I realize you're focused on flying mechanics, but there's a separate concern here: you're badly nerfing your dwarf and I'm not sure you've thought that out. The nerf is technically RAW, but if I were the DM, I would never let it happen. Here are the two rules in question:
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feel. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.
When you use this variant, ignore the Strength column of the Armor table in chapter 5.
Dwarfs don't just totally ignore encumbrance and have limitless carrying capacity. He was encumbered because he was carrying another party member.
In terms of the rest, I can't say that calculating that kind of thing is plausible whilst DM'ing for a group of four players in the middle of combat, but I only allow one diagonal movement for every movement of up to 30 feet. Allowing 6 diagonals massively increases movement speed to crazy levels. It doesn't really matter that much anyway, as regardless of which way you rule movement they could still be in a scenario where you couldn't reach them without falling out of the sky. But I do appreciate the effort you went to in the post, and thanks for the Xanathar's link.
I made that post, not TexasDevin. And I stand by it: the dwarven racial was clearly not written with variant encumbrance in mind, and at my table, I would rule that the dwarven racial applies to variant encumbrance, for the reasons I gave. You can rule however you like. We are talking about homebrew, here. :)
I've never heard of your homebrew for diagonal movement before, and I don't think I understand it properly since the mental image I've formed implies that a party deploying movement blockers intelligently can assume their enemies will only move like rooks, making most fights trivial, but if it works for you, great!
In terms of the rest, I can't say that calculating that kind of thing is plausible whilst DM'ing for a group of four players in the middle of combat, but I only allow one diagonal movement for every movement of up to 30 feet. Allowing 6 diagonals massively increases movement speed to crazy levels.
Your house rule would make you unable to move to a space 25 feet away with 30 feet of movement (your house rule only allows 21 feet diagonal, compared to the optional rule which lets you move 28 feet diagonally, while the default lets you move a whopping 42 feet diagonal).
It doesn't really matter that much anyway, as regardless of which way you rule movement they could still be in a scenario where you couldn't reach them without falling out of the sky. But I do appreciate the effort you went to in the post, and thanks for the Xanathar's link.
In my first comment, I described how it could just barely be done using the optional diagonal rules that limit diagonal movement. It could easily be done using default rules.
I would rule it that downward movement doesn't count as long as you move less than your total speed downward. So if you have a speed of 25 and dash, you could move 50 forward and 50 down. If you wanted to move more than that down, you'd take falling damage for the remainder.
Even without that ruling, I use 5-10-5 movement, so the total distance you need to move is the longest axis plus half of the other two axies. So if you're 300 horizontal and 120 vertical from the target, that's 360 ft you need to move.
I've always ruled that up/down movement uses up some of your movement. Downward movement in a CONTROLLED manner is very different from simply falling in an uncontrolled manner.
Dwarfs don't just totally ignore encumbrance and have limitless carrying capacity. He was encumbered because he was carrying another party member.
I made that post, not TexasDevin. And I stand by it: the dwarven racial was clearly not written with variant encumbrance in mind, and at my table, I would rule that the dwarven racial applies to variant encumbrance, for the reasons I gave. You can rule however you like. We are talking about homebrew, here. :)
Yea I have to agree with quindraco here. In the base rules the only weight thing that affects movement is the armour strength requirements and the Dwarves get to ignore that. If you use the variant rules then the armour strength requirements are tossed and you only use actual weight. That means that if you don't make an extra allowance for Dwarves then you have essentially thrown one of their racial trait out the window and that is mighty harsh.
I'm not sure that I would allow Dwarves to ignore encumbrance completely but something like halving the penalties to -5/-10 perhaps. And likely keeping the disadvantage for attack rolls and ability checks but not for saves. Or something like that.
I think the applicable RAW here is that when you fall, you fall up to 500 feet instantaneously. There is no way to interrupt it except with a reaction such as Featherfall. So you're welcome to stop flying, but you fall all the way to the ground and take d6 damage for each 10 feet you fall. There is no RAW way to stop a fall by resuming flying.
In terms of realism, I also don't think you can fall arbitrarily far and instantly stop your fall. If you fall hundreds of feet, you'll be going pretty fast, and it takes some distance to brake your fall.
