# Why is flight considered a game breaker?



## Leatherhead (May 20, 2010)

I often hear of game breaking abilities being used in games. Stuff like open ended abilities, vague interpretations and clarifications, or even bizarre combination's of rules that create monstrosities. But there is one ability that leaves me scratching my head whenever I hear it being sited as a game breaker. That ability is flying. 

I cannot fathom how people have difficulties with flying, unless for some reason the GM only uses ground-bound melee-only brutes with the mental capacity of an angry chihuahua in wide open featureless planes. It's not like you can't have encounters, puzzles, traps, and even entire "dungeons" in the sky. Or just have them indoors or under a canopy with a limited ceiling height. Heck, even a few bows or a good old fashioned rock can help get things going in the right direction.

Is it adapting the metagame that leaves people in a fluster? Are people put off over climbing and jumping skills not being good enough? Are the rules too much of a headache to keep track of? Is getting from point A to point B without having to get tangled up in the bushes some sort of deal breaker? Really, why is flying a problem?


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## Nightson (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> It's not like you can't have encounters, puzzles, traps, and even entire "dungeons" in the sky.




Like what exactly? (mainly with regards to the non isolated combat encounter area, just curious)

Plenty of monsters have either no ranged attack or a ranged attack that is much weaker then the melee attack.  Yes low ceilings can solve this, but with flight you just can't have melee focused critters in the open.  I mean, there's pretty much nothing that makes the game unplayable and has no counter whatsoever, it's an issue of how much an effect it has compared to other things.


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## cwhs01 (May 20, 2010)

It circumvents a lot of potential monster abilities, hazards and traps and why would you want to allow that?
 Especially in 4e permanent flying makes a lot of tactics involving terrain features pointless. For example if pc's avoid most traps and obstacles by flying, it could also make skills such as athletics and acrobatics irrelevant. 
 IMO one of the interesting features in 4e combat is the creative use of terrain. Permanent flying would make it alot more difficult to make terrain matter i think.

However, i could see a number of potential hazards (like giant spider webs etc.) that could make arial encounters very interesting. I just think that it would be a problem for the game as it is now, if a pc had permanent flight ability..


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## Doug McCrae (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> ground-bound melee-only brutes



That's a heck of a lot of monsters right there.

The traditional medieval knight
Normal animals - lion, bear, wolf, crocodile, snake, etc
Giant arthropods - scorpion, spider, praying mantis, centipede, etc
T-Rex and other dinosaurs
The tarrasque
Zombies and most corporeal undead. Mummy with a longbow feels wrong, somehow.
Bruisers - golem, earth elemental, ogre, minotaur, troll
D&D weirdness - owlbear, carrion crawler, oozes, gelatinous cube, otyugh, purple worm, displacer beast, shambling mound


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

As others have pointed out, flying makes it possible to circumvent many traditional foes - pretty much any unintelligent monster that doesn't have some kind of built-in ranged attack. It also makes it possible to ignore a lot of traps and challenges.

The 3E tarrasque was a joke because you could just hover overhead and bombard it. It took some work to come up with attacks that could overcome its regeneration and massive resistances, and you had to scrape up a _wish_ spell from somewhere if you wanted it to stay dead, but it couldn't actually threaten PCs at a comparable level.

In 4E, they gave it a special power that pulls flying enemies out of the air. That power doesn't fit very well with the traditional "giant uber-brute" conception of the tarrasque, but it had to have _something_ like that if it was to pose any kind of a challenge to late-game PCs. IMO, any time you find yourself giving monsters special abilities solely to enable them to deal with Tactic X, you should be taking a hard look at Tactic X.

Yes, you _can_ build adventures that allow for flying PCs. You can build adventures that allow for anything.

Say one PC has an at-will attack that targets Will with a +10 bonus on the attack roll and does 500 points of radiant damage a hit. Broken, you say? Why would that be a problem? Unless the DM is using a lot of monsters that don't have Will defense 10 points above their other defenses, or that lack resist radiant 495, I don't see why this ability would cause issues.


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## Aberzanzorax (May 20, 2010)

It's pretty simple, really.


For situations where there are counters, it's NOT a problem.

For situations where there are not counters, it IS a problem, an "I win" button, if you will.



This is true of many (all?) game elements. 


But it's about believability and rate. It simply doesn't make sense to always have counters to flight. While I could easily imagine a game built around flight, one that has a ton (every?) monster/npc/trap/obstacle related to flight, that's a very specific case.

In your average fantasy game, there are overland journeys (or above land if flying) that can result in missing entire plot elements (yes, alternative plot elements could be introduced, but, again, then we're specifically addressing flight). There are uber monsters, like the Tarrasque, with no ranged attacks. There's the average Joe NPC focused on melee combat...because how many people even have a scaled magical bow unless they are archery focused? 

Seriously, have any of you ever had a non-archery focused PC or NPC with a nice, fancy magical bow available in case of flying creatures? MAYBE pc's think like this, but usually not. NPC's? With their very limited resources for buying equipment? Never.


In short, flying requires that you build the game/adventure around it...in ways that, for example, fireball, does not.


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## Hand of Evil (May 20, 2010)

Plain and simple: Bad DMing - Okay, maybe that is harsh but it takes the game into the 3rd dimension which requires additional thought.  You can also say, game design issues.  You have stuff like ceilings (how high something can go), angles for distance effect, wind speeds, cover provided by trees, Line of Sight, etc. 

You may ask youself why?  Wish I knew, as flight is part of the game, it should be thought about. 

Things I use to combat flyers: swarms and familiars (crows, owls, hawks can mess with a flying magic-user).  You also need to remember the rules for cover, ground forces can get a lot of protection from trees in the spring and summer, not so much in the winter.


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## Gilladian (May 20, 2010)

I never found a SINGLE flying PC to be game breaking at appropriate levels. However, I did find the flying familiar game-breaking at low levels, because it allowed the PCs wayyyyy too much freedom to scout ahead and discover things I didn't necessarily want them to.

I also found that giving the whole party flight (magic boat, specifically) allowed them too much freedom to circumvent many obstacles that would otherwise have been level appropriate.

So my rule is; no flying familiars until about 4th level, and no magic that lets the whole group fly continuously for long periods of time. Not that I wouldn't let them hire a flying boat for a day's travel, but I would not let them own a flying carpet for the whole group.


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## Umbran (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> Really, why is flying a problem?




Most of the complaints I recall are not about flying alone.  They are about flying plus invisibility.  

Think about a battlemap, for a moment.  If you are ground-bound, there's a limited number of squares you can be in.  If you are flying, the number of locations you can be in skyrockets, as you effectively stack many levels of battlemaps on top of each other.  Now include invisibility, where the opponent has to guess which square to attack, and the problem becomes much nastier.

Basically, if you have to swing blind, the problem is still tractable if you know you have to swing on your own level, but ceases to be tractable if the sky's the limit on your location.


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## pawsplay (May 20, 2010)

I think that if you run enough superhero games, flying seems like a trivial problem.


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## Blackbrrd (May 20, 2010)

Permanent flying on a character using a bow with 50 range counters basically all monsters but flying ones. Most ranged mobs have a range of 5, 10 or 20. Some using a bow has a range of 40.


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## Kingreaper (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> I often hear of game breaking abilities being used in games. Stuff like open ended abilities, vague interpretations and clarifications, or even bizarre combination's of rules that create monstrosities. But there is one ability that leaves me scratching my head whenever I hear it being sited as a game breaker. That ability is flying.
> 
> I cannot fathom how people have difficulties with flying, unless for some reason the GM only uses ground-bound melee-only brutes with the mental capacity of an angry chihuahua in wide open featureless planes. It's not like you can't have encounters, puzzles, traps, and even entire "dungeons" in the sky.



Which the party members who CAN'T fly have to sit out, because, well, they can't get to them.



> Or just have them indoors or under a canopy with a limited ceiling height.



So, flight isn't a problem when it can't be used?

Well, that was obvious.



> Heck, even a few bows or a good old fashioned rock can help get things going in the right direction.



 If the flying character has range penalties for their weapons, this can work. If not, then they can just use the same weapons, and stay out of range.

Note: Giving flying characters range penalties for their weapons makes perfect sense, because flying means you can't steady yourself. In fact, that's something I'll probably include if I ever make a homebrew that includes flying.

Actually, it could be an elegant solution to allow flight in pre-existing games.



> Is it adapting the metagame that leaves people in a fluster?



Changing the game completely, to accommodate something only one player likely wants? It's a big ask.



> Are people put off over climbing and jumping skills not being good enough?



Flying=auto-win vs. encounters other people have to invest resources into. Flying needs to get much more expensive.



> Are the rules too much of a headache to keep track of?



Depends on the group, but a lot of the time, yes.

Flying during combat takes a lot of extra tracking. Instead of 2d tracking on a battlemap, you now have 3d tracking.



> Is getting from point A to point B without having to get tangled up in the bushes some sort of deal breaker?



Meh, overland flight's not that bad. It's bad in some ways (it trivialises challenges for the flying character that are significant for the other characters) but it's very easily limited. And, if you're not using it in fights, doesn't need special measures to control.



> Really, why is flying a problem?



Same reason having a character who can walk through walls, and burrow into and out of floors can be a problem.


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## Desdichado (May 20, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> I think that if you run enough superhero games, flying seems like a trivial problem.



That's my main problem with it.  It's not tactical.  Fly isn't a game breaker.

It's a genre-breaker.  I don't play D&D to play Superheroes.  That's what I've got my copy of _Mutants & Masterminds_ for.


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## TheNovaLord (May 20, 2010)

i thought the flying issue was why monsters lived in dungeons in fantasy worlds rather than in castles/keeps and above ground?

if you take away flying cos it makes the game tricky, it then makes living in dark grimy dungeons plain silly, when most monsters would live outside. Creatures would live in walled compounds as their is no gunpowder either!!

flying creature have lots of issues. for example being unconcious/immobilised/etc equals being dead, cos of the hard ground you hurtle towards (or sea, river, lake volcano, etc you fall into)

i think the issue is that flying doesnt fit the 4e rules very well (where everything is assumed to be on a flattish, battlemat)


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## RangerWickett (May 20, 2010)

As an experiment I ran a campaign where the PCs all gained permanent flight (they met an orcish biomancer Santa Claus who was experimenting to make flying reindeer cavalry for a warlord). 

If I were to take lessons from that experience and try to balance 'flight' as a game option, I would suggest something like:


Make hovering very rare. Require fliers to move at least X squares or else descend. If a creature receives forced movement, they must save or else have to descend.
Impose a significant penalty to attack rolls while airborne, like -5. 
Make flight strenuous. Perhaps it does HP damage each round. Make it a cost-benefit consideration, rather than just a broken power.


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## Blackbrrd (May 20, 2010)

RangerWickett is said Orcish biomancer Santa Claus going to be used in your new Enworld adventure path?


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

TheNovaLord said:


> i thought the flying issue was why monsters lived in dungeons in fantasy worlds rather than in castles/keeps and above ground?
> 
> if you take away flying cos it makes the game tricky, it then makes living in dark grimy dungeons plain silly, when most monsters would live outside. Creatures would live in walled compounds as their is no gunpowder either!!




So, bears hibernate in caves because they're scared of being attacked by eagles?

Caves are natural fortifications. That makes them a) useful against any type of attacker, not just flying ones, and b) not requiring time, technology, or opposable thumbs to build, which is why monsters from orcs to dragons like living in them. Undead live in crypts and tombs because, well, they're undead and that's what undead do. Drow live in the Underdark because the other elves kicked them off the surface.

There are lots of reasons why monsters live in dungeons. Defense against flying foes is a minor one.



TheNovaLord said:


> i think the issue is that flying doesnt fit the 4e rules very well (where everything is assumed to be on a flattish, battlemat)




Flying has been a nuisance to me in every edition.


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## I'm A Banana (May 20, 2010)

I am an infinitely bigger fan of balancing flight than of forbidding flight. It's a key part of the fantasy genre (pegasus, giant eagles, flying witches, airships, bird-people), and to get rid of it seems shortsighted to me. 

Flight needs to be available, but I'm sympathetic to the cries of "it makes you un-hit-able in combat."

That's part of why I prefer a more abstract combat, where things like "reach" and "movement speed" and "range" aren't so codified. In FFZ, forex, flying creatures can be wailed on as much as anyone else, because if they're in the battle, they're in range of melee attacks (though they might not take as much damage from them as other critters). If they fly out of range, they have effectively fled the battle, and can't attack anything in the battle anymore (the battle is over, the flyer fled).

It's a gamist solution, to a large degree, but the simulationist solutions that D&D tries to impose generally don't work because, when emulating the real world, being able to blast something from high in the sky _really is a powerful ability_, which is why we have an Air Force, and why the flight in myth and legend was so potent (Pegasus or Giant Eagles = WIN). 

To keep things playable, I'm okay going abstract on flight, which, in part, means going abstract on positioning in combat. Which I'm really okay with, not being a big fan of representational, simulationist combat to begin with.


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## Cadfan (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead- Its not about whether you "can't" have encounters that are challenging for flying characters.  If that were the concern then flying wouldn't be available for characters at any levels at all, instead of the way it is now where flying is available for higher level characters.  The issue is that a large category of challenges become irrelevant.

Its a question of how much is bypassed by flight, not whether everything is bypassed by flight.  Obviously not everything is ruined.  Just some things.  For a lot of people, pretty important things.


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I am an infinitely bigger fan of balancing flight than of forbidding flight. It's a key part of the fantasy genre (pegasus, giant eagles, flying witches, airships, bird-people), and to get rid of it seems shortsighted to me.




I find that flight isn't too big a deal as long as a) it's not available to the entire party, and b) it's a limited resource for the PCs who do have it.

If some of the party members can't fly, then the flying PCs can't just auto-win against melee brutes; _you_ may be sailing serenely overhead lobbing spells, but your buddy is still down there getting pounded on. (Although this assumes your buddy can't just sit out the fight.) And if flight is a limited resource - you have to pay something to use it, or you only get X amount of use out of it per Y time period - then it no longer enables the flying PC to bypass whole classes of obstacles at will.


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## billd91 (May 20, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> I think that if you run enough superhero games, flying seems like a trivial problem.




I've run a lot of superhero games and I can't fully agree to this. Your classic ground-hugging brute response to fliers in a superhero game is to throw something heavy, like a car, a cement mixer, or a rabid wolverine. Most fantasy environment brutes aren't capable of that.


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## billd91 (May 20, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> I find that flight isn't too big a deal as long as a) it's not available to the entire party, and b) it's a limited resource for the PCs who do have it.




I always liked the fact that Fly in 1e and 2e had a variable duration that only the DM knew. The PC could rely on it for a good chunk of time but, as the time neared its end, could no longer do without risking a fall. If not backed up by feather fall holding a spell slot, the wizard (or other character) had to be a bit more conservative with use of the spell.


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## MrMyth (May 20, 2010)

Much of this has already been covered, but to offer a couple thoughts: 

I first saw this in action in Living Greyhawk. The group I often saw in action was almost entirely ranged - a cleric, a wizard, 2 rangers and 2 rogues. And thus, they all decided to invest in flying bucklers and other items that gave them flight for relatively cheap. 

The RPGA is not an environment where the DM can customize every encounter to the party. Which meant many fights involved the party just flying 40' into the air, and nuking the battlefield at their leisure. 

So that is one problem with 'game breakers' - they don't adapt well to standardized environments where everyone is supposed to be on even footing. (No pun intended.)

The other issue is that of limits. Yes, if I have a party that entirely flies, I can design adventures specifically for them. But it means I can _never_ have a ground based encounter. _Never_ have a pit or chasm for them to deal with. Every enemy needs to be able to adapt to their fighting style, or be completely useless. 

Even more dangerous - what if only 1 or 2 PCs can fly? I not have a much harder time balancing obstacles and threats. Will those PCs trivialize things? Will putting something in place to challenge them become too dangerous to the land-bound PCs?

Flight isn't the end of the world. But in the game I'm running, one PC can indeed fly, and it is often a hassle when he does something unexpected that undermines an encounter or challenge. I don't begrudge him that - he gets to feel awesome about it - but it definitely shows itself as a very strong ability, particularly because he has it all day long without any limitations.


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## CleverNickName (May 20, 2010)

It's not a game-breaker for me, but it plays havoc with my preconceived notions of the game.  Like pawsplay and Hobo have suggested, the ability to fly is more of a superhero game element, not a fantasy one.  It's perfectly fine to have superhero characters in the game; it's just not something I care for.

Gandalf, King Arthur, Bilbo, Merlin...none of them fly.  That's more of a Superman or Magneto thing.  But I digress.

The ability to fly doesn't necessarily _have_ to break the game, but it certainly _can_...especially when made permanent, and when combined with powerful ranged attacks or other magic.  It takes a bit of finesse and tact on the part of the DM, to restrict flight in a way that is fair to the player and fitting to your game.  And it takes a bit of trust and understanding on the part of the player, to not exploit the rules in his/her favor.  This is true for any rule, though.

For us, we got rid of the _fly_ spell.  Characters can still fly, but they have to use potions or winged mounts (only) in order to do it.  This gives the players what they want, without letting the game drift too far into Superhero Land.


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## Herschel (May 20, 2010)

Flying is also a problem for balanced character creation. Suddenly, the melee barbarian can fly and smack the winged bad guy and has a big advantage over the Ranger or Rogue who actually built their character to do ranged attacks. I have a barbarian in one game and he's hhad encounters where he has chucked rocks, grab a long plank, whatever to try and help in the fight. He's fast, but he doesn't have teleports or flying to get to the balconies, etc. Other characters have that.


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## Stoat (May 20, 2010)

Flight raises three issues in D&D.

1)  As others have said above, it makes melee-oriented, nonflying monsters obsolete.  Take a look a look at the Monster Manual.  The majority of monsters are melee-oriented and don't fly.

2)  It allows PC's to circumvent ground-based obstacles such as chasms, rivers, walls, rough terrain, etc.  This makes it more difficult for the DM to channel the PC's movement.  As a result, it is harder for the DM to predict where the PC's will be.  This makes it harder to plan out an adventure.

3) In D&D, flying characters are often faster than ground-based characters.  Frex, in 3.5 _Fly_ gives you a speed of 60', double that of most medium sized creatures.  In tactical combat, speed is a huge advantage.


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## Doug McCrae (May 20, 2010)

Afaics there are four means of flying in fantasy.
1) Transform into a bird. This is quite common in Norse and Celtic myth.
2) Ride a winged steed. Pegasus, the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso.
3) Magic item - winged sandals, broomstick, flying carpet.
4) Be a creature capable of flight - angel, air elemental, aaracokra, etc. These beings usually have wings.

Raw flight, Superman-style, is rare in fantasy. Much more of a superhero schtick, as others have noted.


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## amerigoV (May 20, 2010)

To me, this just falls into the catagory game mastery and understanding your PCs. Every few levels in D&D PCs have access to abilities that change the game. I can only talk D&D 3.5 here, but the game evolves into a new style of play about every 5 levels. Spells like Invisibility and Web are the first pain, then Fly, then Divination type spells, then Teleport, then eventually Wish and Miracle. You could have this same conversation about any of these spells.  Being on top of what spells are accessible* at that level helps you then build better adventures.

