Aerial warfare.

[Empyreal Dragon]

Currently working on a setting, and while I was working out how military activity is handled, I was having a thought about the advent of air power IRL.

And it got me thinking, how prevalent would airpower be? What would it look like? Would it be organized closer to a modern airforce or would it operate more like medieval cavalry units, but flying? Curious what airpower looks like for DND nations

[RexDart]

My first thought is that most flying wizards and sorcerers would be the equivalent of heavy bombers. They can unleash tons of damage and other effects from the air, but aren't "natural" fliers, and aren't the fastest or most maneuverable in the general category of "things that can fly."

So to me it makes sense that you'd want a lot of "fighters" in an army - air units that are really good at flying, and can take down the enemy magic users, or at least harass them and make them less effective.

Of course, that also means the army with the magic users will want its own "fighter" units to screen the magic users and engage with the enemy fliers.

[liquidformat]

It would really depend on a few variables and could be anywhere from no aerial units to a big focus of a nation's power.

First and foremost is the power level of the country and the army. Also keep in mind the lore of the country, industrious countries in a more advanced setting might find flying vehicles pretty straight forward. Whereas a mountainous country might have a herd of hippogriffs, flock of dire eagles, or even raptorans as populous.

E6 would expect vast majority of soldiers around ecl 1-3
No airforce at all isn't uncommon
Flying vehicles (see A&EG): dirigibles, blimps, and hot air balloons mostly focused on bombing might play some role but probably not that common. On the plus side could be manned and operated by low level soldiers
Mounted flying cavalry you could potentially have hippogriffs, dire eagles, dire bats, ect.; though they would probably only have a small elite force of them. Might see some griffons, giant eagles, and owls though they are CR 4+ so probably mounts for generals rather than having a fully unit of them
Magic flight: at these levels magical flight isn't very viable and not as viable, Fly for example only works for 6 min.
Flying races: While there are a few races that can fly the main go to like raptoran and Dragon born will be in a similar situation to magic flight


E12 would expect vast majority of soldiers between ecl 1-8
airforce is more common at this power level though still might not be common
Flying vehicles: at this power level their prices are more reasonable might even see some eberron style elemental flying ships here though those would be quite expensive
Mounted flying cavalry could be reasonably common assuming having herds of such animals are common in said country
Magic flight: at these levels magical flight is more viable but still not has viable as mounted or flying vehicles due to duration. Expect bomber or ranged tactics
Flying races: Starting to come more into their own with more LA +2 options now viable. similar to mounted flying cavalry depends on the nation. Could go any style really


E20 anything below ECL 10 is probably worthless cannon fodder, average ecl 10-15
airforce is mandatory to maintain power structure
Flying vehicles: flying vehicles of all kind should be reasonably common
Mounted flying cavalry: would expect all countries to have this, a magical flight corp, or flying race corp if not all.
Magic flight: very reasonable most everyone at this level has magical flight
Flying races: flying races very easily accessible at these levels

[Mechalich]

Part of the problem here is that D&D cheats on flight physics, and it cheats hard.

Specifically it allows creatures to fly that are far too heavy, with ludicrously insufficient wingspans, and with none of the evolutionary adaptations that tend to make real world fliers fragile compared to ground dwelling animals. This means in D&D that flight is a straight-forward advantage to anything that has it, rather than a complex series of trade-offs as it is in the real world.

The result is that in D&D you don't have specialized flying units like real world militaries do, you have forces with all the ground-based capabilities they normally possess that can also fly. And this isn't a high-level issue, it comes online from Level 1, in the form of flight capable playable races (3.5 makes this a bit hard, PF is quite open about it), and low-level flying monsters capable of serving as the foundation of a flying army. The CR 2 Hippogriff being a prominent example.

This utterly warps the strategic environment, not only because low-level fliers are capable of devastating attacks (especially against fixed targets, you don't build catapults in D&D, you load up a griffon and have it drop rocks from thousands of feet up), but because the system, as it stands, lacks dedicated anti-aircraft options to overcome the disparity.

Even in E6, it's difficult to justify having non-flying cavalry at all.

[RandomPeasant]

I don't know that it's so much that it removes those things as that they are outside the scope of a lot of what D&D typically covers. It would be fairly easy to imagine a situation where the dietary requirements of Hippogriffs and Manticores (let alone Dragons) are so high as to make it logistically infeasible for most nations to field significant forces of flying cavalry. But "how much food does this thing need to eat every day to maintain the muscle mass required to carry an adult human and 50 lbs of iron" is not something D&D gives a lot of consideration to. create food and water tells you that it can feed a horse, but as far as I'm aware there's not much that explains how much a Displacer Beast or Wyvern needs to eat.

