Rules of Fly Spell

[davison357]

Hi guys

First post to the Forum and relatively new to D&D so I'm going to ask for your patience if I seem a bit daft or ill-informed.

My questions relates to the Fly Spell in D&D 5e in the PHB.
1. Can a character who has the benefit of the Fly Spell hover in the air without moving laterally (horizontally)? Like can a character cast Fly and then just stay stationary, hovering 20 feet (or something) off the ground out of melee range without moving, until the end of the spell duration or concentration is broken, etc?
2. How high can that character fly? It says 60 feet flying movement so presumably the character can fly 60 feet directly upwards per turn? But then how high can they go? Can this continue indefinitely until the character reaches the top of the tallest tower in the castle, or the peak of a high mountain?
3. How is range calculated if trying to target a flying character with a ranged attack. Say the flying creature is 60 feet up and 60 feet away across, that creates a Hypotenuse of 84.85 (let's round up to 85 feet). So the target is 85 feet away. Is that how to calculate it?

I just can't find an answer for this anywhere so even if I can be pointed in the right direction I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

[Palanan]

You should ask the mods to move this post to the 5E subforum. You can just report your post (small triangle with exclamation point in the lower left) and politely request that this be moved to the proper subforum.

[Ninja_Prawn]

My questions relates to the Fly Spell in D&D 5e in the PHB.
1. Can a character who has the benefit of the Fly Spell hover in the air without moving laterally (horizontally)? Like can a character cast Fly and then just stay stationary, hovering 20 feet (or something) off the ground out of melee range without moving, until the end of the spell duration or concentration is broken, etc?
2. How high can that character fly? It says 60 feet flying movement so presumably the character can fly 60 feet directly upwards per turn? But then how high can they go? Can this continue indefinitely until the character reaches the top of the tallest tower in the castle, or the peak of a high mountain?
3. How is range calculated if trying to target a flying character with a ranged attack. Say the flying creature is 60 feet up and 60 feet away across, that creates a Hypotenuse of 84.85 (let's round up to 85 feet). So the target is 85 feet away. Is that how to calculate it?

Yeah, this need to move to the 5e subforum. The answers are:

1. No, as far as I can see. Unless something says you can hover, you can't (PHB 191).
2. No limit. Why would there be a limit? I guess your DM would have to make a ruling about when you would start suffocating or freezing.
3. Up to the DM really. The default is probably to ignore diagonals - therefore the range you can target is a cube. When I'm DMing over Roll20 or whatever, I use the built-in ruler to do the trigonometry in the x-y plane, but ignore the z axis (making your ranger look like a cylinder). I'm sure there are people that do the full calculation (cutting it down to a sphere), but it seems like a lot of effort.