Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hi there!
So in a recent campaign I'm allowing flying races, and one of my players is gonna play a winged Tiefling. I don't think there will be any problems with that throughout the campaign, but could you give me some advices to counter the advantage that flying characters may have? Just in case things go south. 😂
Thanks in advance.
You need a clear ruling up front about whether they can carry other characters.
Most of your encounters should include some kind of ranged capability, even if it's just throwing spears. Doesn't mean every enemy should have them, but some of them should. (Having a ranged component is good for making encounters more interesting anyway.)
There's a bunch of obstacles that become trivial, or at least easier, if there's a flying PC. You're going to forget sometimes.
Ranged weapons work quite well.
Ranged weapons, as the others said. There’s typically no cover when you’re up in the sky. You’re just a really nice, easy target.
Besides that there’s a ceiling, flying doesn’t help much inside. Or something like a tree canopy. If the flyer is up above it, they can’t see the enemies, and I usually treat flying through the branches as difficult terrain. (This can also work for things like a cave opening, or the awning of a roof. If it stops a person from getting rained on, it will stop many of the advantages of flying.) The Earthbind spell is an option, but I wouldn’t do that much. It’s the kind of thing you throw out there once early on, just to let the player know it’s a possibility. It can make them think twice before they start flying around.
The other piece of advice I’d have when flying is, think of the character occupying a 5’ cube rather than a 5’ square. Even if they are more than 5’ tall. It can matter for who they are able to reach, and who reaches them in melee. And be warned that the game can really get stressed when you add that third dimension, be it flying or at different depths while swimming. Suddenly things like how high up they cast the fireball really matter. I usually (house rule) start thinking of things like fireball as a cube rather than a sphere; it just makes it way easier than trying to calculate if someone is in it or not around the edges.
The Prone condition is your friend. Some monsters, like Earth Elemental will knock a player prone when they hit them with their ranged attack.
You can also use your own flying monsters, or monsters with long range. Mage-like monsters (Mage Apprentice, Mage, Archmage) have an attack called Arcane Burst that has 120ft of reach and deals an atrociously high amount of damage for their CR.
Spells like Hold Person, or Earthbind will force a player to the ground if they fail the save. Flesh to Stone will make a player fall to the ground no matter what, even if they succeed the save (but it's kinda dickish to cast that spell on a player)... You have a lot of options :)
Thank you very much for your answers, guys! They helped me a lot! ❤️❤️
Flying monsters
Your player will have no backup except for the ranged attacks from the ground, and if a flying monster drags them up higher and higher, it becomes a 1v1.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
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"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
Ban flying tiefling it is too op.
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Hahaha I can't. I allowed it, so now I must face the consequences.
I agree with both flying monsters and ranged weapons, but additionally, in dungeons, have you considered ceiling traps? Maybe the inhabitants are at odds with some flying creature and have installed traps on the ceiling or higher up on the walls. It would probably catch them off guard if they were expecting to fly above all the traps!
She/Her/Hers DM
Flying in a dungeon is not as useful as flying outdoors.
Sure they're virtually immune to pit traps, but arrow traps, falling rock traps, poison dart traps, illusion traps, etc. all work just fine.
Generally speaking, in a dungeon there isn't as much freedom of movement when the ceiling is only 10 feet high.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
this is all true and you could add some enemys that can restrain them
Adding onto this, you could make some kind of puzzle with heavier gravity so they can't fly, if you have a really cool idea that you don't want them to be able to just fly over.
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When you make situations that are very clearly for the purposes of preventing the flying character from doing their thing, the player may rightly feel that they're being picked on.
Once you have a flying character, certain obstacles just aren't in your toolbox anymore.
I also want to add, most of the time, let them fly. As jl8e says, if you shut them down every time, it’s just picking on them. So, let them fly and just sometimes throw in a wrinkle where some enemies are well equipped to deal with flyers.
As someone who’s DM’d quite a few flying characters, they’re not as OP as many people think. I’ve had many a flying character go off ahead and realize the peril of being alone in a game that assumes a team will be there to deal with problems. And once they realize they can be knocked out of the air, and take fall damage, or a failed death save when they hit the ground, they tend to get more conservative about when they choose to fly.
Agreed, just let them fly. Challenge them sometimes, but not all the time.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It's probably better to occasionally shut down flying later on (level 5+), when it's not just the one character with the ability.
Yeah, I let them fly. I won't try to hamper they experience. I was talking mainly about combat situations, because I see several advantages outdoors (for example, a race that can fly can get close to a creature until his ranged abilities can be used, attack, and then move backwards until the character is out of the creature's range abilities).
How and what will they carry.
If allowing a flying PC (especially if doing so before the wizard PCs can get access to the Fly spell), you need to make sure the encounters have some sort of ranged abilities. I would also suggest adding in more flying enemies to the encounters, as well as spells and abilitites that could drop a flying creature (that can't hover) from the air - which would have a benefit of getting the flying PC to stay lower to the ground to avoid taking nasty falling damage.
There should also be situations of low ceillings, or hazards high up (stronger winds, more likely to be hit by lightning during storms, random encounters of flying creatures, etc.).
We've had players who played flying species mixed into parties where none of the others could fly, and it almost always ended in the death of the flyer. They get too cocky thinking they can simply stay out of the enemies range, or scout too far ahead, or fly too high - only to then get into trouble, and the other characters have no way to help them or reach them in time to save them. Most that want to play flying species do so from a desire to be 'immune' to the average encounter, and instead wind up dying first.
The first time they fly 600 ft above the party and get themselves knocked out (or knocked prone), and take 20 dice of falling damage when they're only 4th level - tends to cure them of that really fast.
I was in one group where the flying PC scouted 800' ft ahead of the party, flying out over a cliff with the sea below them, to spy on an enemy fortress when an Invisible Stalker came out to 'greet' them. They couldn't outrun it, weren't strong enough to fight it, and died because the rest of the party couldn't help them. Then there was another one who played a flying archer gloomstalker who flew out of the group's vision range, in the dark - and bled out while the group tried in vain to try to figure out where they went and get to them before they died... Then there was the one that became a snack for a much larger flying creature that snatched them from mid-air well out of the party's ranged attack range...
It has been my experience that flying PCs before 5th level, don't survive to 5th level.
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