The Pixie is up!

[Klaus]

They changed that rule and got rid of it. All hover does now is prevent you from falling when you're stunned.

Thanks, I'll have to look that up again.

Can't XP you yet, though.

 

[blalien]

Please name a living creature that is limited in ANY of the following ways
1) Stays within 5 ft of the ground (what appears to be the case for pixies until one carefully reads the rules) regardless of incentive to get away from the ground (ie, don't confuse "does not like to fly high" with "cannot fly high")
2) Can fly up higher but must return to within 5 feet every 6 seconds
3) If it is blown higher will suddenly dramatically fall

All flying animals have an altitude limit. Wings work by displacing the air around them, sort of similar to swimming. In order to fly, you must be able to displace an amount of air equal to your weight. The farther you get from the surface of the earth, the lower the air pressure gets. When you reach a certain altitude, there won't be enough air for you to displace, and you won't be able to fly any higher. The altitude you can reach depends on your size, wing span, and wing strength. Most airplanes and other flying objects have an altitude limit for the same reason, unless they use rocket fuel.

There are no animals that fit your conditions, because there are no animals that have a body similar to a pixie, specifically a mammalian body with insectoid wings. Butterflies have a tiny, hollow, aerodynamic body which allows them to fly up to a height of a few hundred feet. The only flying mammals are bats, and they have expansive wings like birds. You could argue that a pixie could not exist in real life, and then I would just respond with, "magic pixie dust."

Considering a pixie's size and relative wing span, it's not unreasonable to assume that a pixie can only fly when there is high air pressure, near the surface of the earth. To fly higher, the pixie must beat its wings harder, and it can only keep that up for a few seconds. The D&D rules are an abstraction and therefore won't be completely realistic, but the altitude rules are not completely out there.

 

[pauljathome]

Anything that relies on a ground effect to 'fly', this would include your smaller and higher power 'hovercraft' (which actually work remarkably similar to the pixie), as well as any number of other systems like 'wing over ground', etc..

I'll take that as an admission that you can NOT come up with a living creature with these restrictions.

And the ground effect of hovercraft doesn't let one go up 60 ft in the air every 6 seconds.

You can like pixes or not like them. That doesn't change the fact that they don't resemble any living creature in their flying ability.

I also can't think of any (non gaming) fictional creature that they resemble either but there is a lot of fiction out there that I haven't read and so might well be missing something there.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Pixies are tiny because when someone wants to play a pixie, they want to play a super-small (aka Tiny) character. Making them 4' tall would have, frankly, missed the whole point.

Well, it depends upon the person. Some people want to play a pixie because it can fly, thus making the 1-square altitude limit missing the point. Some people play a pixie because they can turn invisible, making the whole "no invisibility as a racial power at level 1" thing missing the point. Some people play a pixie because they want to be a fey trickster, and those people don't even need a pixie now because they have re-fluffed halflings, gnomes, and eladrin.

I don't think we can say "Everyone who plays X plays it for reason Y!" There's a lot of things that, say, Dragonborn have going for them. It's not just one thing. Pixies are (I imagine) the same way.

Considering a pixie's size and relative wing span, it's not unreasonable to assume that a pixie can only fly when there is high air pressure, near the surface of the earth.

Insects, arachnids, hummingbirds, and other itty bitty critters routinely make journeys of hundreds of kilometers, sometimes thousands of feet above sea level. And they're not made of faerie magic. "Logic" doesn't exactly apply. It's a game-rule reason. The reason is, effectively, "It was too hard for us to design a game wherein flying characters did not have some inherent mechanical advantage over non-flying characters, but we felt the need to make a pixie anyway and try to find a middle ground."

If that reason doesn't jive for you, or you can't MAKE it jive for you, the pixie just ain't gonna be acceptable to you. Which is fine, it's not like this specific race has to have universal appeal. It's a PIXIE. It's already inherently not gonna appeal to lots of insecure 13 year old boys.

FWIW, there's plenty of game systems wherein size and flying don't so deeply affect balance, D&D4e just ain't one of 'em.

 

[pauljathome]

All flying animals have an altitude limit. Wings work by displacing the air around them, sort of similar to swimming. In order to fly, you must be able to displace an amount of air equal to your weight. The farther you get from the surface of the earth, the lower the air pressure gets.

You might want to note here that the limitation is 5 feet above ground and NOT 5 feet above sea level.

There are no animals that fit your conditions

That is precisely my point. Another poster said that there ARE, in fact, many animals with these limitations.

You can definitely make either the argument "Its magic. Deal"
or the argument "Its for game balance. Deal"

I'll concede to those arguments (well, with my already expressed caveats that such is not to my taste and, IMO, misses a great deal of the POINT of a pixie).

But don't try and claim that its realistic unless you can back it up with actual facts.

 

[JPL]

I'll take that as an admission that you can NOT come up with a living creature with these restrictions.

. . . .

You can like pixes or not like them. That doesn't change the fact that they don't resemble any living creature in their flying ability.

Between that and their ability to shrink objects, I am beginning to suspect these pixies are unrealistic.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

You can definitely make either the argument "Its magic. Deal"
or the argument "Its for game balance. Deal"

Thank you.

I agree, using physics to justify the pixie's altitude limit is like justifying lightning bolt with "well, I can shock my DM if I rub my feet on the carpet!" No thanks, I'll stick with the universal explanation. ("It's magic, get over it.")

Scratch that, I'm in the mood for a joke character. Tinker Fey is a mage bent on lifting the curse of acrophobia that plagues her people. (And even that's more consistent than the physics explanation.)

 

[Siberys]

I'll take a shot at a reasonable explanation for the altitude limit;

The pixie's wings are not what keeps it aloft - they are actually used mostly for stability in flight, much how a human on a tightrope might hold out their arms, or how boats often have fin keels. The real thing keeping it aloft is it's pixie dust, and that can only lift the pixie so high without giving out (it's magic!). Pixie dust, when used on another, is an encounter power because the pixie can only syphon of so much of it's magic at a time before it would fall out of the sky.

 

[ppaladin123]

Pixies may be like Shades and Vyrloka and receive optional racial utility powers. If so, I'm guessing the level 10 or level 16 utility option is at-will, move action flight with no altitude restriction and with flavor text like "Your growing power has offered true mastery over flight."

 

[Matt James]

You can expect more support for the Pixie via DDI. My hints may or may not be subtle, I leave that up to you fine folks. Now, where are my pants?