Situations in which Flying is Powerful:

[Steampunkette]

This thread is to document all the situations in which flight makes you significantly more powerful than other characters.

1. Pit Traps. You can avoid them by flying above the ground. Though if you step on it and fail your dex save you don't have time to spread your wings and fly to get enough lift to avoid falling. Unless the pit is over 700ft deep so you get a "Turn" while falling and can spend your movement to fly up, stopping the fall. Well. Assuming normal gravity.

2. Climbing situations. Need to climb a cliff or over a wall or up a tree or something? Fly right over it! maybe even let down a ladder to your party so they can climb up more easily.

3. Chasms. By flying across the chasm you avoid any chance of falling into it, and can even help your party cross it.

4. Encounters in open areas with enemies that don't have flight or ranged attacks. Mostly animals, really, a handful of humanoids (Even Cultists can throw a dagger or pick up a crossbow). Though this only helps if you're a ranged-focused or magic-focused character. If you've gotta get into melee then this situation isn't conducive to flying.

5. Scouting. By flying over enemy forces at night you can count campfires or troop placements so long as they're not under thick canopy in a forest, underground, inside buildings, or otherwise in any place that has something roof-like blocking line of sight.

... that's all the ones I can think of, really. And four of those fives could be replaced by "Having a decent skill mod". The only one that looks kind of strong is number 4, but it's not really that much stronger than being far away from the enemy or having cover or being on top of a high object. You could also list that one as "Flying in the dark with no light source above creatures with light sources to attack them without being seen" but is that really all that different from being outside of their light sources and attacking them with your own doused so they can't see you?

What other situations can you think of in which flight is particularly powerful in the hands of players?

[nickl_2000]

Any time you have a time sensitive movement through a city. The one flying can get in the air and outpace the rest of the group easily.

Any combat in a castle or with multiple floors with outside windows

Any combat on by a cliff or any other sheer drop

[Hrugner]

Areas with rough terrain or versus opponents that create rough terrain. Traps with any sort of ground based trigger like tripwires or pressure plates. Many types of crowd control can be avoided such as all wall spells. Water hazards of various sorts, rapids, sinking boat, waterfall and so on. Cloud spells. Flight makes it less likely your party can be caught in targeted AoE attacks. That's it for now, I'm sure there's more though.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Any situation where you need to catch, apprehend or melee-fight a flying enemy. If you can't fly, they're going to have an easy job escaping.

In general, any combat encounter that takes place across multiple z-levels will favour fliers. A little while ago, my players got in a fight in a treehouse village where giant & phase spiders used their spider-climbing, phase-shifting and web-walking to come at them from different angles. The fliers in the party were able to make good use of their abilities and it ended up being quite a fun encounter.

There might be times when you can gain some stealth advantage if you're flying too high to be spotted or if the people you're trying to sneak past aren't watching the skies.

There are a lot of variations on the 'cliff/chasm' scenario; for example if you need to explore an abandoned mineshaft or rescue someone trapped in a well. It'll probably come up in some form during any given campaign.

[LudicSavant]

4. Encounters in open areas with enemies that don't have flight or ranged attacks. Mostly animals, really, a handful of humanoids (Even Cultists can throw a dagger or pick up a crossbow). Though this only helps if you're a ranged-focused or magic-focused character. If you've gotta get into melee then this situation isn't conducive to flying.

This category can be expanded considerably. It's not just enemies who don't have flight or ranged attacks. Enemies with ranged attacks that are shorter than yours are also helpless. The fact that an enemy has ranged attacks doesn't matter if theirs go 120 feet and you're shooting them from an altitude of 300 feet.

They are also helpless even if they have flight, if their version of flight isn't fast enough to close the distance with you.

- Any terrain hazards or difficult terrain tends to favor fliers considerably.
- Major obstacles like wall spells or cover can often be circumvented with flight.
- Fliers can set up OAs and flanks more easily against non-fliers
- It's not just pit traps that are circumvented by flight. Many traps are triggered by walking on the ground, such as by stepping on pressure plates. Those who are not walking on the ground do not trigger this traps. It's honestly a little silly, since the ability to fly around a 5 foot corridor 5 feet off the ground is pretty unrealistic maneuverability, but you can do that all day in 5e rules.

[Naanomi]

If the whole party had flight capability: overland travel of any kind. The lava pits are a pretty sight from a thousand feet up, not a deadly challenge... and the mad rush to get the princess to the coronation is a much different endeavor when you don't need to charter a ship, avoid bandits... just carry her

Basically, though, the entire exploration pillar is greatly effected (and not infrequently completely trivialized) by resourceless flight; doubly so at speeds greatly exceeding normal overland speed

[mgshamster]

Environmental challenges that require navigation or surviving the wilds. Those who can fly can just avoid them altogether.