In my game I have a lot of aarakocra, including two PCs, so I have a lot of homebrew flying rules. I allow you to move up to your movement in a downward direction for free. You can still use all of your movement to move horizontally as well, or use your movement to move downward again for a total of double of your movement downward. You can then come to a dead stop. This is just your normal movement, not a dash. So you could actually dash downward again and then come to a stop. If you have a movement speed of 50 feet, you can drop 150 feet in a turn and stop, without even needing any special class features. Rogue and Monk aarakocra could dive faster.
Moving up requires you to use your movement, according to "Manhattan distance" (horizontal distance plus vertical distance, not Pythagorean distance). You can move up by no more than the amount you move horizontally in the turn, and you can't cheat this by just turning in a super tight circle and returning to your original position. In general you can't turn in a super tight circle. Any circle would have to be radius at least 5. I play on hexes, so that would mean moving 6 hexes to get back to your original position. And if you are in that tight a circle, I won't allow you to ascend. If you are ascending at the same time as turning, you would need at least a 10 foot radius.
That was way more than you asked for, but basically I have separate rules for flyers, and moving downward is covered under those rules. If you wish to move downward faster, you may do so at your own risk.
I think the applicable RAW here is that when you fall, you fall up to 500 feet instantaneously. There is no way to interrupt it except with a reaction such as Featherfall. So you're welcome to stop flying, but you fall all the way to the ground and take d6 damage for each 10 feet you fall. There is no RAW way to stop a fall by resuming flying.
(1) 500 feet is a Xanathar's optional rule, not the core PHB rule, so is only RAW in a game where the DM adopts it, and (2) it's a little ambiguous whether the Xanathar's optional rule is using "instantly" to truly mean (a) "in one unit that cannot be interrupted by anything other than a reaction," or just (b) "on this turn."
Its a confusing area, because the PHB doesn't talk about falling a total distance "immediately" (is 'immediately' the same as 'instantly'?), and yet Xanathar's thinks it does, and then provides itself as an alternative. Its preamble to all of this is to explain that it is providing a way to describe falling taking "more than a few seconds," so reading the Xanathar's rule as justification for falling in the blink of an eye too fast to do anything else is... strange.
I think the applicable RAW here is that when you fall, you fall up to 500 feet instantaneously. There is no way to interrupt it except with a reaction such as Featherfall. So you're welcome to stop flying, but you fall all the way to the ground and take d6 damage for each 10 feet you fall. There is no RAW way to stop a fall by resuming flying.
(1) 500 feet is a Xanathar's optional rule, not the core PHB rule, so is only RAW in a game where the DM adopts it, and (2) it's a little ambiguous whether the Xanathar's optional rule is using "instantly" to truly mean (a) "in one unit that cannot be interrupted by anything other than a reaction," or just (b) "on this turn."
Its a confusing area, because the PHB doesn't talk about falling a total distance "immediately" (is 'immediately' the same as 'instantly'?), and yet Xanathar's thinks it does, and then provides itself as an alternative. Its preamble to all of this is to explain that it is providing a way to describe falling taking "more than a few seconds," so reading the Xanathar's rule as justification for falling in the blink of an eye too fast to do anything else is... strange.
None of which changes the fact that there is no RAW for falling except for the damage, so you have to house rule it according to either realism or balance or both.
I think it would be overpowered if a flying character can instantly get far out of range just by diving off a cliff with no consequences.
Isn’t that a pretty common narrative trope though? Everyone playing a flying character will have seen movies where flying characters do exactly that, so the expectation is already there…
I think it would be overpowered if a flying character can instantly get far out of range just by diving off a cliff with no consequences.
You mean, like if a character can fly, they could just jump off a cliff, fall 100 feet or so, and then start flying? That doesn't seem any more overpowered than them having the ability to fly in the first place. In fact, that sounds very cinematic to me. That's how a bird dives.
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I have no memory of making the post you quoted.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Yea, the quote is from quindraco, I'm guessing some things got messed up while someone was editing their post.
I made that post, not TexasDevin. And I stand by it: the dwarven racial was clearly not written with variant encumbrance in mind, and at my table, I would rule that the dwarven racial applies to variant encumbrance, for the reasons I gave. You can rule however you like. We are talking about homebrew, here. :)
I've never heard of your homebrew for diagonal movement before, and I don't think I understand it properly since the mental image I've formed implies that a party deploying movement blockers intelligently can assume their enemies will only move like rooks, making most fights trivial, but if it works for you, great!
