What counts as (poor) flight?

[CyberThread]

I really honestly , do not understand the flight rules in the game,


What does (poor) flight mean, and what can it do?

[Fouredged Sword]

Go here.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm

- Now Poor is a maneuverability rating for flight. It controls how well a creature can alter directions during a movement using flight, as well as the minimum speed they must maintain to remain airborn.

[Rhynn]

It's a maneuverability class.

Poor maneuverability means you can't move forward less than half your speed each turn, you can't hover, move backwards, or reverse, you can only turn 45º per 5' moved forward (so coming about requires moving 20' in a semicircle), you can't turn in place, you can't turn more than more than 45º in a space, you can't climb at an angle steeper than 45º, climbing is at half speed... and so on. It's all there in the SRD/DMG.

[Asgardian]

I really honestly , do not understand the flight rules in the game,


What does (poor) flight mean, and what can it do?

Here's something easier to visualize from the DandD wiki

Perfect: The creature can perform almost any aerial maneuver it wishes. It moves through the air as well as a human moves over smooth ground.
Good: The creature is very agile in the air (like a housefly or a hummingbird), but cannot change direction as readily as those with perfect maneuverability.
Average: The creature can fly as adroitly as a small bird.
Poor: The creature flies as well as a very large bird.
Clumsy: The creature can barely maneuver at all.

[JusticeZero]

A "poor" flier flies a lot like an airplane. A perfect flier can bip around like a hummingbird. The ratings are how maneuverable it is.

[Duke of Urrel]

Air is a very thin medium to move around in. On the one hand, that offers you very low friction compared to thicker media, such as water. On the other hand, low friction means it's hard to change direction. Think of the difference between a semi truck and a cargo ship: The truck has brakes, but the ship doesn't. So it's a lot harder to stop or steer a ship than it is to stop or steer a truck, as the captain of the Titanic no doubt became aware, albeit too late.

With air travel, the "no brakes" problem is even worse. It's so bad, in fact, that if you're a heavier-than-air creature, simply having a lot of mass means you can't stop in midair and must make a very wide arc in order to turn around. This is why big dragons, being very massive, unavoidably have poor or even clumsy maneuverability. A heavier-than-air creature simply can't have anything close to perfect maneuverability in the air unless it's very small and light, like an insect or a hummingbird. (An air elemental, which has little mass and correspondingly little inertia, is another matter.)