On the question of flight

This is a topic you’ll see around the ‘net and D&D forums that I’ve never weighed in on. Mostly I considered it a non-issue because, let’s face it, I haven’t allowed flying PCs in my game since the days of “every splatbook, all the time,” under 3rd Edition rules. I generally felt as other DMs do: that player character flight is a thing best reserved for later levels, comparable to when the party gets spells and/or magic items that grant the same ability; and that it’s a pain in the ass to deal with, in any case, because of the players’ ability to circumvent virtually any encounter.

Some of the more common critiques against allowing flight as a natural ability include:

• Players can avoid encounters entirely and/or trivialize overland travel.
• Players can “rain death” down on the enemy.
• The DM has to design special encounters to address a player’s flight ability.
• Flight, as a natural ability, circumvents the “normal” power curve with respect to magical abilities.
• Completely alter the design and existence of castles (and other comparable medieval military tech).

I think that covers it. There’s probably one or two other concerns that can’t be neatly rolled into these, but this addresses the main issues and will suffice for our discussion today.

I’m going to address the finer points of each of these and (hopefully) demonstrate why they’re not really a big deal. More than that, though, I’m going to discuss natural flight (as opposed to magical flight, acquired by spells or magical items) in terms of its real world properties and how we might adopt these principles to a fantasy game. As always, where fantasy is concerned, I believe a solid understanding of the real is the best approach to figuring how we should approach the game and this is probably the best topic to tackle (so much so, I’m not sure why I haven’t done it before).

First, on the subject of natural flight . . .

It has some limitations . . .

Though I cannot find anything like the square-cube law regarding flight, there is some corollary: the heavier a body, the more power is required to get it aloft and to keep it in flight. This is why birds tend to be significantly lighter than similarly sized creatures. The wild turkey or the royal albatross, for example, have wingspans around four feet wide, yet they only weigh a few pounds, about one-quarter what a human child of the same height would weigh.

Further, a flying creature cannot simply “take off” from a standing position. They’re not built like helicopters or drones. Yes, I know, there are insects and beetles and small birds that are more than capable of doing exactly that . . . but those are tiny creatures, barely weighing a few ounces. The albatross or the turkey are able to sustain short bouts of “jumping” or fluttering, similar to a sprint, not unlike sprinting, which serves to get them aloft; but the process takes time such that a winged humanoid would not be able to simply “escape” to the skies in the space of a single round. Two or three, perhaps, maybe, but we have to dial in those details before we can say for certain.

And then there’s the energy requirement. If a creature glides rather than flies, it can get away with a vegetarian, low-calorie diet; but if its flight requires the flapping of wings or if they’re capable of executing complicated maneuvers mid-flight, they need something more substantial. Birds and bats tend toward diets that are high in calories and fat (mainly nuts and fruits, but some omnivorous species exist as well). In general, birds eat substantially more “per capita” than mammals; that is to say, the ratio of body mass to food mass is closer to a 1:1 relationship among birds than among mammals.

Next, we might consider the effectiveness of a given creature’s flight. Bats are capable of mid-flight maneuvers while most birds are not (hummingbirds being the exception), but bats aren’t quite as fast as birds. This comes down to how the wings are structured on the body and how the body is built to support flight. To say how this impacts any potential flying player character would require more details about the exact race we’re working with. Generally, though, we can assume that less maneuverable flyers will require constant momentum to maintain and control their flight; more maneuverable flyers will require less of this but they won’t be able to fly as fast, overall. This would extend to a creature’s ability to carry objects while flying, to wear restrictive clothing (or armor) and even to fight with a weapon. Like, I’m not saying an aarakocra can’t fight with a bow while flying, but I’m struggling to see how it could do so effectively. There would have to be some very practical limits in place to explain it.

