers in it, that still leaves you with maybe 50% of your normal firepower, which is not really conducive to victory in most battles.

So look at flying PCs in combat as a high risk thrill type scenario for the players, and the ease grounding flying monsters as a benefit to the game.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Lets not forget that there are a massive number of hover fliers in 4e. Probably more than half the fliers can hover. Prone is the only reliable way to bring them down. As previously stated most prone effects come from melee attacks which makes it hard to apply them to fliers.

The rules for flight in 4e are relatively weak but it does sort of make sense that if you're having combat 150' off the ground there is a significant chance your day is going to end with a resounding thud and a small bounce.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I remember a few months ago a thread where people debated whether the wizard 1 power "Icy Ground" (or whatever it is called) should or shouldn't be able to knock a flying creature prone. One group say "It's icy ground, so it doesn't affect flying creatures". The other group say "forget the fluff, just go with the mechanics and make up a reason for it".

Certainly the wizard "Icy Rays" can be good at bringing down flying creatures (damage + immobilise).

It seems to me that the question behind the question is why, when even epic attack powers might be limited to 8d6 damage or 6[W] damage, is there a way for relatively simple to cause falls do 20d10?

Cheers

 

[Tuft]

It seems to me that the question behind the question is why, when even epic attack powers might be limited to 8d6 damage or 6[W] damage, is there a way for relatively simple to cause falls do 20d10?

Cheers

Because you are not supposed to be doing such things in 4E, so not much attention have been given to it?

 

[Nightson]

Thus my PCs have worked out they can fly at height 150 and use fairly low level powers to cause high level creatures to crash and sustain 20d10 damage.

More like 9d10 to 5d10 damage depending on the speed of the flier. Also, do it to the players, they want to play with fire then let them get burned a couple times.

 

[Starfox]

Afraid Tuft is on the ball. Remember the table in the DMG that lists level-appropriate falls? You are not supposed to fly higher than that.

In this case, it seems it is the players taking the initiative to fly high. In which case the DMs response should probably be to not challenge them up there. All they can do at 150 feet is travel. If they constantly seek to use high-level archery or such trickery, maybe a few ranged immobilize/knockdown powers is in order, but in general I'd let them get away with it. Most interesting stuff in DnD is indoors anyway.