* Clerics/Druids can be a real PITA here when you allow stuff like Spell Compendium in play - so many spells the DM has to be at least familiary with is a negative for 3.5 over 4e in my opinion.

And it does not have to be magic. Heck I remember one of my DMs being flustered because my barbarian got some pretty sweet defensive abilities - it was hard to flank/catch him flat footed once he got up a enough levels.

Monte Cook had a great write-up about this for his Demon God's Fane module. It was an early high level module available under 3.0. He gave some great advice on how to build encounters assuming PCs had availability to certain things (in that particular case - divination magic - a L13 or so module starting with a murder mystery). He did not set it up to NERF, but to take those problematic abilities and require them to be used to further the plot.

On flying specifically - its not much of a problem. In a world of magic, one has to assume that Invisibility and Fly are available after awhile. Invisibility Purge and a few good archers with See Invisibility makes airborne attackers more wary. 

I do not agree with the idea that ground base creatures are 'eliminated' by flying PCs. If that were true, then we would only have an Air Force in RL. I believe we still have a pretty robust set of ground forces despite some pretty advance flight capabilities. Also, we lost a war to a country in which we had complete air supiority (Viet Nam). Flight is powerful, but it can be countered tactically and strategically. Brutes and such many not be able to attack the airborne, but they can sure has hell take cover. If the Brutes got what you want, then you will eventually have to come to them.


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## Desdichado (May 20, 2010)

CleverNickName said:


> It's not a game-breaker for me, but it plays havoc with my preconceived notions of the game.  Like pawsplay and Hobo have suggested, the ability to fly is more of a superhero game element, not a fantasy one.  It's perfectly fine to have superhero characters in the game; it's just not something I care for.



Ironically, I've long been tempted to run a scoundrels type Eberron game with a changeling named Mystique, a shifter name Victor Creed and an Inspired soulknife named Betsy Braddock.

But that's a considerably gritter type of superhero than Superman.


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## korjik (May 20, 2010)

Rule 1: The PCs are not the smartest/most powerful creatures in the game world until they max their levels.

Rule 2: Anything the PCs have thought of an NPC has thought of.

Rule 3: Dragons have really good senses, and consider PC in the air to be lunch.

Results from these rules: 1) If players fly alot, then even relatively stupid monsters will take into account flying creatures. Dosent mean that all will, just that even gobbos will eventually start carrying around bows.

2) When fighting smart monsters, your flying wizard just got backstabbed by my invisible flying assassin, or jumped by a half dozen orc wyvern riders, or chompped by a really big dragon.

3) If you fly around alot before you can fight a really big dragon, you really dont want the really big dragon to know that you have enough magic to fly around alot.

flying being a problem is bad DMing only. If your players always just fly across the chasm, they dont want to deal with the chasm, so dont put them in your adventures. If the monsters dont have a way to retaliate, give them one, stop being a slave to what is in the books and realize that the purpose of the DM is to run the game, not be a second rate computer. The base game rules dont need to put restrictions in, the DM does.


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

korjik said:


> Rule 1: The PCs are not the smartest/most powerful creatures in the game world until they max their levels.
> 
> Rule 2: Anything the PCs have thought of an NPC has thought of.
> 
> Rule 3: Dragons have really good senses, and consider PC in the air to be lunch.




Ah, the "DM-player arms race" approach.



korjik said:


> flying being a problem is bad DMing only. If your players always just fly across the chasm, they dont want to deal with the chasm, so dont put them in your adventures.




Wow! This has led me to a great epiphany!

If my players always solve a problem in the most expedient way they can think of, that must mean they don't want to deal with problems, so I shouldn't put problems in my adventures. No challenges and nothing to do! The world is a utopia and the player characters lead lives of untroubled bliss! The perfect adventure!

Next time I run a game, I'm totally doing this. The whole session will consist of me and my players holding hands in a circle and singing.



korjik said:


> ...stop being a slave to what is in  the books and realize that the purpose of the DM is to run the game,  not be a second rate computer.




I am not a slave to what is in the books. Therefore, I can strip out _fly_ spells from my game with a clear conscience.


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## pawsplay (May 20, 2010)

Hobo said:


> That's my main problem with it.  It's not tactical.  Fly isn't a game breaker.
> 
> It's a genre-breaker.  I don't play D&D to play Superheroes.  That's what I've got my copy of _Mutants & Masterminds_ for.





Hm, let's think about this. 

- Peter Pan and Tinkerbell
- The protagonist of the Dragon and the George
- Several characters in the Xanth book have a form of flight as their spell
- The characters in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
- Perseus wears Hermes' winged sandals and a cap of invisibility, making him a classic munchkin
- Klone from the cartoon Blackstar, by growing wings
- Airbenders
- Dhoulmagus

My thinking is that it's actually pretty common whenever you have a setting with lots of magic. It's not as common in legendary England, Middle-Earth, or Conan's prehistorical Earth.


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## Janx (May 20, 2010)

Saying that if a DM has problems with Flight-capable PCs that he's a bad GM is a bit insulting.

Apparently some folks have never been taken by surprise or advantage of by the players.  It happens.


Setting things on fire can totally throw an adventure plan out of whack.  Oftentimes, it can be a really good idea for the PCs to light a place on fire.

Suddenly, the BBEG and his friends are burnt up.  No fuss, no muss.  And if your PCs are motivated by more than XP and Money, they don't really care that treasure is destroyed, because as "Heroes" the King and Village will reward them for their good works in their own way.

The same can be said for flying, regardless of the mechanism.  It's not the combat that matters, its all the "traditional" gaming stuff the PCs can skip and bypass.

If your focus is on combat, or XP or loot, then bypassing encounters is something the PCs miss out on.  If the PCs actually studied the Art of War, bypassing encounters is good strategy to the success of the quest.

it is the sign of a game problem when the GM has to start including a slew of counters  in every encounter, because the players have found a clever solution to most problems.  It gets old, and smacks of arms-racism, and the DM utilizing meta game information to thwart the PCs (because he uses what he knows about the PCs and makes EVERY encounter somehow aware of the party's capabilities).

When the players come upon an ever-clever solution, the GM is going to have a "oh crap" moment.  Because he just realized the PCs can use this trick over and over again, rather than it being situationally useful.


One poster's response was to completely remove the Fly spell.  That strikes me as unrealistic, because if a wizard can create spells, he will create spells to solve problems, therefore eventually some wizard will create the Fly spell to solve the problem (even in real life, Man had spent millenia trying to fly).

Since Flight is so powerful, its certainly worth reviewing its function and level.  As some folks have devised ways to limit it or make it cost more (or make the spell higher level/shorter duration).

I know one thing, as a GM, I would hate to have to constantly use the same nerf-trick for every encounter because the PCs have a new toy. But then, consider that as PCs level, we already counter their new BAB and HD, by using higher CR monsters.

I suspect the answer to Flight, as in many other "oh crap" features, is to make sure your sessions feature a variety of encounters.  As noted, Flight is not as useful in indoor settings (at least not expansive ones).  Therefore, some percentage of encounters should be indoors.  Just as some % of structures should be stone, and not wood to prevent arson-solving.  Just as some % of murder mysteries should have disguised the murderer such that Speak With Dead can't give the answer away.


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## samursus (May 20, 2010)

In regards to flight as a unavoidable trope in a universe where there are dragons and almost anything can be done with magic, I would posit that flight is one example of something that can easily be determined as _a concept that is just inherently against the "laws of nature" and therefore takes tremendous effort _.  Like gravity. 

For example, in the Wheel of Time universe, mountains can be created, the world sundered by the One power, yet one cannot use the power to fly.  Even lifting another person takes an exponential effort.

I think the way 4e has handled flight makes perfect sense to me (and the way they reined in *wish* and *miracle* as well).  Flying is probably the greatest fantastical desire mankind has ever had (along with the 3 wishes trope) and it doesn't seem unreasonable to make such abilities the result of tremendous personal power (read Epic tier).

By all means, if you want a flight-based campaign, its easy enough give anyone and every one flight, and base all encounters on that.  But as the default, give me the dream of flight over the reality.


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## Azgulor (May 20, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Hm, let's think about this.
> 
> - Peter Pan and Tinkerbell
> - The protagonist of the Dragon and the George
> ...





While your point is valid, I think far more people hew towards swords-n-sorcery than the fantasy sub-genres depicted in some of your examples.  As for the one's I'm familiar with:

Peter Pan - Classic fly & hover.  However, I have yet to participate in a game where the PCs wanted to emulate Peter Pan's style of fantasy.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - While many fans of this like to state that this how high-level D&D MUST be played, not everyone is a fan of wuxia.

Perseus - yeah, he's a munchkin.  And despite the inspirational sources, he's a solo protagonist munchkin and a demigod.

Airbenders - The airbenders can't actually fly.  They have to constantly work magical effects or rely on their staff to glide.  If anything, it's an excellent example of how flight can be controlled to avoid the capes-n-tights cliches.


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

Janx said:


> One poster's response was to completely remove the Fly spell.  That strikes me as unrealistic, because if a wizard can create spells, he will create spells to solve problems, therefore eventually some wizard will create the Fly spell to solve the problem (even in real life, Man had spent millenia trying to fly).




Sure, we spent millennia trying to fly. And it took us millennia to figure out how to do it! Just because something _can_ be done doesn't mean it _has_ been. For that matter, there's no guarantee that flight spells are even possible.


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## Herschel (May 20, 2010)

No. No capes.


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## Azgulor (May 20, 2010)

As a GM, my biggest gripe with fly has nothing to do with flying creatures and everything to do with "Hey, I've got a Fly spell/item and now I can fly as well as Superman" (hovering, diving, etc.).

Things like Flying takes tremendous effort for races/species that don't fly naturally, Pathfinder's FLY skill, Avatar:TLA's airbender glider, etc. are all creative and viable ways of impacting another D&D prime offender element that pushes D&D away from swords-n-sorcery towards "Fantasy Superhero Action Hour".


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## Oryan77 (May 20, 2010)

I don't find flying to really be a problem, I just think flying can get to be pretty lame. 

I'm a pretty low-key DM when it comes to magical abilities. Subtle things don't bother me, but flashy "far out" things make me cringe for some reason when it seems out of place. Flying is one of them.

The only reason is because it's a fairly low level spell that a PC can start using early on in his career. It's more of the visual effect that I imagine that bothers me more than the benefits it provides. It starts to feel too much like a comic book super hero scenario to me rather than a medieval fantasy scenario when a guy starts flying around so soon in his adventuring career. I'm not bothered by it at all at higher levels, because by then, the PCs are more _super_. But then, levitation doesn't bother me no matter how early on a PC does it...go figure 

Plus, I cringe even more when the party wizard casts fly on everyone, then casts invisibility on everyone, and they hold hands like Peter Pan, Wendy, John, & Michael, and fly over danger. Not that I mind them avoiding the danger, but damn, if I saw anyone in Lord of the Rings do it like that, it would have ruined the coolness of the movie to me. I'm trying to run a macho gritty manly game, not a Disney cartoon


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## Celebrim (May 20, 2010)

Flying is a game breaker.  It however also can be controlled.   Like many things where 3e removed a 'gotcha' limitation on spell powers, it resulted in unnecessary brokenness.   I can't speak to 4e because I'm not familiar, but I would suggest the following.

1) Spells are one of the most common ways to gain flight.  It should be explicit that if you are flying when the spell is dispelled, you are automatically falling.  3e removed this drawback, much to its loss in my opinion.
2) Flight, and in particular flight with 'Excellent' or better manueverability, is generally underpriced in my opinion.  Either reduce the quality of magical flight from spells directly (or make the manuevarability scale with level of caster, with poor manueverability generally available early on), or else increase the level of the spells (or both).
3) Long duration always on items are generally underpriced in 3e.  In particular, you are much more likely in my games to find an item that lets you cast a spell on yourself X times per day, than you are to find an item that grants you unlimited access to that spell.  A 'ring of invisibility' that lets you be invisible all the time and has no drawbacks is IMO, something that shouldn't be showing up at all before very high level and should be priced under the item creation guidelines accordingly.  In particular, the 3e item creation rules don't take into account balancing factors of the spell like the normal length that the spell lasts when determining what the spell should cost when made effectively 'permanent'.   There is relatively greater advantage in making a spell that lasts rounds last 24 hours compared to making one that lasts hours last 24 hours.  At lower levels, a 'ring of invisibility' or 'ring of flight' that let the wielder use a spell once or thrice per day is much less abusive and more likely to be balanced with the rest of the campaign.
4) Magical mounts are under the above obviously much stronger choices than they would be otherwise.  Of course, magical mounts have obvious drawbacks that obviously under default 3e rules deprecate their usage relative to a 'ring of flying'.   If you have a magical mount, you are vunerable to having your mount shot out from under you.   You also have to pay the penalties to hit with ranged weapons for using winged flight, and you probably have insufficient manuerability to fly around in a typical dungeon.   Still, if 'dispel magic' is reasonably common (and it should be) and 'always on' magic items relatively rare this might be worth it.   At a metagame level I find this highly desirable, because wing mounts have alot of mythic resonance.
5) Both ranged weapons and spells have unrealistically large ranges that also have the undesirable effect of creating tactically simple situations.  Since reducing ranges improves both my simulation and game, I've reduced both weapon and spell ranges to make melee a stronger option, which in turn reduces the number of monsters that simple go down hard at range flying or otherwise.  As a nice side effect, spell ranges now tend to be inside weapon ranges, which makes spellcasters somewhat more vunerable.

Flying is not all great though.  A flying creature cannot take cover.  In balanced encounters involving ranged weapons, the ability to take appropriate cover is often the determining factor.   Beyond 'having the high ground', a flying attacker is actually at a considerable disadvantage in a ranged weapon fight.  One thing I find is that outside of an ambush, any encounter intended to challenge mid-high level PC's must have a ranged fallback option because really, flying is just a special case of the general 'maintain your distance and pummel option'.  Giants need to throw rocks/spears.  Humanoids need to have ranged weapons.  Outsiders better have a ranged attack of some sort whether spells or missile weapons.   If you build monsters like you would build a PC, with a primary attack/strategy (ranged or melee) and a fallback if the primary attack is unusable, it tends to go better.  It also tends to go better if you mainly put monsters in terrain they are effective in.  This is both gamist and simulationist as well, as a monster with reasonable intelligence is going to choose a place to lair which suits it, and a monster that can't stick to terrain that suits it probably will have died before the PCs came along.

However, I think that too much focus is being placed on how flying is a game breaker during combat.  This is the least of its problems.  Flying also does the following:

1) Gives you a +100 bonus to climb checks and grants you a natural climb speed.
2) Gives you a +100 bonus to balance checks and makes you trained in balance.
3) Gives you a +100 bonus on jump checks.
4) In the case of wingless flight, gives you a very large bonus on move silently checks.
5) Gives you the ability to avoid pressure plates and all traps based on gravity.
6) Allows you to move across difficult terrain without penalty.

The biggest problem with flight IMO is that it gives you the equivalent of epic level skill in several areas.   The poor skill monkey or martial class working diligently on his athletics in order to do these awesome stunts, finds himself immediately outclassed to an incredible degree by a relatively lowly application of magic.  His utility to the party which formerly had been quite high is suddenly reduced to a very low level.  He isn't needed to climb the wall and throw the rope down anymore.  He isn't need to find the pressure plate.  He doesn't get to shine as the only one who can make it across the ice covered chain to pull the level.  This is a problem skill monkey classes ('thief') have been having since 1e.


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## Crothian (May 20, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Hm, let's think about this.




Most of those are not D&D though.  You have classic faerie tale, pun filled worlds, demi god, asian themed wuxia, but not much D&D.  


The biggest problem with flight is probably that modules don't take flying into account.  Even the higher levels ones were flying should be more common I've seen Cs with flight dominant encounters that were supposed to be tough.


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## Aeolius (May 20, 2010)

People fail to remember that one need not resort to magic or flight, to explore a three-dimensional realm. One need only dive underwater. Granted, when I was dreaming of undersea adventures, I knew that the world of liquid space was one of freely explored three-dimensional travel. 







    Envision a realm where shallow-dwelling aquatic races freely interact with the surface. Many have deified the waves as Synsaal, the Barrier Between Worlds. Those who freely swim in the sun-lit waters seldom encounter those who dwell in the chill and pressure of the deep abyss below. In essence you have three worlds; the shallows, the open ocean, and the depths, each with it’s own ecosystem that may or may not interact with its neighbors. Going a step further, there are regions inhospitable to others; hydrothermal vents (black smokers), undersea lakes (cold seeps) and the like where specialized species might dwell.  

     Granted, just as magics allow drylanders to fly, there are ways that one born to the shallows may endure the pressures of the deep.

     Yes, it takes a different mindset, to be part of an adventure where foes can approach from above and below. Dungeons take a bit of retooling as well. While characters can swim over a pit trap, let’s see how they handle a swarm of jellyfish clogging a passageway or a tunnel lined with stinging anemones.


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## CleverNickName (May 20, 2010)

korjik said:


> ...your flying wizard just got backstabbed by my invisible flying assassin, or jumped by a half dozen orc wyvern riders, or chompped by a really big dragon.
> 
> (snip)
> 
> flying being a problem is bad DMing only. If your players always just fly across the chasm, they dont want to deal with the chasm, so dont put them in your adventures. If the monsters dont have a way to retaliate, give them one...



One could also argue that (a) giving the PCs an ability that will eventually require you to (b) sucker-punch them for using, is equally "bad DMing."  Some DMs prefer to nip the problem at the bud.

@Celebrum & Herschel: I really need to spread some XP around.


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## billd91 (May 20, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> 3) Long duration always on items are generally underpriced in 3e.  In particular, you are much more likely in my games to find an item that lets you cast a spell on yourself X times per day, than you are to find an item that grants you unlimited access to that spell.  A 'ring of invisibility' that lets you be invisible all the time and has no drawbacks is IMO, something that shouldn't be showing up at all before very high level and should be priced under the item creation guidelines accordingly.  In particular, the 3e item creation rules don't take into account balancing factors of the spell like the normal length that the spell lasts when determining what the spell should cost when made effectively 'permanent'.   There is relatively greater advantage in making a spell that lasts rounds last 24 hours compared to making one that lasts hours last 24 hours.  At lower levels, a 'ring of invisibility' or 'ring of flight' that let the wielder use a spell once or thrice per day is much less abusive and more likely to be balanced with the rest of the campaign.




I take it you weren't keen on 1e's ring of invisibility either? How about the 1e invisibility spell?
I can see what you're saying, but one area where I disagreed with the 3.5 revision was turning the invisibility spell from a spell with some good non-combat utility into a short duration combat spell.


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

billd91 said:


> I take it you weren't keen on 1e's ring of invisibility either? How about the 1e invisibility spell?
> I can see what you're saying, but one area where I disagreed with the 3.5 revision was turning the invisibility spell from a spell with some good non-combat utility into a short duration combat spell.




Can't speak for Celebrim, but IMO invisibility falls into the same category as flight. It's okay as long as it a) is not available to all PCs and b) has some form of limits on usage - which may mean limited duration, limited charges, high cost, or what have you.

