Time for an all-pixie campaign

[JPL]

In retrospect, it is now clear that my 25 years of RPG experience have all been leading up to the release of "Heroes of the Feywild" and the introduction of pixies as a PC class.

I will not insist up a strictly all-pixie PC group from here on out. Possible exceptions would be a gnome (who would act as the muscle for the party), and maybe an elf druid (provided he spends 95% of their time in animal form, and believes that he's a badger or deer that can turn into an elf).

 

[the Jester]

I like the cut of your jib.

 

[JPL]

Seriously, you ever watch those new Tinkerbell movies? I'd want to butch it up slightly, but that's basically a D&D campaign right there, with Tink as a sort of MacGyver twigpunk artificer.

The mechanics will be interesting --- I assume the PC strain of pixie will be around 2 to 2 1/2 feet, on the small end of Small. Natural feylocks.

 

[Pour]

Seriously, you ever watch those new Tinkerbell movies? I'd want to butch it up slightly, but that's basically a D&D campaign right there, with Tink as a sort of MacGyver twigpunk artificer.

The mechanics will be interesting --- I assume the PC strain of pixie will be around 2 to 2 1/2 feet, on the small end of Small. Natural feylocks.

I'm hoping it'll be the first Tiny PC race we get for 4e, what might pave way for imps or mephits later on, but I wonder if that's part of how they'll balance the flight, both in the inability for a pixie to carry anyone, and perhaps the limited flight speed of as low as 5 or 4.

 

[Scribble]

Here comes your campaign... do do do do dada do dadada do do do...

 

[pauljathome]

I'm hoping it'll be the first Tiny PC race we get for 4e, what might pave way for imps or mephits later on, but I wonder if that's part of how they'll balance the flight, both in the inability for a pixie to carry anyone, and perhaps the limited flight speed of as low as 5 or 4.

Flight is very, very hard to balance. In the right situations its can be a game killer. Other times it is just about useless.

My guess is that they'll toss in some completely arbitrary restriction on how high a pixie can fly. It will make no sense, of course, but it will help limit them.

 

[keterys]

Balancing flight for PCs is an interesting question, really.

Some options:
Altitude limit
Clumsy flight
Extremely slow
Overland flight only (or only at any speed of note)
Maintenance cost (actions, hit points, penalties)

One thing you need to be careful to avoid is allowing ranged fliers who can just stay out of range without penalty.

So you could, for example, give a race
fly 4 (clumsy)
overland flight 6

And it's got a real reason to avoid flying in combat, but it's pretty useful otherwise. Of course, it can still sidestep a number of possible terrain challenges, especially in skill challenges, but eh.

You could have a race have flight that requires concentration, so maybe it's effectively a move action to _not fall_. If it wants to fly, it can move up some, then move again to not fall... or it can fly to a spot and land, then take its standard action.

You could have a race that flits from spot to spot, never able to maintain flight at all, but great for crossing gaps, flitting up cliff faces, etc... just give it an altitude limit of 0.

Anyhow, it's an interesting design space.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I will be interested to see how they balance flight, as it is nearly impossible to do.

Or try to balance flight.

But I know for me, as possibly many other, pixie leaves a bad taste in my mouth after Savage Species came out and all the optimizers who wanted an unkillable flying abomination.

A REALLY bad taste.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Balancing flight for PCs is an interesting question, really.

Some options:
Altitude limit
Clumsy flight
Extremely slow
Overland flight only (or only at any speed of note)
Maintenance cost (actions, hit points, penalties)

One thing you need to be careful to avoid is allowing ranged fliers who can just stay out of range without penalty.

So you could, for example, give a race
fly 4 (clumsy)
overland flight 6

And it's got a real reason to avoid flying in combat, but it's pretty useful otherwise. Of course, it can still sidestep a number of possible terrain challenges, especially in skill challenges, but eh.

You could have a race have flight that requires concentration, so maybe it's effectively a move action to _not fall_. If it wants to fly, it can move up some, then move again to not fall... or it can fly to a spot and land, then take its standard action.

You could have a race that flits from spot to spot, never able to maintain flight at all, but great for crossing gaps, flitting up cliff faces, etc... just give it an altitude limit of 0.

Anyhow, it's an interesting design space.

Yeah, I've voted for the altitude limit option. For instance if you limited it to an altitude of 2 it would not even be a way to avoid melee combat, but would still be quite useful otherwise. I mean if you are really a tiny creature, flying high may just not be feasible (and it is magic, so whatever, eh).

Even with a higher altitude it isn't that hard to counteract fliers. A tiny creature will be totally useless in melee. ANYTHING that can get to it will create a problem, and you can be sure that all the artillery are going to be real happy when you fly out of the cover of your allies and be sure to let you know how far away they can hit you from.

You can create some situations where a character could fight with impunity, yes, but that existed in every previous edition of the game and I am yet trying to remember a situation where it was actually pulled off for long. Maybe my 15th level magic user that had wings from being mutated in Gamma World with the Staff of the Magi and a fully charged wand of Magic Missle, who could use the psionics he got from "Dual Brain" to be totally invisible even while attacking? Yeah, that guy couldn't always pull it off... (and damn some demons and illithids had way nasty psionics too...).

 

[Almacov]

I'm hoping it'll be the first Tiny PC race we get for 4e, what might pave way for imps or mephits later on, but I wonder if that's part of how they'll balance the flight, both in the inability for a pixie to carry anyone, and perhaps the limited flight speed of as low as 5 or 4.

Rodney (Moridin) Thompson's post on RPGnet here, makes me almost certain it will be, which I find really, really exciting.

Treading plenty of new ground there. =)

While pixies in 3.5 were Small creatures, Tiny fits better thematically.

Also, Mirrorstone's Practical Guide to Faeries (which I've heard makes mention of the Feywild, essentially linking it to 4e canon) depicts what seem to be pixies (I've only glanced at previews of the book myself, unfortunately) at a scale that is very much Tiny or smaller.