A Party of Aarakocra?

[imaginary]

This post comes it four parts, feel free to only respond to some of it if you'd like.

1) Viability?

I was wondering about what it would be like if everyone in a party played an Aarakocra (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/EE_PlayersCompanion.pdf), with a flying speed of 50' at first level. If the entire party could fly at will, it would certainly make travel easier in many modules or adventures. How else would it impact stories and encounters.

For a reference point, how might it impart some standard adventures like Storm King's Thunder? It would certainly be less advantageous in Out of the Abyss, or would it? Basically I'm curious about how effective it might be?

Has anyone every played an Aarakocra, how did it balance with the rest of the group? If you were to re-imagine some of your encounters with the whole party as Aarakocras, how do you think it would go?

2) Party Composition?

Could you design a party of Aarakocra that would be balanced and viable, and what might they look like? What classes and feats would you include in such a party? Let's assume a target of 10th level. Thoughts?

A party would need to handle all kinds of encounters, including ones were they are inside or can't fly.

3) Tactics?

What synergies or team tactics could a party of Aarakocra use?

4) Backstory?

What possible backstory or reasons might a party of all Aarakocra have to adventure or get involved in any of the existing campaign modules?

~imaginary

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Viability - Certainly viable, since any race is more or less viable for any class in 5e.

Composition - More or less similar to that of a regular party, but with emphasis on dex, wis, and ranged combat. For a five man party, something like Rogue, Ranger, Light Cleric, Druid, Scout Fighter might do nicely.

Tactics - The obvious tactic is shooting things from above to nullify any enemies that can't shoot back or fly themselves. A somewhat less obvious tactic is the use of the ability of a group of five Aaracockra to summon an Air Elemental (see Monster Manual).

Backstory - Aaracockra are a fairly isolationist society with something of a lawful (they might be predominantly NG, but the Wind Dukes they serve are most definitely L) and militaristic (seeing themselves as guardians against invaders) bent. As such a fully Aaracockra party seems an entirely reasonable proposition lore-wise, and indeed arguably more likely than a lone Aaracockra signing up with a non-Aaracockra adventuring party. An Aaracockra party might be a task force sent by the Wind Dukes to deal with a specific threat. As for the existing adventures:

Princes of the Apocalypse: Given that this adventure centres around the Aaracockra's sworn foes, their reason for getting involved should be obvious.
Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat, Storm Kings Thunder - These adventures all deal with the rise of a global-level threat, one that would concern the Aaracockra as much as anyone else.
Out of the Abyss - Aaracockra are in no way immune to being kidnapped by a Drow surface raid.
Curse of Strahd - Anyone can be drawn into Ravenloft, as the Dark Powers will it. The Aaracockra are no exception to this.

[MasterMercury]

A party of bird-people? I love it. Give one of them a bag of holding, and watch him fill it with rocks and drop them on all of his enemies.

The flight probably won't be much of a hassle in dungeons, if you do much if that. Social interaction might be a bit interesting, if Aaraocka aren't that common.

I red a thread earlier that was rather interesting. Have this party, at level one, fight a really high level non-flying monster. Someone made a claim that a 1st level Aarokan cleric could beat a TARRASQUE with sacred flame.

[Naanomi]

I'd want a monk on the team for super-fast flying!

Consider adding one Winged Tiefling for variety?

[SharkForce]

i would not advise putting an all-aarakocra party into an unmodified module. many of the limitations on aarakocra come from having non-flying party members, for one thing. for another, the modules are simply not designed to properly account for what aarakocra can do. it isn't broken, because aarakocra can certainly be challenged, even from level 1, but there are things that will challenge a regular party that are no challenge at all for an aarakocra party (there are also a few things that are true the other way around - mostly, anything that forces aarakocra to not fly generally leaves them relatively immobile on the ground compared to many creatures, for example).

if you're willing to go through each module first, ask yourself how you would solve each encounter if you could fly, and then take that into account as you modify it, i think you could certainly make it work. but not straight out of the box.

even in campaigns like out of the abyss, i wouldn't discount aarakocra. there will be places with low ceilings and narrow passages where flight is inadvisable or even impossible. but there are also going to be places where you're in a large open cavern, and when you have a 50 foot flight speed when normally you would be, say, rowing around a lake on a small boat trying to outrun a group of pursuing drow... well, let's just say that one of those two scenarios will be slightly more favourable to the PCs than the other ;)

[Mith]

Surround the lake with hazards that make the party unable to land. Then they have to deal with the boat of drow, or find a clever way to escape.

