An alternate way to think about altitude, and to explain it to your players, could be to break it down into imaginary storeys of a building. Let’s say that each ‘storey’ is about 15 feet high. If a creature is flying, but on the same level as another creature, they can attack each other using melee. If they are on different storeys, they cannot use melee attacks against one another (perhaps a Reach weapon could reach enemies one storey above or below). I think this would really help simplify things, and make it easier to explain to your players “How high is the Harpy? She’s currently flying at about the height of a third storey window” This approach would also be very helpful if creatures were flying around an actual building as well.
Hey guy, the actual reason for maximum fall damage is, that you cant accelerate beyond a certain speed. So whether you fall from 10km or 20km does not matter, cause you wont hit the ground harder. And thats something that people sometimes survive, even without a tree.
Sennar So few people realise this! A personally homebrew "size dice" small=d4 medium=d6 large=d8 and so on to get a slight feeling of damage dispersion based on weight.
It's dependent on how much resistance you offer the air vs how fast gravity is accelerating you; terminal velocity is different depending for somebody diving straight down vs somebody falling spread-eagle.
Fishotic While that is obviously true, it serves no reason to implement rules that takes this into account. There comes a point where you must balance playability over realism.
With every video, I feel I am becoming a better GM. Thank you so much! Never have I contemplated how npc's would react to seeing players flying. So much to consider now. :)
Yes, it is often interesting to have NPC spectators, and sadly it is extremely rare that GMs remember to have spectators. I usually say there are two types of spectators: Those who by coincidence was there to observe. They can be the source of a simplified rumour about what the players did. Those who deliberately was there to observe. My favourites here are journalist, they may even go so far to interview the players! ... And they often make an exaggerated version of the story, as such attracts the most audience! There are many brilliant ways to have spectators be the source for a lot interesting role play!
I like "Pills of Featherfall". Cheap enough for every passenger and crew member onboard an airship to carry them in a pocket, .... but they also make you violently sick for about a week, so you don't want to use them, except in an emergency.
Stefan B And then the group has a paladin or a druid/cleric with lesser restoration. Still totally love the concept! I'll definitely use it in my game, I'll just have to accept that the paladin is going to cure the sickness in the snap of a finger.
SirReffo If you want to game-lawyer your party: "You touch a creature and can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned." Give them 5 levels of exhaustion, and they will need almost a week to completely sleep it off. Or a Greater Restoration spell, which considerabely ups the costs. Oh, and you should avoid exhausting yourself BEFORE falling, or the pill might just kill you, by pushing your exhaustion level to 6. Now, after the rule niceties are done, all you need is a sufficiently gory description of what the pill actually DOES to your players body. I like the idea of blowing their body up like a balloon.
Stefan B I have to say, using exhaustion points didn't come to mind, brilliant idea. I would probably go a little less cartoony depending on the campaign. Something along the lines of "Your body hardens like a spring, tough yet malleable you hit the ground, absorbing the impact without bodily harm. Or so it would seem." It would reveal that exiting this state takes a matter of days equal to that of 5 exhaustion points, as you slowly regain the use of your body as the exhaustion points fade. This pill would simply give damage immunity for one round, so it would have a little more utility. But still have horrible consequences.
Stefan B why are you trying to make the party's abilities useless? Part of the perk of being a divine caster is healing others, including from status effects. Punishing the players like this, for not even making mistakes, just turns the game into player vs dm.
vara vashtul I would have to disagree. They given a tool (that they can choose to use) that is ment to have repercussions. It's a "get out of jail free" card. Your not taking away anything, your adding tension and risk. It can stil be healed with enough greater healing. We should trust our players to handle and understand high risk with possible repercussions.
I always thought of airships as technology coming from the desert to facilitate travelling across the _"sandworm-ridden dunes, riding the wind"._ It makes sense since you have lots of open fields, a good temperature differential making it easier to fill a balloon to max capacity, difficult terrain, very few flying threats and whenever you need sand bags for whatever reason you got sand all around (plus the "sandbox below to slightly alleviate your landing" can help you pass that the guy who fumbled manage to survive just breaking his legs, even better you just tie them to the mast with rope and a harness). Since there are very few natural flying threats and airships are used for trading, to pose a proper threat you get pirates either ambushing on the ground or with fast motorized airships of themselves turning the combat into a fancy sea ship.
Areal combat is fun. I had a blast doing it on my non-dmg 5e wizard. We were fighting some Lovecraftian thing who teleported people up 300 ft into the air every turn. Good thing I had feather fall prepared 😀 It was all I did the entire combat. Eventuellt I had to blow a 4th level spell slot on a feather fall haha. Totally worth it.
Guy’s story focused/character focused outlook continues to be refreshing. Our party has had access to flight for a long time. Our GM (who would benefit from watching the channel) would never think to intercede in a death, so it’s up to us to think prevention. Featherfall is always prepared (3.5); Flight straps crafted for hippogriff, dragon & dire-falcon mounts, etc. Our DM has taken to NPC’s enchanting areas with “No Fly Zones”. Traveling via phantom steeds and dire-falcon, our party entered such a zone at 1000 ft and proceeded to fall like stones until featherfall was cast, sparing everyone 20d6 damage and a system shock roll. Well worth a 1st level spell slot to prevent multiple needless deaths before even arriving! I very much like the point about giving options for players who are unable to participate/defend from a threat, if they are clever enough to pick up on it.
Nice easy rule of thumb to remember for diagonal distances: For every 5ft horizontally away together with 5ft vertically away, the direct diagonal is 7ft.. So, for every 10ft horizonal distance combined with 10ft vertical distance, the direct diagonal is 14ft... Example: Player character takes off & uses their 50ft flight speed to move diagonally towards and up / over the enemy - who are on the ground 30ft away... [The PC wants to fire down at the enemy].. After 3 x 14 = 42ft they are directly above the enemy, 30ft up in the air - and well within range of both ranged & thrown weapons - in either direction! XD
The natural flyers have an advantage due to practice. Therefore anyone using magic or mechanical means to fly is likely to lose in an air to air battle. But, since there ARE flying threats, it is perfectly logical for a DnD castle to have anti-air defenses.
Land combat involving flying heroes has never bothered me. Everything in D&D seems to have its niche. Some characters are literally useless in many combat scenarios. A flying character just gets to use melee against flying foes, while everyone else needs range. They are hardly safe from typical land foes either, since flight rarely lets you go faster than 1.5x land speed and most humanoids carry ranged weapons; otherwise, consider including more ranged and fliers. As for dungeoneering, it behooves DMs to remember that unless the player is levitating, they can't fly indoors without risk of bodily harm. Those sad that pitfalls just don't work anymore and the risk of falling is gone: feather fall is the one spell aside from Detect Magic I've never seen a caster fail to take.
It's simple math. I'm certain there's an app for that. :P "Oh, you're ten feet away and ten feet above?" *types in app* "14 feet and some change. Call it fifteen since we use five foot squares." Takes less than 15 seconds.