A journey through the jungle to the mystical hidden pyramid? Fly over all the jungle challenges and land right on top (or near) the pyramid.

A journey across the desert? Fly over it!

Need to travel through bandit laden forest trails? Flying bypasses it all!

Is that swamp filled with dangerous crocodiles and poisonous snakes where you need to take a raft? Just fly; skip it all.

Etc...

Now, all of those can be altered to include the challenge to fliers, but it does present a greater challenge to the DM to do so.

[Idkwhatmyscreen]

This thread is to document all the situations in which flight makes you significantly more powerful than other characters.

1. Pit Traps. You can avoid them by flying above the ground. Though if you step on it and fail your dex save you don't have time to spread your wings and fly to get enough lift to avoid falling. Unless the pit is over 700ft deep so you get a "Turn" while falling and can spend your movement to fly up, stopping the fall. Well. Assuming normal gravity.


If flying creatures are common in the world, then traps designed to stop flying creatures should also be common.

Hand a trip wire in the air over the pit trap, when the wire is stuck, you can blast the flyer with sticky goo and then they will fall down into the pit trap

If you plan for flying party members, they are really no better then anybody else

[sir_argo]

Interesting. This just came up in our session a week ago. We went into an underground complex and on our second encounter, the enemy mage cast Fly and escaped out a tunnel in the ceiling. I cast Fly using a 6th level slot, giving the entire party Fly and we took off after him. The dungeon was, evidently, designed vertically to make it a challenge to go through the rooms but because we all had flight, we literally ignored the design and just went straight through all the rooms.

But on a side note, I absolutely love Fly. I like to cast it on our fighter because he has Sentinel and Mage Slayer. I cast Fly on him on round 1 and he soars over the battlefield and lands right next to the enemy caster and proceeds to shut him down. He does get swarmed by the minions and typically ends up in really bad shape, but we take the caster out very fast.

[Zene]

Grapple, fly, and drop

[mephnick]

This category can be expanded considerably. It's not just enemies who don't have flight or ranged attacks. Enemies with ranged attacks that are shorter than yours are also helpless. The fact that an enemy has ranged attacks doesn't matter if theirs go 120 feet and you're shooting them from an altitude of 300 feet.

They are also helpless even if they have flight, if their version of flight isn't fast enough to close the distance with you.


Also, even if they can hit you, many monsters' ranged option is generally weaker than their melee abilities. It's all well and good to say "Hobgoblin Captain has ranged, doesn't count.", but they get 1 javelin at 1d6+2 instead of two greatsword swings at 2d6+2 plus martial advantage for an extra 3d6. Your flight ability literally just let you take 1d6+2 instead of a possible 7d6+6 full attack.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Basically, though, the entire exploration pillar is greatly effected (and not infrequently completely trivialized) by resourceless flight

On the flipside, if you know you're going to have fliers in the party, you can just redesign the exploration aspects of the game to present a better challenge. I think what Steampunkette is looking for (and correct me if I'm wrong) is smaller-scale things that can't be designed out beforehand, like aerial scouting. A flier is always going to be a better scout and it'd be unfair for the DM to constantly take specific countermeasures against that, so that's something you have to consider when you're trying to gauge how powerful flight is. Grand, strategic changes to the exploration pillar on the other hand, aren't something that should be factored into that calculation.

[LudicSavant]

Also, even if they can hit you, many monsters' ranged option is generally weaker than their melee abilities. It's all well and good to say "Hobgoblin Captain has ranged, doesn't count.", but they get 1 javelin at 1d6+2 instead of two greatsword swings at 2d6+2 plus martial advantage for an extra 3d6. Your flight ability literally just let you take 1d6+2 instead of a possible 7d6+6 full attack.

Yeah that too. So you can say that flight (in sufficiently open spaces) invalidates melee only enemies, ranged enemies with a shorter range than you, and ranged enemies whose ranged attack just isn't very good. Which can add up to an awful lot of enemies.

[Naanomi]

Yeah that too. So you can say that flight (in sufficiently open spaces) invalidates melee only enemies, ranged enemies with a shorter range than you, and ranged enemies whose ranged attack just isn't very good. Which can add up to an awful lot of enemies.
And flying enemies who are sufficiently slower and have less range than you as well

[Steampunkette]

So would you say that's less a flying specific issue and more a ranged specific issue, regardless of axis of distance?