[Naanomi]

Part of the fun of a party like this in existing modules is that you break some encounters inherently, I would play opponents smart but not change them.

In Hackmaster we took a pixie-faerie party across most of the published adventures for great fun in the same vein

[SharkForce]

Surround the lake with hazards that make the party unable to land. Then they have to deal with the boat of drow, or find a clever way to escape.

if you're going to make sure that the players can't be an aarakocra every time they want to be an aarakocra, you shouldn't say yes when they ask to be an aarakocra.

when i said modify the adventure, i didn't mean make sure flying is useless. i meant, take into account that they can fly, and change the module. if they need a few more encounters to make sure they've got the exp to survive later on, put in a few random encounters. if they need to find some information that would normally be revealed by an NPC who stops them with an obstacle that won't work because they can fly (and the NPC doesn't have any other plausible means of stopping them), make sure they'll have a chance to find that information somewhere else. but don't wait for them to run into situations where it looks like the ability you explicitly agreed to will be useful, and then tell them (only after they try to use it) that you've blocked them from being able to use it.

either say no when they pick aarakocra, or accept that sometimes being aarakocra will reduce or negate the impact of certain obstacles.

[N810]

The main problem with flying is ... well falling.
and a lot of different statuses can make you immobile
and plummet to your likely death.

[imaginary]

The main problem with flying is ... well falling.
and a lot of different statuses can make you immobile
and plummet to your likely death.

Excellent point. I assume someone nearby should always have the feather fall spell ready and be able to use it. But it is a good drawback that I'm glad you mentioned.

[tieren]

I do think you'll need to add more airborne encounters to many published adventures.

I would recommend letting them get good use of the feature but not letting them break the story.

So maybe they don't have to walk through the scary forest, let them fly over and get to the village. So they want to fly to the top of Strahd's castle, now throw swarms of bats and defending gargoyles, skeleton archers, whatever it takes to drive them off and consider a different tack.

[Douche]

Would be pretty cool in a campaign based on the elemental plane of air or something... I'm imagining the Aarakoa settlements & dungeons from World of Warcraft (which is pretty much a straight rip off of Aarakocra). They live in trees with a lot of platforms & rope bridges. A lot of hopping between them, open air.

Thing is, while they'd get to fly everywhere, the campaign would be based around a lot of flying in the first place, so they wouldn't be able to use it to their advantage as much... I think it'd also be cool to have, like, a mercenary group that specializes in taking down flying enemies - like professional dragonslayers, chimera hunters, etc. They'd have a crapton of nets & stuff to threaten your PCs with.

Also, if you get 5 aarackocra to do a tribal dance for 3 rounds, you can summon an air elemental :smallcool: no one ever mentions that part

[CursedRhubarb]

A full party could work well, though casters and Str melee may have a slow start but they will pick up speed after their first ASI.

For strategies, they are still good on the ground, if a little slow, and scary in places they can fly. The Mobility feat works really well with them, letting them basically to owl familiar flyby attacks with being able to avoid AoOs when swooping back out of reach.

Nets, grappling hooks, spears with ropes, and casters will be their biggest worry because they can cause massive fall damage if the players aren't careful. One cast of Hypnotic Pattern could be a potential TPK as at max range it could hit the whole party and those who fail the save will plummet. (Range of 120' with 30' cube area so can reach up to 135' in the air.) At max height from someone on ground level a failed save would cause 13d6 falling damage, enough to easily flat out kill most classes at full hp when at 6th lvl due to just massive damage so they will want to be careful about using their flight.

A good way to let them know how double sided the flight gift is would be to net one of them early on or have a Roc dive bomb them as they fly, knocking them out of the sky, but have them fall into something safe so they don't die. Could be a hay stack or water. (Would still likely kill them RL but one advantage of fantasy is hay stacks and water are used to soften falls all the time without people going splat.)

After that they should play it a bit safer and not fly so high.