Monster Study: The Aarakocra

[I'm A Banana]

So, I thought the folks over here would have some interesting thoughts on this.

Basic summary is that the aarakocra highlight two design issues in D&D that could use some broader thought. The original design of the critter was a Good folk who lived in mountains and basically were guides and locals and occasional livestock-thieves. This image loaned itself to a few incarnation of the aarakocra as a PC race, but largely with similar problems: The critter can fly, which is a problem for D&D combat.

So if you ditch it as a potential ally, potential PC, and all-round benevolent critter, and leave it as a "monster," it has another problem: as a Good monster with generally poor combat stats, it's not a great fight for heroic characters. The challenge implied in the original version was esentially a light social challenge: the aarakocra and local townsfolk might conflict, and it's up to the PC's to make peace, if they can.

This kind of thought process is probably what resulted in 4e's vulture-like antagonists: clearly a better villain than misunderstood tribal locals.

The linked article ends with some 4e rules for using "old" aarakocra in 4e, as NPC's that aren't monsters to fight, but also aren't PC-ready.

But I'm interested in EN World's take on these problems.

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D? Are there mechanics that can help? How has PC flight worked in your games?

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?

How might you bring the aarakocra into your own games?

(and yeah, the little article is something I wrote...though clearly the blurry image with the misspelling of "charge" could've used some more work...)

 

[Stormonu]

First of all, flight isn't much help in a typical dungeon. Especially winged flight.

Overall, I don't think the stat blocks we see should be limited to combat encounters.

It can be useful to have stats for other encounters (though you usually don't need as much info as you do for combat). Imagine an encounter with a brownie whose guarding a bridge you need to cross. He's laid down some magic that prevents folks from crossing the bridge (they suddenly turn away and begin walking the opposite direction) unless they pay his fee of a bowl of fresh, warm milk. Maybe strong-willed PCs can overcome the magic (successful Will save), a wizard could dispel it or the party could try to intimidate him (at the first sign of naked steel, he vanishes, thinking his prank isn't worth the trouble he's about to face).

They don't have to be negative encounters either; seeking out a gold dragon for his knowledge (and perhaps aid) might be use for the big dragon. A monster's use as an ally may be possible. You don't necessarily need combat stats for this kind of stuff, but you still need an entry to know what's within the bounds of reason. And sometimes the good guys get ticked or are guarding something and might come into conflict somehow with the party.

 

[Gilladian]

I generally find continuous long-term flight to be a REAL problem. I even find a flying familiar to be something of a problem, because both can make outdoor/overland and even town encounters MUCH easier.

A flying familiar a hundred yards ahead of the PCs on a forest trail negates SO many encounters, it isn't funny. No more ambushes, no more toll gates (they just go around), etc...

Even in a dungeon, flight can be a headache for the DM.

I love Aarakocra and other such creatures as foes/problems to be solved, but not as PC races.

 

[Jhaelen]

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D? Are there mechanics that can help? How has PC flight worked in your games?

Well, as written, flight rules in pre-4e were way too complicated. While we managed somehow in 3e it was pretty awkward and required significant simplifications.
In 4e it works better but can still be problematic to visualize. Unless D&D ditches the mini-based combat it will always be tricky.

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?[/quotes]There's definitely no room for them in a D&D style monster manual.

There would be room for them in a setting-based book, though. Since Aaracocra aren't meant to be fought what makes them interesting must be something connected to their background or culture. Generic Aaracocra's are useless.

How might you bring the aarakocra into your own games?

The easiest way to introduce them is an adventure (module). Since they aren't combative, the most obvious hook involves them looking for help. So all you have to come up with is a motivation for the pcs to help them. E.g. they could serve as guides to a well-hidden place or have access to forgotten lore, etc.

 

[Corathon]

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D? Are there mechanics that can help? How has PC flight worked in your games?

I have a winged PC in my game (he's not an aaracokra). As some have mentioned already, winged flight isn't all that useful in a dungeon. Even outdoors, missile weapons (possessed by many humanoid types and all giants) guarantee that fliers are not invulnerable all of the time. If they are able to get out of reach of some monsters, that's fine; not that big a thing.

