Immobilising flying creatures

[MacavityCat]

Thanks for the thoughts. I guess the question was related to the discrepency between falling damage and limitation on epic powers. Take the point on the knock prone being even easier to achieve than immobilse.

As for 4E and flying, I think the inclusion of relatively low level flying mounts such as hippogriff enable even heroic tier to fly. If the PCs can sit at range 40' above the target and pepper it with arrows its hard for a flying creature not to get drawn upwards.

I have also noted that the game mechanics have do not quite scale up to 3D.

There seem a few solutions.

Dont let the PCs get access to flying mounts
Have monsters decline ariel encounters at altituide
Reduce the damage from falling to be consistent with epic limits
Reduce the DC for a creature to recover from a crash

The latter seems to make most sense as creatures tend to evolve to protect themselves from their most obviuos dangers. Ignoring the real world simulation debate I have watched wildlife programmes where eagles have all but knocked flying prey sensless and the prey recover readily during the subsequent drop.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, one way to deal with that would be to come up with a rule relating to saves vs these kinds of effects. What you need is a mechanism that provides a guarantee that the target gets at least one save before it crashes into the ground.

Here's what I would consider doing. Make 'falling' an 'end of turn' thing that happens AFTER saving throws. So a prone/immobilized/stunned creature moves its movement and is now 'crashing'. Then it gets its save, then if it fails, it falls, which may or may not result in hitting the ground depending on how high up it is. If it does save, then it simply does not fall.

Not sure if that has any other rules implications, but it would mean that you are at least guaranteed a chance to avoid crashing and possibly more than one chance if you are high enough. The last remaining hitch is then powers with no save (usually those that read something like "... until the start/end of your next turn.") I don't know what the answer is for that, yet, but I'm thinking... Hmmmm, perhaps crashing movement happens at the start of the turn of whoever initiated the crash? That might work.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

This is easily fixed. You're being way too soft on the pc's in my estimation. First letting them have flying mounts in heroic seems a little montyhaulish to me. I've been playing DnD for 30 years and other than a flying carpet in one campaign my experience with flying mounts is limited to 1-2 adventures where they were temporary.

PC's flying at 150' look like food to a ROC. Kill a pc through falling and see how long they want to continue to be fighter pilots. Any dragon can stun pc's in flight via frightful presence and stun their mounts and send them all to the ground in a pile. Griffons/hippogriffs don't have hover so any attack that immobilizes, stuns, or knocks prone is lights out. There's a dragon appropriate to every level pc group. They all have frightful presence. buhbye pc's

 

[MacavityCat]

Killing PCs to make a point over a weakness in the game system is not my style especially when they were not being explotative they only had the mount for 1 day for a specific purpose and it just happened during an encounter. Equally a return to the bad old days of earlier edition broken rules and the unwritten code of abstenance or risk for tat seems a tad tedious (remember level raised holyword ... roll for initiative the cleric with the highest paralyses the other side, coup de grace).

Abdul I tend to agree with you Crashing has more of a condition type feel one in which the target is essentially falling out of control doing everything to regain control (i.e. effectively stunned). A flat DC of 30 makes it impossible for many creatures to recover irrespective of height. A save ends would provide lower level flying monsters a chance to recover. Knowing creatures can more readily recover from a crash would make PCs far more cautious about flying.

 

[Nytmare]

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.

Killing PCs to make a point over a weakness in the game system is not my style especially when they were not being explotative they only had the mount for 1 day for a specific purpose and it just happened during an encounter.

The opening statement didn't sound anything like that last one. It sounded like you gave a low level party the ability to fly, and didn't know how to stop them from hanging out at 150 feet, waiting for epic tier monsters to show up, and then watching said monster fall to its death.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Killing PCs to make a point over a weakness in the game system is not my style especially when they were not being explotative they only had the mount for 1 day for a specific purpose and it just happened during an encounter. Equally a return to the bad old days of earlier edition broken rules and the unwritten code of abstenance or risk for tat seems a tad tedious (remember level raised holyword ... roll for initiative the cleric with the highest paralyses the other side, coup de grace).

You definitely made it appear as if it was a problem being exploited by your pc's. You could give them ample warning this was dangerous business by having a creature stun a mount and have the mount fall to it's death. If they can't glean that being 150' in the air is going to catch up with them there's no saving them anyway.