There is, I suppose, also cover as a way to defend against ranged attacks, flying or not.

[LudicSavant]

There is, I suppose, also cover as a way to defend against ranged attacks, flying or not.

There are an awful lot of ranged attacks which ignore cover in 5e.

[Gastronomie]

Not really "flying" itself, but most of the methods in which you can fly also allow you to move much faster than other characters (flying speed is generally 50 ft/turn). That alone is a pretty important factor for opening up new strategies.

[MrStabby]

I don't buy the "flight isn't powerful if you design the world around it" philosophy. If it is powerful enough to distort the game and deny the DM the ability to make certain encounter types fun then it is probably an issue.

It's like saying fireball is not a strong spell because I can just use a lot of fire immune enemies in all may encounters. If something forces you to change the world and the themes for your campaign due to one player or ability overshadowing the others it is probably an issue.

As to the question in hand - indoors it isn't really an issue; it is often a nice mobility boost for big rooms and lets players take down weak targets. Outdoors it can make a lot of encounters just not worth doing.

To be honest fly isn't such a big deal. Between lower level limits, resource usage and the concentration requirement it is a really powerful effect but a caster pays the right price for it. At will flying is much more concerning - I have learned that games are much more fun without flying races (as both a player and a DM). At will flying from class abilities is usually high enough level that a campaign can cope but I never hand out at will flight magic items as a DM.

[Steampunkette]

Any time you have a time sensitive movement through a city. The one flying can get in the air and outpace the rest of the group easily.

Any combat in a castle or with multiple floors with outside windows

Any combat on by a cliff or any other sheer drop

Time Sensitive Movement is definitely a thing that particular character would be good at. But is that really -powerful- or just something the character is good at?

Combats in a castle with multiple floors and access to windows are probably pretty common (Or other two story buildings), but how powerful is the ability to hot-swap between a fight on the first floor and a fight on the second floor, really? Mostly it just saves you a "Use Object" action so that you're not wasting time climbing a ladder/rope/whatever between the two floors that other party members would have to use.

Why would it make them more powerful at the edge of a cliff? In that it would be really hard to knock them off the edge? Or that they could push other people off of it? 'Cause Grapple, move, drop works whether you're flying or not.


Areas with rough terrain or versus opponents that create rough terrain. Traps with any sort of ground based trigger like tripwires or pressure plates. Many types of crowd control can be avoided such as all wall spells. Water hazards of various sorts, rapids, sinking boat, waterfall and so on. Cloud spells. Flight makes it less likely your party can be caught in targeted AoE attacks. That's it for now, I'm sure there's more though.

It definitely helps to avoid rough terrain and other difficult to move through areas.

It helps with ground based triggers... if you're flying when you come across them. You're more than likely going to find those in dungeons where flying with wings isn't really much of an option, all things considered. Or out in the open world when you're moving with you group (Unless you spend 16 hours a day in endless flight every day). And those things are still going to affect your friends (And you, if the effect hits the whole room). But is that really any different than a character that stays back away from the Trapfinder or Scout party member?

Wall spells can be avoided so long as they're cast out in the open where there's no ceiling to stop you from going over it. Could still wind up doing damage to you to start with (depending on how high off the ground you are in the beginning). Though it would still be useful against your friends. Though is that really any different than a character that stays back away from the melee where the AoE is going to be targeted, anyhow?

See Above when it comes to Fireballs and Lightning Bolts. It's really not that different from being outside of Fireball Formation.


- Fliers can set up OAs and flanks more easily against non-fliers


I don't really see how being able to fly would allow you to set up an OA more easily than moving close enough to touch the enemy and waiting for them to move away. Flanking isn't a thing in 5e, either. Sorry I didn't quote your whole post, the rest is addressed in other parts of this post or the last one.


If the whole party had flight capability: overland travel of any kind. The lava pits are a pretty sight from a thousand feet up, not a deadly challenge... and the mad rush to get the princess to the coronation is a much different endeavor when you don't need to charter a ship, avoid bandits... just carry her

Basically, though, the entire exploration pillar is greatly effected (and not infrequently completely trivialized) by resourceless flight; doubly so at speeds greatly exceeding normal overland speed

That's a really big if, though, Naanomi. Telling the party "No, you can't all be Winged Tieflings" would hardly be out of line. Though the Exploration Pillar is definitely changed by having one or two fliers in the party, is that a -bad- thing or just different? Does changing how that pillar works in play make flight deeply powerful?