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?

IMC, I use "monsters" of all types - allies and neutrals as well as villains and thugs. And good-aligned monsters are fine in a game where the PCs are predominantly evil or even neutral. For that reason they should ahve the same stats as any other monster.

How might you bring the aarakocra into your own games?

I used them a couple of years ago. Following the trail of a villain into some high mountains the characters discovered some aaracokra (the existence of the species is not common knowledge). The charismatic paladin and psionicist made friends with them and got valuable information about the area where their enemy had made her lair.

 

[Celebrim]

Basic summary is that the aarakocra highlight two design issues in D&D that could use some broader thought.

Interesting topic.

The original design of the critter was a Good folk who lived in mountains and basically were guides and locals and occasional livestock-thieves.

Sounds interesting. I should note my bias before hand by saying that I have fairly extensive experience with Aarakocra in this role. In one of the campaigns I played in, the PC's set up a kingdom in newly explored territory and one of the assets/difficulties that they had to deal with was a native tribe of aarakocra in this role.

This image loaned itself to a few incarnation of the aarakocra as a PC race, but largely with similar problems: The critter can fly, which is a problem for D&D combat.

Now this is a jump in logic that I don't really understand at all. Just because a creature is good aligned and relatively weak, doesn't mean its automaticly qualified to be a PC race. Certainly it wouldn't have been seen as such at the time that the race was originally introduced.

So if you ditch it as a potential ally, potential PC, and all-round benevolent critter, and leave it as a "monster," it has another problem: as a Good monster with generally poor combat stats, it's not a great fight for heroic characters. The challenge implied in the original version was esentially a light social challenge: the aarakocra and local townsfolk might conflict, and it's up to the PC's to make peace, if they can.

First of all, I should admit another bias and say that the latter sort of challenge is one I find to be a higher level of design, and a more mature approach to RPGs in general, than pure tactical or system mastery challenges. That said, I still don't understand the criticism at all.

To begin with, while most PC parties are clustered around 'good' alignments, its by no means universal that all PC parties are good and their primary antagonists evil. And even if a PC party is good aligned nothing precludes misunderstandings, xenophobia, disagreements over what is in each cultures best interest, differences over law and chaos, and specific differences in culture or custom from creating conflict with another good aligned culture. Finally, even if a race is 'usually' good, doesn't mean that there aren't individual members and somtimes communities and societies that aren't.

Secondly, the combat attributes of aarakroka are equivalent to that of orcs or goblins. Are you suggesting that because orcs and goblins have generally poor combat stats that they aren't meant to be antagonists?

Granted, neither stock orcs nor stock goblins nor stock aarakroca are much of a threat in a straight up fight past 5th level or so in any edition, but increasing longevity of these foes into higher levels is the same regardless of which form the low HD intelligent humanoid takes. You up their 'tech level', give them champions with higher than normal HD, and put them into tactical situations that highly favor them. In the case of goblins that means ambushes, traps, and fortifications to hide behind. In the case of aarakroca that means ambushes, higher tech or magitech bombs and so forth.

Squadrons of 2HD aarakroca dive bombing you with javelins, yellow mold bombs, canisters of flaming oil, and 'fire trap' bombs can maintain their status as threats over a fairly signficant period, especially when backed up with pet giant eagles and higher HD champions and leaders. Welcome to 3D you poor land bound saps.

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D?

I would say that Flight is always a problem with Heroic tier PC's, but that at some point, D&D has always assumed that the means to fly will come into PC hands and eventually the means to fly over long periods will become available. I don't believe that it presents a big challenge at high levels provided the DM is prepared for this fact and takes it into account when imagining and inventing challenges for high level PC's.

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?