Of course, in a fantasy world, we might postulate explanations that allow us to ignore or alter these assumptions. If we have giant creatures, we can use the same justification to allow for giant bird-like humanoids (“giant,” in this case, meaning a bird that’s about the size of a human). This applies to insect-like creatures; normally, an insect’s size is limited because its exoskeleton can only be so big before it collapses under its own weight. Even so ~ and I think this is where we get the majority of our objections about effective game play with flying characters ~ even if we create proper explanations, we need to understand exactly how these things function so that we can craft appropriate rules for their use.

With those base assumptions in mind, I think we can see how the usual DM concerns aren’t really that concerning . . .

Players Avoid Encounters

I think this, more than anything, is a misunderstanding of how the game should be played. It’s a matter of base paradigms. I’m not talking about the railroad vs sandbox debate, or how to address the Quantum ogre in the room. No, I’m referring to the players’ willingness to risk their characters’ lives.

Experience is only awarded when the players risk something. No risk, no reward. You’re not obligated to advance the characters or give out treasure because the players chose to sit in the tavern and drink beer all night long. Likewise, if they manage to “go around” a pack of wolves while travelling to the next town, so be it. Lost experience. Maybe lost treasure. They want to go up a level, they have to risk something for it.

In this context, it doesn’t matter if the players have the ability to fly or not; if all they ever do is fly and never actively engage their opposition, then they never earn anything for their (lack of) effort.

Attacking While Flying

Let’s consider this from a more detailed perspective.

The combat round is 12 seconds long. Your game might use a different measurement, which is fine, so long as we’re on the same page that it’s not a full 60 seconds like it was under AD&D. Shorter rounds allow for more precision during a fight, which gives players the advantage by dispelling uncertainty about what’s going on at the table. Your typical player character will have 5 Action Points (again, the definition of an action varies with rule sets; the point is that there’s a limit), with a single AP granting one hex of movement. Running requires working up to speed (though some rules allow for an all-out run during the first round); but while running, actions are somewhat limited. A character cannot cast a spell; make a ranged attack; or a melee attack (and if they can, there’s probably some penalties applied to the attack roll). Typically, in other words, a character has to stop forward movement in order to take a non-movement action.

Why should this be any different when flying? (corollary: what happens when a flying creature stops flying?)

Of course, there should be some rule that covers a diving attack. Birds of prey are the perfect example for this sort of thing; an eagle diving at a small dog or child can really mess up their day.

Then again . . . eagles have talons. Natural weapons, which don’t require bracing or leverage or combat training to use effectively. Sure, our flying humanoid PCs could have talons as well, but they won’t deal that much damage. And making a diving attack means closing that distance with the enemy, giving them a chance to strike back for a round or two.

Return to the question of movement: how much effort does it take to get off the ground? I know most versions of the game don’t require a running start to get up to speed, but my rules do. That’s because I’ve done some combat training and I know how much effort it takes to move when you’re slinging 30-40 lbs of gear in your pack. It’s why I let characters move faster in the first round if they drop their backpack first. So how much time should it take to get off the ground? Without testing this in play (obviously), I should think 2 AP are sufficient to “leap” into the air and begin flapping your wings. You’re still “grounded” for practical purposes, being only a few inches to a foot above the ground. The next round, you gain some altitude ~ a little ~ and you’re able to climb 5′ for each AP spent on movement. From there, the rules for aerial movement kick in (see below), allowing for faster or slower movement, depending on what (exactly) you’re trying to do as you twist through the air.

So a diving attack is a thing. Probably worth a +2 to-hit and a +1 to damage (high ground and coming in at a pretty fast speed). Of course, you’re limited on the weapons you can use. Natural weapons like a bite, claws or talons; a dagger or similarly small weapon; and for anything longer than two feet in length, it’d have to be a piercing weapon.

Interesting thing about making a diving attack: if we look at the peregrine falcon, we find recorded dive speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour.

Go ahead. Take a moment to let that sink in.

What sort of visual acuity and mental processing capacity does a creature need in order to move at that speed and make a successful strike without plastering itself on the ground? If I allowed flying PCs in my game, and if they could make diving attacks like that, I’d be more concerned about how quickly they can react to their environment. We’re talking a massive bonus to initiative or maybe it’s impossible to sneak up on them. This reason alone is enough to make me deny flying PCs (or at least, find a way to limit their diving attacks).

