D&D 5E On fairies and flying

[doctorbadwolf]

It might make the story slightly different, but not fundamentally.

Replace giant spiders with giant wasps.

You don't try and imprison someone on the roof if you know they can fly, you put them in the dungeon instead. Wings would have made this more difficult for Gandalf.

The Nazgul wouldn't have been on horses if they where hunting someone who could fly.

In the novel this is not an obstacle.

Flying wraths, mosquito swarms, disorientating fog.

Exactly.
And the Nazgul have monstrous flying mounts. The Shadow has spies in the air. The Fellowship trying to use flying as a shortcut would have been suicide. They wouldn’t even have made it to Rivendell, much less Mordor.

 

[iserith]

I build a campaign world or sandbox, fill it with various kinds of obstacles and challenges and set the PCs loose. The world exists independently of the PCs. If they make some parts trivial, fine, there will be other parts that are not trivial. Where things like exploration in 5E, skip buttons, and flight become a problem is that the game I want to run is focused on exploration. Sandbox hexcrawl. West Marches. Whatever. So for the entire purpose of the game to not be trivialized, I have to make a lot of house rules in 5E that I wouldn't in other games. Throwing flying into the mix is just one more skip button that trivializes the main focus of the game, for me.

So I'm running a hexcrawl and one of the PCs is an aarakocra. What are you experiencing exactly with this being a problem? Because I am not having any issues with this. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

[iserith]

Flying is massive. With flying the castle is massively changed and people live underground in what we could call "dungeons". Hey that gives me an idea.....

Perfect.

 

[Scott Christian]

It might make the story slightly different, but not fundamentally.

Replace giant spiders with giant wasps.

You don't try and imprison someone on the roof if you know they can fly, you put them in the dungeon instead. Wings would have made this more difficult for Gandalf.

The Nazgul wouldn't have been on horses if they where hunting someone who could fly.

In the novel this is not an obstacle.

Flying wraths, mosquito swarms, disorientating fog.

This is literally the point I have made in several posts prior to this. In games where the DM plays a tit-for-tat with players, it quickly becomes a competition, or worse yet, something that isn't even fun. If everything the player gets or achieves is suddenly thwarted in each encounter because the DM takes it into account, then the player soon doesn't care what power or item or spell they get. Why should they? The DM is just going to negate it, you know, out of fairness.
That is the entire point of flying. It is a resource that gets used up. As a wizard, I couldn't wait until I got flying. Know what happened once I did - every combat was underground or had archers/long range spells, or an ogre magi appeared. And everything was just out of reach. The conditions just right to make it extremely difficult to use or worse, completely ineffective. Know how happy I was when I got flying and all that happened? Zero. In fact, I grew to dislike it. That is not how a power should make a player feel. It should make them feel good when they use it, because they are using it to overcome an obstacle. Take away the resource and just give it, well, it can fundamentally change the way some campaigns work. That's all I'm saying.
I think this is true with many of the spells in the PHB. But at least those spells use the caster's resources. I mean, I know I have been in campaigns where I could have ruined the entire session with one spell, but chose not to. Sometimes it just doesn't seem like the logical or right thing to do. It is the same with DMs. Sometimes you can create encounters that take everything your group can do into consideration. Other times, just for logic's sake, you shouldn't.

 

[overgeeked]

Flying is so OP they needed to keep the drakewarden from gaining access to flight until 15th level. But it's so nothing burger that the aarakocra, fairy, and winged tiefling can have it from 1st level. Make up your minds guys.

 

[Charlaquin]

In my experience, flight breaks down into three tiers:

1. The party has no flight capacity at all.
2. The party is mostly ground-bound, but some portion of it can fly.
3. The entire party can fly.

Each tier dramatically expands the PCs' capabilities, which in turn closes off a bunch of options for the DM in adventure design. Going to tier 2 opens up room for aerial scouting, sending a flyer to tie a rope or retrieve an object, and "air support" in combat. Going to tier 3 allows the party to soar merrily over all manner of obstacles and threats, and demolish melee enemies at no risk to themselves.

BUT: The find familiar spell means tier 2 is already available from the start. It doesn't actually make much difference whether the flying thing is a PC. An owl or hawk familiar allows the party to reap most of the benefits of tier 2 right there. When you hit third level, warlocks get Pact of the Chain, beast master rangers can call flying companions, and so forth.

If it weren't so easy for a low-level party to push into tier 2 already, I would object strongly to "flight at level 1" races. However, that ship has sailed. Aarakocra and fairies are just another way to get to the same place as a wizard with an owl or a beast master with an eagle.

I mostly agree, but I would say flying companions put you into like tier 1.5. Yes, they allow you to do most of the things you can do at tier 2, but only indirectly through an NPC companion, and more importantly, doesn’t give you air support in combat. All of the early-game options for flying companions prevent or heavily restrict the companion’s ability to attack.

So, for me, the Aarakocra problem was solvable by saying that Aaracokra only have 4 limbs instead of 6 and ruling that in order to use their flight speed they need both hands free in addition to not having medium or heavy armor on. This had the added benefit of giving them a reason to ever attack with their talons. But faeries will need a different solution. I’m thinking maybe they need to Dash to use their flight speed, but then I suppose rogues will be able to do that with Cunning Action…

 

[Charlaquin]

Fairies are small, which means carry weight is halved,

No it doesn’t?

 

[Charlaquin]

I definately felt that way about counterspell. It changed my entire approach to enemy spellcasters so much that I finally just banned it after several attempts to houserule it. I of course was able to find ways around it....but over and over and over again, eventually I just didn't like being constrained by that one spell.

Hmm… I’ve never had an issue with counterspell, but with this analogy I now instantly understand why many do. Bravo.

 

[Charlaquin]

With flying you can easily destroy the one ring, and often quickly complete other quests

One does not simply ride eagles into Mordor.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hiya!

I don't quite understand why so many folks are "against" flight at low levels.

Actually, scratch that. I have a theory...

Many of the DM's who poo-poo flight ability at low level are likely the type of DM's who like their "Adventure Paths & Stories" to unfold as they expect them to. I'd also say that many of the DM's who have no problem with it are the type of DM's who like the story to unfold as the Players dictate. (basically, "new school" versus "olde skool", I guess).

Your theory is incorrect, as I prefer to let the story unfold as the players dictate, and I also don’t like PC flight at 1st level.