Have we seriously come to the point where we are asking questions like this? Really? Honestly, I don't think there are many creatures in the Monster Manual that might always be battled to the death. Most creatures in the Monster Manual are far more interesting when battle to the death is not the immediate and foregone conclusion. Red Dragons, for example, make interesting NPC's, and at the very least, are more satisfying foes if Smaug like, they get a chance to interact with the PC's beyond a suprise round ambush with a breath weapon. Are we so beaten down as DMs that we have to wring every tactical advantage out of every combat in order to worry our players? Seriously, if we've come to the point where we only see monsters as stat blocks and numbers, then I'm done with RPG's because I got past that in about the 7th grade when the endless dice rolling in contests I was supposed to lose just started to bore me to tears as a DM.

How might you bring the aarakocra into your own games?

Look at their original intention. Now imagine a king builder style campaign were one hex of the map contains a couple hundred aarakrocaa and the neighboring hex contains a couple hundred human goatherders and their flocks. 'Hilarity' ensues.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D? Are there mechanics that can help? How has PC flight worked in your games?

1) Yes. The DM has to redesign a lot of stuff. Certain terrain features (especially dealing with traps) can become trivial. Infiltrating a castle becomes a lot easier; the defenses are designed to keep people out the ground-floor doors. An aarakocra rogue with Stealth and Thievery could disable the trap on the window, pick the lock, and get in, by themself, then go downstairs and open a door to let the rest of the party in, as opposed to the extended Bluff/Thievery skill challenge (with a failure resulting in combat very much on the NPCs' terms) that would likely result on the ground floor. Trap encounters might need to be redesigned. Etc.

I don't think being able to fly changes scouting all that much. Your opponents might have a harder time getting the cover/concealment needed to hide from a flying scout, but it's also hard to be stealthy while flying. If you're scouting by yourself, well, you're just a target for everyone who sees you.

For the flying familiar, that's even worse... the familiar has to act on its own intelligence, which I believe isn't that high. (And even worse if the scout is an animal companion!)

2) In my last session, the PCs fought primarily flying opponents in their first encounter. These opponents had ranged attacks too, so it wasn't just constant Fly-by Attack (you can ready an action to stop that). Many PCs were severely "nerfed", leaving the encounter being tougher than the XP budget would indicate. Similarly, most monsters and many NPCs are far weaker at ranged than at melee, giving a flying PC a large advantage. (In fact, the PCs could focus on the ranged opponents first, making the flying PC nearly invincible.)

3) In Gamma World, the flying "origin" gives you -2 to hit while flying. Maybe that's enough of a problem-solve.

This isn't to say you can't use a flying PC (or companion), just that you need to adjust encounters to take that into account.

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?

"Monsters" should be combat antagonists, yes. I frequently design minions with non-adventuring skill powers (eg the ability to craft something in an hour, similar to the Martial Practice) but they're not intended to engage in combat. While they technically have XP values and combat stats, they're there mainly so I can know what their skill bonus instead, in case it comes up.

I've also designed "neutral" NPCs, like Silvarr the diviner. One of his abilities is not a combat ability but a skill-booster, and he has access to a vast swath of divination rituals, but most of his abilities are still of the
"dishing out the hurt" variety. (I made up a version of Shadow Evocation just for him.) His skills are mainly mental skills like Arcana and History, but that's not unusual for even a combat mage.

Silvarr, being an old wizard not "optimized" (in flavor terms) for combat, would probably spend his first action just casting an escape spell and fleeing, but he is a wizard, would prep a few combat spells, and could fight if he felt he had to.

I had two conflicting issues with the stat block as presented. The first is the monster looks exactly like a skirmisher, but has several healing surges. It would make a good antagonist against evil PCs too, as even a good-aligned NPC healbot can only heal once or twice per encounter, making their higher number of healing surges irrelevant. I suppose the difference becomes more noticeable at higher level. The second - you don't need different stats if you're not using the companion rules. But I suppose, having started in 2e and never having gone through the companions, henchmen and hireling phase, I don't see much point of having "allied" creatures. It's a cultural or generational thing, not really a rule thing.

