I don't get why using the encumberance rules (or my understanding of the rules) make the flier more effective (wich I don't find to be a problem btw).
What was linked to the thread was that the rules "make no distinction," leaving room for the DM to make one. Also, there's an issue with credibility when it comes to Jeremy "Shield Master" Crawford in my view. His read on the rules is no better than any other DM's (and often much worse).
Another way to look at it is that when faced with adjudicating a flying PC carrying another PC across the river (for example), you're choosing to use the carrying capacity rules to resolve whether the action is successful. You could choose otherwise. The rules don't actually say that carrying capacity applies the same way to flying as they do for walking. The DM gets to say. If you as DM have been saying that it does apply equally to walking and flying in the past, then past being precedent, it's a good idea in my view to have a discussion with the players about that. Setting expectations up front is ideal. But again, if you're ruling in a way that makes fliers more effective, it makes complaints about them being too effective ring pretty hollow in my view.
Right, the rules don't really say what it applies to exactly, leaving room for the DM to decide in particular situations. This goes back to my point about how the DM adjudicates and how that impacts the efficacy of certain approaches the players may try. The rules simply can't account for this.
That's a great rulling!
Now there I will agree!
I think this speaks to a point I made upthread that often the objection to the flying race is the kind of player that is attracted to it or the tactics the player is using. So it's not really about the tool but the person wielding it and how.
Until the party has to get the dead party member back to town.
Who does that? We just loot the corpse, kick it a few times, and leave it in a ditch. Or sometimes do a whole Weekend at Bernie's thing for laughs before tossing the body in an anthill.
I agree with some of this. But I think it's a Dm's job to mold the encounters around characters abilities, to correctly challenge them. I think you should let the players use their features to solve the encounter, but not trivialize it every time. A flier should be able to use their flying speed to win some encounters, but creating some encounters were flying isn't possible/doesn't give tactical advantage is okay.
I have a player pool with more players than available seats for a given session. And often each player has 2 PCs, if not more, one of which they can play per session. So I honestly don't know which PCs will be in a session until we turn up to play. Thus, it would be something of a waste of time for me to try to tailor challenges for specific characters. Instead, I simply make sure that my prep is focused on producing robust challenges regardless of who is playing and sometimes they have a composition that just rocks it and sometimes they don't. That strikes me as the right balance.
So, I shouldn't challenge my players specific skills?