And yes, I thought the 1E _invisibility _spell was a problem.


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## Leatherhead (May 20, 2010)

So the problem that keeps coming up is with the metagame, having to customize the game to challenge the PCs?

Maybe this is why I don't see it as a problem, I always take my players abilities into consideration when making a campaign (and use tons of custom monsters). I don't consider it any different than any other ability that the PCs may or may not have. It's just like framing a campaign around not having a cleric in older editions of DnD.


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## Azgulor (May 20, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> Can't speak for Celebrim, but IMO invisibility falls into the same category as flight. It's okay as long as it a) is not available to all PCs and b) has some form of limits on usage - which may mean limited duration, limited charges, high cost, or what have you.
> 
> And yes, I thought the 1E _invisibility _spell was a problem.




Ditto this whole post.  I also think Haste, Teleport, and Raise Dead were too low level for the results they produce.


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## Beginning of the End (May 20, 2010)

I would say two things:

(1) On a strategic level, the problems with fly disappear if you stop designing your adventures in a reactive, linear fashion. If there's an encounter that "needs" to happen, design the adventure so that the PCs will seek out that encounter in a proactive fashion.

If you design encounters that "need" to happen by placing them in a dungeon room or along a road that the PCs will be forced to pass thru to get to their actual goal, then teleportation, flying, pass through stone, and abilities like them will all pose problems. 

Re-analyze whether such an encounter is really _necessary_ in the first place. (If it's just a trap or a combat encounter designed to grind away their resources you can probably start by making it more interesting in the first place.) 

Then look at how you can make the encounter more flexible. For example, let's say that you want the PCs to see evidence of the tyrant's cruel reign by seeing some of his soldiers roughing up a young lady. Rather than locking that encounter into "this will happen as they walk down the road", make it a flexible module that you can plunk down at any dramatically appropriate time: They teleport into Nulb and find the young lady being harassed; or hear her cries as they're flying over; etc.

And I'll admit that this isn't easy: Part of the appeal of the dungeon crawl adventure structure is that you don't have to think too hard about how to get the players into Room 15. You can just force them to follow the hallways and -- bam! -- there's Room 15. But I think you'll find your adventures becoming more interesting in general if you don't rely on railroading or define every railroad-avoidance technique in the game as a "problem".

(2) On a tactical level, if the PCs ever figure out a combat tactic that you can't figure out how to counter, there's always a simple solution: Have NPCs use the same tactics on them. Either the players will show you exactly how to counter it, or they'll realize it's not particularly fun for any of you and agree that it should be removed.


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## Garthanos (May 20, 2010)

TheNovaLord said:


> i think the issue is that flying doesnt fit the 4e rules very well (where everything is assumed to be on a flattish, battlemat)




Nyeh... its pure genre crash to have cheap flying... A War Wing drake at level 4 in 4e or a Hypogriff ... the mounts are there and as available as the DM wants them. Its just pure genre issues.

I can have flying brooms for my witches that require a mounted combat feat to fight off of... works great.


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## Dausuul (May 20, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> So the problem that keeps coming up is with the metagame, having to customize the game to challenge the PCs?




Not exactly. The problem, metagame-wise, is that certain abilities rule out whole categories of challenges and thus eliminate a big chunk of the DM's adventure design toolkit. The question is, is it worth making that sacrifice so the players can have access to cheap-and-easy flight magic? That will depend on how badly the players want that type of magic, how much fun it adds to the game, how much the DM relies on the tools that will be eliminated, and how much fun it will be for the DM to work without said tools.

And as others have said, genre and theme also come into it. The ability to fly at will is quite rare among fantasy protagonists, and clashes badly with the lower-powered sword-and-sorcery style that many ENWorlders (including me) favor.


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## I'm A Banana (May 20, 2010)

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. 



> I've run a lot of superhero games and I can't fully agree to this. Your classic ground-hugging brute response to fliers in a superhero game is to throw something heavy, like a car, a cement mixer, or a rabid wolverine. Most fantasy environment brutes aren't capable of that.




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 _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.


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## Doug McCrae (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> 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.



Or it could breathe atomic fire.


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## FireLance (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> 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.



I would argue that in most fantasy, flight is possible, but it is not common or reliable. And I think that the latter two are the key to the problem.

If flight was common and reliable, The Lord of the Rings would have been a very short book! 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU[/ame]


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## Doug McCrae (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> 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.



I think I know why that is. Maps are a really big deal in D&D, since the very beginning. In fact before that, because wargames are all about the tabletop battle map too. Because maps are a big deal, terrain is a big deal. Flight lets you ignore the map.


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## Janx (May 21, 2010)

Azgulor said:


> Ditto this whole post.  I also think Haste, Teleport, and Raise Dead were too low level for the results they produce.




Teleport is another "bypass a whole ton of stuff" spell.  Probably even more so than flight, as the steps it takes to block teleports can get even more outrageous.

Haste to my experience has mostly been a combat changer.  It makes combat easier.  That's not the same as bypassing a ton of content as a surprise to the DM.

What's unbalancing about Raise Dead?  It's mostly a heal spell for when the GM ganks a PC.

I think for a GM, it helps to have methods to make decent encounters and situations that have a fair balance of variety that includes sometimes blocking known "exploits".

I think it is also good for the GM to have a checklist of those exploits, and to figure out if it is fair for the given encounter to have a block for it, preferably from list of blocks so that the GM isn't using the same excuse every single time.

For instance to block Fire:
the structure isn't flamable (made of stone)
the structure is wet
the structure could ignite neighboring "innocent" structures
the structure has hostages or non-hostiles inside
the structure has desirable valuables inside

to block Speak with dead:
the subject didn't see the murderer
the subject doesn't know the murderer
the subject mistook the murderer
the subject is lying about the murderer

To block Flight:
the encounter is indoors (low ceiling)
the encounter is under a tree canopy
the encounter is smokey (smoke rises, those in air can't see/breathe well)
the encounter is drafty (strong wind current, forces movement on fliers)

to block Teleport:
the destination is too far away
the destination is unknown/unfamilar
the destination is shielded to block teleports

to block Haste:
the path is crossed with super-fine razor wire*

*it worked for Drizz't with a plowshare and quickling.  Plus, in MN, people die from decapitation by barb wire and snowmobile, so it's plenty feasible that running at haste through some wire will do some damage.

Anymore blocking/negation ideas?  

I don't think its fair for every encounter to employ all of these, but it is fair that some % of them feature 1 or more negations.


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## ExploderWizard (May 21, 2010)

Flight itself isn't a huge problem. Once players are able to purchase and maintain flight on demand for the entire group via an a la carte shop til you drop magic system then flight, teleport, invisibility, various detection magics, etc start to become problems. Powerful effects were meant to part of the game and that power was balanced by rarity and limited access. 

Remove the balance factors and of course there will will be overuse/abuse of such things. The answer surprisingly enough, was to nerf the effects into oblivion rather than fix the actual problem. The actual problem was simply at odds with the marketing strategy. Players buy more stuff. Players want access to more stuff. The player base is appeased but look-ZOMG it's broken! 

Duh.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (May 21, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> I cannot fathom how people have difficulties with flying, unless for some reason the GM only uses ground-bound melee-only brutes with the mental capacity of an angry chihuahua in wide open featureless planes.



The majority of encounters ARE with ground-bound, melee only opponents.  Always have been.
[







> It's not like you can't have encounters, puzzles, traps, and even entire "dungeons" in the sky. Or just have them indoors or under a canopy with a limited ceiling height. Heck, even a few bows or a good old fashioned rock can help get things going in the right direction.



Or... you can stop treating the symptom and instead go after the CAUSE...



> Is it adapting the metagame that leaves people in a fluster? Are people put off over climbing and jumping skills not being good enough? Are the rules too much of a headache to keep track of?



No these are not really at issue as many posts above will indicate.  Improvisation and adaptation to counter the problem are not what breaks the game.  What breaks the game is when the occasional adaptation becomes the obligatory default scenario.



> Is getting from point A to point B without having to get tangled up in the bushes some sort of deal breaker?



When the game up to that point has so prominently featured the struggle to get through the tangling bushes, rendering that struggle entirely moot CAN BE a deal-breaker.


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## DrunkonDuty (May 21, 2010)

Well I don't much like the high end DnD characters as super heroes sort of game. Like it gritty and prefer to run a game in the sword'n'sorcery style. And that would mean no fly spells. Not even a friendly pegasus to ride.

_But_ if I'm going to break out of my usual game rut and go all High Fantasy, I'm going to go High Fantasy. Players want to feel all free and flying? Great. I'lll do what I can to accomodate. Characters can all fly and use it for overland travel and combat encounters? OK, fine. If there are encounters while travelling then by definition they won't be with ground pounders, they'll be something flying characters will interact with. Either voluntarily such as a scene on the ground that attracts their attention or involuntarily such as a pack of wyvern riding orcs coming out of the sun.*

Someone above mentioned no chasm encounters (that's chasm, not chasme.) Well, they won't be of the same sort, no. But if you put the mcguffin at the bottom of the cavern then the heroes have got to fly down into it the narrow chasm. Then you've got giant spider webs or goblins on hang gliders with petrol bombs or kamikaze zombies or, or... You get the picture. It can be made challenging. Those things that become routine (like crossing rivers) can simply be glossed over. We already gloss over the things that are routine and dull for us. And don't forget there _is_ terrain in the air. Updrafts, down drafts, wind, rain, fog/cloud, mountains in fog/cloud. Dragons count as terrain if they're large enough. Floating castles/sky islands. The lot.

And sometimes I'd even throw in an encounter where the flying heroes completely wail on the poor old ground pounders. And how about a scene/episode in which the heroes find themselves talking to a bunch of ground pounders and find out what it's like down on the ground during an air raid? Even throw in an air raid while they're there.

I do agree with those who've said they don't like the idea of playing a supers game dressed up as fantasy. I'd not allow fly spells that give perfect manoeuverability. In fact I'd try to discourage fly spells in favour of flying mounts. I'd do away with that utter bollux feat 'wing over,'  I mean what a cop out. No hovering gun platforms thank you. Well, not many. And none pretending to dragons.

For inspiration look to old war movies like the Battle of Britain. Or Star Wars. Plenty of dog fights there. There's even a well known scene about flying through a chasm.

Of course all this does require a lot more work on the part of the GM. And I do understand that not everyone has the time to do their own adventures or make major modifications to bought ones. And I can see that in these cases something like flying heroes would be a major pain. Most published adventures are not written with flying PCs in mind. In which case, nerf that damn flying. Well, perhaps chat with players and make sure everyone is happy with the sort of game you're playing. Then nerf that damn flying.

cheers all.

*BTW: do you know why you put orcs on the backs of wyverns and goblins on wargs? A distraction from the mount.


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## Kafen (May 21, 2010)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Of course all this does require a lot more work on the part of the GM. And I do understand that not everyone has the time to do their own adventures or make major modifications to bought ones. And I can see that in these cases something like flying heroes would be a major pain. Most published adventures are not written with flying PCs in mind. In which case, nerf that damn flying. Well, perhaps chat with players and make sure everyone is happy with the sort of game you're playing. Then nerf that damn flying.
> 
> cheers all.
> 
> *BTW: do you know why you put orcs on the backs of wyverns and goblins on wargs? A distraction from the mount.




I introduced a species of drake into my game to 'nerf' flying. PCs still fear it at level 8-10. The drakes are attracted to flying things. So, the players do a lot of self regulation. It's my quick fix for the flying issue.


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## The Human Target (May 21, 2010)

I ran a game of 4E DnD on Sunday.

They fought  blazewyrm, with flight (hover) and reach 2.

Had I wanted to, I could of floated above the party and basically TPKed them as the only member with any real ranged powers is the wizard and he doesn't have a high damage output.

Flight is usually just unfun.


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## Azgulor (May 21, 2010)

Janx said:


> <lots of stuff>




I didn't say they had no place in the game, I said they were too low level for the benefit/advantage they produced.

As for Teleport & Raise Dead specifically:

*Teleport *- while you can deal with it, you can only do so to a limited degree.  Once you've invaded the BBEG fortress, say for recon, you can teleport at will (barring ridiculous provisions against it) for hit and run tactics.  It's cool the first time PCs do it.  It becomes tedious the sixth or seventh.  It also feeds the "you must pick these spells" meta-game approach.  Finally, while your suggestions are good, a real issue for me is that once I spend more time planning around the PCs abilities rather than working on adventures & NPCs, my fun-quotient as a GM goes into the crapper.

*Raise Dead* - cheapens the whole experience.  Raise Dead shouldn't be equivalent to a heal spell.  The death of a character should be a big deal.  There are a variety of additional mechanics available ranging from Action Points, to Fate Points, to Cheating Death rules that are more thematically appropriate to thwarting a bad roll than the following, all-too common scenario:

*<Distraught PC> * Sniff.  "Bob's dead!"
*<Unconcerned PC>*  "Medic! I mean, cleric!"  Looking at Distraught PC, "Seriously, don't sweat it.  He's just dead.  He's died like 5 times already..."
*<Distraugh PC> *sniff, sniff "REALLY?!?"
*<Cleric PC>*  "BE _HEAAAALED-AH_!!"


Bringing back the dead should be 7th level or higher spell (3.x/PF).  Raising the dead shouldn't be something that someone at the high-end of MID-LEVEL (and that's pushing it) should be able to do.  IMO, obviously.


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## CleverNickName (May 21, 2010)

The more I read in this thread, the more inspired I feel to run an E6 game.  Capping stuff at 6th level fixes *so many* of my power and balance issues with the game.


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## Celebrim (May 21, 2010)

billd91 said:


> I take it you weren't keen on 1e's ring of invisibility either?




1e is a whole different beast than 3e when it comes to magic items.  1e magic items were priced according to the percieved utility of the item, and because Enchant Item and Permenance were so high level (to say nothing of Wish, which was implied to also be a common requirement), they were generally nigh impossible to manufacture.  The practice of making magic items freely available for purchase was highly looked down upon, and so if you found something it was usually off a random table or becaues the DM placed it.  In either case, it was only there if the DM was willing to accept the results of having a ring of invisibility in his game.  Magic items were considered the exclusive territory of the DM, and so much a perusing the DMG when you weren't the one running a campaign was considered bad form.

3e is different in every regard.  PC's are empowered to create their own items and can do so easily at low levels using readily available commodities (feats, spells, XP, and gold) rather than an unknown or even unknowable list of random hard to obtain items combined with spells which required major sacrifices to cast and were generally not obtained at the usual levels of play anyway.  Many campaigns readily accept the notion that gold is freely tradable for any item of the player's choice, and PC's generally have the equipment that they want when they want it and even plan out what equipment that they plan to have at a given level.  

There are numerous problems with both models in my opinion, but the biggest single problem with the 3e model is that is 'one size fits all' system for pricing magic items does not in any fashion take into account the actual utility of the item.  For a game that prides itself on balance in a way that 1e did not this is an amazing oversight.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the 3e item creation rules are the least balanced and most abusable part of the system, which makes it amazing to me that they escaped as much scrutiny as they did.  A 3e ring of invisibility is priced as a relatively minor item.  This suggests all sorts of major problems with the system.



> How about the 1e invisibility spell?




One of the single most abused spells in the games history and one of the most frequent complaints about the 1e system, not only by me but by players generally.  The biggest problem here is the 1e version of the spell had unlimited duration.  So long as you didn't attack, it was permenent.  And as a 2nd level spell, it came up almost immediately in a way that much of the brokenness of the game never did.  What made the problem even worse is that 1e didn't have a well thought out system for dealing with invisibility the way 3e does.  There was no concept like 3e's 'Scent' ability, and the table for detecting an invisible foe wasn't really easily integrated with 1e's concept of attributeless monsters.



> I can see what you're saying, but one area where I disagreed with the 3.5 revision was turning the invisibility spell from a spell with some good non-combat utility into a short duration combat spell.




I'm notorious as a 1e thief/M-U.  I know all about the 'non-combat utility' of invisibility, and while I'm not completely happy with the 3e implementation, I know exactly and from personal experience why it is that way.


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## TarionzCousin (May 21, 2010)

Hobo said:


> It's a genre-breaker.



These guys would disagree with you.


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## pemerton (May 21, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I think you'll find your adventures becoming more interesting in general if you don't rely on railroading or define every railroad-avoidance technique in the game as a "problem".



I dont think that the common objections to the fly spell arise because it is a railroad-avoider.

And I'd add my voice to those who have had bad experiences with fly and invisibility. The small consolation that D&D players can draw is that in Rolemaster it's even worse - flight and invisibility are more easily available and more frequently castable.

I don't have quite the same issue with strategic-level teleports - these take away wilderness crawling, but I can handle that for some games at least. Tactical-level teleport, on the other hand (not 4e-style, because that doesn't allow passage through walls) is another gamebaker that Rolemaster suffers from worse than D&D.

I've never had the same issues with Passwall, because it's always been higher level and so less frequently used.


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## Greylock (May 21, 2010)

The only AC my Wizard has is Fly. If my DM takes that away, he may as well take away Invisibility, Greater Invisibility and Mage Armor. And Fireball and Empowered Scorching Rays, since those are his best weapons. Take away Fly, and you'll quickly have one dead mage.

While he's at it, he should totally take away the Cleric's Turnings, because that completely nerfs his undead, and the Thief's lockpicking/trap-sensing and Sneaking, because it makes his traps useless. And for that matter, what does that Fighter think he's going with a flaming Greataxe, or the Ranger with the mighty Bow and a rocking Track bonus?

We keep breaking his game, and I don't know how he puts up with it.


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## The Human Target (May 21, 2010)

Greylock said:


> The only AC my Wizard has is Fly. If my DM takes that away, he may as well take away Invisibility, Greater Invisibility and Mage Armor. And Fireball and Empowered Scorching Rays, since those are his best weapons. Take away Fly, and you'll quickly have one dead mage.
> 
> While he's at it, he should totally take away the Cleric's Turnings, because that completely nerfs his undead, and the Thief's lockpicking/trap-sensing and Sneaking, because it makes his traps useless. And for that matter, what does that Fighter think he's going with a flaming Greataxe, or the Ranger with the mighty Bow and a rocking Track bonus?
> 
> We keep breaking his game, and I don't know how he puts up with it.




This post reminds me why I switched to 4E.

I had almost forgotten.


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## Jhaelen (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Even Bilbo used giant eagles on occasion.



Yep. And did he fight anything while riding a giant eagle? Using flight as a method of overland travel isn't overly problematic. It's combat encounters where things get ugly quickly.

I have yet to see a good and easy system to deal with 3d combat. We've had lots of combats involving flight in D&D 3e, but the flight rules aren't particularly good and are only easy to use if you ignore half of them.

In D&D 4e the designers continue to pretend that there's no such thing as flight. I mean, the pity excuse for rules the system provides is from a chapter about underwater combat!