Featherfall pill isn't a bad idea, but what about just like a magic parachute pack. One use, costs X amount of money. NO CONTROL OVER LANDING, YOU LAND RIGHT BELOW WHERE YOU FALL. So falling becomes a expense thing. If you were in a air ship, they'd hand out free packs that need to be returned at the end of the trip or you will be charged for them. Maybe better (more expensive) packs allow for surviving higher falls. These packs are designed to automatically trigger past a certain fall speed so you never have to worry about triggering them in time. Maybe fall save packs can hold charges where each charge costs as much as a pack and allows one use. (so basically the same as one use but putting multiple in one) Fall safe packs could have settings which allow them to trigger earlier than fatal if players want to avoid some fall damage (but maybe not perfect protection even on most sensitive setting) or even to disable them if they wish so a charge isn't used when falling fast if you got another means to deal with it. Any time a player decides to risk life and limb in sky high fall risk endeavor, I warn them against it if they don't have a pack or alternative, if they do it anyway, they must face the consequences. And of course if I am specifically running a sky high adventure, I can just build in the packs in one way or another.
Where's the treasure you ask? Just down that 10'10 corridor? Totally not trying to stop you flying guys. Ow yea just a heads up the iron doors work on a pressure pads...exactly the weight of a PC.
@@NieroshaiTheSable I had a necromancer run gnome skellies down the hall to try and set off traps. The pressure plates didn't activate on the 27 lb skellies... they needed 65 lbs or more. The players were not amused... too bad.
In a Sci-Fi campaign (SpaceMaster) a Gunslinger-PC fell out of a plane at 400 m altitude. Gave em three rolls to save him, but each one failed miserably. So the guy was going to die. I was just starting to describe this guys final fall, when the according player asked: "Wait.. What's the ACTUAL gravity on Titan (where the characters were)?" Wikipedia said 1,3 m/s², as opposed to 9,8 m/s² on earth, resulting in fall damage equivalent to a 10 - 20 m fall on earth. I think, in these cases it's OK to actually do the physics, because I've never seen this kind of tension, when putting some numbers into the calculator. Anyway, the guy survived, barely and everyone was cheering for physics... (Please don't correct me on the maths, I don't want to retcon this whole thing ;) )
All I will say is considering atmospherics and then probably Terminal Velocity as a function of the whole... You're probably not far off. {running the estimates in my head}... In any case, Guy does explicitly suggest "make the call and go with it"... SO we can just do that. In this situation, though, the tension and dramatic build that resulted is exactly why (sometimes) we should go through the efforts and do the math... Even just "ball-parking" the physics to a game mechanic equivalent is enough to send most Players into near fits. ;o)
I recently had the pleasure of running a brand new Savage Worlds game for a brand new group of players that had never tried it. I decided to run an Indiana Jones type of adventure set in the 80's and start off by having the characters ride their parachuted dirt bikes out of a cargo plane flying over South America. I asked the players to roll a piloting skill to land their dirt bikes on a narrow mountain pass that snaked along a steep cliffside that dropped sharply into the ocean. One of the three players failed his roll and was heading over the cliff. The second player grabbed a tree branch, tied his parachute around it and made a kind of net. He managed to swing the net over the cliffside and catch his falling comrade but then failed his strength check and both of them began sliding over the edge of the cliff. The woman in the group made her Agility check and jumped over to their location and grabbed the two men with a strength check of her own. I described her boots sliding across the dirt, dislodging small rocks and stirring up dust before just catching her boot on the edge of the dropoff. It may sound like they were having a really bad day but there was a collective sigh around the table and the group of players walked away with a great gaming memory from their very first session. Thinking about it now seems funny because that one aerial introduction was the most challenging and memorable moment of the entire session for me, mostly because I saw the rolls they were getting and for the briefest of moments, I thought the adventure had ended before it even began.
Love this video. I had to figure a lot of these concepts out a year ago when I had a party consisting of an Aarocokcra, a half-Dragon, and a Druidess who can fly. At first as a DM I was definitely shaken up with this party but as the campaign moved along I found a lot of nifty tricks to challenge them. Weather, particularly, can have a huge effect on travel and aerial combats/situations.
I watched this video because one of my players called me out about not allowing flying. Honestly 3.5 scared me from flying because it bogged down the game so badly when my first DM tried it. This helps with setting proper expectations and glad you focused more on mindset then rules. As though rules are fun we are here to play a game.
Instead of trying to work out diagonal distances on the fly I just made a 12x12 table with 5ft increments (so it maxes out at 60ft in either direction). Top row is horizontal distance, side row is vertical distance, and pre-calculated estimates of the hypotenuse for all the combinations. Also works well in ground combat for when people use rang attacks on enemies who aren't perfectly in line with them. Just as easy as making up a number and moving on, but it adds transparency and consistency.
Fakjbf If you're using a square grid for fighting diagonal range is always the same as the longest straight length. A creature that is 20ft. in front and 10ft. to the left is still within 20ft. movement. The same applies to high. If a creature is 30ft. ahead, 20ft to the left and 25ft. in the air it is then 30ft. away. It is simply how diagonals work in a square grid combat.
SirReffo According to the official rules, yes. But the reason they do it that way is because calculating everything on the fly is too tedious. Having a table of pre-calculated values removes that tediousness, so I see no reason to follow the official rules there.
Fakjbf It is ofc only for simplicity. In my experience it doesn't make any difference as long as you don't have a player with big hang-ups about ignoring the realism on this circumstance.
Thank you, you don't know how much this means to me. I have been running a Star Wars RPG and really trying to recreate some of the magical moments similar to the movies.
In the most recent UA, WotC presented the Owlfolk, which have a flying speed, but they added that if they start falling, they can use a reaction to make a Dex save so that they instead just start flying in-place until the start of their next turn. Definitely a change of pace which I feel that it would be appropriate to treat aaracokra and winged tieflings to as well.
I tend to include a challenge catered towards every player in my game. If I have flying player characters, there are obstacles that have to be flown over. If there's a mix, I think up puzzles that require co-operation between the flying player and the land-based one - they have to be holding down a spring-based obstruction at the top of the wall, while simultaneously pushing a crank on the floor, to get the door to open. As for maths in combat, what I usually do is fudge "Long distance, plus half of short distance, rounded to nearest 5 because the system works in 5-foot increments". So if something is 20 feet away horizontally and 10 feet vertically, it's roughly 25 feet away. If both horizontal and vertical distance are equal, just pick one to be the "short" distance.
As a player, I love having a character who can fly (my first character ended up being a Draconic Sorcerer with wings), and so my first thought was that you were going to be discussing how to limit your players from abusing their flight; my first thought on the matter was to have NPC archers start using called shots on the wings to bring down the players (from our games it'd be AC + (5-10) depending on the range and cover and such) it was a fun dramatic way to handle it. I nearly lost my Sorcerer in a fight because an enemy Archer hit my wing and I failed my Dexterity check to prevent my fall... when I was out over a 700 foot cliff. Luckily saved eventually but spent the half of the remaining fight getting back to the party and sweating bullets lol happy gaming y'all
A few things to consider: Is air movement speed is affected by moving up or down. "Up" should go slower than "down". And weather effects: If there are wind, it give a constant drift in one direction. Turbulent air-flow make air a bumpy terrain to move in! Not to forget: It could be raining. Or it could be foggy, limiting sight range.
You always answer my questions with videos every time I really start to question it! I've been wondering how to do flying with bi-planes and such for the future! I've got months for certain to come up with everything, but once my current main campaign is over, we're gonna move far forward into the future to a steampunked version of my world!
Earth normal gravity: 9.8 m/(sec^2) first sec you fall appx 15 ft. (slightly under 5 meters) Second sec you fall appx 45 ft more Third sec you fall appx 75 ft more This continues, appx 30 ft faster per sec until terminal velocity Ignoring the reducing rate of acceleration due to drag increasing with speed which we can ignore terminal velocity or set it at 125 mph, the appx terminal velocity of a naked man {not overweight} spread eagle for max resistance. A person wearing plate has a higher terminal velocity than a naked man. A person wearing padded will fall a bit slower than the naked man. And there you have the physics of falling.