As for "Chartering a Ship" and "Avoiding Bandits" you still have to land, sometime. Unless there's a perfectly spaced out chain of deserted islands that whole party of Bird-Folks is gonna be drowning before dawn while the Tieflings get set upon while resting in the night... Also: Overland Travel rules assume you take breaks to rest. Which means landing for that whole party of winged wonders.

[Sigreid]

As a bit of a mitigating factor, all of the at will flying PC races have wings that are presumably what allow them to fly. For wings to be effective, they probably need to have a wingspan of at least twice the character's height. So a 5' tall bird man needs at least 10' width to be able to fly.

Also, the aerial scouting isn't really better than that of a wizard with a flying familiar.

I would be more bothered by a player who plays a bird man but ignores the whole claustrophobia trait.

[Sigreid]

...

As for "Chartering a Ship" and "Avoiding Bandits" you still have to land, sometime. Unless there's a perfectly spaced out chain of deserted islands that whole party of Bird-Folks is gonna be drowning before dawn while the Tieflings get set upon while resting in the night... Also: Overland Travel rules assume you take breaks to rest. Which means landing for that whole party of winged wonders.

If I recall, the bird man fluff does specifically state that they can rest/sleep without landing.

[LudicSavant]

I don't really see how being able to fly would allow you to set up an OA more easily than moving close enough to touch the enemy and waiting for them to move away.
It's because reach works differently than in 3.5e. Thus, you could set up in a position right above a creature's head, and then they'd provoke if they moved in any ground-based direction, because you threaten a sphere rather than a cube.


Flanking isn't a thing in 5e, either.

Flat out not true. Flanking is an optional rule in 5e, same as multiclassing, feats, disarming, etc. See page 251 of the DMG. It is quite clearly a thing.

[Naanomi]

That's a really big if, though, Naanomi. Telling the party "No, you can't all be Winged Tieflings" would hardly be out of line. Though the Exploration Pillar is definitely changed by having one or two fliers in the party, is that a -bad- thing or just different? Does changing how that pillar works in play make flight deeply powerful?

As for "Chartering a Ship" and "Avoiding Bandits" you still have to land, sometime. Unless there's a perfectly spaced out chain of deserted islands that whole party of Bird-Folks is gonna be drowning before dawn while the Tieflings get set upon while resting in the night... Also: Overland Travel rules assume you take breaks to rest. Which means landing for that whole party of winged wonders.
If flying were seen as powerful enough... and especially as more flying races appear to fill more niches... I could easily see a fully flying party. Right now you between bird-men, tieflings, and feral tieflings you have access to bonuses in every stat except Strength, so you can fill the vast majority of party roles easily.

Anyways, 'chartering a ship' and 'avoiding bandits' isn't a 100% solution, but it grossly mitigates threat. When your only time to run into bandits is when you choose to land... presumably after scouting out a secure location off the beaten path (maybe only accessible by air to begin with)... instead of walking down the trail, the chances of running into bandits is grossly reduced. Likewise, the ship journey makes you vulnerable and visible at sea... flying along the coastline and camping at inaccessible beaches along with way can save a lot of hassle for everyone involved.

Likewise with the combat maneuverability, it doesn't remove all the challenge just mitigates a lot of it... that cliff fight is no problem when you can just take off from the cliffside and fly around when everyone else is clinging to it for dear life. Interesting terrain becomes 'interesting barriers for my enemies that I fly around so they don't get cover' instead of tactical considerations for both sides to consider. Again, not always; and not entirely... but enough; and enough to trump basically any other racial benefit in a comparative sense

The things it manages to completely remove is the classic 'exploration' stuff... find the hidden temple in the desert, scout out the warlord's camp, climb the treacherous mountain, etc: all trivial tasks from a thousand feet up (that eagle totem aarakocra can see two miles down right?).

It is worse, of course, if you don't 'plan around it'. I generally don't write my adventures from a perspective of specifically considering the party's abilities (unless, perhaps, they are facing a foe who knows their abilities and is working to counter them). Likewise, there are many tables out there ultimately running pre-written adventures; many of which barely consider the possibility of flight from a spell in solving problems, let alone all-day flight from level 1.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

So would you say that's less a flying specific issue and more a ranged specific issue, regardless of axis of distance?

Fast (or just Dashing) ground based monsters can run ground based archers down, though. If they can't fly, they can't run down flying archers.

Flight essentially makes the ranged issue worse/much easier to exploit.

[LudicSavant]

Fast (or just Dashing) ground based monsters can run ground based archers down, though. If they can't fly, they can't run down flying archers.

Flight essentially makes the ranged issue worse/much easier to exploit.