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## TheNovaLord (May 21, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> So, bears hibernate in caves because they're scared of being attacked by eagles?
> 
> Caves are natural fortifications. That makes them a) useful against any type of attacker, not just flying ones, and b) not requiring time, technology, or opposable thumbs to build, which is why monsters from orcs to dragons like living in them. Undead live in crypts and tombs because, well, they're undead and that's what undead do. Drow live in the Underdark because the other elves kicked them off the surface.
> 
> ...




let me know when you tink of a good one

bears arent monsters
undead dont live anywhere
drow would like to live back on the surface

Again, it has never been a problem in any gaming ive known. worlds full of magic, and its just one bit of it
i dont think its fits 4e 'role' system to well, so thats why its nerfed so much as a combat thing

its no worse than invisbility and any other number of in-game affects

interesting discussion al the same though


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## I'm A Banana (May 21, 2010)

> I have yet to see a good and easy system to deal with 3d combat. We've had lots of combats involving flight in D&D 3e, but the flight rules aren't particularly good and are only easy to use if you ignore half of them.
> 
> In D&D 4e the designers continue to pretend that there's no such thing as flight. I mean, the pity excuse for rules the system provides is from a chapter about underwater combat!




Well, FFZ does it, but it goes very abstract and gamist with it, which doesn't mesh well especially with 4e's grid combat, but can be useful on its own. 

Essentially, it boils down to: "If your enemies cannot attack you, this isn't a combat." 

It could be other things. It could turn into a sort of attack-roll based skill challenge at that point, with the big beast looking for cover and the players trying to snipe it down before it reaches cover. If they fail, the best survives. If they succeed, they manage to kill it. It could just end like the character ran away from combat. 

In FFZ, because of the abstraction, you can melee attack at basically any range (you are assumed to move, jump, leap, trap, or otherwise find an opening, but we don't have to specify it), so if you're out of range, you're out of range for all attacks, and they're out of your range, too. 

You could take the "if your enemies can't attack you, this isn't a combat" thing by itself, though it might be harder to justify in a more simulationist combat.


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## billd91 (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> (no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them).




Of course not. If the bats are attacking, they're within reach. If they're out of reach, they're not attacking and not so much of a threat. Why *would* the low level PCs want to go after them?


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## ExploderWizard (May 21, 2010)

billd91 said:


> Why *would* the low level PCs want to go after them?




They might need more guano for a quest?


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## Herschel (May 21, 2010)

Jhaelen said:


> Yep. And did he fight anything while riding a giant eagle? Using flight as a method of overland travel isn't overly problematic. It's combat encounters where things get ugly quickly.
> 
> I have yet to see a good and easy system to deal with 3d combat. We've had lots of combats involving flight in D&D 3e, but the flight rules aren't particularly good and are only easy to use if you ignore half of them.
> 
> In D&D 4e the designers continue to pretend that there's no such thing as flight. I mean, the pity excuse for rules the system provides is from a chapter about underwater combat!




Apparently, my Windsoul Genasi and Avenger aren't really flying then. Sure, they're limited and can't just hover around, not should they be able to. They're not birds or aberrations, they're humanoids that can only gain the ability for short distances without the aid of something that can actually fly (like the obsidian fly).


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## MrMyth (May 21, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> (no one seems to have a problem pitting a swarm of flying bats against a 1st-level party that can't fly after them).




Well, the issue on either end of the equation (in terms of combat abuseability) comes up when flight is combined with ranged offense. A swarm of flying bats that shoot lasers from their eyes could well be a problem for a land-bound party.


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## Celebrim (May 21, 2010)

Greylock said:


> The only AC my Wizard has is Fly. If my DM takes that away, he may as well take away Invisibility, Greater Invisibility and Mage Armor.






There are two basic problems with that set of statements. 

First, the second sentence invalidates the first.  If the only defence your Wizard has is Fly, what are invisibility, greater invisibility and mage armor?

You've contridicted yourself.  

The second problem is more subtle but just as important.  The problem is that one of those things you've listed is not like the others.   One of those things just doesn't belong.  Mage armor provides a relative advantage.  It reduces the chances that you get hit.  Fly and Invisibility usually - at the time that they are employed - provide absolute advantages.  That is, either the foe has some way of dealing with your flight or invisibility, in which case, it provides no advantage to you, or else the foe has no way of dealing with flight or invisibility in which case it is now helpless.  The problem with flight is that it is the equivalent of a spell that gave you a +100 bonus to AC vs. blunt weapons.  The spell give absolute immunity on the one hand, and nothing on the other.  That's IMO quite bad design.  Sadly, 3e (and to a lesser extent 1e) is filled with these sorts of absolute immunities, of which flight is a relatively unegregious example.  

Absolute immunities are in my opinion little fun for either the DM or the players.  In the case of the players having an absolute immunity, they make problem solving trivial and tend to suppress creativity.  In the case of the monsters having an absolute immunity, they tend to force one or more players to stand on the sidelines unable to effectively contribute.

While I do believe that flight and invisibility are 'undercosted' I don't believe either is inherently broken.  They are reasonable tools to allow the players to have to occasionally solve problems.  However, they shouldn't become skeleton keys used to solve every problem.



> And Fireball and Empowered Scorching Rays, since those are his best weapons. Take away Fly, and you'll quickly have one dead mage.




It should be clear from the start that I'm not talking about taking away Fly.  I'm talking about scaling the availability of fly appropriately to the level of the party.  At lower levels it probably should not be available to allow players the enjoyment of finding creative solutions to mundane problems.  As it becomes available, it should at first be available as winged flight with poor manueverability for relatively short durations and at relatively slow speed.  As the power level of the campaign increases and mundane problems (having been experienced and overcome) become less and less interesting, better and better manueverability and longer and longer durations and higher speeds become balanced both with what the rest of the party can do, and what foes are capable of countering at least to some extent.  That just basic balance considerations.

And again, you contridict yourself.  Have you ever heard the term, "The best defense is a good offense"?  Just because your Wizard has a poor defense (which he doesn't, but hypothetically) doesn't mean he's actually weak or unbalanced or at the mercy of his foes.  Incinerated foes don't represent threats.


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## Celebrim (May 21, 2010)

MrMyth said:


> Well, the issue on either end of the equation (in terms of combat abuseability) comes up when flight is combined with ranged offense. A swarm of flying bats that shoot lasers from their eyes could well be a problem for a land-bound party.




Indeed.

Flight combined with melee is usually a disadvantage unless the melee attacher has perfect manueverability.  Flight+melee tends to be very ineffective because manueverability restrictions tend to limit you to attacking only every 3-4 rounds, during which time the foe can pummel you with ranged weapons.

However, while I agree that the combat problem comes with the absolute advantage of flight + ranged in an open environment, too little focus is given to the utility of magical flight relative to the alternatives like climb, balance, jump, move silently, and even (at times) trap finding.  One of the easiest ways to demonstrate this is to run ToH with a party that can't fly and one that can.  A flying party renders the problem solving in probably 75% of ToH trivial.  You just don't even set off the traps, and the only reason that the flying party is likely to die is the overconfidence such a strategy tends to cultivate.   Which incidently is one of my main problems with flight and its ilk - it a crutch and players that depend on it tend to be helpless when its removed because they aren't used to problem solving.  Flight is effectively a very large blunt instrument for dealing with problems.


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## Janx (May 21, 2010)

Azgulor said:


> I didn't say they had no place in the game, I said they were too low level for the benefit/advantage they produced.
> 
> As for Teleport & Raise Dead specifically:
> 
> ...




Well, my main point is that Raise Dead doesn't really break the game/GM's adventure.  In most cases, the GM didn't even plan for a PC to die.  So it ultimately gets the party back to normal.

Bear in mind, I don't disagree with making Raise Dead a rare event.  But on the other hand, countless video games (even Oblivion, ultimate CRPG sandbox) have pretty much gotten most people over the curve of dying just means you respawn back at the save point.

But it's just not a game breaker.  In fact, statistically, if you took out Raise Dead, your party would be lower level, because eventually each PC would hit a fatal encounter, and have to roll up a new one.

From my perspective, your beef with Raise Dead is a flavor issue.  Just as some folks have a beef with Superman flying PCs.

I'm not concerned with Flavor, because if the rules have the game element, then that IS the flavor.

I am concerned with game balance, including as you allude to not over-nerfing something that really is a good idea.

I don't want to have to build every encounter to negate a list of game breakers.  But I do want tools to fairly negate them at times.

Here's some more Negators I just thought of, BTW:

Teleport negation:
enemy location is mobile

Flight negation:
enemy is also flighted
enemy has longer range weaponry


For myself, Flight or Teleport hasn't come up as a problem in the games I've played or run.  Maybe my group just isn't that clever.  I'll talk to my GM, and see what he's seen, as I'm curious.

What I hope to get out of this discussion (and I have) is a list of these "game breakers" and some ways to negate them when it is fair to do so in order to raise the challenge level.


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## CleverNickName (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> While I do believe that flight and invisibility are 'undercosted' I don't believe either is inherently broken.
> 
> (snip)
> 
> It should be clear from the start that I'm not talking about taking away Fly.  I'm talking about scaling the availability of fly appropriately to the level of the party.  At lower levels it probably should not be available to allow players the enjoyment of finding creative solutions to mundane problems.



There are many ways to make the cost-benefit ratio of these spells to balance out in the game (even one as "elegant" as 3.5E).  So let's summarize all of the solutions.  What would you recommend?  Here are a few suggestions that we seem to be kicking around.

0.  Do nothing.  Problems arise, and are dealt with on a case-by-case basis...sometimes easily, other times not-so-easily.

1.  Ban these spells outright.  Easy for the DM, not very much fun for the players.

2.  Change all adventures to accommodate for flying, invisible* characters.  A lot of fun for the flying, invisible characters, a lot of extra work for the DM, not fair to the other characters.

3.  Change the spells (shorten the duration, increase the spell level, etc.)  Extra work for the DM, slightly unfair to the flying, invisible characters.

4.  Replace the spells with rituals.  Extra work for the DM, allows all characters to use them, severely limits the use and utility of these spells.

Any other ideas?

-----
*and teleporting, and wishing, and dead-raising, etc.


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## Doug McCrae (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Absolute immunities are in my opinion little fun for either the DM or the players.



Yeah, I've been noticing problems with binary abilities for some time, and you're right that D&D has a lot of those. Many of them are cleric spells. For example, if the PCs have _protection from evil_ they're safe from a vampire's charm. If they don't they are totally hosed.

Binary abilities put a heck of a lot of power in the hands of the GM. Whether the party lives or dies could be dependent on a decision about a spell's duration. Has it run out or is it still up? GM decisions about whether the opposition have ranged attacks means the difference between an encounter and a non-encounter.

I'd reached the same conclusion as KM, that a flyer with ranged attacks versus a 'melee brute' is simply a non-encounter. Which kind of sucks when some people at the table are expecting an encounter. Non-encounters are not particularly fun.


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## Celebrim (May 21, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Yeah, I've been noticing problems with binary abilities for some time, and you're right that D&D has a lot of those. Many of them are cleric spells. For example, if the PCs have _protection from evil_ they're safe from a vampire's charm. If they don't they are totally hosed.




The biggest problem it creates in my opinion is the presence of the absolute defence disguises the problems in the math.  If the PC's are totally hosed by a vampire's charm attack without protection from evil, it implies the vampires charm attack is not well thought out.  In particular, 3e saving throw DCs tend to scale too fast - scaling for example with both HD and charisma (which tends to go up with HD in most 3e monster designs) - with the result that it outstrips the ability of PC's to defend against it.  This problem is disguised by answers like, "Well, the PC's can just use 'protection from evil'.", but the problem with that answer is it means that the PC's _ must _at all times have Protection from Evil up, and Death Ward, and Freedom of Action, and Mind Blank, and have eaten recently from a Hero's Feast, etc. or else they are hosed.  On upshot of this is that non-spellcasters lose the ability to protect themselves.  They still might be quite capable damage dealers, but without support from a spellcaster they are helpless to defend themselves.  Spellcasters by contrast can both deal damage and defend themselves.   IMO, this is the biggest source of caster/non-caster imbalance at 11th level and higher.

Another problem is that if you have a absolute immunity like the immunity to fire damage which is so common with creatures with fire subtype is that this absolute immunity doesn't always seem to be so absolute after all when you think about it.  Sure, a fire elemental ought to be immune to fire, but is a fire elemental immune to being burned up by a fire deity or the wellspring of utter fire itself?  That is, when you think about it, most immunities of this sort actually only mean 'immunity to normal stuff of this type'.  Is it really the intention of the Freedom of Action spell to give you immunity to the God of Wrestling?  What happens this is that you start creating absolute attacks that overcome absolute defences.  The most obvious example I can think (though probably not the worst) of is the rule that things with Improved Grab don't draw attacks of oppurtunity when they initiate a grapple, except when the target has Close Quarters Combat in which case they absolutely do.

This is all just bad design in my opinion.

Flight is much less of a problem.  It's biggest problems in my opinion are out of combat.  The fact that it puts a burden on design that says things like, "Tyrannasaurus Rex is almost never an appropriate encounter, because at low levels its grapple/bite/swallow whole attack is too strong, and at high enough levels that the PC's could fight it they will just fly up and pound from an absolute secure positions." is a much lesser albiet still highly annoying problem.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> 1e is a whole different beast than 3e when it comes to magic items.  1e magic items were priced according to the percieved utility of the item, and because Enchant Item and Permenance were so high level (to say nothing of Wish, which was implied to also be a common requirement), they were generally nigh impossible to manufacture.  The practice of making magic items freely available for purchase was highly looked down upon, and so if you found something it was usually off a random table or becaues the DM placed it.  In either case, it was only there if the DM was willing to accept the results of having a ring of invisibility in his game.  Magic items were considered the exclusive territory of the DM, and so much a perusing the DMG when you weren't the one running a campaign was considered bad form.




All 3E changed was making the rules more clear and uniform.  Or actually putting rules in place where once an issue was handled solely by DM fiat.  If you don't want PCs able to buy a magic item, don't put it in a store!  If you don't want them to be able to make the item for themselves, don't give them the lengthy downtime it requires to make said item!  If you just plain don't want the item to exist, ban it!  You're the DM for crying out loud!  No edition changed that.



Celebrim said:


> 3e is different in every regard.  PC's are empowered to create their own items and can do so easily at low levels using readily available commodities (feats, spells, XP, and gold) rather than an unknown or even unknowable list of random hard to obtain items combined with spells which required major sacrifices to cast and were generally not obtained at the usual levels of play anyway.  Many campaigns readily accept the notion that gold is freely tradable for any item of the player's choice, and PC's generally have the equipment that they want when they want it and even plan out what equipment that they plan to have at a given level.




Again, that's a campagin style decision of the DM.  I've been in 3E games where the party had NOTHING. Like, we were frantically grabbing at shackles that had previously held us captive just to have some sor of weapon that could deal lethal damage.  Seriously nothing.  I've been in others where there truly were magic Walmarts for anything you could desire.  And I've been in lots of in between those extremes.  Either extreme can work, or fail miserably, depending on how well thought out the DM's approach is.  In the slave game example, it didn't work out too well, because he was shocked his changes unevenly hurt Fighters (though the Wizard was the most hurt; not even a spell component pouch nor spellbook = "That's why you had to make him as an NPC, none of us wanted to deal with that !") more than casters, and was also surprised that a CR 5 monster was an easy TPK for our level 5 party and thus we wisely ran away almost immediately (he had expected it to be a run of the mill fight).  If he had actually given some thought into what his campaign style would do to the game, it could have been a really fun game, as it was aside from his poor expectations on encounter balance.  I also had a game where the DM never exerted any control at all and simply let out evil party conquer lands for their own, massively tax the populace with not a single drawback or revolt, and use that money to buy crazy stuff like a Mirror of Opposition.  At level 9.  Again, not the system's fault, she was just far too much of a hands-off DM.  And again, aside from the gross imbalance that led us to actually utterly destroying the level 20 NPC party she sicced on us intending to put a merciful end to the game, it was a fun game.  My friend and I have used character background and plot elements from that game in at least half a dozen campaigns since.  Don't know how this got so long, but the point is...this isn't the fault of an edition.



Celebrim said:


> There are numerous problems with both models in my opinion, but the biggest single problem with the 3e model is that is 'one size fits all' system for pricing magic items does not in any fashion take into account the actual utility of the item.  For a game that prides itself on balance in a way that 1e did not this is an amazing oversight.




The DMG is pretty clear that the table for magic item pricing is a *guideline*.  Not much to say beyond that.  Other than that if you look at the specific DMG magic items themselves, it's obvious in many cases that they didn't exactly follow said guidelines themselves.



Celebrim said:


> In fact, I would go so far as to say that the 3e item creation rules are the least balanced and most abusable part of the system, which makes it amazing to me that they escaped as much scrutiny as they did.  A 3e ring of invisibility is priced as a relatively minor item.  This suggests all sorts of major problems with the system.




By the time you can reasonably be expected to afford a ring of invisibility (keeping in mind that until then, you've been saving up a wad of cash and been significantly weaker than a hypothetical similar PC who spent it as he got it), you could have just been say...a Pixie... and had at will GREATER Invisibility anyway.  Probably for a few levels prior to getting the ring.  The ring of Invisibility isn't undervalued.  You just overvalue it.  It's a level 2 spell, and lots of monsters can use it by the time you get the ring.  As can the caster use it (or buff with it) for many levels by then.  If you want a lower magic setting, limit the levels by playing E6 or E8, severely nerf casters and eliminate most magic items, or do something along those lines.  Otherwise, accept that the game is no longer "grim and gritty" after PCs reach level 6 or so and that the game has different tiers of power levels.  Also, as a Rogue who eagerly used the Ring of Invisibility in a game as early as he could get it -- level 8-9 in his case -- it's really not THAT amazing.  You get one atack off. And then you get the attention of all the enemies and they make you a priority target before you can go invisible again.   Fun.  Or if they're smart, they toss a homing spell like Spiritual Weapon, or a covering spell like Glitterdust (or even mundane flour, dirt, etc...) something to leave a trail for when you go invisible...  You also still have to make the Move Silently checks or they can generally know the square or area you're in.

My general rule (ie, it's just "a guideline," like with item creation tables ) is that for "gamechanger" spells like Invisibility and Fly, they tend to be fairly devastating when first becoming available, but thankfully also typically of limited use.  By the time they can be frequently or reliably used, roughly 5 levels after initial availability, EVERY character should have a means to deal with or counter it.  And if they don't, it's their fault.  A level 10 Fighter can easily afford a potion of Fly, and if he really was concerned, could even have Boots of Flying by then, for example.  At the very least, he could bother to have a decent ranged weapon, which is probably his best counter for the tactic around level 5 when it first becomes an issue.




Celebrim said:


> One of the single most abused spells in the games history and one of the most frequent complaints about the 1e system, not only by me but by players generally.  The biggest problem here is the 1e version of the spell had unlimited duration.  So long as you didn't attack, it was permenent.  And as a 2nd level spell, it came up almost immediately in a way that much of the brokenness of the game never did.  What made the problem even worse is that 1e didn't have a well thought out system for dealing with invisibility the way 3e does.  There was no concept like 3e's 'Scent' ability, and the table for detecting an invisible foe wasn't really easily integrated with 1e's concept of attributeless monsters.