I haven't had a bunch of experience with exclusive aerial combat, but mixed has been a thing for sure. great video A thought for encouraging players who get an air ship to spend time on the ground: depending on how the airship is designed, they may need to have different births. Zepplin like airships need to have a steady supply of helium, which may only be available from airports that have gnome engineering to refill the ship. This encourages players to not just leave their airship flaring in the air somewhere while they do their thing.
Some quick useful thoughts: A normal human holding a standard 1-handed sword straight up puts the tip about 9ft off the ground. An easy (no roll) hop can put that at skimming 10. That means anyone wielding a longer weapon (like a greataxe/sword, or any kind of polearm) should be able to hit someone 10ft off the ground without even making a jump check of any sort. If that fails or you just have a shorter weapon, even swords can be thrown (real documented historical technique: you throw straight swords like javelins, and they hit quite hard). Also, while the geometry may be math heavy, you can actually use physics concepts to simplify. Because you're in a gravity well count all downward-angled movements of things with inertia (which may or may not apply to magical flight like a magic carpet) as their horizontal distance and the elevation change as free (even if they go up again as long as they don't go any more than half way back up from their lowest point). For going up you can either round down heavily or count both horizontal and vertical movement as adding (because now you're fighting gravity). When in doubt for a strictly vertical increase, the jumping rules from 3.x D&D have a pretty good approximation where 2 forward=1 up that can be used for a lot of situations. Rays can be a bit more complicated, but you can also pull another rule from 3.x and approximate 45° lines with the movement rules that gave you 2 diagonal movement for 3 movement. If you end up with a partial overlap with your range and the target position, just give a penalty/disadvantage (depending on the system, and narrate failures the spell as stopping just short of the target. Hope that serves as a nice balance between accuracy and keeping the math quick so the game doesn't stop if you're using a rules system without streamlined aerial combat rules.
Whatever a given range is, it can be divided between altitude and ground distance 90%/40%, 80%/60%, 70%/70%, 60%/80%, or 40%/90%. This is usually precise enough.
I run a simplified game. I take wind into consideration and count flying as running. So the players do str and dex checks to remain flying if above a certain elevation, before the character gets tired and has to land. Luckily all my players are okay with this.^^
I do not think that the reasoning behind a Damage Cap by Falling is due toe some people surviving really high falls. The real Reason behind this is Physics. Terminal Velocity! At some Point the Air Drag becomes so great, that you do not Fall faster. So the impact after a 100m Fall is no different from that after a 10000m Fall. At least Physics Wise.
Just tie your character to a mast, it wasn't that important on the sea but in the skies you'll always want to be firmly secured for anything that you have to do faster than walking pace. Terminal velocity for normal size and weight humans is still most likely lethal and without a really high level mage able to mend shattered bones and burst muscles you aren't gonna get your guy back on his feet anytime soon if ever in a low magic, low technology game.
in non high mortality games I add 5 ft. extra per 10 ft in diagonal movement and airbattles are handelt the same way, exept I subtract if something shoots down
Paul-Georg Jordan If your using a grid for combat the flying creatures simply are the furthest square away. For example: If a creature on the ground is 10ft. in front and 20ft. to the left it would still only take the player 20ft. diagonal movement to get to the creature. So it would technically apply the same way if the creature is 10ft. ahead and 20ft. up. It would then be 20ft. away in diagonal squares upwards.
Awesome subject, and one I look forward to trying out your methods on! Any chance you can touch on naval matters? High seas adventures, and the advantages and disadvantages of them?
Feather fall states that the falling speed is reduced to just exactly 60 feet per turn, so falling down 600 feat would take 10 turns, and since 1 turn is 6 seconds, he would be falling 1 minute.
For flyers and calculating ground to flight, i just use a calculator. Its pretty easy. It takes less than 5 seconds. 10 ft away, 30 ft up? Square both, add, use square root button on the answer.
As a pc fall I often get them to make a constitution check depending on how far they are falling to see if they can avoid spiralling out of control / lose their balance - if they fail they lose the ability to cast spells and checks following are made a disadvantage. Luckily this hasn't come up too often and has let to some very tense moments of play ^^
You can easily cobble together a program or even just an excel sheet to plug in height and horizontal distance to get true distance. Would take about three seconds for each calculation.
Flying in ground combat: If you want the quickest & easiest way, just ask: Which is greater, their distance along the ground or their height? Take the greater of the two, and use that as the distance. It's "Close Enough" to the real value in terms of most medieval style ranged weapons that it won't make a difference. Alternatively, you can remember the 3-4-5 rule, and use that, and I and most of my groups prefer it. ex: if your target is 40' away (as measured on the ground) and 30' up, the target is 50' away. If they are 80' away and 30' up, calculate it as 40' away + 30' up + 40' away, and your answer is going to be 90' away, and the real, math based answer, is 85.4-ish feet away, so you can see that it's still "close enough." You're always going to be a little bit off, but it's a lot closer of an estimate, and the 3-4-5 rule works quickly and easily and with whatever measuring system you're using. But, as you can see, even the "whichever is greater" estimate is still fairly close. As for falling, I will typically go with whatever the rules set has for falling damage, or failing that, there's usually a collision damage rule that can be used. If neither of those exist for the game, then I'll go with a slight mod to old-school D&D, 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, with a damage cap at 1d6x10 to represent terminal velocity.
What happens if you cast fly underwater or go underwater while using the fly spell , do you zoom through the water at normal flight speed or is your flight movement cut in half do to water resistance , does the spell simply fail or end ?
This talk of falling reminds me of the time on Critical Role that Keyleth thought she could negate fall damage off a 1000-foot cliff by transforming into a goldfish. When your GM says, "This is too many dice to roll," and goes to the dice roller app on his phone, you know you've screwed up bigtime.
... Honestly I would just make a coordinate board and a string that I painted to show distance in the same scale as the coordinate board then attach one end to 0-0 and use it to measure. So they are 10 feet away and 8 feet in the air? Move the string along the bottom to line up with 10 and then move up 8. String then shows you the distance.
How to deal with flight? Don't _deal_ with it. _Embrace_ it. But if the players start to fly over everything, gently ask them "do you want to play tonight?" Remember the golden rule: don't be a d*ck.
I'm not messing with math in my TTRPG, I'm just using short, medium, or long range/distance. I don't understand feet, meters, or math, so why bother with it? In my TTRPG there are races of people with wings, flying mounts, flying animals, flight or levitation magic, and flying ships (Via levitation, telekinesis, or wind magic). For flying creatures they use a Flying skill plus other skills like Dexterity, Athletics, Combat Speed, Travel Speed, and various combat skills to make certain rolls depending on what they're trying to accomplish. With fall damage I give them four distances they can fall from, Ground Level (Equal to falling off a horse), short, medium, or long distance. Then what they land on: soft grass, hard pavement, even water does damage at certain distances. And finally how big the falling creature is. An average sized creature can take 1D6 damage from falling on grass from a short distance plus 1D10 because of their size. They might really bruise some body parts (as my game has an injury system), but it won't kill them unless they're really low on HP.
Perhaps it could be a quick and easy solution to calculate the distance of a flying PC if you just add half of the height to the horizontal distance. And if you have two flying 'people', you can simply add half the height of the higher one and subtract half the height of the lower one to the horizontal distance. I know it's not mathematically correct, but its a quick estimation you can come up with right out of your head.