I agree with you about 6 diagonals being ridiculous, that is why I use the optional diagonal rules in the DMG. Much more realistic.
Your house rule would make you unable to move to a space 25 feet away with 30 feet of movement (your house rule only allows 21 feet diagonal, compared to the optional rule which lets you move 28 feet diagonally, while the default lets you move a whopping 42 feet diagonal).
In my first comment, I described how it could just barely be done using the optional diagonal rules that limit diagonal movement. It could easily be done using default rules.
I've always ruled that up/down movement uses up some of your movement. Downward movement in a CONTROLLED manner is very different from simply falling in an uncontrolled manner.
Yea I have to agree with quindraco here. In the base rules the only weight thing that affects movement is the armour strength requirements and the Dwarves get to ignore that. If you use the variant rules then the armour strength requirements are tossed and you only use actual weight. That means that if you don't make an extra allowance for Dwarves then you have essentially thrown one of their racial trait out the window and that is mighty harsh.
I'm not sure that I would allow Dwarves to ignore encumbrance completely but something like halving the penalties to -5/-10 perhaps. And likely keeping the disadvantage for attack rolls and ability checks but not for saves. Or something like that.
I think the applicable RAW here is that when you fall, you fall up to 500 feet instantaneously. There is no way to interrupt it except with a reaction such as Featherfall. So you're welcome to stop flying, but you fall all the way to the ground and take d6 damage for each 10 feet you fall. There is no RAW way to stop a fall by resuming flying.
In terms of realism, I also don't think you can fall arbitrarily far and instantly stop your fall. If you fall hundreds of feet, you'll be going pretty fast, and it takes some distance to brake your fall.
In my game I have a lot of aarakocra, including two PCs, so I have a lot of homebrew flying rules. I allow you to move up to your movement in a downward direction for free. You can still use all of your movement to move horizontally as well, or use your movement to move downward again for a total of double of your movement downward. You can then come to a dead stop. This is just your normal movement, not a dash. So you could actually dash downward again and then come to a stop. If you have a movement speed of 50 feet, you can drop 150 feet in a turn and stop, without even needing any special class features. Rogue and Monk aarakocra could dive faster.
Moving up requires you to use your movement, according to "Manhattan distance" (horizontal distance plus vertical distance, not Pythagorean distance). You can move up by no more than the amount you move horizontally in the turn, and you can't cheat this by just turning in a super tight circle and returning to your original position. In general you can't turn in a super tight circle. Any circle would have to be radius at least 5. I play on hexes, so that would mean moving 6 hexes to get back to your original position. And if you are in that tight a circle, I won't allow you to ascend. If you are ascending at the same time as turning, you would need at least a 10 foot radius.
That was way more than you asked for, but basically I have separate rules for flyers, and moving downward is covered under those rules. If you wish to move downward faster, you may do so at your own risk.
(1) 500 feet is a Xanathar's optional rule, not the core PHB rule, so is only RAW in a game where the DM adopts it, and (2) it's a little ambiguous whether the Xanathar's optional rule is using "instantly" to truly mean (a) "in one unit that cannot be interrupted by anything other than a reaction," or just (b) "on this turn."
Its a confusing area, because the PHB doesn't talk about falling a total distance "immediately" (is 'immediately' the same as 'instantly'?), and yet Xanathar's thinks it does, and then provides itself as an alternative. Its preamble to all of this is to explain that it is providing a way to describe falling taking "more than a few seconds," so reading the Xanathar's rule as justification for falling in the blink of an eye too fast to do anything else is... strange.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
None of which changes the fact that there is no RAW for falling except for the damage, so you have to house rule it according to either realism or balance or both.
I think it would be overpowered if a flying character can instantly get far out of range just by diving off a cliff with no consequences.
Isn’t that a pretty common narrative trope though? Everyone playing a flying character will have seen movies where flying characters do exactly that, so the expectation is already there…
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
You mean, like if a character can fly, they could just jump off a cliff, fall 100 feet or so, and then start flying? That doesn't seem any more overpowered than them having the ability to fly in the first place. In fact, that sounds very cinematic to me. That's how a bird dives.
"Not all those who wander are lost"