Yes, 3E has a lot of counters for invisibility in the system.  And at higher levels, high Hide checks actually are arguably more useful than invisibility, as spells like True Seeing become almost ubiquitous and render magical hiding worthless.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Flight combined with melee is usually a disadvantage unless the melee attacher has perfect manueverability.  Flight+melee tends to be very ineffective because manueverability restrictions tend to limit you to attacking only every 3-4 rounds, during which time the foe can pummel you with ranged weapons.




Well, you can hover with Good maneuverability, you don't need perfect.
Quibble aside, one other effect of Flight + Melee is making ranged combat in general less useful.  When it becomes easy to reach almost any enemy, nowhere is safe for the ranged attacker to fall back to, and his advantage of targetting almost anyone becomes a mere first round advantage instead.  When you combine this with say...splat material to make a 90 degree turn during a charge (so you can now charge up at a 45 degree angle over obstaces and back down 45 degrees to the target) or even better, to gain Pounce (Lion Totem Barbarian FTW), ranged combat becomes litterally worthless.



Celebrim said:


> However, while I agree that the combat problem comes with the absolute advantage of flight + ranged in an open environment, too little focus is given to the utility of magical flight relative to the alternatives like climb, balance, jump, move silently, and even (at times) trap finding.  One of the easiest ways to demonstrate this is to run ToH with a party that can't fly and one that can.  A flying party renders the problem solving in probably 75% of ToH trivial.  You just don't even set off the traps, and the only reason that the flying party is likely to die is the overconfidence such a strategy tends to cultivate.   Which incidently is one of my main problems with flight and its ilk - it a crutch and players that depend on it tend to be helpless when its removed because they aren't used to problem solving.  Flight is effectively a very large blunt instrument for dealing with problems.




Avoid a lot of traps, maybe, but flight in a dungeon has plenty of other problems.  Most of the fighting and exploring time IME has been in dungeon type environments.  In all of the games I've been in.  Almost always, these dungeons are tight and cramped enough so that, while you may still be able to fly, you're still at risk from enemies with reach weapons and/or good jump mods, and spiders and such climbing the walls and ceilings can easily attack you.  Even when the dungeons are larger, it's often to accomodate larger creature sizes living there, so even then, they still can reach you...

Flight's most powerful in open environments.  But, just like how on paper, Entangle is one of the best 1st level spells in the game, IME there just isn't enough outdoor combat, or when there is outdoor combat it's typically random encounters or relatively unimportant to the plot "filler" ones, such that it's never actually caused a problem thus far.


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## Doug McCrae (May 21, 2010)

Great analysis regarding absolutes, Celebrim, I'd xp you for it if I could but I can't.


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## Celebrim (May 21, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> All 3E changed was making the rules more clear and uniform.




I'm not even sure how to respond to a claim like that, since it seems to have totally ignored the evidence I presented and went on to assert a completely unsupported contrary claim.  Since you present no evidence to refute and ignored the evidence I presented without attempting to refute it, all I can say is you are just wrong.  3e and 1e are totally different in their handling of magic items.



> Or actually putting rules in place where once an issue was handled solely by DM fiat.  If you don't want PCs able to buy a magic item, don't put it in a store!  If you don't want them to be able to make the item for themselves, don't give them the lengthy downtime it requires to make said item!  If you just plain don't want the item to exist, ban it!  You're the DM for crying out loud!  No edition changed that.




First of all, your first sentence in that is contridicted by everything else you say in that section.  On the one hand you want to claim that there are rules for handling issues that were once handled solely by DM fiat, but then all your supporting evidence is that it still should be handled by DM fiat.

Secondly, do you realize how lame a defence, "Well, you are the DM, change things.", actually is?  That's not a defence at all.  That's an admission.

As for your litany recounting your bad DMing experiences, that sounds more like an admission than a defense as well.  While its not the fault of the system per se, the fact that these things take an inexperienced DM by surprise is IMO a fault of, if not the system per se, then the guidelines provided to the DM.  It's incredible to me that you would talk about how all of this can be handled easily by departing from the guidelines on one hand, and not note the irony of how easily the game breaks in the hands of anyone but the most experienced GM's when you do.  You also seem to fail to totally miss the irony of telling me how this doesn't matter because there are more powerful game breaking effects available soon thereafter.  I mean a ring of invisibility isn't undercosted because you could make a pixie PC instead?  Seriously???  

How can I argue against logic like that?


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## Doug McCrae (May 21, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Flight's most powerful in open environments.



This is true. Most D&D games are largely set indoors, I would imagine. But for those that aren't, as has been the case with many of our campaigns, flight is very good. For example, the last campaign I played in was piratical, with not that many dungeons and a lot of ship-based action. As it happened no one played a caster but if they had flight would've been amazing. A druid's wildshape into a bird, or even a wizard's familiar, would have provided a very useful scouting capability.

This raises an interesting question - whether D&D is a fantasy toolbox or does it, unmodified, only support a fairly limited style of play? I would say the latter. Eschewing dungeons causes all sorts of problems. Vancian casters are really only balanced in dungeons because they are one of the few means to provide many encounters within a short space of time.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not even sure how to respond to a claim like that, since it seems to have totally ignored the evidence I presented and went on to assert a completely unsupported contrary claim.  Since you present no evidence to refute and ignored the evidence I presented without attempting to refute it, all I can say is you are just wrong.  3e and 1e are totally different in their handling of magic items.




3E had feats to create items.  3E had pricing guidelines.  While for use-activated spell magic items they weren't particularly solid, for wands, scrolls, weapons, and armor they were.  The creation process was coherent and defined.  




Celebrim said:


> First of all, your first sentence in that is contridicted by everything else you say in that section.  On the one hand you want to claim that there are rules for handling issues that were once handled solely by DM fiat, but then all your supporting evidence is that it still should be handled by DM fiat.




No...I said if you don't like the standard progression of magic items in a campaign, use DM fiat.  If you're fine with it, the DM doesn't really have to do much of anything.  In older editions of D&D, DM fiat was required no matter what, because the rules for magic item creation, etc... were undefined or poorly defined.  Changing things you don't like is different than needing to invent things at all.



Celebrim said:


> Secondly, do you realize how lame a defence, "Well, you are the DM, change things.", actually is?  That's not a defence at all.  That's an admission.




Like I said, I don't mind flight or invisibility, or any of the other gamechanger spells.  The game's set up for the PCs to get access to that stuff after a while, and works fine so long as the DM doesn't delude himself into thinking a standard pit trap is going to be a serious obstacle for a high level party.  If you want a standard pit trap (as opposed to one with a column of antimagic field above it, magically enhanced spider webs to ensnare people flying over it, an NPC at the bottom needing rescue from a monster that lurks there, or some other feature to make it a hassle for flying PCs) to be a hassle to be a challenge for a party with access to mid/high level spells and items, then yeah, you need to tweak the game.



Celebrim said:


> As for your litany recounting your bad DMing experiences, that sounds more like an admission than a defense as well.  While its not the fault of the system per se, the fact that these things take an inexperienced DM by surprise is IMO a fault of, if not the system per se, then the guidelines provided to the DM.  It's incredible to me that you would talk about how all of this can be handled easily by departing from the guidelines on one hand, and not note the irony of how easily the game breaks in the hands of anyone but the most experienced GM's when you do.  You also seem to fail to totally miss the irony of telling me how this doesn't matter because there are more powerful game breaking effects available soon thereafter.  I mean a ring of invisibility isn't undercosted because you could make a pixie PC instead?  Seriously???
> 
> How can I argue against logic like that?




An inexperienced DM in any edition can end up with vastly unbalanced PC parties or encounters.  Do you think otherwise?  How's a 4E party do at level 10 with no magic items at all and no change to the monsters used?  How's a 1E party lavished with many times more magic item treasure than the suggested wealth by level (oh wait...did 1E even have any sort of guideline like that?  My bad...) says they should have fare?

Okay...if you think playing a pixie PC is overpowered (I don't, one or two good hits and you're dead for most levels, I don't like to be that vulnerable)...how about because a spellcaster can use invisibility from level 3+?  Again, if you're using typical wealth and not completely saving up every penny you own for this one item liek a lunatic, AND it's easily obtained from a store when you do have the money...you're getting it at what?  Level 8?  9?  By which time a spellcaster can cast it many times per day if he wanted to anyway?  And you could have had so much other stuff instead of the ring.  But hey, now in combat, you can get off one sneak attack every two rounds, awesome!  I guess a caster could sit back and buff or summon...but they could do that just by casting Invisibility anyway...  Out of combat for sneaking, it still lasts only a few minutes per use and needs a spoken command word to reactivate.  There's still plenty of means to at least alert others to your precense if not your exact location.  And a dedicated sneak rogue by that level could probably scout just as well as you anyway.



Doug McCrae said:


> This raises an interesting question - whether D&D is a fantasy toolbox or does it, unmodified, only support a fairly limited style of play? I would say the latter. Eschewing dungeons causes all sorts of problems. Vancian casters are really only balanced in dungeons because they are one of the few means to provide many encounters within a short space of time.




I also think it's the latter.  What would class balance be like in a completely urban political intrigue type game with almost no combat, if you made no changes to the rules aside from campaign setting, for example?  I don't see warriors and druids being particularly useful.


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## Votan (May 21, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> 1) Spells are one of the most common ways to gain flight.  It should be explicit that if you are flying when the spell is dispelled, you are automatically falling.  3e removed this drawback, much to its loss in my opinion.
> 2) Flight, and in particular flight with 'Excellent' or better manueverability, is generally underpriced in my opinion.  Either reduce the quality of magical flight from spells directly (or make the manuevarability scale with level of caster, with poor manueverability generally available early on), or else increase the level of the spells (or both).




I like the point about maneaverability and falling.  One of the balances of flight in more realistic setting is that it is loud (think planes but even birds aren't silent) and it's dangerous to be hit int he air.  Fligth would still be a useful ability if it was noisy, could be dispelled and if you could lose control of it after a hit from a ranged weapon.  

This would not break most fantasy tropes but would make the decision to fly in battle more of a trade-off.

The same is often true of teleport.  If teleport works like the tardis (noisy as it arrives), requires knowledge of the target, can go wrong (see 1E teleport where there was always a 1% risk of death) and takes time to cast (say one minute) then it's a lot harder to abuse.

Alternatively, if you can teleport a maximum of 100 feet it doesn't matter if it is just a move action or not.  

The key to these abilities is that they have drawbacks.  If you don't want to include drawbacks then the only option is assume that there has been an arms race already and nobody is left who isn't actively countering these abilities (modern soldiers, for example, all assume that opponents have nasty ranged weapons and develop their tactics as needed).  It's a different sort of game but might be fun in it's own way . . .


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## Beginning of the End (May 21, 2010)

Re: Teleport. I use these house rules, which are designed to eliminate the tactical problems and mitigate the strategic issues without completely nerfing the spell.


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## billd91 (May 21, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> All 3E changed was making the rules more clear and uniform.  Or actually putting rules in place where once an issue was handled solely by DM fiat.  If you don't want PCs able to buy a magic item, don't put it in a store!  If you don't want them to be able to make the item for themselves, don't give them the lengthy downtime it requires to make said item!  If you just plain don't want the item to exist, ban it!  You're the DM for crying out loud!  No edition changed that.




I think 3e went a little bit farther than just making the rules more clear and uniform. The ability to make scrolls went from, I believe, 7th level to 1st level and the ability to make permanent magic items went from 11th level to 3rd in most cases. Both changes, standard rules and lower level requirements, can significantly increase the ability of PCs to determine the nature of their own magic items. They take obtaining the Big 6 (as people like to talk about) from being a pipe dream to most players to being a reasonable strategy. That's, I think, pretty big.

Of course, play style preferences for both sets of editions (pre/post 3e) could change that. There were plenty of DMs giving PCs whatever they wanted back in 1e/2e and there were plenty of DMs being tighter-fisted with magic in 3e.

I would like to say that the game's default assumptions have a significant impact on player and DM expectations, particularly when not experienced with an alternative. Coming from 1e, I didn't see anything particularly wrong with allowing PCs to commission or sell magic items. The 1e DMG had prices for all of the items so clearly some economy in the items was assumed. Making the shift to 3e wasn't too hard. Contrast that with someone coming out of 2e with its default assumption that magic items were too valuable to be available for sale or purchase (the DMG had no money values on the items). They might have had a little more trouble... or they might have had a lot more pent up demand for it leading to a 3e magic item binge. Then 3e comes along and not only do magic items have a monetary value again, but that value is used to determine how difficult is it to make and is used as a gauge to pace a character's treasure acquisition over his career. It's really no wonder that some people see the wealth by level and magic items as a rudimentary point-buy system for power-ups akin to spending points on powers in Mutants and Masterminds or Champions.

That's an attitude that can flow from the rules that wasn't present in 1e or 2e (though it's not our only possible attitude). And it is different.


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## Garthanos (May 21, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Vancian casters are really only balanced in dungeons because they are one of the few means to provide many encounters within a short space of time.




Change that to dailies or similar time restricted empowerment and you're on. ;p. Hence some of the discussions about changing dailies to 'inspired powers' and tying recharging more to abstractions like milestones (just one example)

I reallly dont like forced pacing ... the above allows it to be somewhat more natural with regards to game world time... but those having non-combat encounters still enter combat encounters more refreshed unless non-combat encounters also drain on dailies (not that many seem to).


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## Votan (May 21, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Re: Teleport. I use these house rules, which are designed to eliminate the tactical problems and mitigate the strategic issues without completely nerfing the spell.




They are pretty good rules.  They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:


"Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport." 

does a great deal to balance the spell (all by itself) by making relatively unsuitable for short duration buffs and "risk-free" surprise attacks.  Add in the shorter range and the spell is much more difficult to abuse.  It's probably a better fix than the AD&D 1E risk of death (as 1E did not have a "teleport without error" option in the PHB).


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 22, 2010)

Votan said:


> They are pretty good rules.  They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:
> 
> 
> "Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport."
> ...




Those are pretty good rules.  My hang up about them is that he put in nothing to make an exception for (comparatively) short ranged "combat" teleporting.  Whether it's the core Dimension Door spell to get out of a grapple or the splat book Benign Transposition to swap two allies' positions, I don't think such spells should be affected by those rules, as they were written to prevent scry-buff-teleport, which the short ranged teleports can't be used for anyway.  Well...maybe in very specific cases...


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## Tuft (May 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Indeed.
> 
> 
> 
> However, while I agree that the combat problem comes with the absolute advantage of flight + ranged in an open environment, too little focus is given to the utility of magical flight relative to the alternatives like climb, balance, jump, move silently, and even (at times) trap finding.





- You see a large cliff before you, barring you from entering the Forbidden Earldom. 

- Ok, we want to proceed. Adventure awaits!

- Well, gang, that means it is _skill challenge time_! How do each of you want to get to the top?

-  I want to climb.

- Well, that's a DC 20 climb check for you. 

- I want to _fly_!

- Well, roll a DC 20 acrobatics to land safely among the trees at the top. 

- I want to run the long way around. 

- Hmmm, you stubborn dwarves... well, that is a DC 20 endurance check for you, my lad....

...

If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC. And if the flier does not roll for landing, he can roll Perception to find the party again, Insight to avoid the hungry giant eagle, Nature to avoid flying through the patches of levitating poison ivy, etc, etc... as long as you get _any roll at all_ out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.


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## Celebrim (May 22, 2010)

Tuft said:


> If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC.




I feel perfectly safe criticizing the design of 3e however I like, because I'm also one of its staunchest defenders.

You really don't want to hear my honest opinion of 4e or skill challenges.  It would get the thread locked in a hurry.

Nor for that matter do I really want to hear, "Yeah, 3e sucks, but 4e is awesome sauce."  I don't know why every EnWorld thread needs to transform into an edition war, but I assure you, my discussion of the flaws of 3e is not intended as praise of how 4e tried to address them.



> ...as long as you get _any roll at all_ out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.




Errr.... exactly; I couldn't have said it better myself.


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## Kafen (May 22, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Re: Teleport. I use these house rules, which are designed to eliminate the tactical problems and mitigate the strategic issues without completely nerfing the spell.




I'd be tempted to remove Blink and shift all Blink like abilities on creatures to these rules.  I like what you have here. Blink -> Teleport. It would solve both my Blink and Teleport issues.


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## I'm A Banana (May 22, 2010)

> If you run it as a skill challenge, you don't have to worry if it is fly, climb, or anything else - you just have to invent something for each to make them all roll against the required DC. And if the flier does not roll for landing, he can roll Perception to find the party again, Insight to avoid the hungry giant eagle, Nature to avoid flying through the patches of levitating poison ivy, etc, etc... as long as you get any roll at all out of him, it's all equal, given the skill challenge mechanics.




IMO, this is a flaw, not a feature. The lack of meaningful difference in PC abilities in a skill challenge severely restrains how interesting having a skill challenge is. It's just not fun to do the same thing that everyone else does when I'm supposed to be different.

IMO.


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## LightPhoenix (May 22, 2010)

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to add something that I didn't see offhand in the thread.  If it was and I missed it, sorry!

Suppose you do have a flying enemy lobbing ranged attacks at hapless enemies.  As a DM, I'd say that the encounter no longer counts as a challenge, and doesn't net experience.  After all, if there's no risk, why should it count?  Heck, I wouldn't even bother running a combat; just say it happens and spare everyone some time.

A lot of people have posted about the meta-game and the DM adjusting encounters to deal with this.  I would argue the converse is also true - as a player that gets boring, and they may adjust _their_ play style to deal with it.  The whole point of the game is to have fun, right?  Last I checked, if combat isn't fun, the players tend to grumble.  That's why there's so many posts about grind - meaningless repetition with no real challenge just isn't fun.

So in summary, I'm not sure flight or any alternative movement is really that much of a problem, in 4E or in any game.  The meta-game is (usually) self-correcting.  The mechanics leave a lot of room for counters.  I'm not saying I think the mechanics are perfect.  I think the concept is sound.


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## Celebrim (May 22, 2010)

Votan said:


> They are pretty good rules.  They don't quite have the "tardis effect" but:
> 
> 
> "Teleporting characters or objects disappear instantly, but teleportation takes a number of rounds equal to the number of miles traveled (minimum of 1 round). During this time, characters at the destination of the teleport can make a Spot check (DC 20). If the check succeeds, they are aware of the incoming teleport."
> ...




They are interesting rules.  If I might make a suggestion, in my game I also have the teleports are limited to 1 mile per caster level rule (though not the other interesting stuff that I have to think about).  But, I also have 'Ley Lines', and when travelling along a Ley Line, you can travel from node to node at a range of up to 100 miles per caster level.  

In my game, the locations of these nodes, and even to a certain extent the existance of the ley line network, is a closely gaurded secret of the highest level mages.  They fear, given the general antipathy to magic users, that should the ley lines become widely known that steps will be take to make travel on the lines difficult or impossible.  Of course, if you want to go with a more high magic Eberron style feel, you could go the opposite direction and make major cities built around ley lines and teleport circle networks.

What this lets me do is 'best of both worlds', so to speak.  Teleport can be used as an emergency button to get out of a bad situation, but it can also be used as a mode of long range travel where I can a somewhat selective control over where you can go.  It also adds IMO to the depth of the magicalness of the world to have all this arcane lore hidden underneath the surface.