I watched 1 of ur videos last night & u were wearing a costume u said was for a movie or something, or in crazy & dreamed it. But if I'm not crazy then what it called?
Honestly, I feel like flight changes rather little... It always gets put forward as this amazingly broken thing, but then you get to actual play and it is surprisingly limited. Oh nooo, they can kite the mobs.... Well so could the speedster, and honestly, why was this bit of combat in wide-open plains? Oh nooo they can cross the cliff/ravine/wall, honestly was this ever a complicated obstacle? Does it really make a difference that one player could avoid it? The rest stilll needs to get past, and I'm not seeing much help from Mr. Wingsforbrain. The wings also help sooo sooo much in that tavern brawl... with the low ceiling, and thrown objects. It's just one of those things that people complain too much about.
TL;DR: Our entire party thinks flight in D&D is broken and uses homebrew flight mechanics based on actual laws of physics instead of arbitrary restrictions. As a DM with a background in aerospace engineering, I generally find flying systems in games such as D&D to be completely broken. Instead of just using the traditional flying movement rules with a fly speed and an altitude, we use a bit of math and a lot of homebrew stats to determine actual aerodynamic characteristics, such as mass, total effective area of aero surfaces, CoM/CoL, TWR, etc. These stats tend to be based on ability scores, as well as the laws of aerodynamics, based on the artwork the player created or found for their character. Flying using a _fly_ spell or similar is generally limited to hovering by repelling the ground, and isn't much different from normal D&D, but flying using aero surfaces, such as wings or a 5th level _erect forcefield_ spell allows for many possibilities that simply do not exist in the normal game, such as pitch and roll, diving, dogfighting, coordinated turns, angular velocity, velocity on the Z axis, and a lot more that's too long to list here. To use a reference most people can relate to, compare flying in creative mode to flying with an elytra. To the answer the question of how I prevent the players from just skipping obstacles: I don't. I create the obstacles with the knowledge that characters can fly, and that it is not uncommon for characters in this campaign to fly. For example, the mage's tower mentioned in another video would have AA weapons around the top, or might be underground. A city that you need to use persuasion to get into might have a forcefield or other barrier around it. Communicating with the ground isn't really an issue as one can't eat or sleep while flying, and quests can generally be found in a place that sells food and lodging. An example of flight in our game: The time is 22 : 45. A winged tiefling warlock decides she wants to fly low over an enemy fortress and land in the leader's bed chamber through the large window she spotted earlier. She has STR 12, CON 14, long membranous wings and a physical TWR of 0.8, as well as a magic TWR of up to 3 for 5m per 15m via a _phantom thrust_ cantrip. Due to her natural TWR being
If your party doesn’t have ranged attacks vs flyers then your party dies. Hopefully they learn a lesson. That being stated, if you know your encounter is going to generate a TPK, why are you throwing it at the party?
Iron Cross I had someone like that. They started crying about how it was unfair that most of the town guard was coming for him when he killed the only merchant in the small town. He ended up leaving so it was ok.
Mate, Mate, I love your videos, but you need to start asking people to subscribe and click the notification bell, because someone with this many subscribers should get ATLEAST 25% of views.
Insert Name Here, I personally didn’t need this episode at the time that it came out, so I didn’t spend my time on it. It’s great when these are relevant to my campaign, but not all are. 🤷♂️
I think the worst parts about this are the nightmare of trying to map something in 3D on a 2D map... and the fact that half the possible encounters of the entire game system just flat out get negated by player flight. You get ambushed by 10 thugs . I fly away. You fall into a pit trap. I fly away. The chasm is 100 feet deep and you have to climb down it. I fly down. The trap is filling with water as the villain laughs at you from a hole in the ceiling. I fly out the hole. There is a massive ravine filled with lava between you and the princess. I fly over it. Your ship is about to sink in shark infested waters. I fly back to land. Your airship is going to crash. I fly back down to the ground. You must go to Havenshire and meet the Priestess but in the way is the forbidden swamp. I fly directly there. You get attacked by a horde of 100 orcs. I fly up 100 feet in the air and shoot them all 100 times. The golem is too strong, his armor and hit points are just too high to take any damage. I grab him and fly up 300 feet and drop him. See how goddamned annoying that is for a GM? It's just maddening. Now literally everything has to be custom tailored for it, or become a complete non-encounter. So either they just cheatcode their way past everything, or they complain that you are hosing them just for flying (which you in effect are). >.< It's even worse in superhero games because a lot of characters literally start with flight at level 1.
I like to save my players when they fall to their almost certain doom with two rols. First of is a D100 to figure out how much mobility they lose when their boddys turn into modern art. The second is a D20 to determin how stupid the thing is wich saves their life. I once had a friend who got 1% and a nat20, so he landed on a cart filled with hay with nothing but som scratches. Sounds familiar? Thought so.
Nes I totally love this system for low level play. But when characters reach 10th+ level terminal velocity (20d6) had an incredibly low chance of killing them outright, they'll probably even stay conscious. I have nothing against that, seeing that 10th+ level characters are getting close to demi-god status in any modern sense.
SirReffo This is onely my system to figure out How they sourive. If they sourive is asked earlyer. I basicaly ignore the 20D6 above a certain height. After my players fail the last saving check i make a judgementroll (1D20), below 15 and they are phankakes.
Nes I get where you're coming from, but no matter how you spin it, they won't fall faster then terminal velocity (represented be the 20d6). Any difference in height beyond 200ft. makes no realistic impact on survival. I know that sounded a little rough, that's not my intent.. Difficult to word it properly without it seeming like a "but your wrong" argument. Using your rule system sounds like a great replacement for the standard rules in certain circumstances. ^^
SirReffo Dont worry. I constantly ned to fight the urge to overexplain. And afterwards i feel like something important got cutt when swiching into translatermode.
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if your parachute fails, you have the rest of your life to find a solution
so true
Soften the landing with your legs, you'll break both of them in the process but at least you're alive
Failure to resolve this issue will not be a problem for long
An alternate way to think about altitude, and to explain it to your players, could be to break it down into imaginary storeys of a building. Let’s say that each ‘storey’ is about 15 feet high. If a creature is flying, but on the same level as another creature, they can attack each other using melee. If they are on different storeys, they cannot use melee attacks against one another (perhaps a Reach weapon could reach enemies one storey above or below). I think this would really help simplify things, and make it easier to explain to your players “How high is the Harpy? She’s currently flying at about the height of a third storey window” This approach would also be very helpful if creatures were flying around an actual building as well.
Hey guy, the actual reason for maximum fall damage is, that you cant accelerate beyond a certain speed. So whether you fall from 10km or 20km does not matter, cause you wont hit the ground harder. And thats something that people sometimes survive, even without a tree.
Sennar So few people realise this!
A personally homebrew "size dice" small=d4 medium=d6 large=d8 and so on to get a slight feeling of damage dispersion based on weight.
It's dependent on how much resistance you offer the air vs how fast gravity is accelerating you; terminal velocity is different depending for somebody diving straight down vs somebody falling spread-eagle.
Fishotic While that is obviously true, it serves no reason to implement rules that takes this into account.
There comes a point where you must balance playability over realism.
I imagine if someone plunged to their death they wouldnt go head first if they wanted to survive, which our characters do.
@@SirReffo I agree.
With every video, I feel I am becoming a better GM. Thank you so much! Never have I contemplated how npc's would react to seeing players flying. So much to consider now. :)
Yes, it is often interesting to have NPC spectators, and sadly it is extremely rare that GMs remember to have spectators.
