D&D 5E On fairies and flying

[overgeeked]

So...characters and flying.

There's the new fairy: "Flight. Because of your wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You can’t use this flying speed if you’re wearing medium or heavy armor."

There's also the aarakocra: "Flight. You have a flying speed of 50 feet. To use this speed, you can’t be wearing medium or heavy armor."

There's also the aasimar: "Radiant Soul...at 3rd-level...Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. During it, you have a flying speed of 30 feet..."

So clearly the game designers think flight is something that should be limited. Either by limiting armor worn or limiting by level and duration or as a short-duration concentration spell that's not available until 5th level.

Okay. So some DMs think early access to flight will destroy their games others think it's no problem at all. But flight is a really potent ability. Sure, there's are a lot of ways flight can go against the flying character. Wind gusts, lack of cover, inability to hide, being an obvious target, easy line of sight, etc. But flight lets the character bypass a lot of stuff. Traps, difficult terrain, any and all ground-based effects, etc. It also lets the flyer make athletics and climbing redundant...but there's also spider climb (2nd level, 1-hour, concentration).

To me it comes down to style. If the DM is one who wants those things to matter and easy access to flight removes those as obstacles...there's a problem. There's also the ease of abuse of fairy flight. As written, anything that boosts your walking speed also boosts your flying speed. So mobile, monk, barbarian, haste, etc.

As a player, I still want to play a wild magic barbarian fairy...or a drunken master monk fairy.

But as a DM, I'm torn. I can go either way on it being too much or no big deal.

So help me out. Why is it too much and why is it no big deal?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So...characters and flying.

There's the new fairy: "Flight. Because of your wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You can’t use this flying speed if you’re wearing medium or heavy armor."

There's also the aarakocra: "Flight. You have a flying speed of 50 feet. To use this speed, you can’t be wearing medium or heavy armor."

There's also the aasimar: "Radiant Soul...at 3rd-level...Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. During it, you have a flying speed of 30 feet..."

So clearly the game designers think flight is something that should be limited. Either by limiting armor worn or limiting by level and duration or as a short-duration concentration spell that's not available until 5th level.

Okay. So some DMs think early access to flight will destroy their games others think it's no problem at all. But flight is a really potent ability. Sure, there's are a lot of ways flight can go against the flying character. Wind gusts, lack of cover, inability to hide, being an obvious target, easy line of sight, etc. But flight lets the character bypass a lot of stuff. Traps, difficult terrain, any and all ground-based effects, etc. It also lets the flyer make athletics and climbing redundant...but there's also spider climb (2nd level, 1-hour, concentration).

To me it comes down to style. If the DM is one who wants those things to matter and easy access to flight removes those as obstacles...there's a problem. There's also the ease of abuse of fairy flight. As written, anything that boosts your walking speed also boosts your flying speed. So mobile, monk, barbarian, haste, etc.

As a player, I still want to play a wild magic barbarian fairy...or a drunken master monk fairy.

But as a DM, I'm torn. I can go either way on it being too much or no big deal.

So help me out. Why is it too much and why is it no big deal?

Limiting it to light armor is not really a gameplay restriction, because if you are flying, using a ranged weapon will give you advantage and you want high dex anyway. Only a cleric suffers a bit.

The big deal is, that it trivializes quite a few encounters, as explained in the other thread:

• climbing (bringing the end of the rope to the top)
• fights against monsters without ranged weapons (killing a tarrasque with acid spray at level 1)

You might notice that I don't take it too serious. A flying familiar is nearly as annoying as a flying character, but as a DM, you should just accept it and make the player suffer when it is appropriate.

TThey might miss an archer and are an easy target. A hold person or tasha's hideous laughter hurts a lot more if you fall 60ft first. And there is no question, that this is what your enemies do if they have the means.
So in the end it balances out.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As a DM, I don’t view flight as especially powerful. Regardless of any flyers, I pepper encounters with flying enemies and archers/spell-snipers(often falconer teams with a flying beast and an archer), and I don’t design terrain challenges that can be wholly bypassed by one character using an ability to individually bypass the obstacle.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Limiting it to light armor is not really a gameplay restriction, because if you are flying, using a ranged weapon will give you advantage and you want high dex anyway. Only a cleric suffers a bit.

The big deal is, that it trivializes quite a few encounters, as explained in the other thread:

• climbing (bringing the end of the rope to the top)
• fights against monsters without ranged weapons (killing a tarrasque with acid spray at level 1)

You might notice that I don't take it too serious. A flying familiar is nearly as annoying as a flying character, but as a DM, you should just accept it and make the player suffer when it is appropriate.

TThey might miss an archer and are an easy target. A hold person or tasha's hideous laughter hurts a lot more if you fall 60ft first. And there is no question, that this is what your enemies do if they have the means.
So in the end it balances out.

Generally I avoid stuff that comes across as punishing the PCs for being good at things, but yes, in the case of flying, this stuff is literally just obvious tactics against flyers.

 

[Stalker0]

I actually posed this very concern in the Levelup forum as they now have a Dragonborn that has limited fly. I immediately got replies from several parties that say they have flight in their game and its no big deal.

I think it probably depends on the type of campaign. If your doing mostly dungeons, flight is nice but it gets limited by the constraints of the dungeon and so is naturally hindered.

However in a more outdoor game, I can't see how flight isn't a win button in many circumstances:

1) Fly up for super scouting
2) Crossing natural hazards
3) Avoiding melee heavy combats (animals are a good example)
4) Unstoppable ranged assaults in open ground.

Sure, DMs can craft encounters to thwart flight, but that does put a continuous onus on the DM....so its about whether they want to deal with that or not.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

1) Fly up for super scouting
2) Crossing natural hazards
3) Avoiding melee heavy combats (animals are a good example)
4) Unstoppable ranged assaults in open ground.

These are all tactics enemies can and do use. Anyone too dumb to come up with ways of countering them isn't worth fighting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So clearly the game designers think flight is something that should be limited.

Actually, this tends to come from player feedback. The UA versions tend not to have this restriction.

And I think it has more to do with suspension of disbelief. A fairy flapping around on insect wings in full plate just looks dumb. A few points of AC don't make any difference if the thing you are fighting can't reach you in the first place.

 

[John R Davis]

Flying is really powerful. A Flying familiar makes several PC abilities somewhat redundant and risks to much screentime for its owner. Not a fan

 

[AtomicPope]

Everything depends on the campaign. I've excluded swimming races and races that don't breathe from pirate campaigns to put all of the PCs on an even keel. Half of the danger of being on a boat is drowning. The same goes for flying. If I was running a campaign were travel and exploration were thematic then I would restrict/forbid flying races. It's best to have the PCs separated by skills rather than a single feature that allows them to ignore obstacles and difficult terrain.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It is perhaps more interesting to point out the difference between "you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed" and "You have a flying speed of 50 feet". Fairy flight speed is affected by things that change walking speed, such as barbarian fast movement, whist aarakocra's is not.