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## korjik (May 22, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> Ah, the "DM-player arms race" approach.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




It really is sad that people like you got flight removed from the rules set because they could not figure this out.

It is also too bad that you cannot figure out that when your party flys over the chasm, then deliberately walks into a cave to whack a dragon, one of these situations is desired, and the other isnt. I will give you a hint:They probably want to kill things.


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## Teemu (May 22, 2010)

Flight still exists in 4e, and you can still have the entire party fly over the chasm. It's just a higher level ability.


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## Dausuul (May 22, 2010)

korjik said:


> It really is sad that people like you got flight removed from the rules set because they could not figure this out.
> 
> It is also too bad that you cannot figure out that when your party flys over the chasm, then deliberately walks into a cave to whack a dragon, one of these situations is desired, and the other isnt. I will give you a hint:They probably want to kill things.




They fly across the chasm because that's the most expedient way to get across. If they can't fly, they do it some other way.

They walk into the cave to whack the dragon because that's the most expedient way of killing it. If I gave them a _wand of instant dragon slaying_, they'd use that instead.

When presented with a problem, players look for the best available solution and use it. That's human nature. I don't give them cheap flight spells for the same reason I don't give them _wands of instant dragon slaying_: Because if they have ways to instantly bypass all obstacles, there's no game.


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## Votan (May 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> They are interesting rules.  If I might make a suggestion, in my game I also have the teleports are limited to 1 mile per caster level rule (though not the other interesting stuff that I have to think about).  But, I also have 'Ley Lines', and when travelling along a Ley Line, you can travel from node to node at a range of up to 100 miles per caster level.
> 
> In my game, the locations of these nodes, and even to a certain extent the existance of the ley line network, is a closely gaurded secret of the highest level mages.  They fear, given the general antipathy to magic users, that should the ley lines become widely known that steps will be take to make travel on the lines difficult or impossible.  Of course, if you want to go with a more high magic Eberron style feel, you could go the opposite direction and make major cities built around ley lines and teleport circle networks.
> 
> What this lets me do is 'best of both worlds', so to speak.  Teleport can be used as an emergency button to get out of a bad situation, but it can also be used as a mode of long range travel where I can a somewhat selective control over where you can go.  It also adds IMO to the depth of the magicalness of the world to have all this arcane lore hidden underneath the surface.




This is a good compromise.  It gives player's a chance to get additional rewards (knowledge of the lines) or (in your high magic example) it means high level parties can easily hop between cities.  Both are improvements in game flavor.

The reason I like some means of detecting teleport in advance is I like it as an escape or transport spell -- not the ultimate ambush spell.  Adding in methods of detection (spot makes rangers and rogues more able to contribute at high level, noise makes it much harder to pull off as a stealth attack) brings the spotlight away from the wizard for sneak attacks and puts them back into characters who can do stealth (even if you are invisible, move silently is needed).   Or it at least means you can't prepare one spell for escape, stealth attack and transport.


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## Votan (May 22, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Those are pretty good rules.  My hang up about them is that he put in nothing to make an exception for (comparatively) short ranged "combat" teleporting.  Whether it's the core Dimension Door spell to get out of a grapple or the splat book Benign Transposition to swap two allies' positions, I don't think such spells should be affected by those rules, as they were written to prevent scry-buff-teleport, which the short ranged teleports can't be used for anyway.  Well...maybe in very specific cases...



I think given the "one round per mile" travel time, I'd allow the travel time to be part of the spell casting and/or over too quickly to matter.  Dimension door, for example, already ends your turns.

In a similar sense, given the turn ending effects and the range, I am not overly worried about Dimension Door as an ambush spell. It takes hard work and planning to make work (i.e. it creates fun challenges).


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## billd91 (May 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> They are interesting rules.  If I might make a suggestion, in my game I also have the teleports are limited to 1 mile per caster level rule (though not the other interesting stuff that I have to think about).  But, I also have 'Ley Lines', and when travelling along a Ley Line, you can travel from node to node at a range of up to 100 miles per caster level.




I'm doing a variation on that to explain why teleporting doesn't work very well in the D1-3 modules. The curvature of the ley lines, that work to allow long teleports on the surface, are severely tightened in adventuring area. Short scope teleports like dimension door are unaffected but the effect is noticeable to the caster and provides a clue to the effect of the full teleport.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 22, 2010)

Votan said:


> I think given the "one round per mile" travel time, I'd allow the travel time to be part of the spell casting and/or over too quickly to matter.  Dimension door, for example, already ends your turns.
> 
> In a similar sense, given the turn ending effects and the range, I am not overly worried about Dimension Door as an ambush spell. It takes hard work and planning to make work (i.e. it creates fun challenges).




Yes, definitely.  But as written, the rules linked to explicitly put a mimimum of 1 round travel time on *all* Conjuration (Teleportation) and similar effects.  I'm just saying I don't like that part, there's too many interesting tactical teleportation spells that such a rulee messes up that weren't part of the scry and die problem anyway, and I don't want to see them become useless as a result.  All I'm saying is... change it to something like "no travel time is added to spells granting less than a mile's travel" or "this rule does not apply to effects and spells that measure their maximum ranges in feet, or have short, medium, or long range."  Something.

I also have to say, I think mile/CL is a little short for my tastes, but Celebrium's leylines idea is good for allowing longer ranged travel.  To me, the most important parts of those houserules were that those about to be teleported on got advance notice of it, and the ability to follow where someone teleports, so if things go wrong and the teleporters try and hastily retreat, the defenders can truly make them pay for their overly ambitious assault.  Those were the kinds of rules I had long been thinking of adding to my games for a long time.  I just haven't DMed a high enough level game yet that the party ever wanted to try scry-buff-teleport, so it hadn't been a major issue for me thus far.


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## Doug McCrae (May 22, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Another problem is that if you have a absolute immunity like the immunity to fire damage which is so common with creatures with fire subtype is that this absolute immunity doesn't always seem to be so absolute after all when you think about it.  Sure, a fire elemental ought to be immune to fire, but is a fire elemental immune to being burned up by a fire deity or the wellspring of utter fire itself?  That is, when you think about it, most immunities of this sort actually only mean 'immunity to normal stuff of this type'.  Is it really the intention of the Freedom of Action spell to give you immunity to the God of Wrestling?



The most obvious solution seems to be tiers of power. For D&D I would propose mundane, magical and divine. So one could be immune to mundane fire only for example, or magical (which would include mundane) or divine (which includes the other two tiers).

The other solution is to dispense with immunities and give everything a number. Anything can be overcome with a big enough number. This how the HERO system does it. This can result in confusion as to how much one needs to be 'immune'. Immunity isn't a thing in itself, it's dependent on the rest of the world. Everything is relative. So to properly build a PC, a player actually needs to have a good understanding of the whole world.


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## Derren (May 22, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> I cannot fathom how people have difficulties with flying, unless for some reason the GM only uses ground-bound melee-only brutes with the mental capacity of an angry chihuahua in wide open featureless planes.




Thats what most DMs do. And because of all their complaining flight got restricted.
Thats the same reason teleportation go axed except for a few circumstances. Those DMs do not take the abilities of the PCs into account when writing adventures and then complain when the PCs use their abilities to bypass their railroad.
But the customer is always right and thus the abilities got removed.


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## Votan (May 22, 2010)

Derren said:


> Thats what most DMs do. And because of all their complaining flight got restricted.
> Thats the same reason teleportation go axed except for a few circumstances. Those DMs do not take the abilities of the PCs into account when writing adventures and then complain when the PCs use their abilities to bypass their railroad.
> But the customer is always right and thus the abilities got removed.




I think one can have legitimate concerns about the balance of easy/safe flight and teleportation in standard fantasy campaigns even in a sandbox campaign.  Sure, one could design adventures that take these abilities into account.  But then many types of creatures that one might want to have in such a campaign will be strictly limited to things that are capable of co-evolving.

You also have issues when things like scry/buff/teleport are too effective -- sooner or later it will be used against the party and the result is often anti-climatic.  

I'm not saying that you can't create games that work with these features.  Certainly you can.  But flight gets so easy by level 10 or so that the entire game will have everyone flying, pretty much all of the time.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 22, 2010)

Derren said:


> Thats what most DMs do. And because of all their complaining flight got restricted.
> Thats the same reason teleportation go axed except for a few circumstances. Those DMs do not take the abilities of the PCs into account when writing adventures and then complain when the PCs use their abilities to bypass their railroad.
> But the customer is always right and thus the abilities got removed.




Yes, but there is the Superman effect:

Superman is all powerful, but gets his ass kicked by kryptonite. When every enemy the PCs face has to have krypotnite to provide any sort of challenge, the game becomes lame, and flight/teleport/whatever becomes boring instead of amazing.

Its the issue with giving players trump cards. Everything that is trumped by a trump card turns into a non-encounter, and the game loses a lot of its flavor.


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## The Human Target (May 23, 2010)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Yes, but there is the Superman effect:
> 
> Superman is all powerful, but gets his ass kicked by kryptonite. When every enemy the PCs face has to have krypotnite to provide any sort of challenge, the game becomes lame, and flight/teleport/whatever becomes boring instead of amazing.
> 
> Its the issue with giving players trump cards. Everything that is trumped by a trump card turns into a non-encounter, and the game loses a lot of its flavor.




Agreed.

I play to have fun, and playing "Gotcha" isn't that fun to me.


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## Celebrim (May 23, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> The other solution is to dispense with immunities and give everything a number. Anything can be overcome with a big enough number. This how the HERO system does it. This can result in confusion as to how much one needs to be 'immune'. Immunity isn't a thing in itself, it's dependent on the rest of the world. Everything is relative. So to properly build a PC, a player actually needs to have a good understanding of the whole world.




This is the path I'm trying to take.  I'm trying to write all of the immunities out of the game and replace them with numbers.   For example, Mindblack gives you a bonus vs. mental attacks and additionally causes you to not fail a save on a 1.  Death ward works the same.   So does Freedom of Action.  Creature that previously have immunity tend to have very high levels of resistance.  I'm striving toward a situation where a powerful fire elementalist could with the right feats actually burn a fire elemental.

I'm also working toward scaling down DC's so that immunities are nice, but not as essential as stock 3.X.  I'm trying to emulate the experience of 1e where, as you leveled up, you could be more and more confident of passing a saving throw.  My experience of stock 3.X is almost the reverse - as you got higher level, the less likely it was you'd pass a saving throw because DC's ramped up faster than saving throw bonuses.   For example, spells no longer add their level to the DC of the saving throw.  Monster HD no longer adds to the DC of the saving throw either - its enough in my opinion that the abilities that the attack is based on are already going up.  

Of course, none of this is rigorously play tested (well, certainly not at the high levels where it really matters), but on paper it certainly looks like the math works better.

As far as 'understanding the world to build the character goes', I'm not sure I quite follow that argument except how it pertains to HERO system where starting characters can choose to have 'immunity'.  It seems to me that Fire Resistance 20 is always less than Fire Resistance 40.  If it was really necessary to do the math, I think a good rule of thumb is that spell effects tend not to do much more than 1d8 damage per character level.  So, from that its pretty obvious to see that 5 energy resistance per expected challenge rating is quite high resistance, and anything much more than that is going to be effective immunity.  After that, it only remains to ask what the limit of natural fire is in terms of damage, which is probably something like 'In direct contact with molten lava or (in absence of rock) heat which would melt metal and stone'.  A creature which has high enough resistance to withstand that would be percieved as 'immune to fire'. 

As far as saving throws go, I'm working from the theory that '+20 to saves/doesn't fail on a 1' is 'hard immunity' in as much that under my revisions DCs much above 20 are very rare and that at no time does a balanced encounter require a save more than 20 higher than the anticipated base save bonus to succeed.  I'm actually unlikely to translate immunities like that into 'hard immunities' though because its almost as bad as what it replaces, and my tendancy is to move more to 'soft immunities' which are '+10 to saves/doesn't fail on a 1'.  The obvious justification here is that in an average balanced encounter, the player generally shouldn't have to throw much higher than a 10 to succeed at something.  Thus, a 'soft immunity' wouldn't represent absolute immunity, but rather near or complete immunity to typical hazards faced at the character's level, and signficant resistance even to hazards somewhat above typical for the characters level.  Because the anticipation under my revisions is that save bonuses will go up faster than DC's, as the players increase in level 'soft immunities' would tend to act more and more like 'hard immunities'.

One of the theories I'm hoping to prove about my rules revisions as I continue to play test them is that they improve the balance between non-casters and casters and reduce the necessity of reliance on items (especially for non-casters).  Of course, this isn't the entire picture as I've made other revisions as well (and some are still being refined), but the math seems to work at first blush.


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## pemerton (May 23, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The lack of meaningful difference in PC abilities in a skill challenge severely restrains how interesting having a skill challenge is. It's just not fun to do the same thing that everyone else does when I'm supposed to be different.



One solution to this, I think, which is consistent with keeping and developing, rather than abandoning, the skill challenge mechanics, is to place greater emphasis  on the difference in ingame situation resulting from checks by different PCs on different skills. Unfortunately, the published rules don't help very much with this.


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## Celebrim (May 23, 2010)

pemerton said:


> One solution to this, I think, which is consistent with keeping and developing, rather than abandoning, the skill challenge mechanics, is to place greater emphasis  on the difference in ingame situation resulting from checks by different PCs on different skills. Unfortunately, the published rules don't help very much with this.




In fact, the published rules very much get in the way of this.

When the 4e design team first started talking about 'skill challenges', I said, "I've been doing this for a while now."  An example for me would be a chase, in which the PC's are expected to accumulate a certain number of success to catch their quary, and if they accumulate a certain number of losses they lose the quary.  (Not coincidently, one of the better 3e third part supplements, 'Hot Pursuit', has mechanics that boil down in their essence to exactly that.)  That sounds like a skill challenge on the surface, but in practice its something very different from what 'skill challenge' has come to mean.

When the 4e design team talked about running a 'Temple of Doom' style mining cart chase, not only did I think, 'alright!', but I felt there was a direct correlation between how I would have ran such a such a scene and what they described.

But the key difference between that and what the 4e team ultimately came up with is that the 4e design team came up with the idea of what amounts to a subsystem with an entry point and an exit point, and, while within the subsystem the rules no longer seem to interact with either the game world or the rest of the game rules themselves.  Running a 'skill challenge' for me meant running a situation where skill ranks were important, but for which there was many entry and many exit points and each die roll equated to some quantifiable game state.   The 4e skill challenge seems to only have quantifiable game states at the beginning and end of the skill challange, and everything within is simply a mechanical state of the challenge.  

Or in other words, each individual action within a skill challenge is meaningless.  It renders the whole system nothing more than meaningless dice throwing.  Rather than a skill challenge meaning 'every few rounds you must make a skill check that has an important effect on the current game state', they... I honestly don't know what they think that they are doing.  I don't believe it would have been possible to design a worse system if you'd set out to try.  

A skill is nothing more than a mechanic for determining whether a risky player proposition succeeded or failed.  The results of either should be more or less immediate and each result should lead to some clear game state that the PC's can interact with and which is the obvious result of their choice in the prior game moment.  A series of these cases is a 'skill challenge', but it lacks all the completely arbitrary system first, game second, artifacts of the 4e rules set.  

If you actually abandon the 'skill challenge' mechanics, you actually get much closer to making skills matter than if you had them.  To place great difference on the results of choosing one course of action over another is to abandon the skill challenge mechanics.  The solution is to just drop the damnable things and frame them, stick them up on a wall in the RPG hall of shame, along side FATAL and Spawn of Fashan as an example of how to do everything wrong, as an example one of the worst designed game mechanics of all time having completed failed in every single one of its stated objectives, and not just failed, but having somehow moved beyond failure to a state that is worse.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 23, 2010)

@Celebrim

Oh, come on now.

I've been playing 4E since launch, and I've used, adapted and ignored the skill challenge system. I've played an run many a RPGA adventure as well, of which almost universally contain at least one Skill Challenge. The Skill Challenge system has its good points and its bad points, but it is most definitely not the travesty you make it out to be.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 23, 2010)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Yes, but there is the Superman effect:
> 
> Superman is all powerful, but gets his ass kicked by kryptonite. When every enemy the PCs face has to have krypotnite to provide any sort of challenge, the game becomes lame, and flight/teleport/whatever becomes boring instead of amazing.
> 
> Its the issue with giving players trump cards. Everything that is trumped by a trump card turns into a non-encounter, and the game loses a lot of its flavor.




There's a difference between kryptonite and "able to pose a challenge."  When a DM includes archers in the enemy ranks ot shoot up the wizard who's typically in the back trying to stay safe, the archers are not the wizard's "kryptonite," unless you use that term very loosely.  A wizard's kryptonite would be a grapple monkey with an AMF emanating from himself.  Something that utterly shuts the wizard down and makes him basically powerless.

A game with a flying party can be fun if the DM is willing to run it.  3D combat can be complicated to figure out, but once you get the hang of it, could make fights much more dynamic, especially if you limited access to good and perfect flight (so that creatures can't just securely hover in one spot) or had rough weather conditions lower effective maneuverability.

And not every enemy has to fly, and not every area has to have environmental hazards/dangers/annoyances.  IMO, a simple group of skilled foot archers could probably be big trouble for a flying party.  More access to cover and ability to hide and ambush.  If they're using crossbows (light, with Rapid Reload) they can drop prone for a basically free +4 AC.  If the PCs can't hover, they'd just be plainly outmatched in such a shoot-out, unable to full attack while the ground-based foes can.  If they can hover, the enemies can still amass the benefits I outlined above.  And certain spells and abilities to stun, daze, etc... someone could potentially cause a flying PC to drop to the earth rather painfully.

Similarly, as long as they have ranged attacks, burrowing creatures remain a nuissance, since they can dive underground to recover and wait if things go south.  And again, any classic dungeon type environment with small corridors and tight corners (and since it's a flying party, complete flooring is less of a necessity, and there might be more fun potential for exploration or fight scenarios) will limit how safe they are and how far away they can put themselves from nonflying enemies.

There's plenty of potential for a "flyer" game with the game system.  Really, especially by high levels, the PCs are practically demigods anyway, fighting appropriately dangerous monstrosities.  I still don't see why flying is such a stretch.


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## Noumenon (May 23, 2010)

> place greater emphasis on the difference in ingame situation resulting from checks by different PCs on different skills.




Like, make the first player's choice binding on the whole party.  "I fly to the top of the cliff" means the next roll of the skill challenge becomes about getting to the top after the boulder rollers are alerted.  "I go the long way around" means the next roll is about enduring the hot hot sun and prickly bushes.  "I climb" means the whole party hits the cliff face and needs Insight checks or Use Rope to keep making progress.


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## Votan (May 23, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> There's a difference between kryptonite and "able to pose a challenge."  When a DM includes archers in the enemy ranks ot shoot up the wizard who's typically in the back trying to stay safe, the archers are not the wizard's "kryptonite," unless you use that term very loosely.  A wizard's kryptonite would be a grapple monkey with an AMF emanating from himself.  Something that utterly shuts the wizard down and makes him basically powerless.
> 
> A game with a flying party can be fun if the DM is willing to run it.  3D combat can be complicated to figure out, but once you get the hang of it, could make fights much more dynamic, especially if you limited access to good and perfect flight (so that creatures can't just securely hover in one spot) or had rough weather conditions lower effective maneuverability.
> 
> ...