I usually say there are two types of spectators:
Those who by coincidence was there to observe. They can be the source of a simplified rumour about what the players did.
Those who deliberately was there to observe. My favourites here are journalist, they may even go so far to interview the players! ... And they often make an exaggerated version of the story, as such attracts the most audience!
There are many brilliant ways to have spectators be the source for a lot interesting role play!
Keep a arrow or balistashott once every while as an option, as some townsguard might get spocked and in smaler vilages it might cause panic. ^^
*Graphic description of what happens to skydivers upon impact without their parachutes working* Yup, that gets a like.
I like "Pills of Featherfall". Cheap enough for every passenger and crew member onboard an airship to carry them in a pocket, .... but they also make you violently sick for about a week, so you don't want to use them, except in an emergency.
Stefan B And then the group has a paladin or a druid/cleric with lesser restoration. Still totally love the concept! I'll definitely use it in my game, I'll just have to accept that the paladin is going to cure the sickness in the snap of a finger.
SirReffo If you want to game-lawyer your party: "You touch a creature and can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned." Give them 5 levels of exhaustion, and they will need almost a week to completely sleep it off. Or a Greater Restoration spell, which considerabely ups the costs. Oh, and you should avoid exhausting yourself BEFORE falling, or the pill might just kill you, by pushing your exhaustion level to 6.
Now, after the rule niceties are done, all you need is a sufficiently gory description of what the pill actually DOES to your players body. I like the idea of blowing their body up like a balloon.
Stefan B I have to say, using exhaustion points didn't come to mind, brilliant idea.
I would probably go a little less cartoony depending on the campaign.
Something along the lines of "Your body hardens like a spring, tough yet malleable you hit the ground, absorbing the impact without bodily harm. Or so it would seem." It would reveal that exiting this state takes a matter of days equal to that of 5 exhaustion points, as you slowly regain the use of your body as the exhaustion points fade.
This pill would simply give damage immunity for one round, so it would have a little more utility. But still have horrible consequences.
Stefan B why are you trying to make the party's abilities useless? Part of the perk of being a divine caster is healing others, including from status effects. Punishing the players like this, for not even making mistakes, just turns the game into player vs dm.
vara vashtul I would have to disagree. They given a tool (that they can choose to use) that is ment to have repercussions. It's a "get out of jail free" card. Your not taking away anything, your adding tension and risk.
It can stil be healed with enough greater healing.
We should trust our players to handle and understand high risk with possible repercussions.
I always thought of airships as technology coming from the desert to facilitate travelling across the _"sandworm-ridden dunes, riding the wind"._ It makes sense since you have lots of open fields, a good temperature differential making it easier to fill a balloon to max capacity, difficult terrain, very few flying threats and whenever you need sand bags for whatever reason you got sand all around (plus the "sandbox below to slightly alleviate your landing" can help you pass that the guy who fumbled manage to survive just breaking his legs, even better you just tie them to the mast with rope and a harness).
Since there are very few natural flying threats and airships are used for trading, to pose a proper threat you get pirates either ambushing on the ground or with fast motorized airships of themselves turning the combat into a fancy sea ship.
Areal combat is fun. I had a blast doing it on my non-dmg 5e wizard. We were fighting some Lovecraftian thing who teleported people up 300 ft into the air every turn. Good thing I had feather fall prepared 😀 It was all I did the entire combat. Eventuellt I had to blow a 4th level spell slot on a feather fall haha. Totally worth it.
The video dislikes are clearly disgruntled skydivers.
Guy’s story focused/character focused outlook continues to be refreshing. Our party has had access to flight for a long time. Our GM (who would benefit from watching the channel) would never think to intercede in a death, so it’s up to us to think prevention. Featherfall is always prepared (3.5); Flight straps crafted for hippogriff, dragon & dire-falcon mounts, etc.
Our DM has taken to NPC’s enchanting areas with “No Fly Zones”. Traveling via phantom steeds and dire-falcon, our party entered such a zone at 1000 ft and proceeded to fall like stones until featherfall was cast, sparing everyone 20d6 damage and a system shock roll. Well worth a 1st level spell slot to prevent multiple needless deaths before even arriving!
I very much like the point about giving options for players who are unable to participate/defend from a threat, if they are clever enough to pick up on it.
This is very cool! May be using this in the new Skyraiders of Abarax.
Nice easy rule of thumb to remember for diagonal distances: For every 5ft horizontally away together with 5ft vertically away, the direct diagonal is 7ft.. So, for every 10ft horizonal distance combined with 10ft vertical distance, the direct diagonal is 14ft...
Example: Player character takes off & uses their 50ft flight speed to move diagonally towards and up / over the enemy - who are on the ground 30ft away... [The PC wants to fire down at the enemy].. After 3 x 14 = 42ft they are directly above the enemy, 30ft up in the air - and well within range of both ranged & thrown weapons - in either direction! XD
The natural flyers have an advantage due to practice. Therefore anyone using magic or mechanical means to fly is likely to lose in an air to air battle.
But, since there ARE flying threats, it is perfectly logical for a DnD castle to have anti-air defenses.
If you fall far enough onto a hard surface... you are a grease splat. I don't care what the rules say.
Land combat involving flying heroes has never bothered me. Everything in D&D seems to have its niche. Some characters are literally useless in many combat scenarios. A flying character just gets to use melee against flying foes, while everyone else needs range. They are hardly safe from typical land foes either, since flight rarely lets you go faster than 1.5x land speed and most humanoids carry ranged weapons; otherwise, consider including more ranged and fliers. As for dungeoneering, it behooves DMs to remember that unless the player is levitating, they can't fly indoors without risk of bodily harm. Those sad that pitfalls just don't work anymore and the risk of falling is gone: feather fall is the one spell aside from Detect Magic I've never seen a caster fail to take.
It's simple math. I'm certain there's an app for that. :P
"Oh, you're ten feet away and ten feet above?" *types in app* "14 feet and some change. Call it fifteen since we use five foot squares."
Takes less than 15 seconds.
That said, I play Pathfinder, so rules and math don't bother me much. :P
Featherfall pill isn't a bad idea, but what about just like a magic parachute pack. One use, costs X amount of money. NO CONTROL OVER LANDING, YOU LAND RIGHT BELOW WHERE YOU FALL. So falling becomes a expense thing. If you were in a air ship, they'd hand out free packs that need to be returned at the end of the trip or you will be charged for them. Maybe better (more expensive) packs allow for surviving higher falls. These packs are designed to automatically trigger past a certain fall speed so you never have to worry about triggering them in time. Maybe fall save packs can hold charges where each charge costs as much as a pack and allows one use. (so basically the same as one use but putting multiple in one)
Fall safe packs could have settings which allow them to trigger earlier than fatal if players want to avoid some fall damage (but maybe not perfect protection even on most sensitive setting) or even to disable them if they wish so a charge isn't used when falling fast if you got another means to deal with it.
Any time a player decides to risk life and limb in sky high fall risk endeavor, I warn them against it if they don't have a pack or alternative, if they do it anyway, they must face the consequences. And of course if I am specifically running a sky high adventure, I can just build in the packs in one way or another.
Where's the treasure you ask? Just down that 10'10 corridor? Totally not trying to stop you flying guys. Ow yea just a heads up the iron doors work on a pressure pads...exactly the weight of a PC.
Are we talking goliaths or gnomes?
@@NieroshaiTheSable
I had a necromancer run gnome skellies down the hall to try and set off traps.