[Firest Kathon]

The result is that in D&D you don't have specialized flying units like real world militaries do, you have forces with all the ground-based capabilities they normally possess that can also fly. And this isn't a high-level issue, it comes online from Level 1, in the form of flight capable playable races (3.5 makes this a bit hard, PF is quite open about it), and low-level flying monsters capable of serving as the foundation of a flying army. The CR 2 Hippogriff being a prominent example.

This utterly warps the strategic environment, not only because low-level fliers are capable of devastating attacks (especially against fixed targets, you don't build catapults in D&D, you load up a griffon and have it drop rocks from thousands of feet up), but because the system, as it stands, lacks dedicated anti-aircraft options to overcome the disparity.

I disagree on the viability of low-level fliers, at least at the scale you describe here. Let's take your example of a griffon with rocks. With strength 16, it can carry 690 lb.1. Stones are surpisingly heavy3, so that would be a rock of about 1x1x0.5 m, which would be a small object. According to the falling rules (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/Gamemastering/environment/environmental-rules/#Falling_Objects), that would do 2d6 points of damage. Also, it could be dropped from a maximum height of 100 feet if they still want to aim:


Such attacks generally have a range increment of 20 feet.

The maximum range for a thrown weapon is five range increments.

That puts them well in the range of archers, low-level wizards, and only in the second range increment of crossbows (which could be given to more or less anybody). Considering the cost of griffons ("Undamaged eggs sell for up to 3,500 gp apiece"), that seems to me like it would not be used efficiently at low levels, at least not for "devastating attacks".

1) Rules for carrying capacity of flying creatures are a bit unclear, I'm taking here the best case of a heavy load (x3 for a large creature).
2) https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/weapons/#Ranged_Attack_Range_Increments
3) https://www.baustoffe-liefern.de/Rechner/Steine.html#umrechner (in German, sorry, but searching for "rock weight" only gave me results for Dwayne Johnsons weight. And dropping him into the enemy base is an entirely different strategy :smallwink:).

[Beni-Kujaku]

It's 3d6+1d6 per 10ft. Even if you only fly 100ft, it's still 13d6, enough to kill any soldier. Also, you don't have to aim, you're letting go of a one meter wide rock above a wall. Rocks do not get sidetracked as they fall. It will not break a castle wall (a 3ft thick wall has 540 HP), but it's not supposed to. You can just go above the wall and throw rocks at random, destroying houses and barracks inside. On a battlefield, a rolling stone can kill dozens of soldiers by its sheer mass.

Still, I'm not convinced a hippogriff is really that much better than a regular well-adjusted catapult, maybe fired by a sorcerer with True Strike if you want to hit a precise building. A hippogriff will still get targeted by archers, or mages, or other flying cavalry (maybe simply flying mages, or flying zombies), and it's much cheaper to buy a catapult than to buy and rear a hippogriff. They would probably be of more use for information or to launch higher-level characters (spies, or frenzied berserkers, depending on how subtle you want the war to be) with Feather Fall items inside the enemy walls.

[Firest Kathon]

It's 3d6+1d6 per 10ft. Even if you only fly 100ft, it's still 13d6, enough to kill any soldier.

Okay, so this is another thing that Pathfinder changed, which I did honestly not expect :smallredface:. I went off the Pathfinder rules, which is my default search...

[QUOTE=Falling Objects]In addition, if an object falls less than 30 feet, it deals half the listed damage. If an object falls more than 150 feet, it deals double the listed damage.


Also, you don't have to aim, you're letting go of a one meter wide rock above a wall. Rocks do not get sidetracked as they fall.

Wind would like to have word with you...


It will not break a castle wall (a 3ft thick wall has 540 HP), but it's not supposed to. You can just go above the wall and throw rocks at random, destroying houses and barracks inside. On a battlefield, a rolling stone can kill dozens of soldiers by its sheer mass.

So for destroying buildings and such I agree, but against anything with and Int higher than 0, I expect them to look up and step aside as soon as the first rock has dropped from the sky. Note that D&D 3.5, unlike Pathfinder, has no rules (that I could find) for actually hitting anyone with a falling object. While no rules exist on how fast objects fall, characters fall 150ft in the first round (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm#movingInThreeDimensions), which reasonably applies also to objects. So if dropped from higher than 150ft., those objects will be easy to avoid.


Still, I'm not convinced a hippogriff is really that much better than a regular well-adjusted catapult, maybe fired by a sorcerer with True Strike if you want to hit a precise building. A hippogriff will still get targeted by archers, or mages, or other flying cavalry (maybe simply flying mages, or flying zombies), and it's much cheaper to buy a catapult than to buy and rear a hippogriff. They would probably be of more use for information or to launch higher-level characters (spies, or frenzied berserkers, depending on how subtle you want the war to be) with Feather Fall items inside the enemy walls.

I did put my emphasis on lower-level, which I understood as maybe an E6 situation. For higher level, I refer to my comment about Rock weight :smallwink:.