I agree, in principle, but realize that the game world changes (radically) from a lot of fantasy worlds if you take this route.  

Now this is absolutely not true in an E6 environment.  In the first six levels, access to flight is limited, duration is short and the only class that can have it one command (the Sorcerer) needs to pick it as their signature spell.  Getting the entire party to fly is a major accomplishment.  

Where this begins to be an issue is with medium to high levels.  Starting at level 15 or so (well with-in the level range of the PhB), characters can start having perfect and silent flight for hours at a time while being invisible.  There are counters (True seeing has too short of a range but see invisible exists) but they can't be up all of the time.  Characters sleep in alternate dimensions and cross continents with a word.  

Flying in high level games is more effective than modern methods of flight.  It allows hovering, turning on a dime, doesn't create lot's of noise and there is no amplification of danger if you get hit.  Compare that to the closest modern technological solution (the helicopter) where hits magnify danger tremendously and it cannot sneak up on you.

Despite these disadvantages (relative to D&D flight), aircraft have transformed the nature of warfare.  Large and tight formations are a thing of the past.  The idea of deploying melee weapon only troops is considered only for specialized (stealth) missions.  

I think a high level fantasy game would have these features as well.  Everyone would carry ranged weapons.  People would move thinking about cover.  Large formations would be abandoned.  Units without enhanced sensory gear (see invisible) would be at a tremendous disadvantage and it would need to be available to nearly everyone.   

Alternatively, clever players are (literally) superheroes.  One annoyed wizard can smash an army with little risk (protection from missiles, overland flight, teleport and great invisibility -- plus ranged area effect attack spells).    

It is certainly doable and can be fun but it's also a pretty clear arms race.  Flight is simply straight good as opposed to being an interesting option.  My main issue with 3/3.5 era flight is that it is riskier to fly via mount than via spell -- if the mount is killed you fall (fast) whereas if the spell is dispelled you feather fall (automatically).  This is odd to me . . .


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## Celebrim (May 23, 2010)

Votan said:


> My main issue with 3/3.5 era flight is that it is riskier to fly via mount than via spell -- if the mount is killed you fall (fast) whereas if the spell is dispelled you feather fall (automatically).  This is odd to me . . .




That's my main issue as well.  My secondary issue is the vast scale up in power between Alter Self/Levitate and Fly.  There is a lot of room for spells that are intermediate in utility between the 2nd level options and the all in one tool of Fly that is availabe at 3rd level.  I believe Fly is a 4th level spell based both on the power escalation test (is there a viable spell design between Levitate and Fly?) and the pragmatic test (if Fly was 4th level, would you still cast it?).


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## Leatherhead (May 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> That's my main issue as well.  My secondary issue is the vast scale up in power between Alter Self/Levitate and Fly.  There is a lot of room for spells that are intermediate in utility between the 2nd level options and the all in one tool of Fly that is availabe at 3rd level.  I believe Fly is a 4th level spell based both on the power escalation test (is there a viable spell design between Levitate and Fly?) and the pragmatic test (if Fly was 4th level, would you still cast it?).




Now that's a test I can't agree with. If Cure Light Wounds was a second level spell people would still cast it, but that doesn't mean it belongs at second level. There just isn't anything to replicate the lateral movement that fly has. 
What you should do is bring Telekinesis down and see which one gets used more.


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## Celebrim (May 23, 2010)

Leatherhead said:


> Now that's a test I can't agree with. If Cure Light Wounds was a second level spell people would still cast it, but that doesn't mean it belongs at second level.




Errr... wouldn't they just cast 'Cure Moderate Wounds' instead?  I believe you are failing to understand the test.



> There just isn't anything to replicate the lateral movement that fly has.  What you should do is bring Telekinesis down and see which one gets used more.




Alter Self is a second level spell and gets you in the air.  It stands to reason that there could be a 3rd level spell that was better than Alter Self (for example, average manueverability, higher speed, but still winged flight) which people might cast in preference to Alter Self.  The only reason that they don't, is the jump between the options at 2nd level and Fly is enormous.  Fly gives you good manueverability, high speed, and stable (wingless) flight.  That's awesome.

It's too awesome.  It's not in step with the logical progression, and it's level is not being capped by the introduction of something obviously superior soon after.


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## Steelwill (May 23, 2010)

*This should sum it all up...*

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU"]YouTube - How Lord of The Rings Should Have Ended[/ame]

This is why flight is OP in a fantasy setting


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## Kafen (May 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Alter Self is a second level spell and gets you in the air.  It stands to reason that there could be a 3rd level spell that was better than Alter Self (for example, average manueverability, higher speed, but still winged flight) which people might cast in preference to Alter Self.  The only reason that they don't, is the jump between the options at 2nd level and Fly is enormous.  Fly gives you good manueverability, high speed, and stable (wingless) flight.  That's awesome.
> 
> It's too awesome.  It's not in step with the logical progression, and it's level is not being capped by the introduction of something obviously superior soon after.




I like this one. I might move the spell up to 4th level and see what happens.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 23, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Alter Self is a second level spell and gets you in the air.  It stands to reason that there could be a 3rd level spell that was better than Alter Self (for example, average manueverability, higher speed, but still winged flight) which people might cast in preference to Alter Self.  The only reason that they don't, is the jump between the options at 2nd level and Fly is enormous.  Fly gives you good manueverability, high speed, and stable (wingless) flight.  That's awesome.
> 
> It's too awesome.  It's not in step with the logical progression, and it's level is not being capped by the introduction of something obviously superior soon after.




Well, there is the duration.  Alter Self is 10/min level and can often last "all dungeon," especially later on.  Fly is only min/level and will seldom benefit more than 1 or 2 encounters.

Higher level Fly spells seem to be more about "Mass" casting or long duration flight, usually at the expense of something else.  For example, my favorite fly spell is Flight of the Dragon which is 10 min/level and 4th level (or 5th level and hour/level in the version i prefer, before SpC nerfed it and lowered the level).  The duration and speed 100 are boosts over Fly, but the self only aspect and only Average maneuverability are steep prices for those benefits.

Fly is a little too good at level 3, though.  I think 4 is a better call, and at level 2 or 3 I'd rather see some sort of flying ability that requires minor concentration to maintain.  If you get hit and fail to keep concentrated, the spell ands and you plummet.  But it'd be a swift action to maintain, not standard like normal concentration spells.  I'd want a person to be able to fight with it up.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 23, 2010)

The Fly spell specifically as a problem is also largely a 3E phenomenon, since in previous editions Fly was a 3rd level spell that had to compete with Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and Haste for spell slots, and that was a losing battle. As good as Fly is, those three were the god spells of AD&D. Flying in AD&D was more a case of you getting lucky enough to get yourself a magic item that let you fly.


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## StreamOfTheSky (May 24, 2010)

Votan said:


> I agree, in principle, but realize that the game world changes (radically) from a lot of fantasy worlds if you take this route.
> 
> Now this is absolutely not true in an E6 environment.  In the first six levels, access to flight is limited, duration is short and the only class that can have it one command (the Sorcerer) needs to pick it as their signature spell.  Getting the entire party to fly is a major accomplishment.
> 
> ...




Well, that's what I was saying with the power tiers in 3E.  E6 is a rather simple and effective solution to cut off the next tier from happening to much of an extent if you prefer low level feel and restrictions.  As for continuous flight, out of core Warlock literally can have unlimited flight, though self only, it'd be his ONLY lesser invocation, ever, and...the Warlock class is rather limited anyway.

I agree that by level 15 everyone is probably flying, often times every combat or even all day.  I just don't see it as an issue because of all the other incredibly super human stuff PCs are doing by that level.

And I hate the term "arms race" being thrown around so much in this thread.  Between levels 5 and 15, a Fighter's adding +10 to hit from class alone, and another several points from enhancments on the weapon, str, etc...  A creature needs a higher AC to be a challenge to the level 15 fighter.  Is that also an arms race?  To me, it' just levelling.


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## I'm A Banana (May 24, 2010)

SteamOfTheSky said:
			
		

> And I hate the term "arms race" being thrown around so much in this thread. Between levels 5 and 15, a Fighter's adding +10 to hit from class alone, and another several points from enhancments on the weapon, str, etc... A creature needs a higher AC to be a challenge to the level 15 fighter. Is that also an arms race? To me, it' just levelling.




I cannae posrep ye, but, um *this*.

Any game with an advancement system is in an implicit arms race as you gain levels. Complaining about needing special wards to undo flight is like complaining about needing critters with an attack bonus of 10 to hit a PC with an AC of 20. 

But perhaps the binary nature of the power leads to something more disgruntling. It's not like there's one universal method for getting rid of flight, and it's not like flight is on a continuum (floating -> gliding -> flying like a bird -> flying like a Beholder -> teleporting -> whatever). It might lack integration in ways that AC and Attack Bonus have integration.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 24, 2010)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Well, that's what I was saying with the power tiers in 3E.  E6 is a rather simple and effective solution to cut off the next tier from happening to much of an extent if you prefer low level feel and restrictions.  As for continuous flight, out of core Warlock literally can have unlimited flight, though self only, it'd be his ONLY lesser invocation, ever, and...the Warlock class is rather limited anyway.
> 
> I agree that by level 15 everyone is probably flying, often times every combat or even all day.  I just don't see it as an issue because of all the other incredibly super human stuff PCs are doing by that level.
> 
> And I hate the term "arms race" being thrown around so much in this thread.  Between levels 5 and 15, a Fighter's adding +10 to hit from class alone, and another several points from enhancments on the weapon, str, etc...  A creature needs a higher AC to be a challenge to the level 15 fighter.  Is that also an arms race?  To me, it' just levelling.




The arms race exists in 3E whether you like it or not. Using only the rules as written, and any set of 3E rules as it is just as easy to do with just the core three as it is to do with a pile of splats(splats just give you more avenues to powergame), you can overpower the assumed power level of the 3.5E system and the power level of people who aren't optimizing. If somebody decides to go down this road, the other players must follow suit or end up the sidekicks of the superhero, and the DM must start powergaming himself or else just let the optimizers walk all over the campaign. In addition, 3E powergaming is not straightforward, and its often the weird and outlandish options that work(the iconic fantasy tropes not so much), and a game that goes down the powergaming road looks less and less like a fantasy world and more and more like Marvel/DC superheroes. 

I don't consider having to play less well to avoid destroying the game a good solution.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 24, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I cannae posrep ye, but, um *this*.
> 
> Any game with an advancement system is in an implicit arms race as you gain levels. Complaining about needing special wards to undo flight is like complaining about needing critters with an attack bonus of 10 to hit a PC with an AC of 20.




In 3E, its not just advancement. If you boil down total character power into a single number, some things in 3E add 1 to your power level, and some add 10, and every number in between. Something that adds 1 to your power level often costs the same amount of character building resources as something that adds 10. 

A person who builds a character with options that add +1 to +4 to their power level will get dramatically different results than someone who tries to add 10 every time. In addition, the system assumes you're playing it down the middle, and somebody who builds weaker/stronger than the assumptions makes the DM have to wrestle the game up or down to their level, and god help them if the players are playing at wildly differing power levels.


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## I'm A Banana (May 24, 2010)

thecasualoblivion said:
			
		

> In 3E, its not just advancement. If you boil down total character power into a single number, some things in 3E add 1 to your power level, and some add 10, and every number in between. Something that adds 1 to your power level often costs the same amount of character building resources as something that adds 10.




This 3e hate-fest is great and all, but I'm personally much more interested in figuring out a way to include flight from Level 1 in a way that doesn't hose DMs or Players, going forward, than I am in picking apart any given edition of D&D. Clearly, neither of the two extant versions get it quite right for me. 

I mean, ideally, I want rules so that I can play a bird-man or a flying witch from the get-go and not be (a) gimped with rules minutae about "hovering," "turning radius," "minimum forward speed," "gliding," and blah blah, or (b) grossly overpowered for the party. 

That shouldn't be impossible.

Maybe one way of getting at it is to have a continuum of flying and fly-negating effects, so that it's not a binary "you fly"/"you don't fly" thing. So at level 1, I can fly like a bird, but maybe not very quickly, and maybe not with attacking, and maybe if I get hit, it knocks me out of the air. And by the time I'm cresting the last levels of my character, maybe I can fly faster than most people can run simply by willing it to be, stop on a dime, and launch ballistae from orbit.

Or something.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 24, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> This 3e hate-fest is great and all, but I'm personally much more interested in figuring out a way to include flight from Level 1 in a way that doesn't hose DMs or Players, going forward, than I am in picking apart any given edition of D&D. Clearly, neither of the two extant versions get it quite right for me.
> 
> I mean, ideally, I want rules so that I can play a bird-man or a flying witch from the get-go and not be (a) gimped with rules minutae about "hovering," "turning radius," "minimum forward speed," "gliding," and blah blah, or (b) grossly overpowered for the party.
> 
> ...




It is nearly impossible because flying doesn't exist in a vacuum. This is a fantasy game, and there are iconic tropes like the knight in shining armor and big, strong, stupid ogres. Being iconic, these tropes need to have value, and the concept of many of these things doesn't really allow them to deal with flight very well. The knight can pull out a bow and the Ogre can throw a spear or rock, but in the big picture that really isn't what they do, and certainly not what they do best. One of the iconic abilities of the D&D Rogue is the ability to climb walls. Flight all by itself completely trumps the ability of Rogues to Climb Walls. Cheap and accessible flight changes the game at a fundamental level, either devaluing core fantasy concepts or forcing you to tack on solutions to flight that don't really belong.


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## I'm A Banana (May 24, 2010)

> It is nearly impossible because flying doesn't exist in a vacuum.




Nothing does. If "existing in a vacuum" is a prerequisite for "having balanced rules," then it's impossible to have balanced rules for anything. 



> This is a fantasy game, and there are iconic tropes like the knight in shining armor and big, strong, stupid ogres. Being iconic, these tropes need to have value, and the concept of many of these things doesn't really allow them to deal with flight very well. The knight can pull out a bow and the Ogre can throw a spear or rock, but in the big picture that really isn't what they do, and certainly not what they do best.




...and flying witches, and bird-people, and giant eagles, and pegasi, and...

What makes a "big stupid ogre" trope more important to support than a "pegasi-mounted warrior" trope?

I'm of the mind that the two can coexist, just like magic missiles and crossbows do, we just maybe need to account for flight in a way that the game hasn't done particularly well to date. 

I mean, the game certainly values flight. Flight exists in all editions of D&D. So do ogres. They're not inherently incompatible. 



> One of the iconic abilities of the D&D Rogue is the ability to climb walls. Flight all by itself completely trumps the ability of Rogues to Climb Walls.




Well, since *a stepladder* can trump that ability, I don't think that ability is very significant. I beat an "iconic" D&D rogue every time I get something out of a high cupboard. I am a big fat hero.

Climbing walls is very niche. 



> Cheap and accessible flight changes the game at a fundamental level, either devaluing core fantasy concepts or forcing you to tack on solutions to flight that don't really belong.




Climbing walls is not a core fantasy concept, and nothing is inherent to big dumb ogres that makes them incapable of swatting down flying characters (King Kong did quite a good job, even though he eventually lost). 

Impossible you say? Nothing is impossible *with science*!






...or in this case, with good game design. 

Heck, I've mentioned one possible way of addressing it already. It's probably not great for most D&D games, but it's clearly not impossible.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 24, 2010)

Then its a matter of making sure it has the appropriate cost, and a lot of people in this thread think Flight was way too cheap in 3E.


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## I'm A Banana (May 24, 2010)

> Then its a matter of making sure it has the appropriate cost, and a lot of people in this thread think Flight was way too cheap in 3E.




Sure. Though flight ain't exactly "expensive" in 4e (though it is generally much more limited, and reserved only for high levels, so it's rarer). 

Think we can come up with some limitations that 90% of possible enemies probably can have some counter for? 

I'm pretty happy saying "if your character takes damage, they fall down," meaning anything with a ranged attack can knock a character to the ground, and any monster group with at least one ranged attack can deal with fliers (as I mentioned upthread, a group of melee-only brutes probably can't deal with ANY highly mobile characters, flying or not). 

Does that solution have problems I'm not seeing?


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## Leatherhead (May 24, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Errr... wouldn't they just cast 'Cure Moderate Wounds' instead?  I believe you are failing to understand the test.



Bah oversimplifications. The point is people would still cast healing spells even if they were all pushed back a level. That doesn't mean they should be.



> Alter Self is a second level spell and gets you in the air.  It stands to reason that there could be a 3rd level spell that was better than Alter Self (for example, average manueverability, higher speed, but still winged flight) which people might cast in preference to Alter Self.  The only reason that they don't, is the jump between the options at 2nd level and Fly is enormous.  Fly gives you good manueverability, high speed, and stable (wingless) flight.  That's awesome.



 Alter self does so much more that even if you couldn't fly it would still be picked for other reasons. Saying that it is part of a "flight progression" is absurd.


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## Dice4Hire (May 24, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Well, since *a stepladder* can trump that ability, I don't think that ability is very significant. I beat an "iconic" D&D rogue every time I get something out of a high cupboard. I am a big fat hero.
> .





Funny. A terrible example, but still funny.

If this is the only use of climb, then jump is just as valuable. 

Ever try to use your stepladder to get to the 10th floor window?


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## Stalker0 (May 24, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> That shouldn't be impossible.




Flight is always going to be a powerful ability, but there are ways to nerf the more significant problems.

1) You can't attack while flying
2) Your AC is reduced by 5 while flying.
3) Your carrying capacity is reduced to 1/4 normal when flying.

With these rules in place you could have a flying player at level 1 and eliminate some of the big abuses. His ability to scout around and avoid terrain is still very strong, but he is no longer an unstoppable god of combat.


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## pemerton (May 24, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> In fact, the published rules very much get in the way of this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But the key difference between that and what the 4e team ultimately came up with is that the 4e design team came up with the idea of what amounts to a subsystem with an entry point and an exit point, and, while within the subsystem the rules no longer seem to interact with either the game world or the rest of the game rules themselves.  Running a 'skill challenge' for me meant running a situation where skill ranks were important, but for which there was many entry and many exit points and each die roll equated to some quantifiable game state.   The 4e skill challenge seems to only have quantifiable game states at the beginning and end of the skill challange, and everything within is simply a mechanical state of the challenge.



I don't think that your last sentence is consistent with what the design is intended to achieve, but it is a problem that can arise if the context of the challenge and its possible permutations are not well-developed and spelled out. Resolving the challenge _should_ be like an extended contest in HeroQuest, I think, or even like resolving a conflict in The Dying Earth, but not much guidance is being given. DMG2 gives some examples, but mostly pertaining to "geographic" challenges rather than social ones.