The pressure plates didn't activate on the 27 lb skellies... they needed 65 lbs or more.
The players were not amused... too bad.
In a Sci-Fi campaign (SpaceMaster) a Gunslinger-PC fell out of a plane at 400 m altitude. Gave em three rolls to save him, but each one failed miserably. So the guy was going to die. I was just starting to describe this guys final fall, when the according player asked: "Wait.. What's the ACTUAL gravity on Titan (where the characters were)?" Wikipedia said 1,3 m/s², as opposed to 9,8 m/s² on earth, resulting in fall damage equivalent to a 10 - 20 m fall on earth.
I think, in these cases it's OK to actually do the physics, because I've never seen this kind of tension, when putting some numbers into the calculator.
Anyway, the guy survived, barely and everyone was cheering for physics...
(Please don't correct me on the maths, I don't want to retcon this whole thing ;) )
All I will say is considering atmospherics and then probably Terminal Velocity as a function of the whole... You're probably not far off. {running the estimates in my head}... In any case, Guy does explicitly suggest "make the call and go with it"... SO we can just do that.
In this situation, though, the tension and dramatic build that resulted is exactly why (sometimes) we should go through the efforts and do the math... Even just "ball-parking" the physics to a game mechanic equivalent is enough to send most Players into near fits. ;o)
I recently had the pleasure of running a brand new Savage Worlds game for a brand new group of players that had never tried it. I decided to run an Indiana Jones type of adventure set in the 80's and start off by having the characters ride their parachuted dirt bikes out of a cargo plane flying over South America. I asked the players to roll a piloting skill to land their dirt bikes on a narrow mountain pass that snaked along a steep cliffside that dropped sharply into the ocean. One of the three players failed his roll and was heading over the cliff. The second player grabbed a tree branch, tied his parachute around it and made a kind of net. He managed to swing the net over the cliffside and catch his falling comrade but then failed his strength check and both of them began sliding over the edge of the cliff. The woman in the group made her Agility check and jumped over to their location and grabbed the two men with a strength check of her own. I described her boots sliding across the dirt, dislodging small rocks and stirring up dust before just catching her boot on the edge of the dropoff. It may sound like they were having a really bad day but there was a collective sigh around the table and the group of players walked away with a great gaming memory from their very first session. Thinking about it now seems funny because that one aerial introduction was the most challenging and memorable moment of the entire session for me, mostly because I saw the rolls they were getting and for the briefest of moments, I thought the adventure had ended before it even began.
Reminds me of Deadpool 2.
Love this video. I had to figure a lot of these concepts out a year ago when I had a party consisting of an Aarocokcra, a half-Dragon, and a Druidess who can fly. At first as a DM I was definitely shaken up with this party but as the campaign moved along I found a lot of nifty tricks to challenge them. Weather, particularly, can have a huge effect on travel and aerial combats/situations.
I watched this video because one of my players called me out about not allowing flying. Honestly 3.5 scared me from flying because it bogged down the game so badly when my first DM tried it. This helps with setting proper expectations and glad you focused more on mindset then rules. As though rules are fun we are here to play a game.
Instead of trying to work out diagonal distances on the fly I just made a 12x12 table with 5ft increments (so it maxes out at 60ft in either direction). Top row is horizontal distance, side row is vertical distance, and pre-calculated estimates of the hypotenuse for all the combinations. Also works well in ground combat for when people use rang attacks on enemies who aren't perfectly in line with them. Just as easy as making up a number and moving on, but it adds transparency and consistency.
Fakjbf If you're using a square grid for fighting diagonal range is always the same as the longest straight length. A creature that is 20ft. in front and 10ft. to the left is still within 20ft. movement. The same applies to high.
If a creature is 30ft. ahead, 20ft to the left and 25ft. in the air it is then 30ft. away.
It is simply how diagonals work in a square grid combat.
SirReffo According to the official rules, yes. But the reason they do it that way is because calculating everything on the fly is too tedious. Having a table of pre-calculated values removes that tediousness, so I see no reason to follow the official rules there.
Fakjbf It is ofc only for simplicity. In my experience it doesn't make any difference as long as you don't have a player with big hang-ups about ignoring the realism on this circumstance.
Thank you, you don't know how much this means to me. I have been running a Star Wars RPG and really trying to recreate some of the magical moments similar to the movies.
In the most recent UA, WotC presented the Owlfolk, which have a flying speed, but they added that if they start falling, they can use a reaction to make a Dex save so that they instead just start flying in-place until the start of their next turn. Definitely a change of pace which I feel that it would be appropriate to treat aaracokra and winged tieflings to as well.
I tend to include a challenge catered towards every player in my game. If I have flying player characters, there are obstacles that have to be flown over. If there's a mix, I think up puzzles that require co-operation between the flying player and the land-based one - they have to be holding down a spring-based obstruction at the top of the wall, while simultaneously pushing a crank on the floor, to get the door to open.
As for maths in combat, what I usually do is fudge "Long distance, plus half of short distance, rounded to nearest 5 because the system works in 5-foot increments". So if something is 20 feet away horizontally and 10 feet vertically, it's roughly 25 feet away. If both horizontal and vertical distance are equal, just pick one to be the "short" distance.
As a player, I love having a character who can fly (my first character ended up being a Draconic Sorcerer with wings), and so my first thought was that you were going to be discussing how to limit your players from abusing their flight; my first thought on the matter was to have NPC archers start using called shots on the wings to bring down the players (from our games it'd be AC + (5-10) depending on the range and cover and such) it was a fun dramatic way to handle it. I nearly lost my Sorcerer in a fight because an enemy Archer hit my wing and I failed my Dexterity check to prevent my fall... when I was out over a 700 foot cliff. Luckily saved eventually but spent the half of the remaining fight getting back to the party and sweating bullets lol happy gaming y'all
I left a like specifically because of the spell Doppler effect. Fantastic!
A few things to consider:
Is air movement speed is affected by moving up or down. "Up" should go slower than "down".
And weather effects:
If there are wind, it give a constant drift in one direction.
Turbulent air-flow make air a bumpy terrain to move in!
Not to forget: It could be raining.
Or it could be foggy, limiting sight range.
You always answer my questions with videos every time I really start to question it! I've been wondering how to do flying with bi-planes and such for the future! I've got months for certain to come up with everything, but once my current main campaign is over, we're gonna move far forward into the future to a steampunked version of my world!
So glad you did this video. I've struggled with this in my games.
Earth normal gravity: 9.8 m/(sec^2)
first sec you fall appx 15 ft. (slightly under 5 meters)
Second sec you fall appx 45 ft more
Third sec you fall appx 75 ft more
This continues, appx 30 ft faster per sec until terminal velocity
Ignoring the reducing rate of acceleration due to drag increasing with speed
which we can ignore terminal velocity or set it at 125 mph, the appx terminal velocity of a naked man {not overweight} spread eagle for max resistance.
A person wearing plate has a higher terminal velocity than a naked man.
A person wearing padded will fall a bit slower than the naked man.
And there you have the physics of falling.
And the entire point of this video is that it is too complicated to be practical by any means.
I haven't had a bunch of experience with exclusive aerial combat, but mixed has been a thing for sure. great video
A thought for encouraging players who get an air ship to spend time on the ground: depending on how the airship is designed, they may need to have different births. Zepplin like airships need to have a steady supply of helium, which may only be available from airports that have gnome engineering to refill the ship. This encourages players to not just leave their airship flaring in the air somewhere while they do their thing.
What I need when I need it.