If your flying pc's wasn't a problem I'm unsure the point of this thread. The odds are not stacked massively in the players favor as you suggest especially as even one failure for the players is career ending.

The opening statement didn't sound anything like that last one. It sounded like you gave a low level party the ability to fly, and didn't know how to stop them from hanging out at 150 feet, waiting for epic tier monsters to show up, and then watching said monster fall to its death.

this

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not exactly sure why it would generally be any more exploitative for PCs to BE flying than to not be flying... Consider, many spells have ranges of 20 squares. A monster falling from that height will take 7d10 damage. That is already FAR beyond anything characters below epic tier can normally deliver for damage. So, regardless of whether or not the PCs are themselves flying, they possess a potent form of attack against flying monsters, at practically any level. Now, every flying monster could simply fly at treetop altitude at all times, etc. but the potential is there.

I really don't understand the attitude that says "well, all flying is just restricted to higher tier adventurers." I don't think that is really a reasonable stance to take either. Lower level characters could also fly around only at treetop height and thus avoid most deadly fall situations, but that is still simply putting a fairly arbitrary sort of restriction on what types of environments heroic characters can adventure in. What convincing argument exists for having such a restriction in the game? I don't see one.

The problem IMHO was that the designers decided to use a skill check to halt crashing. Once they made that decision it pretty much HAD to be a high DC because otherwise it would be a trivial check for most of the higher level flying creatures, and they didn't want to make it a free pass for anyone.

Using a saving throw simply avoids that problem entirely. In fact to a certain extent it makes flying MORE dangerous for some of the really high level creatures. Consider that an Ancient Black Dragon would have an athletics rating of +21, and a bonus of +10 for flying speed, thus it would normally only crash on a 1 simply 'taking 10' will obviate any chance of it crashing from above 110 squares. The same dragon requiring a save would succeed on a 5+, so it now has 4x the chance of crashing, though the probability is against it in either case. My suggestion also provides a check even below 110 squares for the dragon, so it is really fairly debatable which situation is more hazardous. In general monsters flying near the ground will crash approximately half as often if they get a save. Lower level PCs would rarely make the DC30 check normally unless their mounts are much higher level than they are, and would face practically certain death below 100 or so squares. This way they have roughly a 50% chance of only being grounded, possibly less if they happen to be above about 200 squares (though it strikes me that flying that high doesn't particularly seem like a good idea in any case). Remember, a mounted PC still has to make another save to stay in the saddle if he's knocked prone, and is AUTOMATICALLY dismounted if the mount is knocked prone (in a flying situation you might also grant a save for this).

No matter what sort of rules you use for flying combat, it IS going to be quite dangerous and PCs are likely to fall often. Why make it pure suicide? A heroic character flying at lower altitudes aught to have some chance of surviving a crash without massive damage IMHO. It isn't going to somehow degrade the game any, it just opens up a few more adventure opportunities.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Well, one way to deal with that would be to come up with a rule relating to saves vs these kinds of effects. What you need is a mechanism that provides a guarantee that the target gets at least one save before it crashes into the ground.

Here's what I would consider doing. Make 'falling' an 'end of turn' thing that happens AFTER saving throws. So a prone/immobilized/stunned creature moves its movement and is now 'crashing'. Then it gets its save, then if it fails, it falls, which may or may not result in hitting the ground depending on how high up it is. If it does save, then it simply does not fall.

Not sure if that has any other rules implications, but it would mean that you are at least guaranteed a chance to avoid crashing and possibly more than one chance if you are high enough. The last remaining hitch is then powers with no save (usually those that read something like "... until the start/end of your next turn.") I don't know what the answer is for that, yet, but I'm thinking... Hmmmm, perhaps crashing movement happens at the start of the turn of whoever initiated the crash? That might work.

I think this is a superior solution than by the book, and I'll certainly use it in my games.

 

[Nytmare]

I really don't understand the attitude that says "well, all flying is just restricted to higher tier adventurers."

It's not an attitude, it's a part of the design of the game. In the explanation of the tiers (pg 28 PHB) heroic = characters are earthbound, paragon = characters start flying. Is there even a way to get sustained flight before the paragon tier without DM fiat?

[EDIT] Ok, I found one. There's a chance you can make a heroic tier party fly with a Phantom Steed ritual if the caster is aided by 4 people and can beat a 40 on the Arcana check.