Noumenon said:


> Like, make the first player's choice binding on the whole party.  "I fly to the top of the cliff" means the next roll of the skill challenge becomes about getting to the top after the boulder rollers are alerted.  "I go the long way around" means the next roll is about enduring the hot hot sun and prickly bushes.  "I climb" means the whole party hits the cliff face and needs Insight checks or Use Rope to keep making progress.



This is the sort of thing I have in mind. I find it easier for "geographic" challenges like climbing the cliff, than for social challenges. Not to say that I can't do it - but some guidance, especially from module writers, would make it easier.


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## I'm A Banana (May 24, 2010)

Dice4Hire said:
			
		

> If this is the only use of climb, then jump is just as valuable.
> 
> Ever try to use your stepladder to get to the 10th floor window?




Ya missed the spot where I clarified my hyperbole: "Climbing walls is very niche."



			
				Stalker0 said:
			
		

> 1) You can't attack while flying
> 2) Your AC is reduced by 5 while flying.
> 3) Your carrying capacity is reduced to 1/4 normal when flying.




As always, Stalker0, you're a god.

How would these three interact with the idea of "take damage and fall out of the sky?"



			
				Stalker0 said:
			
		

> With these rules in place you could have a flying player at level 1 and eliminate some of the big abuses. His ability to scout around and avoid terrain is still very strong, but he is no longer an unstoppable god of combat.




I think it's OK for flight to have a solid use, but "combat god" and "making everyone else feel useless" are two big things that I'd hope to avoid with low-level flight.


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## thecasualoblivion (May 24, 2010)

In regards to combat flight, consider the following:

As an effect, you gain immunity to melee attacks made by non flying creatures. What level ability/spell would you consider this by itself? Compare this to existing defensive spells and abilities.


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## Ashtagon (May 24, 2010)

Based on this thread, I've made the following changes to my house version of fly:

* Target changed to self only.
* Movement rate changed to your normal land speed; more of an overpowered hovercraft than a superman-esque strike a pose and whoosh.
* Duration expires if you stop maintaining it with concentration.
* If it is dispelled or anti-magicked, you fall.
* If duration expires or you stop concentrating, a DC 15 Spellcraft check converts it to a _feather fall_; otherwise, you fall.
* Similar changes made to higher-level flight spells, _mutatis mutandis_.

This still keeps it useful as a utility spell, but it's no longer the get out of combat free card it was.


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## Votan (May 24, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> This 3e hate-fest is great and all, but I'm personally much more interested in figuring out a way to include flight from Level 1 in a way that doesn't hose DMs or Players, going forward, than I am in picking apart any given edition of D&D. Clearly, neither of the two extant versions get it quite right for me.




My take on it is that flight is a difficult ability to balance rsther than any hate for 3rd edition.  Editions have tended to over or undershoot the ideal balance point.  The issue with 4th edition is not that flight is unbalanced as being too good of an options -- it's that there is not a decent version of it available until the mid teens (and the useful versions I can recall off the top of my head require investing in a paragon path specifically to do so).  

[It's like half-elves -- you can discuss many issues with balancing a half elef in AD&D or 2E that seem rather odd when the 3.0 PHB Half elf arrives on the scene; the issue is suddenly in the opposite direction]

If you really wanted to do flight from level 1 then you need to make it a non-combat ability.  I'd likely do this with a fly skill (ala Pathfinder) with skill checks required to do combat maneavers while flying.  Failure by more than a certain amount equals falling (so high level stunts can be tried by low level characters with risk).  But I'd make sure that the standard action version doesn't have any risk of a fall by a marginally competent "bird-man".  

The pathfinder SRD makes fly a dex skill and a class skill for wizard, sorcerer and druid.  It has an armor check penalty.  I'd jsut make some actiosn require skill checks:

1 handed weapon attack: DC 15
2 handed weapon attack: DC 20
Cast Spell: DC 15+ spell level

Fail by 10 or more and you fall.  Fail by 5 or more and you are dazed next tunr (only a move action).  Suddenly flying creatures are using javilins and not bows (nice for flavor).  A 12 dex birdman with a first level investment (1 rank PF, 4 ranks D&D) can't fall on a 1 for throwing a spear.  

I'd clarify that flying gives either a -5 or -10 penalty to stealth/move silently checks.  

Mounts would make sense again.  Casters would need to be high level to reliably use fly.  Heck, the base PF rules with a DC 15 to hover are already doing nice things . . .  

Those are the sorts of approaches that I'd think about making fly work from level 1.


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## Celebrim (May 24, 2010)

Fly as a 1st level spell ability is possible.  The obvious solution is to bump Levitate down to a 1st level spell, where it would arguably not be abusive.

I'm not particularly happy with flight as a 1st level ability because I'd prefer to have a few levels where gravity can't be overcome by brute force.  Levitate basically replaces a climb check and elimenates the need for specialized equipment, so its not so bad and is a reasonable first level problem solving solution.  True flight just constrains things too much at low levels.

However, a first level true flight spell would look something like.

1) Full round casting time.
2) Duration of minutes/caster level.
3) Range is personal, target is 'you'.
4) Poor manueverability.
5) Spell effect summons phantasmal/force wings that lift the character.  This is winged flight, and the caster requires space equivalent to a creature two size categories larger.  Makes noise similar to walking on ground.  This is an unstable platform, equivalent to riding a horse in terms of spell casting or penalties to missile fire.
6) Flight speed same as spellcaster's base ground speed.
7) Spell requires concentration to maintain.  Caster is falling when spell ends or concentration is broken.


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## CleverNickName (May 24, 2010)

Kafen said:


> I like this one. I might move the spell up to 4th level and see what happens.



We did this, and it does what it was intended to do.  PCs have to wait until 7th level to get in the air, and it makes potions and magic items a little more expensive.  That's about it.  The biggest boon is that it gives the DM a couple more levels before pits, moats, and rope bridges become obsolete.

I like the idea of the spell ending suddenly, and having a random duration.   But this only amounts to a "flight tax" for spellcasters:  Maximize Spell is already a must-have feat, and _rings of feather falling_ will become the Hottest New Fashion Accessory for Sorcerers.  Nothing really changes.

I'm leaning toward removing the spell altogether, and replacing it with single-use items and winged mounts.  But as others have pointed out, it isn't as simple as that.  There are tons of ways to make a character fly--everything from polymorphing and wild shape, to magical devices like flying carpets and brooms.  Magical flight is hard-wired into the d20 system.

So I'm sort of stuck...and following this thread quite closely, looking for advice and ideas.  I don't want flying superhero-style characters, but I don't want to completely redesign the game.  And honestly, sometimes my adventures require flight.


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## Derren (May 24, 2010)

CleverNickName said:


> We did this, and it does what it was intended to do.  PCs have to wait until 7th level to get in the air, and it makes potions and magic items a little more expensive.  That's about it.  The biggest boon is that it gives the DM a couple more levels before pits, moats, and rope bridges become obsolete.




How about accepting that moats, pits and rope bridges aren't a obstacle to mid level adventurers?
How about designing the world with D&D rules and abilities in mind instead of doing a 0815 mediveal with magic addon?


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## CleverNickName (May 24, 2010)

Derren said:


> How about accepting that moats, pits and rope bridges aren't a obstacle to mid level adventurers?
> How about designing the world with D&D rules and abilities in mind instead of doing a 0815 mediveal with magic addon?



You seem to have missed the point.  The thing is, I _want_ moats, pits, and rope bridges to remain obstacles at all times, not just at low levels.  And I _want_ a "0815 mediveal with magic addon."  I like my game world the way it is; I'm just having trouble fitting magical flight into it.  So any advice that would help me accomplish this would be very appreciated.


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## Derren (May 24, 2010)

CleverNickName said:


> You seem to have missed the point.  The thing is, I _want_ moats, pits, and rope bridges to remain obstacles at all times, not just at low levels.  And I _want_ a "0815 mediveal with magic addon."  I like my game world the way it is; I'm just having trouble fitting magical flight into it.  So any advice that would help me accomplish this would be very appreciated.




Then I suggest to play a different system than D&D (HeroQuest? GURPS?) because there are so many other abilities besides flight which makes the D&D system unsuitable for standard mediveal worlds with a bit of magic. (Raise Dead, Invisibility, AOE spells, teleportation,...)


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## Garthanos (May 24, 2010)

A Witches broom flight is completely doable as a mounted flight it might be a level 5 mount. (yes you can use mounts when you are below there level)  

But if we are doing witches I want more.

I want brooms as implements (they are not just for flying)

The Witches flight ritual using flying ointment that I just designed for 4e costs 25gp and lasts 12 hours if you dont wear even basic clothing. (ie no armor you coat your skin and clothing causes it to wear out very fast)... and could be used for overland flight speed if you wanted.  Its a level 4 ritual with a 5 minute casting time.  It has the some space requirement and is boosted if you have a broom implement... otherwise may be slightly slow (Pick your favorite Arcane attribute modifier as the basis) +2 if you have the broom implement and +1 per bonus on your magic implement.


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## CleverNickName (May 24, 2010)

Derren said:


> Then I suggest to play a different system than D&D (HeroQuest? GURPS?) because there are so many other abilities besides flight which makes the D&D system unsuitable for standard mediveal worlds with a bit of magic. (Raise Dead, Invisibility, AOE spells, teleportation,...)



You might be right, but I am not ready to accept defeat just yet.  D20 is a very robust game system with lots of adaptability...there has to be a "lower-magic" way to play it.

The best idea I've found to accomplish the style of play I am looking for, is to cap character advancement at 6th level (per the E6 houserules.)  _Fly_ is less of a problem when it only lasts 6 minutes, tops.  It still bugs me, though.


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## Dausuul (May 24, 2010)

For the combat aspects of flight, I think I would focus on requiring Balance checks (or Fly checks if you want to make it a distinct skill) to not fall under various circumstances:


When you take damage (DC of check based on amount of damage taken).
When you cast a spell (DC dependent on spell level).
When you make an attack (DC might be fixed in 3E; in 4E, DC would depend on the level of the attack power).
Then eliminate _feather fall_. Now, not only is falling a distinct possibility when using flight in a combat situation, but if you want to fly high enough to evade enemy ranged attacks, you're risking death or severe injury if you miss a check and fall.

To address the non-combat issues (the "+100 to Stealth, Climb, and Jump" problem): Have all forms of flight available to PCs involve wings. If you cast a _fly_ spell, you don't fly like Superman; you sprout wings instead. Then impose the following restrictions on winged flight:


It's noisy. Stealth checks are impossible while flying. Maybe while gliding.
It requires room. A non-flying creature that sprouts wings goes up one size category.
No hovering. In general, I avoid imposing complicated restrictions on flight - it makes combat too much hassle - but I think this one is manageable: You have to move your speed horizontally every round while airborne (end the round [speed] squares away from where you started), or you fall.
As others have suggested, cut all your carried weight limits (light encumbrance, heavy encumbrance, max load, whatever) to one-quarter normal while flying.


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## Kafen (May 24, 2010)

CleverNickName said:


> We did this, and it does what it was intended to do.  PCs have to wait until 7th level to get in the air, and it makes potions and magic items a little more expensive.  That's about it.  The biggest boon is that it gives the DM a couple more levels before pits, moats, and rope bridges become obsolete.
> 
> I like the idea of the spell ending suddenly, and having a random duration.   But this only amounts to a "flight tax" for spellcasters:  Maximize Spell is already a must-have feat, and _rings of feather falling_ will become the Hottest New Fashion Accessory for Sorcerers.  Nothing really changes.
> 
> ...




My main focus is the fly spell. At this time, it's the only real thing that I worry about. Most of the other flight methods are self limiting. I suspect that limiting it to 4th level without changing other things makes it simple to test. 

Anyways, I am following the thread like you for ideas. I am torn between raising it up a level and converting fly to a spell with DC checks to reach 'greater' tiers of effects. I forget who brings it up, but _Fly_ as a skill concept appeals to me, too. *not sure who started it first*


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## Votan (May 24, 2010)

Kafen said:


> I forget who brings it up, but _Fly_ as a skill concept appeals to me, too. *not sure who started it first*




Well, it is a core Pathfinder skill so the idea is at least a few years old.  

They add the twist that you have to be able to fly before you can start training the skill so only a smart Druid really has the skill points to develop this quickly.  Others are waiting until mid-levels.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (May 24, 2010)

Interesting thread all the way.

My take on the whole thing is that I like cool stuff, but only care for power when I'm being limited.  I hear these stories of players using the same strategy over and over.  And the people relating these stories say it makes things boring.  I think so too, but limits can enforce the need to be boring by blocking off new paths.  It sort of makes me wonder whether there's another limit that's causing this boring behavior that isn't be recognized and addressed.  I don't personally know what it is or might be, I'm just throwing the thought out there.



CleverNickName said:


> You might be right, but I am not ready to accept defeat just yet.  D20 is a very robust game system with lots of adaptability...there has to be a "lower-magic" way to play it.
> 
> The best idea I've found to accomplish the style of play I am looking for, is to cap character advancement at 6th level (per the E6 houserules.)  _Fly_ is less of a problem when it only lasts 6 minutes, tops.  It still bugs me, though.



Have you tried Fantasy Craft?  It's d20 and has built right into the system the option to tweak what spells and magic items are available however you want without twisting the balance of the rest of the system into knots.


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## BryonD (May 24, 2010)

I believe it was Henry who proposed a simple low magic rule quite a few years ago.

His rule was that you could never take a class level if that level would increase your caster level above one-half your character level.

Thus a 6th level character could be no greater than 3rd level in Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer or Cleric.  You could be a Cleric3/Wizard3, or a Cleric3/Fighter3 or whatever.  But nothing over caster level 3.

It is an entirely reasonable to base magic item pricing on minimum character level instead of caster level.  If a CL of 5 is required to craft an item, (say a wand of Fly), then only a character of at least 10th level could craft one.  So they would be they much more precious and the value could be calculated using a value of 10 for CL rather 5.  (Though the effective caster level remains 5, just the price is recalculated)  Now spellcasting is brought down a lot and magic items are significantly constrained.


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## Celebrim (May 24, 2010)

BryonD said:


> I believe it was Henry who proposed a simple low magic rule quite a few years ago.
> 
> His rule was that you could never take a class level if that level would increase your caster level above one-half your character level.




This would be my recommendation for any campaign that wants low magic/medieval feel but which also wants to eventually scale up to a very 'epic' (as its erroneously come to be called) flavor.  

Personally, I prefer the term 'colossal' because on of the things I don't feel mods like e6 can reasonably do is capture the feel of extremely massive opponents.  There is plenty of room for an epic campaign at 6th level, afterall Gandalf was a 6th level wizard.  However, there just isn't the nice continious gradient between horse, elephant, dinosaur and godzilla that the full d20 toolset gives you when you limit players to 6th level.  

FantasyCraft, while a great system, in my opinion has this limitation.  There 'big' stuff just doesn't feel big.

Granted, there are improvements I'd like to see in how D20 handles scale, but that's a different thead.


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## Stalker0 (May 25, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> How would these three interact with the idea of "take damage and fall out of the sky?"




I would use the normal fly rules for this one. You are fine if you take damage, but proning effects knock you down.


I caution the idea of balancing fly by greatly increasing the number of ways to knock the person down. If the player feels that every time he flies he is basically giving the DM the rope to hang him with...then there's no point in giving him fly.


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## Votan (May 25, 2010)

Stalker0 said:


> I would use the normal fly rules for this one. You are fine if you take damage, but proning effects knock you down.
> 
> 
> I caution the idea of balancing fly by greatly increasing the number of ways to knock the person down. If the player feels that every time he flies he is basically giving the DM the rope to hang him with...then there's no point in giving him fly.




I suspect it is okay if the rules are clearly spelled out so that the player can judge the risk carefully.  In the most mild example (dispel magic ends the spell and there is no feather fall) that's a fairly uncommon hazard and exists more to keep players from becoming too predictable with fly based tactics (as they invite a planned counter) but would rarely impact a normal campaign.


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## pemerton (May 25, 2010)

Stalker0 said:


> I caution the idea of balancing fly by greatly increasing the number of ways to knock the person down. If the player feels that every time he flies he is basically giving the DM the rope to hang him with...then there's no point in giving him fly.





Votan said:


> I suspect it is okay if the rules are clearly spelled out so that the player can judge the risk carefully.  In the most mild example (dispel magic ends the spell and there is no feather fall) that's a fairly uncommon hazard and exists more to keep players from becoming too predictable with fly based tactics (as they invite a planned counter) but would rarely impact a normal campaign.



Votan, I'm inclinded to agree with Stalker0. As you present it, the removal of feather fall from fly has no impact _except for_ the first time the GM pulls a planned counter on the PCs, at which point a PC dies (or at least runs a serious risk of death). I don't feel that it's very good design to have a class feature that is meant to be fairly utilitarian (like fly) turn into a feature which is closer to "auto-win except when my PC dies". That sort of thing can be OK for a certain style of play which (i) is high on the gonzo factor, and (ii) makes it easy to replace PCs. It can even work in a more typical character-centred D&D game as a climax point (a bit like Frodo dropping the ring into Mt Doom) - but I don't think it works for something like flight.


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## Ashtagon (May 25, 2010)

BryonD said:


> I believe it was Henry who proposed a simple low magic rule quite a few years ago.
> 
> His rule was that you could never take a class level if that level would increase your caster level above one-half your character level.
> 
> Thus a 6th level character could be no greater than 3rd level in Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer or Cleric.  You could be a Cleric3/Wizard3, or a Cleric3/Fighter3 or whatever.  But nothing over caster level 3.




This sounds like a very interesting approach.

Would it be possible to be, say, a transmuter 3 / conjurer 3, with separate caster levels and spells selected for each of those two classes? Is that likely to break anything?


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## Votan (May 25, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Votan, I'm inclinded to agree with Stalker0. As you present it, the removal of feather fall from fly has no impact _except for_ the first time the GM pulls a planned counter on the PCs, at which point a PC dies (or at least runs a serious risk of death). I don't feel that it's very good design to have a class feature that is meant to be fairly utilitarian (like fly) turn into a feature which is closer to "auto-win except when my PC dies". That sort of thing can be OK for a certain style of play which (i) is high on the gonzo factor, and (ii) makes it easy to replace PCs. It can even work in a more typical character-centred D&D game as a climax point (a bit like Frodo dropping the ring into Mt Doom) - but I don't think it works for something like flight.




To each their own.  

I'm not sure where the "character is dead issue" comes from unless the player is a) flying at a great height and b) doesn't expend resources planning for a fall.  A 10th level mage shouldn't be a in a great deal of trouble taking 10d6 damage, for example.  WIth a range of 100 + 10 feet per level, it's hard to get above 100' feet of falling damage unless you are directly below the wizard.  

Now, if the reason is that the player is standing off opponents that could never have been defeated in melee, the standard version is just as bad (except that they take fewer hit points on the way down).  

The idea is to introduce an element of risk into a repetitive tactic. It also aligns the risks closer to that of a flying mount as the classic trick now to to kill the hippogriff and not the rider.  Dispel magic requires a caster level check to work, has a range, and doesn't do anything worse than with a mount.  

I don't think that having a counter to a spell that is dangerous is any worse than current spells -- reciprocal gyre appears to exist partially to introduce risk to heavy buffers.  How is this different?


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