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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5188700" data-attributes="member: 2067">Man, all this fly-hate is bizarre to me. Especially the &quot;it's not in-genre!&quot; argument, or the &quot;it lets you ignore basically all the challenges!&quot; argument. Fantasy I'm familiar with is full to the brim with flying. Even Bilbo used giant eagles on occasion. And the flying is far from problem-free. Those giant eagles were not reliable. Where flight is common, winds and weather and effort and injury all feature into the narrative. This intrigues me as a way to perhaps cope with flight in a 4e-style grid combat. The idea that (a) it's easy to knock you out of the air, and that (b), big hulks can throw part of the environment at you, doesn't seem to be a problem for big fantasy monsters. Achilles wrestled a river. I've got no problem with the Terrasque chucking hunks of rock at you and swatting you out of the air like flies. It seems very natural for such a beast. Giants lob stones. Ogres chuck trees. It might fudge with D&amp;D's reliance on magic equipment if the PC's do it, but mostly we're talking about PC's flying and melee monsters still being able to accost them (no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them). There's also the point that, at least in 4e, monsters tend to come in groups, so a group that consists all of melee-heavy plodding brutes will get mulched from a distance anyway, flight or no. In a game or combat where groups are less encouraged, it might be an issue to control for in that specific fight: the terrasque can chuck rocks, the solo dragons can fly, the solo beholder can fly, whatever.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5188700, member: 2067"] Man, all this fly-hate is bizarre to me. Especially the "it's not in-genre!" argument, or the "it lets you ignore basically all the challenges!" argument. Fantasy I'm familiar with is full to the brim with flying. Even Bilbo used giant eagles on occasion. And the flying is far from problem-free. Those giant eagles were not reliable. Where flight is common, winds and weather and effort and injury all feature into the narrative. This intrigues me as a way to perhaps cope with flight in a 4e-style grid combat. The idea that (a) it's easy to knock you out of the air, and that (b), big hulks can throw part of the environment at you, doesn't seem to be a problem for big fantasy monsters. Achilles wrestled a river. I've got no problem with the Terrasque chucking hunks of rock at you and swatting you out of the air like flies. It seems very natural for such a beast. Giants lob stones. Ogres chuck trees. It might fudge with D&D's reliance on magic equipment if the PC's do it, but mostly we're talking about PC's flying and melee monsters still being able to accost them (no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them). There's also the point that, at least in 4e, monsters tend to come in groups, so a group that consists all of melee-heavy plodding brutes will get mulched from a distance [I]anyway[/I], flight or no. In a game or combat where groups are less encouraged, it might be an issue to control for in that specific fight: the terrasque can chuck rocks, the solo dragons can fly, the solo beholder can fly, whatever. [/QUOTE]

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