Apart from that particular maneuver, a flying creature really doesn’t have many options for attacking from the air. Hurled weapons are a possibility, though I’d argue they suffer a penalty to hit (just a -2) due to the need to brace and balance the body, which is the power behind the throw. The character could avoid this by allowing himself to drop from the sky but . . . then there’s the whole “falling at 9.8 m/s^2” thing to deal with, so there’d be another penalty to-hit. Clearly, bows and slings are out of the question, as are melee weapons; crossbows are possible but we’d have to figure out the weight thing.

And no, you can’t pick up a bag of rocks and get any appreciable damage by dropping them on the enemies’ heads. Again, it has to do with the weight involved; falling rocks are treated the same as any other falling object and although I don’t have exact rules on that just yet, I can’t imagine a handful of rocks would deal more than a point of damage (though that is enough to harass an enemy spellcaster, so that remains a viable option).

And we haven’t forgotten the player spellcaster, either! No, you can’t cast your spells while flying. Magical flight, yeah, that works because it’s magic. Natural flight requires a physical effort to maintain; just like running or climbing. A flying creature that stops flying to cast a spell . . . isn’t flying anymore. (that said, I could see a group of arrakocra climbing high into the air, only to suddenly stop and plummet to the ground, twisting and turning along the way, their wings shielding them from the buffeting wind. they would pull up at the last second, just as a burst of magical energy expands around them . . . but that only works for a very specific set of spells, for a very specific type of spellcaster, and under very specific circumstances. so, yeah, cool and all that, but hardly game breaking.)

Encounter Requirements

This is really no different than if you have a centaur in the party, or an ogre, or a mermaid or anything else. My favorite is when the entire party is composed of Underdark races but the PCs insist on travelling to the surface world. Seriously? No, the local tavern isn’t serving “your kind,” and no, I don’t see this kind of “racism” as inappropriate for my game. You brought this on yourself ~ you know what you did . . .

The DM is always going to take the party’s abilities into consideration when planning encounters. That’s part of her job. The better DMs populate their world and let the players . . . play in it. If they’re smart and they manage their time and resources properly, they’ll always have the upper hand. Good for them. They probably won’t because human nature is what it is, but they have the opportunity.

That said, yes, the DM should consider how a flying PC affects their world; but this diligence should be no more special than anything else in the DM’s world. (see below.)

Flight is too Powerful

Is it?

Because from what I’m seeing here . . .

Let’s consider one more detail, something that I mention above but that I haven’t assigned numbers to: weight limits.

Clearly, the flying character cannot wear restrictive armor or clothing. We can rule out heavy armor for pretty much this reason. But what of medium or light? I would probably deny medium armor for the same reason; it requires the use of a gambeson (or padded jacket) which would limit mobility. A winged PC could use wear light armor just fine, so long as it doesn’t exceed his weight limit.

This is where I would want to stretch reality a bit. I’m okay arguing that a winged PC race should be lighter than the same sized human, but not by one-quarter. Maybe one-half or two-thirds. Enough to drop their base hit die (by mass) to a d6. From there, we can say that the weight limit for a flying creature is either two-thirds (or equal to) its mass; or it’s based on the creature’s Strength. I like the latter approach but I’m reluctant to allow even an exceptionally strong creature to carry much more than its own mass while in flight. I’d probably go with its base carry value, which is the lightest load a walking creature can carry before incurring penalties.

Forces a Setting Change

This is my favorite: the argument that flying “trivialize[s] many traditional historical-type castle designs.”

