Understanding Aerial Combat

[Gizzard]

I am preparing to run some aerial combats and I am trying to understand the rules for them. Six questions, broken up by topic:

1) As far as I can tell, the subject is only covered in the DMG on p20 (Tactical Aerial Movement)?

2) What is Maximum Turn? Is it the sum of Turn and Turn in Place; ie, can you do both of those things in the same movement?
3) If so, then a Gargoyle has a turning radius of 2.5' which seems very tight?

4) If someone with Average manueverability and a 60' move climbs upward at their maximum rate, what horizontal distance do they cover? 51.9' by the Pythagorean Theorem (or something else)? What vertical distance do they cover? 30, right?
5) If two creature with Average manueverability want to fight can they simply move+attack and then move+attack on their next turn in order to maintain their minimum forward airspeed?
6) Can creatures Bull Rush, Grapple (etc) each other in midair? If two creatures rush directly at each other (move) and then fight for their standard action (attack) but then do not have enough manueverability next round to avoid their opponent then do they automatically collide?

 

[Fingers Boggis]

There was a dragon issue a while back with rules for underwater combat, it had a very useful table on triangulated 3D distances or somethin like that, could be what your after srry i cant remember an issue number for you though

Fingers

 

[Thanee]

We wondered about some similar stuff once... lemme see, if I get it together...

1) I do not know of any other sources.
2) Maximum turn is the limit for turn + additional turn in place for sacrificing forward movement. Basically means you can only do that turn in place thing once per square with an average maneuverability. A creature can sacrifice as much movement as it wants this way, unless it goes below the minimum forward speed. For example, a Gargoyle with 60' fly speed and average maneuverability would have to move 30' at least, so it could spend the other 30' to do six 90° turns (one after each 5' square).
3) Yep, that seems to be right.
4) Horizontal 30' (half speed), Vertical 20' (60° angle ~ 2/3). I guess it's meant to be that easy.
5) No clue, but I think so. Guess that's a lot of flying around and getting some hits in meanwhile.
6) No clue. I guess grapple works, but with average maneuverability or worse, they better have enough hps to survive the fall.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Wolffenjugend]

The Dragonlance Campaign Setting has detailed aerial combat rules that answer all your questions.

 

[Eltern]

The Dragonlance Campaign Setting has detailed aerial combat rules that answer all your questions.

Is this Age of Mortals, or the other one?

 

[Wolffenjugend]

The other one: "Dragonlance Campaign Setting", pp. 242-250.

It has rules for normal scale and for "chase" scale which is used when long distances are being covered.

At first the rules seem complicated, but once you run through them they're very intuitive.

 

[Stalker0]

The Quint Elf from Mongoose had a great section on aerial combat if you would like to use it.

 

[Gizzard]

I'll have to take a look at the Dragonlance books or see if I can find that Dragon issue, but I was hoping that the Core Rules would be sufficient. Since Fly is 3rd level and all, you'd think it would come up in a lot of campaigns. ;-)

Thanee says:

4) Horizontal 30' (half speed), Vertical 20' (60° angle ~ 2/3). I guess it's meant to be that easy.

I like this; I like things to be easy. Pythagorus says the overall airspeed in this case is 36', which seems reasonable. But best of all you can actually move 30' and 20' on the grid; as opposed to 51.9'.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am not sure, but I think there was something in the Draconomicon as well...