[liquidformat]

I stand by E6 while you might have a herd of fliers they aren't going to have a lot of them they are much more expensive than your normal soldiers or a normal cavalry so at most you might have one small group of them for each nation and also I believe it would depend on where you are. I can't imagine most nations would have access to such a herd and those that do wouldn't be sharing and selling them.
In E6 having flying mounts would be a huge strategic resource that would be zealously protected, not something anyone would have access to.

I disagree on the viability of low-level fliers, at least at the scale you describe here. Let's take your example of a griffon with rocks. With strength 16, it can carry 690 lb.

I don't think this is possible for just a hippogriff or griffon as neither has hands nor the mental capacity to perform this task. You would most likely need a rider saddled up with a special contraption to drop stones, so you are looking at more like a 200lb rock max. Granted at higher levels you could have a bag of many stones and just rain down stones on the enemy but E6 I don't think so.


[QUOTE=Beni-Kujaku;25389652]
So for destroying buildings and such I agree, but against anything with and Int higher than 0, I expect them to look up and step aside as soon as the first rock has dropped from the sky. Note that D&D 3.5, unlike Pathfinder, has no rules (that I could find) for actually hitting anyone with a falling object. While no rules exist on how fast objects fall, characters fall 150ft in the first round (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm#movingInThreeDimensions), which reasonably applies also to objects. So if dropped from higher than 150ft., those objects will be easy to avoid.

yes I agree with you if their is only one such creature dropping a single stone then yeah not to hard to dodge however in a military situation you can't just start running off randomly, if it is in the middle of a battle you are going to have other things distracting you like arrows, and magic attacks, and also any sensible army wouldn't just be dropping one stone but a whole group of stones together in the same area. Most likely you would need to use the volley rules from HoB which suck for archers but wouldn't be bad for the hippogriff/dire eagle/griffon unit. This would only get worse with a bag of many stones.

[Pezzo]

A psycho wizard could teleport into the enemy capital, shrink some houses (I think this would kill any peasant inside), pick them up, go back to the battlefield and toss them down on the enemy army, hopefully killing them with the blood of their loved ones.
This doesn't come from me, I read it somewhere, I'm not insane.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I'm not convinced that aerial power is as big a deal in the D&D context as is often assumed.

Consider the options:
1. Griffons, giant owls, eagles or whatever dropping rocks.
Imo, this is more on the level of WWI observer plane pilots dropping a hand grenade out of the cockpit than a game changing strategy that would justify the cost of the troops and demand countermeasures from the enemies.
If they are dropping rocks from low enough to have any expectation of accuracy, they are vulnerable to archery and archers are a lot cheaper than flying cavalry. Also, feather fall can mitigate the effectiveness of the rocks and carrying capacity is going to be a serious limitation on how many rocks they can carry.

2. Griffons, giant owls, eagles, or whatever as shock cavalry that can charge troops standing on walls or towers or behind earthworks or wherever. They can also charge enemy wizards and ground-based defenders cannot interpose themselves between the wizard and the flying cavalry.
This is a meaningful advantage but it is still vulnerable to archers and can be meaningfully countered by much cheaper ordinary cavalry in a field engagement, elite infantry or just lots and lots of much much cheaper chaff infantry in the fortification scenario. Or in the wizard scenario for that matter. Making the griffons/owls etc pay for killing your wizard is often going to be as good as protecting the wizard--and the wizard isn't really helpless anyway so it's not like he automatically dies with no escape just because two griffon knights charged him.

3. Manticores or owl/griffon mounted archers.
These provide a meaningful advantage and have the potential to be game changing. They are much more expensive than a unit of horse archers and fill similar functions except that they can bypass a lot of obstacles, walls etc, can't be hedged out by infantry units or kept out of the way by light cavalry. They can also be used as shock cavalry in a pinch of the enemy has war machines (cannon, mortars, trebuchets, etc) or units of lightly defended archers without any cavalry or infantry guardians nearby.

They are one reason that you might want the shock cavalry griffon/hippogriffs--to chase them away from anything you really don't want them shooting at, but mostly they are going to emphasize the importance of bringing archers to the battlefield and keeping them protected and supported. A large unit of infantry archers should cost a lot less than the flying mounted archers and probably wins the arrow duel.

4. Flying wizards. Complete non-issue. Flying wizards do the same thing that non-flying wizards do, they're just flashier. And you're not getting the non-flying wizards in melee either--at least not without paying a high cost--unless their commander really screws up. And archers work just as well on flying wizards as ground bound ones--perhaps better because flying wizards are easier to spot (no using tree cover and hidden gullies to stay out of line of sight--invisibility works but it works and has the same counters on the ground) and are unlikely to have cover from nearby infantry.