Lovely thanks.
I am going to be running a game soon that gives flight pretty early on.
Some quick useful thoughts:
A normal human holding a standard 1-handed sword straight up puts the tip about 9ft off the ground. An easy (no roll) hop can put that at skimming 10.
That means anyone wielding a longer weapon (like a greataxe/sword, or any kind of polearm) should be able to hit someone 10ft off the ground without even making a jump check of any sort.
If that fails or you just have a shorter weapon, even swords can be thrown (real documented historical technique: you throw straight swords like javelins, and they hit quite hard).
Also, while the geometry may be math heavy, you can actually use physics concepts to simplify.
Because you're in a gravity well count all downward-angled movements of things with inertia (which may or may not apply to magical flight like a magic carpet) as their horizontal distance and the elevation change as free (even if they go up again as long as they don't go any more than half way back up from their lowest point).
For going up you can either round down heavily or count both horizontal and vertical movement as adding (because now you're fighting gravity).
When in doubt for a strictly vertical increase, the jumping rules from 3.x D&D have a pretty good approximation where 2 forward=1 up that can be used for a lot of situations.
Rays can be a bit more complicated, but you can also pull another rule from 3.x and approximate 45° lines with the movement rules that gave you 2 diagonal movement for 3 movement. If you end up with a partial overlap with your range and the target position, just give a penalty/disadvantage (depending on the system, and narrate failures the spell as stopping just short of the target.
Hope that serves as a nice balance between accuracy and keeping the math quick so the game doesn't stop if you're using a rules system without streamlined aerial combat rules.
Great exploding body description :)
Whatever a given range is, it can be divided between altitude and ground distance 90%/40%, 80%/60%, 70%/70%, 60%/80%, or 40%/90%. This is usually precise enough.
Oh i need this video
Flight battles are nightmares
Nightmares make for funny flying encounters tho ^^
Mayfair's old DC Heroes RPG was good for this. To this day, it's my favorite game system.
I run a simplified game. I take wind into consideration and count flying as running. So the players do str and dex checks to remain flying if above a certain elevation, before the character gets tired and has to land. Luckily all my players are okay with this.^^
I do not think that the reasoning behind a Damage Cap by Falling is due toe some people surviving really high falls.
The real Reason behind this is Physics. Terminal Velocity! At some Point the Air Drag becomes so great, that you do not Fall faster.
So the impact after a 100m Fall is no different from that after a 10000m Fall. At least Physics Wise.
Just tie your character to a mast, it wasn't that important on the sea but in the skies you'll always want to be firmly secured for anything that you have to do faster than walking pace.
Terminal velocity for normal size and weight humans is still most likely lethal and without a really high level mage able to mend shattered bones and burst muscles you aren't gonna get your guy back on his feet anytime soon if ever in a low magic, low technology game.
Are you planing to do any videos about underwater combat? Planning on spending at least half a campaign undrler the water
in non high mortality games I add 5 ft. extra per 10 ft in diagonal movement and airbattles are handelt the same way, exept I subtract if something shoots down
Paul-Georg Jordan If your using a grid for combat the flying creatures simply are the furthest square away.
For example: If a creature on the ground is 10ft. in front and 20ft. to the left it would still only take the player 20ft. diagonal movement to get to the creature.
So it would technically apply the same way if the creature is 10ft. ahead and 20ft. up. It would then be 20ft. away in diagonal squares upwards.
Awesome subject, and one I look forward to trying out your methods on! Any chance you can touch on naval matters? High seas adventures, and the advantages and disadvantages of them?
Feather fall states that the falling speed is reduced to just exactly 60 feet per turn, so falling down 600 feat would take 10 turns, and since 1 turn is 6 seconds, he would be falling 1 minute.
The few times I ha e played in Arial combat we used multiple gunned ship to make sure every player was engaged
For flyers and calculating ground to flight, i just use a calculator. Its pretty easy. It takes less than 5 seconds. 10 ft away, 30 ft up? Square both, add, use square root button on the answer.
As a pc fall I often get them to make a constitution check depending on how far they are falling to see if they can avoid spiralling out of control / lose their balance - if they fail they lose the ability to cast spells and checks following are made a disadvantage. Luckily this hasn't come up too often and has let to some very tense moments of play ^^
Excellent video
You can easily cobble together a program or even just an excel sheet to plug in height and horizontal distance to get true distance. Would take about three seconds for each calculation.
Flying in ground combat: If you want the quickest & easiest way, just ask: Which is greater, their distance along the ground or their height? Take the greater of the two, and use that as the distance. It's "Close Enough" to the real value in terms of most medieval style ranged weapons that it won't make a difference.
Alternatively, you can remember the 3-4-5 rule, and use that, and I and most of my groups prefer it. ex: if your target is 40' away (as measured on the ground) and 30' up, the target is 50' away. If they are 80' away and 30' up, calculate it as 40' away + 30' up + 40' away, and your answer is going to be 90' away, and the real, math based answer, is 85.4-ish feet away, so you can see that it's still "close enough." You're always going to be a little bit off, but it's a lot closer of an estimate, and the 3-4-5 rule works quickly and easily and with whatever measuring system you're using. But, as you can see, even the "whichever is greater" estimate is still fairly close.
As for falling, I will typically go with whatever the rules set has for falling damage, or failing that, there's usually a collision damage rule that can be used. If neither of those exist for the game, then I'll go with a slight mod to old-school D&D, 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, with a damage cap at 1d6x10 to represent terminal velocity.
You forgot to remove the damage for the first 10 feet.
2:20 But we certainly don't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Great video!
What happens if you cast fly underwater or go underwater while using the fly spell , do you zoom through the water at normal flight speed or is your flight movement cut in half do to water resistance , does the spell simply fail or end ?
This talk of falling reminds me of the time on Critical Role that Keyleth thought she could negate fall damage off a 1000-foot cliff by transforming into a goldfish. When your GM says, "This is too many dice to roll," and goes to the dice roller app on his phone, you know you've screwed up bigtime.
why wouldn't they turn into a bird?
She was thinking, "Water = fish. I'll turn into a goldfish, and it'll be super cute and super hilarious." It was super hilarious, all right.
The equivalent of the skydiver fall in gaming terms would be GM intervention.
... Honestly I would just make a coordinate board and a string that I painted to show distance in the same scale as the coordinate board then attach one end to 0-0 and use it to measure. So they are 10 feet away and 8 feet in the air? Move the string along the bottom to line up with 10 and then move up 8. String then shows you the distance.
How to deal with flight? Don't _deal_ with it. _Embrace_ it.
But if the players start to fly over everything, gently ask them "do you want to play tonight?" Remember the golden rule: don't be a d*ck.
I would say the maximun fall damage would be 150 or 15d20s, you would add a dice for every 20 feet while falling 15 being the max.
Or you could say 1000 damage when your level 17 barbarian party member jumps off a big ass cliff.
I'm not messing with math in my TTRPG, I'm just using short, medium, or long range/distance. I don't understand feet, meters, or math, so why bother with it?
In my TTRPG there are races of people with wings, flying mounts, flying animals, flight or levitation magic, and flying ships (Via levitation, telekinesis, or wind magic). For flying creatures they use a Flying skill plus other skills like Dexterity, Athletics, Combat Speed, Travel Speed, and various combat skills to make certain rolls depending on what they're trying to accomplish.
