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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5748386" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't worry too much about random encounters.  If the PC's random up a tyrannasaurus at 10th level, it's expected that things like invisibility and flight will factor highly in turning the encounter which might be dangerous in a straight up fight into one that is fairly trivial.  But when I plan an encounter with a T-Rex, I'm going to assume that the T-Rex has some means of dealing with flying top order predator competitors or else has been placed by someone intelligent as an obstacle who knows that flight might be used to bypass his land bound beast.  Or, I'm just not going to put a simple T-Rex there at all and instead have a verminous T-Rex that shoots ensnaring web nets or a half-dragon lightning breathing T-Rex or well, just use a dragon and cover all the bases.In general, many to most planned encounters take place in a dungeon environment.  This simply means that if the monster is land bound and lacking a missile weapon, that you avoid placing it in an lair where it can't reach the ceiling.  It also means that above nth level, simple pit traps are no longer a dependable obstacle.  These aren't problems so much as things you take into account in the design, unless you've not encountered this problem before and invest emotionally in 'winning' as a DM only to have the PC's easily bypass what you thought was your clever nasty encounter by 'cheating'.  DM's ego gaming is usually the root problem with flight IMO.  Compared to Invisibility, Divination, clerical Turning, and even a simple Fireball, flight doesn't offer that big of a challenge to the DM IMO provided the DM is ready for it.The problems I've seen have mostly been with DMs just not taking flight into account in their calculations.  For example, the average Brit/American has their image of a castle greatly shaped by the design of Edward I's Welsh Castles - and not just that, but Edward's castles in a semi-ruined state.  It's those castles that are most often movie castles or show up in non-fantasy wargames.   And, as a castle in a world without flight, they are severely lacking.  They have no defenses at all against flight, and are quickly overrun in a world where at least some or all of the enemy can fly.  Yet, some DMs will persist in using these castles in the face of a world filled with flying monsters and foes, only to note at too late of a point that the castle offers no defense against flying PC's and indeed - makes things easier for them.  So some DMs will argue that castles have no place in a magical world. But, if you investigate castles more deeply, you'll find that out 'east' in places like Poland or Switzerland or the Czech Republic they built castles which - for various reasons - had features that perfectly well double as defense against flying foes.  In some cases, they were just building roofs and small courtyards to keep the cold out, but if it keeps the wind out it generally does a good job keeping a flying monster out.  So, if you are ready for it, flight is not a big problem. Encounter design.  Good encounter design rather than mechanical kludges are the answer to most DM problems.   If you can't fly, then you either better have a lair/hunting grounds that renders flying moot or you better be one heck of an ambush predator/grappler.  Any monster designed for high level play better have a ranged reply period even if flight is not an issue, because otherwise its too easy for high level PC's to arrange to 'kite' a foe, use a terrain exploit, or lock them down and immobilize them.  These tactics may still work to some degree, but at least they won't be absolute win buttons.  If gravity isn't a dependable way to victimize the PC's you work around it.  Your trapped filled tomb better not be boring to a party with a flying carpet, and that means avoiding not only the pit trap as your primary hazard but the pressure plate as your primary mechanism.  There are large numbers of traps that still work with a party that can fly.  When the party level is appropriate, utilize them.As a side note, a lot of this 'encounter design' stuff is stuff that anyone playing or building a cRPG knows or learns quickly, but that's because in a cRPG combat is almost there is and if you screw that up you don't usually have much left.As far as 'monster = there for slaying' goes, I have two responses to that.  First, the first edition monster manual listed 'men' as a category of monster.  Second, what would a story like 'The Order of the Stick' be like, if all the monsters were simply 'there for the slaying'?  How much duller than that then would the story of your game be if the monsters were simply, 'there for the slaying'?</blockquote>

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