Yeah, see, the thing is . . . you already have these in your world. Things that trivialize castles. I haven’t done a full write-up for demographics in a fantasy world ~ mainly because it would be different for every DM’s world because her base assumptions are always going to be different from my own ~ and maybe I should do that post anyway, if only to discuss the methodology behind it all ~ but even if we accept that wizards are relatively rare (less than 0.2% of the population), we have to concede that even a single wizard (of sufficient power level) could completely destroy the concept of effective castle design. And that’s only looking at wizards! We also have clerics and druids (or warlocks, psions or other spellcasters, if they exist in your world), and flying monsters like dragons and griffons.

If you’re only concerned about how flying affects things like castle design when the players ask for the ability, then you’ve literally failed as a DM.

Sample Rules for Flying Characters

I’ve already discussed some of the details above, but there’s one that I haven’t really explained: maneuverability. I find this is one of the most crucial and it’s often overlooked in these discussions because ~ for whatever god-awful reason ~ the game’s rules stopped being about details and precision, and leaned way too much into the “give the DM the flexibility to make rulings, not rules, at the table.” Completely asinine, I know, but here we are.

AD&D’s flying rules used a category system to classify a creature’s ability to maneuver through the air. I cannot find the chart for these rules ~ probably buried in an obscure reference book ~ but the DMG listed the details under “Unusual Combat Conditions.” (also as a sidebar, under “Tournament Rules,” which I find somewhat baffling.) For our purposes, I’ve condensed these rules into this chart:

Maneuver Class	Hover?	Minimum Forward Speed	Turning Radius	Maximum Attacks / Round
A	Y	0 feet	360°	Any
B	Y	0 feet	180°	1 / round
C	N	half base move	90°	1 / 2 rounds
D	N	half base move	60°	1 / 3 rounds
E	N	half base move	30°	1 / 6 rounds

Now, AD&D used a one-minute combat round which makes no sense under even the meanest of circumstances. So let’s consider how these rules might play out in the context of a more finely tuned combat system. A round is 12 seconds; we’re using Action Points to represent movement and actions; most PCs have about 5 AP; it costs 1 AP to move 5′; you have to get a “running start” to increase your speed in the following round; and you have limited maneuverability (and limited actions) while running.

Hover: This is a pretty simple concept ~ can the creature maintain its current altitude without forward momentum? The answer combines with the second column; if “yes,” then no forward momentum is necessary; if “no,” then it is. Top of my head, I’d say perfect mobility (Class A flight) equates to 0 AP spent to maintain altitude. Class B allows for hovering but the creature must spend 2 AP to do so. Class C through E does not allow for hovering; forward momentum to maintain altitude is expressed as minimum feet traveled; 10′, 20′ and 30′, respectively.

Turning Radius: This correlates to the ability to maintain altitude. A creature that can hover is able to turn and face any direction without spending additional movement; so Class A and B flight are unaffected by this figure (they effectively have a turn radius of 360 degrees). Since the other categories require forward momentum, they’re limited in how they can turn during their round. Class C can manage a 90 degree turn every 5 feet traveled; Class D can turn 60 degrees every 5 feet; and Class E can turn 30 degrees in the same distance.

. . . and I think that’s it. Except, perhaps, “running” while flying; i.e. moving faster than normal. Yeah, we need a Flight Speed column. Since ground movement is based on Action Points and most creatures are assumed to move at 5′ per AP ~ with allowances for running; most creatures can go into a x3 run, covering 15′ per AP, during the first round (assuming they’re unencumbered) and improving by one each round thereafter, to a maximum of x6 ~ and when I say “most,” I mean there are some creatures that can move faster or slower than that, based on their physiology ~ I’m comfortable starting from a similar assumption for base flight speed. Thus, Class E flight allows for a maximum of x3 movement; 1 AP = 10′ mid-air movement. Class D flight speed max is x4, and so on. Same rules apply as for running, so most creatures can start their flight at x3 and increase from there.

Conclusion

Allowing natural flight for player characters is not a game breaking decision. At best, it gives them options to play around with. At worst, they might discover some trick or combination they can exploit. I’d be very surprised ~ if the reader were to implement something similar to these rules ~ if players could gain such an advantage that they’d become unstoppable.

Apply some critical thinking to your game and you open up possibilities.