With fall damage I give them four distances they can fall from, Ground Level (Equal to falling off a horse), short, medium, or long distance. Then what they land on: soft grass, hard pavement, even water does damage at certain distances. And finally how big the falling creature is. An average sized creature can take 1D6 damage from falling on grass from a short distance plus 1D10 because of their size. They might really bruise some body parts (as my game has an injury system), but it won't kill them unless they're really low on HP.
Perhaps it could be a quick and easy solution to calculate the distance of a flying PC if you just add half of the height to the horizontal distance.
And if you have two flying 'people', you can simply add half the height of the higher one and subtract half the height of the lower one to the horizontal distance.
I know it's not mathematically correct, but its a quick estimation you can come up with right out of your head.
I watched 1 of ur videos last night & u were wearing a costume u said was for a movie or something, or in crazy & dreamed it. But if I'm not crazy then what it called?
Honestly, I feel like flight changes rather little... It always gets put forward as this amazingly broken thing, but then you get to actual play and it is surprisingly limited.
Oh nooo, they can kite the mobs.... Well so could the speedster, and honestly, why was this bit of combat in wide-open plains? Oh nooo they can cross the cliff/ravine/wall, honestly was this ever a complicated obstacle? Does it really make a difference that one player could avoid it? The rest stilll needs to get past, and I'm not seeing much help from Mr. Wingsforbrain.
The wings also help sooo sooo much in that tavern brawl... with the low ceiling, and thrown objects.
It's just one of those things that people complain too much about.
So if my Aarakocra monk can cover 50 ft in a round, thats 8.333- ft/s. So, how much would I have to eat in order to shit all over 6 enemies per round?
ie if your characters fly it's best if you wing it...
TL;DR: Our entire party thinks flight in D&D is broken and uses homebrew flight mechanics based on actual laws of physics instead of arbitrary restrictions.
As a DM with a background in aerospace engineering, I generally find flying systems in games such as D&D to be completely broken. Instead of just using the traditional flying movement rules with a fly speed and an altitude, we use a bit of math and a lot of homebrew stats to determine actual aerodynamic characteristics, such as mass, total effective area of aero surfaces, CoM/CoL, TWR, etc. These stats tend to be based on ability scores, as well as the laws of aerodynamics, based on the artwork the player created or found for their character. Flying using a _fly_ spell or similar is generally limited to hovering by repelling the ground, and isn't much different from normal D&D, but flying using aero surfaces, such as wings or a 5th level _erect forcefield_ spell allows for many possibilities that simply do not exist in the normal game, such as pitch and roll, diving, dogfighting, coordinated turns, angular velocity, velocity on the Z axis, and a lot more that's too long to list here. To use a reference most people can relate to, compare flying in creative mode to flying with an elytra.
To the answer the question of how I prevent the players from just skipping obstacles: I don't. I create the obstacles with the knowledge that characters can fly, and that it is not uncommon for characters in this campaign to fly. For example, the mage's tower mentioned in another video would have AA weapons around the top, or might be underground. A city that you need to use persuasion to get into might have a forcefield or other barrier around it. Communicating with the ground isn't really an issue as one can't eat or sleep while flying, and quests can generally be found in a place that sells food and lodging.
An example of flight in our game: The time is 22 : 45. A winged tiefling warlock decides she wants to fly low over an enemy fortress and land in the leader's bed chamber through the large window she spotted earlier. She has STR 12, CON 14, long membranous wings and a physical TWR of 0.8, as well as a magic TWR of up to 3 for 5m per 15m via a _phantom thrust_ cantrip. Due to her natural TWR being
10:06 Haven't you heard? The Earth is apparently flat! Who knew?
The doppler effect should not have any effect on magic, as you as the caster don't hear any difference.
If your party doesn’t have ranged attacks vs flyers then your party dies. Hopefully they learn a lesson. That being stated, if you know your encounter is going to generate a TPK, why are you throwing it at the party?
3D labyrinth?
As soon as PC can fly there is a sudden influx of thunder storms...
Weird. Must be climate change...
How about a video dealing with crybaby players? What's your opinion? Kick them?
Iron Cross I had someone like that. They started crying about how it was unfair that most of the town guard was coming for him when he killed the only merchant in the small town. He ended up leaving so it was ok.
Iron Cross. First make sure positions are fair and spelled out. If they still cry. Kick them.
He claims that my dungeon was an inappropriately high challenge for the party. It was actually a first level module.
Wow, it takes you 4 hours for a²+b²=c²...i knew that someplaces the education was bad, but maaan...
Ikr wow you don't get exaggeration
No, i don't get how somebody can need more than 10 seconds to make an educated guess, or if too stupid to do so - type it into his smartphone / PC
I’m the 537th person to like
Mate, Mate, I love your videos, but you need to start asking people to subscribe and click the notification bell, because someone with this many subscribers should get ATLEAST 25% of views.
Insert Name Here, I personally didn’t need this episode at the time that it came out, so I didn’t spend my time on it. It’s great when these are relevant to my campaign, but not all are. 🤷♂️
I think the worst parts about this are the nightmare of trying to map something in 3D on a 2D map... and the fact that half the possible encounters of the entire game system just flat out get negated by player flight.
You get ambushed by 10 thugs . I fly away.
You fall into a pit trap. I fly away.
The chasm is 100 feet deep and you have to climb down it. I fly down.
The trap is filling with water as the villain laughs at you from a hole in the ceiling. I fly out the hole.
There is a massive ravine filled with lava between you and the princess. I fly over it.
Your ship is about to sink in shark infested waters. I fly back to land.
Your airship is going to crash. I fly back down to the ground.
You must go to Havenshire and meet the Priestess but in the way is the forbidden swamp. I fly directly there.
You get attacked by a horde of 100 orcs. I fly up 100 feet in the air and shoot them all 100 times.
The golem is too strong, his armor and hit points are just too high to take any damage. I grab him and fly up 300 feet and drop him.
See how goddamned annoying that is for a GM?
It's just maddening. Now literally everything has to be custom tailored for it, or become a complete non-encounter. So either they just cheatcode their way past everything, or they complain that you are hosing them just for flying (which you in effect are).
>.<
It's even worse in superhero games because a lot of characters literally start with flight at level 1.
Nobody expects falling anymore. You never fall. And if you fall a table must be flipped
This didn't feel very informative.
I like to save my players when they fall to their almost certain doom with two rols.
First of is a D100 to figure out how much mobility they lose when their boddys turn into modern art. The second is a D20 to determin how stupid the thing is wich saves their life.
I once had a friend who got 1% and a nat20, so he landed on a cart filled with hay with nothing but som scratches. Sounds familiar? Thought so.
Nes I totally love this system for low level play. But when characters reach 10th+ level terminal velocity (20d6) had an incredibly low chance of killing them outright, they'll probably even stay conscious.
I have nothing against that, seeing that 10th+ level characters are getting close to demi-god status in any modern sense.
SirReffo This is onely my system to figure out How they sourive. If they sourive is asked earlyer. I basicaly ignore the 20D6 above a certain height. After my players fail the last saving check i make a judgementroll (1D20), below 15 and they are phankakes.
Nes I get where you're coming from, but no matter how you spin it, they won't fall faster then terminal velocity (represented be the 20d6). Any difference in height beyond 200ft. makes no realistic impact on survival.
I know that sounded a little rough, that's not my intent.. Difficult to word it properly without it seeming like a "but your wrong" argument.
Using your rule system sounds like a great replacement for the standard rules in certain circumstances. ^^
SirReffo Dont worry. I constantly ned to fight the urge to overexplain. And afterwards i feel like something important got cutt when swiching into translatermode.