5. Dragons, and big high end monsters. If you've got a dragon on your side, that's a big deal but it's as much because it's a dragon as because it can fly. A limnorm will mess up an army too even without flight. If you're assuming a peer or near peer scenario where it's not "we win because we have 200 men and a dragon and they just have 200 men" then the dragon could potentially be countered by wizards, archers--provided they have support like GMW arrows to get past the DR--griffon riders, or heroes with potions of fly and Dragonbane swords.

How you counter the dragon is definitely a question but you can't expect it to have an answer if the other side doesn't have access to some powerful abilities. That's like showing up to a 2000 point wargame tournament with a 500 point army and wondering why you lose. It doesn't matter if the 1500 point difference is a dragon or a limnorm or 3 companies of heavy cavalry.

[Elder_Basilisk]

So how would air power be organized? Depends on the setting and power level.

It is likely that the options would be something like: Simplest level: a flying mount for the local lord--or the local lord is a flying monster like a dragon

Mid level: a specialized unit, probably manticores or hippogriff/griffon/etc archers, but maybe shock cavalry if they serve a more defensive purpose.
High level: multiple specialist units--maybe a mix of mounted archers and shock cav.

In terms of their specific organization, they could be integrated into the main army (like the army air force of WW 2, could exist independently as a knightly order or something similar serving as a detachment under the overall commander, or could be a collection of individuals rather than a coherent unit (all the barons take their hippogriffs and work together since the king summoned them). It seems unlikely that they would be an independent military organization (like the USAF) because their primary use is as a part of combined arms on a battlefield and you usually want close air support or air cav to be integrated into the general chain of command. (Hence the modern military controversy over the A-10; USAF doesn't like it because they don't think it's their job; army does like it because they like close air support but USAF doesn't want army to have it because fixed wing aircraft are their bailiwick and they don't want to share or have anyone ask why not reintegrate them into the army). There probably isn't a strategic bombing command equivalent where you would need doctrine and tactics and chain of command for independent operations unless you escalate to huge flights of dragons. And if you do that, they pack ground holding etc capabilities that strategic bombing command never did so there's not much point to the rest of the army.

[liquidformat]

The effectiveness of feather fall is highly dependent on the size of the rocks being dropped. There are a few scenarios I can think; first hippogriff/griffon with a rider dropping stones. In this case on the low end they could be expected to only be able to drop one stone at a time and it would be around ~200lb once you have a fully geared flying mount. The best case for the flying unit is getting a whole group together and drop all the rocks at once in the same area. The up side is they could could be outside of archer range creating an area of damage that might get a reflex save depending on the size of the area and these stone would be right on the edge of what feather fall might work on. Remember feather fall only works on medium or smaller objects, also this would force the wizard to burn spells that could be used for other things.

Second in a higher end version of this is the mounted hippogriff/griffon with a rider with a bag of many stones. In this case they can dump multiple stones per round each around 50lb, so they could be countered by feather fall but the wizard will run out of spells before the mounted troop runs out of stones as they are more or less endless.

Third if you have a troop of giant eagles/owls, they are smart enough to do bombing mission on their own, can also pickup and drop rocks on their own, and can drop larger rocks. Again they would want to fly in flocks dropping their large stone from on high similar to the first scenario. In this case the wizard couldn't use feather fall at all and even if the only real thing they are doing is causing chaos in the enemy troops that is still enough to win a war.

The last scenario I can think of is the first one however this time the rider is instead carrying a big full of alchemist fire vials dropping them all around. While a wizard can use feather fall to stop some of the vials they again will run out of spells before the flier runs out of vials, even worse the goal of such a tactic is to catch as much as possible on fire. This type of tactic would be similar to napalming a city and would be a horrifying tactic for an unscrupulous enemy.

[Brackenlord]

A psycho wizard could teleport into the enemy capital, shrink some houses (I think this would kill any peasant inside), pick them up, go back to the battlefield and toss them down on the enemy army, hopefully killing them with the blood of their loved ones.
This doesn't come from me, I read it somewhere, I'm not insane.

Assuming it is allowed to Shrink Item parts of a grounded object up to the maximum 2 cu. feet/level, uprooting the house (very cool imagery).

It would be up in air what happened to any residents at the time, the object would at least get a saving throw with their bonus.


SAVING THROW

(object): The spell can be cast on objects, which receive saving throws only if they are magical or if they are attended (held, worn, grasped, or the like) [...]

After the failed saving throw, I see three possible rulings depending on DM sanity.


The residents of the shrinking house are expelled harmlessly to the nearest unnocupied space.
They're crushed with a chance of resisting with a strength check of sorts, I remember rules somewhere for such a thing when growing in size.
They're shrunken with the house, perfect to emulate the extradimensional dollhouse with cursed tiny people inside trope. Purely rule of cool, the spell shoudn't affect creatures normally.