Storms and Flight

[Wolfswift]

So we're gearing up to start our first 5e game and our friend who's DMing wants to do a campaign where we're shipwrecked on an lost ancient island, but he's wanting us to start the campaign making Athletics checks to see how much we can avoid drowning. We won't die, but he said we'll lose more items the more checks we fail once we wash up on shore...

My workaround was I'm playing a Fairy Druid and can fly, I wanted to use my flight to avoid the water longer to compensate for not being great at Strength (Athletics) checks. We rolled 3d6 6 times for stats(not the usual 4d6 drop the lowest), we did scrap entirely **** sets, but we had to keep it once it was even decent, so most everyone has like one stat 15-17, and most others are like 7-12...

We're starting at level 1 and I'm planning to go Circle Wildfire, so focusing on Wisdom first as a mainly blaster caster. I can't muster the strength and I can't Wildshape and he doesn't seem to want me to just fly and avoid all the swim checks, but there aren't hardly rules for making checks to fly in inclement weather, I did find that a flying creature must land at the end of their movement or fall, but I argued I should be able to land on wreckage. He said I'd need to make acrobatics checks and I'm not sure that's accurate... I am better at Dex, but not by much...

TL;DR: In 5e, how can a level 1 fairy druid fly or otherwise avoid as many Strength (Athletics) checks as possible to escape a shipwreck in a storm and make it to our destination island island when the DM doesn't want flight to be the easy answer with no checks necessary. Since there don't seem to be any rules for fly checks.

[JackPhoenix]

By finding a less adversial GM. That's pretty much it, if those are the rules the GM has set up.

[Eldariel]

There isn't anything on level 1. Level 1 = you're pretty much scrubs. If you happen to know Gust specifically, you might have a tool that could be used to push yourself forward (can't avoid checks but can make checks in spite of wind making flying exceedingly difficult). In 3e, high speed wind caused increasingly difficult checks to not get checked or blown away and it was especially harsh for flyers: I can see where the DM is coming from. Swimming might frankly be safer in spite of your terrible Athletics. Anyways...just run with it. You're a Druid, you don't need any items. There's no class that's as excellent on a deserted island with nothing at all, especially since you can also fly when the storm passes. So you'll already be golden: no need to worry about this "cutscene".

[Thrudd]

There are no solid rules for this situation, it is whatever the DM says it is. It's strange that the DM told you what was going to happen before it started, imo, probably a bad idea on his part. I imagine his idea is that he plans for most of you to be without much gear when you wash up and need to find stuff as you play, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. It makes sense that you'd need to make some sort of check to land on randomly sized, drifting pieces of wreckage, if there even is any wreckage in the exact spot you'd need to make progress toward shore. It isn't like just landing on the ground or a static object. It also makes sense that the storm, if it is ongoing, would make your flight harder- maybe requiring a physical ability check of some kind to fly at all, depending on the severity.
I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you, the DM clearly has something in mind and I doubt he's doing this just to screw you over. Well, he is doing it to screw you over, in a sense, but it's probably because he wants you all to start out like the beginning of a survival MMO or something similar, maybe, and you aren't going to get around it. 5e isn't really the game to try to rules-lawyer a DM out of doing what they want - they have enormous leeway, even according to the book, to make anything as hard as they want and to require checks for anything they want.

[Mastikator]

Sounds like your DM wants to run a hardcore gritty survival game and doesn't like how choosing a flying race will just bypass most of his problems. He should've advertised it as such, but nobody is perfect.

If that's not the type of game you're willing to play then don't.

A side note is that needing to make acrobatics checks to land on wreckage during a storm is RAW and legit, the rules specifically say "it's up to the DM to decide when you make ability checks". Sometimes that really sucks if the GM is unfair, I know.

Also I agree with don't worry about losing starting items. If he is- as I suspect, running a gritty game then expect to have only enough power to survive. It's not going to be a power fantasy but a survival fantasy.

[Wolfswift]

Not nessesarily against losing some stuff, but I do have some spiffy fluff heirloom items that mostly just look nice and likely can't be makeshifted to be as cool.

Looking at spells, I'm hoping he'll let me use Animal Friends to befriend a dolphin or something and hitch a ride to help.

[Idkwhatmyscreen]

If the main point of the athletics checks is to get players to lose some gear, then maybe you can trade some gear to fly to island without making athletics, like if there are 4 checks that everyone has to make, (and each check costs 1/4 of your gear) then maybe you can dump 1/2 your gear to bypass the challenge. It might be an option that the DM is down for. But otherwise, you may just have to make the athletics checks and hope you roll hot, it mostly depends on what the DC is, if it's like 5 - 10, you should be alright, but if it's like 15-20 you're just going to have the start the adventure without any gear

[Thrudd]

Not nessesarily against losing some stuff, but I do have some spiffy fluff heirloom items that mostly just look nice and likely can't be makeshifted to be as cool.

Looking at spells, I'm hoping he'll let me use Animal Friends to befriend a dolphin or something and hitch a ride to help.

Who knows. He was nice enough to let you know that equipment is likely to be lost right away, so putting thought into giving personality to your starting equipment was probably not the best move. But who knows, maybe you'll get lucky. Or your character can lament the loss of their treasured heirlooms for a while, and maybe it'll wash ashore later on. I wouldn't worry about it too much, just play it in the moment and see what happens.

