D&D 5E Sword Coast - Winged Tiefling

[ccs]

I've often wondered why flight is such an issue for game balance. It's not like the entire group flies. So, our winged Tiefling flies up and stays out of combat. No different than that archer or wizard that hangs back out of melee and does exactly the same thing. And, it's not like every encounter occurs outside. In indoor situations, flight isn't an issue (generally) and even outdoor, if you're among trees or whatnot, flying thirty or forty feet up simply means everything you're shooting at either has cover or concealment or both.

Why do people consider flight such a big issue?

Because they (the dms) don't take it into consideration when writing/running things.
Thus all the fuss.

 

[ccs]

In my experience, flight for a single PC is not a big problem - highly useful, to be sure, but not the sort of thing to make a DM beat his/her head on the wall. It's when the whole party can do it that it becomes a major headache, because at that point a huge number of scenarios that would normally pose a challenge are trivialized.

Well then I guess you'd just have to write better encounters.

 

[Hussar]

Because they (the dms) don't take it into consideration when writing/running things.
Thus all the fuss.

But do you really have to take it into consideration? Sure the PC is harder to get to than normal but not that much. Many critters come with ranged weapons and it's not really that different than any other rear line character.

 

[Leugren]

But do you really have to take it into consideration? Sure the PC is harder to get to than normal but not that much. Many critters come with ranged weapons and it's not really that different than any other rear line character.

One difference is that the rear line characters usually have cover whereas the flyer usually does not.

 

[bedir than]

If the party has a flier so do those that they encounter. Thinking in 3D can be hard, but there isn't anything mechanically more difficult.

 

[Mephista]

Thanks to the concentration rules and the limited number of spell slots available, 5E does not make it easy for the whole party to fly. Winged tieflings could be a problem if the entire party decided to play winged races; in practice, however, I wouldn't expect to see that happen very often, and it only takes one ground-pounder to force the party to reckon with stuff on the ground.

If the entire party takes fliers, however? That would be a very cool chronicle you could play based around that, though. I think of it more of a giant plot hook to throw at the characters, than a restriction.

Mind you, it'd be hard to shove random fliers into a random chronicle, but if the GM is flexible, it could be a cool story to run. Need some arderial elves first, though!

 

[Marandahir]

Basically, the issue comes from Adventure League, where they don't want to write adventures that take at-will flying into account.

The issue, they fear, would be compounded by the freeform nature of the AL – anyone can join your table because that's what you signed up for when you became an AL DM at a gaming store. So if at-wiill flying was allowed, they fear, it would swiftly move through the tables so that a large number of players would be flying characters and the few who didn't make flying characters would be feeling left out since now they're the luggage.

It's the same sort of bad-wrong-fun banning that the SMOGON online league does for Pokémon. They think by restricting official options they can make other options more desirable and more fun for everyone. Honestly, I'm surprised Adventure League hasn't either banned characters with Darkvision or alternatively characters without Darkvision. Someone's always going to either have a useless feature (we've got torches) or be grasping in the dark (we all can see, but you can't).

 

[Hussar]

Basically, the issue comes from Adventure League, where they don't want to write adventures that take at-will flying into account.

The issue, they fear, would be compounded by the freeform nature of the AL – anyone can join your table because that's what you signed up for when you became an AL DM at a gaming store. So if at-wiill flying was allowed, they fear, it would swiftly move through the tables so that a large number of players would be flying characters and the few who didn't make flying characters would be feeling left out since now they're the luggage.

It's the same sort of bad-wrong-fun banning that the SMOGON online league does for Pokémon. They think by restricting official options they can make other options more desirable and more fun for everyone. Honestly, I'm surprised Adventure League hasn't either banned characters with Darkvision or alternatively characters without Darkvision. Someone's always going to either have a useless feature (we've got torches) or be grasping in the dark (we all can see, but you can't).

I suppose I can see that. I'm not terribly familiar with AL adventures, but, adding 3D to combat can paralyse DM's as well - after all, it's hard enough to calculate the area of a fireball without trying to do a sphere. That and, tracking constant movement in D&D is a PITA. It's not like these characters can hover, so, how far do they have to move in a round? The aerial combat rules in the DMG are a bit... sparse to say the least, so, I could see DM's being overwhelmed at the table if they're not prepared for it.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Basically, the issue comes from Adventure League, where they don't want to write adventures that take at-will flying into account.

The issue, they fear, would be compounded by the freeform nature of the AL – anyone can join your table because that's what you signed up for when you became an AL DM at a gaming store. So if at-wiill flying was allowed, they fear, it would swiftly move through the tables so that a large number of players would be flying characters and the few who didn't make flying characters would be feeling left out since now they're the luggage.

It's the same sort of bad-wrong-fun banning that the SMOGON online league does for Pokémon. They think by restricting official options they can make other options more desirable and more fun for everyone. Honestly, I'm surprised Adventure League hasn't either banned characters with Darkvision or alternatively characters without Darkvision. Someone's always going to either have a useless feature (we've got torches) or be grasping in the dark (we all can see, but you can't).

Well, considering that very few races in 5E DON'T have darkvision, and of those that don't, Humans are one, that's not going to happen. Besides, darkvision in 5E isn't as hot as you might think. You still have disadvantage on perception checks, which is really going to kill you, so you need that light source anyway.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

I've been frequently running games for flying PCs since the 90s (winged elves were popular in my 2e groups, and Arcana Evolved with its sprytes and dracha was my favorite d20 boom-era game). It's... never been a problem. Not once. It's fun!