ways to improve a natural flight

[King of Nowhere]

one of my players is an antopomorphic bat, and he has fly (poor). as i pointed out the limitations of that, he wanted to find ways to improve manueverability.
i know the "hover" feat that lets you hover. and i'm sure there must be a feat to improve manueverability to the next step, but i don't know it. it seems likely there would also be magic items doing that.

what can i suggest to him?

[Maat Mons]

The magic items I know of that improve maneuverability are Pectorals of Maneuverability (Draconomicon, p83).

Edit: I found a feat for it too. Improved Flight (Races of the Wild, p151).

[Tzardok]

There's the feat Improved Maneuverability in the Draconomicon. It raises your maneuvaribility by one step and can be taken more than once (but can't raise it beyond good). Sadly it has strict prerequisites: Your flying movement must be at least 150 ft. and you need to already have either Hover or Wingover as a feat.

Alternatively, there's the Pectoral of Maneuvaribility, a magic item from the same book which takes the vest slot and raises maneuvaribility by one step. (Market price 12,000 gp) There's also a greater variant that raises it by two steps and costs 90,000 gp. They are based, respectively, on the Wings of Air and Greater Wings of Air spells which do exactly the same.

[Particle_Man]

There is also a spell called Aerial Alarcity but it is personal only and at that point you might as well just polymorph man-bat into something that flies well.

[liquidformat]

There's the feat Improved Maneuverability in the Draconomicon. It raises your maneuvaribility by one step and can be taken more than once (but can't raise it beyond good). Sadly it has strict prerequisites: Your flying movement must be at least 150 ft. and you need to already have either Hover or Wingover as a feat.

Alternatively, there's the Pectoral of Maneuvaribility, a magic item from the same book which takes the vest slot and raises maneuvaribility by one step. (Market price 12,000 gp) There's also a greater variant that raises it by two steps and costs 90,000 gp. They are based, respectively, on the Wings of Air and Greater Wings of Air spells which do exactly the same.

There is also Improved Flight feat from Complete Adventurer, Races of the Wild , and elsewhere which just requires the ability to fly. it improves flight by one category add in greater Pectoral of Maneuverability and ba, perfect fly speed.
Also I am a fan of Air Heritage from Planar Handbook which gives you +30 flight speed which would allow you to utilize Improved Maneuverability feat...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Casting levitate, whether through an item or via an actual spell, will allow the character to hover in midair when not actively moving, as well as move up and down at will. That should allow him to at least somewhat make up for having Poor maneuverability.

[ShurikVch]

Aerial Avenger PrC (Dragon #319) gets manueverability improvements at 3rd and 7th levels
(Unlike many other PrC, it's available not from the 6th, but from the 3rd character level - the requirements are: fly speed, Reflex save +3, Dodge, Mobility, and Tumble 5)

[Fouredged Sword]

Casting levitate, whether through an item or via an actual spell, will allow the character to hover in midair when not actively moving, as well as move up and down at will. That should allow him to at least somewhat make up for having Poor maneuverability.

One can also access any other form of flight with better maneuverability. If you somehow have access to a 5ft perfect fly speed it would allow you to hover and change directions mid air while still using your natural flight to cross distances. You are still stuck with the restrictions on flying directly up, but you can at least reverse directions and hover.

Overland flight, air walk, and the bog standard fly spell all do this for various durations.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

One can also access any other form of flight with better maneuverability. If you somehow have access to a 5ft perfect fly speed it would allow you to hover and change directions mid air while still using your natural flight to cross distances. You are still stuck with the restrictions on flying directly up, but you can at least reverse directions and hover.

Overland flight, air walk, and the bog standard fly spell all do this for various durations.Those are much higher level, though, and thus are more expensive.

How about spider climb? Only works with solid surfaces, but it would be a decent stopgap measure in various situations, and it's available via the dance of the spider stance, if you have swordsage levels, are willing to use feats, or can buy a relatively cheap item for it in the form of shadow hand gloves. (Stances are referred to as maneuvers in a few places, so the maneuver items should give you access to them.) You can find spider climb as a level 1 spell for a few classes, so get an at-will item of that for relatively cheap.

Levitate is also a level 1 spell for the Telflammar shadowlord, as well.

[edit] Apparently "Telflammar" is in Google Chrome's internal spell-check dictionary; who knew?

[Remuko]

[edit] Apparently "Telflammar" is in Google Chrome's internal spell-check dictionary; who knew?

It isn't for me. Perhaps you added it to dictionary and forgot?

[King of Nowhere]

thanks. i linked this thread to my player