[Mastikator]

IMO tell the DM you prefer not to lose heirlooms because they have roleplay value

[Wolfswift]

Yeah, we just rolled background stuff in a booked called Central Casting: Heroes of Legend and I rolled up a chest of items, a bound wooden staff, a tiara, an unusual hawk and a sealed magical book. He's making the book plot relevant, so either it won't be lost or if it is I suspect it'll turn up again, but I made the staff a cool druidic focus for a wildfire Druid, it's a scorched branch, bound with live vines. It mostly has sentimental value now. The tiara, I made a nifty druidic circlet of interwoven wood and vines with a flower at it's center, just adds character.

I mean, I know I'm likely to lose more than anyone else unless I get creative, which is what I'm trying to do. I am more likely to succeed acrobatics checks by a little bit, (+2 Dex vs +0 STR) so it's probably the better option, I do hope he might allow me to befriend a dolphin or something on the trip and maybe call on it to aid me...

[False God]

What your DM is likely referencing is the final line of the Wilderness Survival rules in the DMG (pg 110). "A flying creature in a strong wind must land at the end of its turn or fall." The wording is kinda weird since a creature in flight in a strong wind wouldn't just drop like a rock. It would be blown along with the wind.

But to my knowledge the game never becomes more granular with say, a light breeze or a typhoon (save for spell effects).

Forcing you to land (due to the wind) each turn and make an acrobatics check is not, IMO, an unfair compromise. You're getting to use a stat you are presumably better in, but you're not getting out of the same situation everyone else is in.

HOWEVER, I would greatly advise your DM to just not do this. Don't ever "play through the intro". Everyone wakes up on a lost island and has to scour the island for their missing stuff? Great start. Playing through people potentially drowning and losing all their stuff to the bottomless depths? REALLY crummy way to start. I would advise you, the player, to reconsider playing this game. "Hey I'm gonna take away your stuff." as the very first thing a DM has you do is usually a strong red flag.

BUT, if you still want to play, I suggest playing a race that can breath water and swim naturally.

[Wolfswift]

Yeah, I understand and am okay with the acrobatics to land on debris, I'm just wondering if there are hard rules for fly checks beyond the landing at the end of flight in a storm. We're used to Pathfinder where fly is its own Dex based skill and different degrees of wind cause different DC checks with it to keep flying.

I'm also looking for other, potentially better creative methods to get through this skill challenge. He does want us to have barely any starting gear and have it be a survival game, we may lose most/all our items, this is understood, I'm okay with losing all my items, but I'd prefer to keep at least a quarter or so of them for almost purely sentimental RP attachment reasons.

[False God]

Yeah, I understand and am okay with the acrobatics to land on debris, I'm just wondering if there are hard rules for fly checks beyond the landing at the end of flight in a storm. We're used to Pathfinder where fly is its own Dex based skill and different degrees of wind cause different DC checks with it to keep flying.

As far as I'm aware, not really. 5E doesn't do granular like 3.5 or Pathfinder.

[GeoffWatson]

Flying would probably be worse than swimming if the storm is that bad.
Maybe let you use Acrobatics instead of Athletics?

[Thrudd]

Yeah, I understand and am okay with the acrobatics to land on debris, I'm just wondering if there are hard rules for fly checks beyond the landing at the end of flight in a storm. We're used to Pathfinder where fly is its own Dex based skill and different degrees of wind cause different DC checks with it to keep flying.

I'm also looking for other, potentially better creative methods to get through this skill challenge. He does want us to have barely any starting gear and have it be a survival game, we may lose most/all our items, this is understood, I'm okay with losing all my items, but I'd prefer to keep at least a quarter or so of them for almost purely sentimental RP attachment reasons.

There being no hard rules, and not having the situation described precisely yet, there's not much you can do to plan beforehand. I mean, anything that gives you advantage on ability checks would be probably the best thing you can do. You can possibly cast Guidance for one of the checks, if you chose it for one of your cantrips. Want to change your race to water genasi or another water breather? That would have been my first choice, if I was choosing my race in order to defeat this specific scenario (perhaps the DM restricted those, for that reason?). Maybe you could avoid the checks if you were underwater the whole time. Otherwise, I don't see a lot of ways to reliably do anything, given your level. You obviously aren't stopping the ship from wrecking in the first place. I don't think you can get away with creating a makeshift raft out of shipwreck while you're in the water in the middle of the storm - just considering that there would be enough debris in the right places for you to land on in between flight rounds, while still approaching the shore, is the DM making a pretty big concession to you. Maybe you can come up with a plausible reason to that the character would have specifically and specially tethered these items to their body somehow, to make it harder to lose them.

Given this is purely the set up to the adventure, I really don't think it's very productive to design your whole character around it or worry too much about it. Losing things the character is sentimental about is just another thing to roleplay. Since the character doesn't know they are going to be shipwrecked, it's actually kind of wrong to even be planning a "workaround" for the scenario. I mean, you, personally, aren't sentimental about this characters' starting equipment. You haven't even played them yet. Why be so concerned? He told you what to expect, presumably, so you wouldn't worry about it or get upset, not so you'd try to "beat the system" and avoid what is going to happen.

[Wolfswift]

Not trying to beat the system as it were, just trying to see if I can give my character an edge when they're not optimized for this precise situation. I don't plan to take a swimming race when to my knowledge there won't be a lot of water stuff after the intro, I don't plan to go a strength build and take athletics again for just this one scenario. I just wanted to know if there were more rules for flying somewhere and maybe if people knew some creative uses for level one druid spells that might be nifty. As of yet, I've said I plan to make the acrobatics checks and flit from flotsam to flotsam and maybe if that fails hope he let me use Animal Friends and Beast Bond to call on a dolphin friend I might've managed to make on the way or something. I'm not trying to entirely avoid the situation, just don't want to lose everything.