To expand on this, ground-based monsters can also close in on archers using a variety of tactics other than speed. They can use stealth. They can debuff the archer's movement or lay down ground-based hazards like Spike Growth. They can block the archer's path of escape with a wall spell.

There are a great many tactics that you can use against ground based ranged attackers that do not apply to flyers.

[Steampunkette]

There have definitely been some interesting concepts brought up in this thread...

I still don't feel like flying (Even with a whole group of flying characters) negates encounters...

Because there are encounter charts for flying encounters. Just toss in a couple of those for random encounters, here and there, and you should be golden.

[Sir cryosin]

I see everybody mentioning difficult Terrain, environment affects, and lack of encounters. When this is no different then if they were on the ground. There can de high winds, tornadoes, hurricane, blizzard, thunder storm, hail, heavy rain, clouds, fog. Terrain may you have flying mountains or other terrain in the sky. Encounters there are a good amount of creatures with ability to fly. And a few of them can be used as mounts.


Edited: I for got higher you go lack of air, and colder temperatures.

[Hrugner]

I see everybody mentioning difficult Terrain, environment affects, and lack of encounters. When this is no different then if they were on the ground. There can de high winds, tornadoes, hurricane, blizzard, thunder storm, hail, heavy rain, clouds, fog. Terrain may you have flying mountains or other terrain in the sky. Encounters there are a good amount of creatures with ability to fly. And a few of them can be used as mounts.


Edited: I for got higher you go lack of air, and colder temperatures.

Those would seem out of place in a thread about "Situations in which Flying is Powerful:". There are certainly tons of places where flying is pretty worthless and it's lucky you can walk as well.

[N810]

4. Encounters in open areas with enemies that don't have flight or ranged attacks. Mostly animals, really, a handful of humanoids (Even Cultists can throw a dagger or pick up a crossbow). Though this only helps if you're a ranged-focused or magic-focused character. If you've gotta get into melee then this situation isn't conducive to flying.

Nope just need a bag of holding or similar item an a bunch of heavy rocks.
fly high above enemy and empty content of bag, and let gravity take care of the rest.
(what is it, like 1d6 of damage per 10' of free-fall)

[LordCdrMilitant]

Nope just need a bag of holding or similar item an a bunch of heavy rocks.
fly high above enemy and empty content of bag, and let gravity take care of the rest.
(what is it, like 1d6 of damage per 10' of free-fall)

Yeah. Flying at 30000' and carpeting an area in stones does a lot of damage. Even small rocks become lethal. Hitting the target is pretty hard, though.

I don't see a problem with a party that flies. Sure, they can bypass the random bandits and monsters than might infest the trails, but if said bandits/monsters are part of the story, they'll be landing to fight them anyway, and otherwise there's no harm in bypassing them.

[Vae]

From a recent experience I can say its a BAD idea to fly when fighting a group of zombie stirges (or Stombies as we called them).

[ShikomeKidoMi]

There have definitely been some interesting concepts brought up in this thread... I still don't feel like flying (Even with a whole group of flying characters) negates encounters...
Because there are encounter charts for flying encounters. Just toss in a couple of those for random encounters, here and there, and you should be golden.

No one said it negated all encounters, we said it negated a large percentage of them and limited the DM's options.

That flying encounter table is a relatively small selection of monsters.

[MrStabby]

No one said it negated all encounters, we said it negated a large percentage of them and limited the DM's options.

That flying encounter table is a relatively small selection of monsters.

In agreement:

If you find yourself eliminating encounters that have a significant melee component or short ranges you have a much narrower range of encounters to chose from and you have the risk of them being a bit boring and samey.

If your encounters use things like time limits or a need to rescue people to force PCs onto the ground it is fine the first time. After that it just feels contrived.

Making the air full of storms - again, some occasional bad weather is fine but if storms occur on more than one in 10 adventuring days it again feels a little artificial. Of course you can make abnormal weather a feature of the campaign but then that really is power if the ability is warping not just encounters but the whole campaign world.

Terrain is one tool DMs have to make encounters interesting. Blocking off routes in and routes of retreat, providing cover, traps and concealment. If you have flying enemies and have fights in the sky you miss all of these tools to make your fights interesting. Fights in a featureless sky can be fun... but again if you have more than a couple of these in a campaign they lose their shine.

Flying might be ok in a short campaign where you can have a mix of flyers being dominant, indoor/cramped space encounters, mainly flying enemies and/or primarily ranged enemies and bad weather without these getting tired and predictable. If you are wanting to adventure over more than just a few levels then I would suggest not using flying races.