"My hat of flight noes know limits"

[Hussar]

Um.

No.

Remember when Aragorn flew around giving Sauron roundhouse kicks to the eye and then Froda (13-year old ninja / schoolgirl / swordmaster / archmage / starship pilot / nymphomaniac) totally did a flying spin kick and slam-dunked the one ring into Mt. Doom? Neither do I. Nor do I recall similar shenanigans in Conan or any other relevant fantasy authors.

On the plus side, this means that 4E is officially less anime than 3E. Korgoth is pleased.

Remember when the Owls flew Frodo out of Mount Doom? While I disagree with some of his ideas, the idea of flying appears in a very large number of fantasy settings.

Imban - I assume you're looking at the books when you say that. Darn. Probably have to wait for that Adventurer's Vault book, or whatever it's called.

 

[Tewligan]

You've given me an awesome idea for a Lord of the Rings/Final Fantasy crossover.

I hate you.

 

[hong]

I hate you.

You can play Frodo!

 

[Colmarr]

You can play Frodo!

I'm pretty sure Aragorn would much rather play with Legolas.

 

[Parlan]

Remember when the Owls flew Frodo out of Mount Doom? While I disagree with some of his ideas, the idea of flying appears in a very large number of fantasy settings.

Eagles, dude. They were giant eagles.

The same eagles who'd saved Bilbo's bacon back in the Hobbit.

 

[Sashi]

Why do PC's need to be able to fly for long periods of time under their own power? Are you too good for a flying carpet? What's wrong with the flying carpet? We've been using Flying Carpets since you're grandfather's time!

If you want to take the PC's to a fantastical place where they need to fly all the time, then just give them flight (visiting the Air Elemental Zone?).

If all the PC's have flight, they're going to own Team Monster. If The PC's and Team Monster have flight, it's actually easier to run the game as if neither side has flight (really! Try it!)

As for DragonBorn not having flight ... yeah, that is kind of a bummer, and a broken promise. But personally I'd rather have a broken promise than a broken game (and also I'd rather not have PC's sprouting new limbs just by taking a feat).

 

[CleverNickName]

But basically flight as it was in 3.5e is bad for a number of reasons:
(snip)
Non-competitive games are played for fun. The above is not fun.

That's strange...I've played 3.x for almost a decade now, and I have never had any problems with flight. And I could have sworn that the adventure I ran that one time, where the party explored a cloud castle on winged mounts, was a lot of fun.

I must not be doing it right.

Seriously though, any aspect of a game can be "broken" if you want it to be. Flight is no exception...it all depends on how you handle it through the story.

 

[Toras]

While I will admit to using flight as a trap bypass a time or two, there were some instances where tiered battles with flight and thinking in 3 dimensions was far more fun than just running up and hacking at something.

3e also had a number of places which for lack of a better term had no land on the planes. Hell, some days you'd hope for gravity. The problem also with nerfing flight is that it means that any race that has wings or can potentially grow them is going to have a significant advantage. Having imps drop rocks out of conventional range is not good for a party that lacks flight.

It also makes exploring things like sky kingdoms or cloud cities harder to reach.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's strange...I've played 3.x for almost a decade now, and I have never had any problems with flight. And I could have sworn that the adventure I ran that one time, where the party explored a cloud castle on winged mounts, was a lot of fun.

I must not be doing it right.

Seriously though, any aspect of a game can be "broken" if you want it to be. Flight is no exception...it all depends on how you handle it through the story.

Flight (and any other "game-breaker" spell) works best when it's an adventure enabler. Exploring a Cloud Castle is a perfect example. The PCs couldn't even do the entire adventure without some means for flight.

But there are too many good adventure or encounter ideas that are not enabled by flight, but bypassed. Therefor it is important to make Flight (and similar game-breakers) available at a later point in the game, so that you had all the time to explore the scenarios they could bypass, so you can get to the scenarios where they are a vital part off. (You should probably also include a few scenes where they indeed help you bypass stuff, in case the PCs miss how awesome their spells are because they get to do things that were impossible before.)

 

[Aaron L]

I never realized being able to fly was so game-breaking. In fact, I specifically remember it being stated in the 1E DMG that anyone who was flying was essentially making a giant, blatant target of themselves, and should probably be attacked first by any enemy with any sort of intelligence, as a matter of common sense (IE if he can fly he must be powerful, so kill him first.)

It's almost painful to see such a BASIC element of fantasy (the ability to fly is pretty much one of humanity's VERY FIRST FANTASIES!) being neutered so badly in the name of some supposed, ill-considered game balance which could have been handled in a much better and less heavy-handed manner.

I would MUCH rather the game err on the side of fun and basic genre emulation than some ephemeral idea of game balance.

I'd better stop posting tonight, because for some reason everything I've been reading about 4E tonight has been making me more and more upset, and I was so looking forward to 4E even just earlier today. Maybe it's because the books are actually out in some people's hands by now and people have a more solid idea about it and the big flaws are coming out and the happy shine of mystery and optimism is wearing off, but I really hope that isn't the case.