Just because most aarakocra are good (well, Silvaraak aarakocra anyway) doesn't mean that there are no statistically identical aarakocra who aren't, or that they're inappropriate to use against evil PCs. To put it another way, I don't think alignment needs to be a "game stat". There need not be any difference between a good or evil NPC in terms of combat abilities in most cases, and in some cases (eg good vs evil paladin) the differences might simply be damage type. (On the other hand, an evil cleric might be very different than a good one...)

I had no issues with the flavor of the article at all.

How might you bring the aarakocra into your own games?

I actually had one for a while, but its' not very relevant to this thread. The player wanted to play a kenku, but there are no kenku on Athas. So I told him he could be an aarakocra, but use kenku abilities/stats. (The issue was flavor, not balance.)

Kenku don't fly, though.

 

[the Jester]

Is Flight always a problem with a PC in D&D? Are there mechanics that can help? How has PC flight worked in your games?

Unrestricted flight is, yes. If the game is designed for that- good high level 3e adventures were particularly good at designing adventures that required high level abilities- it can work, but it adds a whole level of tactical consideration that turns ugly as soon as the pcs don't have a flyer.

4e has recently given us the pixie for a flying pc race, and it looks like it will work, but I've not seen it in actual play yet, so it's hard to say for sure.

Should "monsters" always be combat antagonists? Is there room in our Monster Manuals for creatures that might not be battled to the death? What should their "stat blocks" look like?

I much prefer a MM with monsters suitable for opposing evil pcs as well as good ones. Neutral parties, including dangerous animals, are also fine inclusions imho. You can always call them "twisted" or "cursed" or "evil cultists" or whatever if you simply must have a combat with them- adapting stat blocks is a long-held tradition and changing the alignment listed is one of the quickest and easiest adjustments to make.

I don't see any reason to reduce the stat block, either, personally.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Interesting thoughts so far! I'm especially a little surprised at the diversity of opinions on PC flight. There's a lot of space between the idea that flight isn't that big of a deal, and that flight makes PCs nearly invincible!

Those who have had problems with flight, what, specifically, in play or in figuring out adventures, have those problems been?

Those who have had no problems with flight, what have you done to counteract it? Is it really as simple as "-2 to attack rolls" and to ensure access to ranged attacks to make flight not an issue?

It also seems like there's some competing definitions of what a "monster" should be. Some basically see the word as equivalent to "creature," so it would be fine to have monsters who are not hostile combat antagonists (provided, of course, they can provide some sort of interesting encounter). Others seem to agree with 4e's philosophy of "monsters are there for slaying."

Even those folks in the latter camp, however, think there is a place for non-hostile creatures...just not necessarily a place in the "monster manual"...a place in adventures or setting books. This seems a bit odd to me, personally...if they are an interesting encounter, why shouldn't there be a single resource the DM turns to when they want an "interesting encounter" (be it combat or otherwise)?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Those who have had problems with flight, what, specifically, in play or in figuring out adventures, have those problems been?

I've avoided it; problems have been mainly in "thought experiments".

Even those folks in the latter camp, however, think there is a place for non-hostile creatures...just not necessarily a place in the "monster manual"...a place in adventures or setting books. This seems a bit odd to me, personally...if they are an interesting encounter, why shouldn't there be a single resource the DM turns to when they want an "interesting encounter" (be it combat or otherwise)?

I wouldn't expect to find minion bakers in a Monster Manual. I would expect to see them in adventures and setting books though. I was disappointed that most of the named NPCs in Keep on the Shadowfell weren't given stats (even though they weren't combatants), and even some combatants like Lord Padraig weren't given stats. (Incidentally, I've statted them all up.)

Said NPCs could play a big role in a social skill challenge. Usually the rules of a skill challenge give you a level (presumably that of the lead NPC) and that's it. IMC, I have Bluff checks opposed by Insight rather than the "standard DC" for most such skill challenges. If the NPC in question is "dumb" they might not have Insight and so Bluff checks would be easy. On the other hand, said leader might have an advisor with a high Insight score (making this harder), or one time, the NPCs tried to use the Discern Lies ritual (the PCs found a way of disrupting the ritual and ended up winning the skill challenge).