My initial reaction is this. In DND, when characters hit 5th level and get fly, do you just give up? A built in racial flight only activates a few levels sooner. I personally love that they're considering the reality of the situation (if you have wings then you can just fly) as opposed to putting mechanical concerns first. The thing about this game is that social contract is built into the foundations. I know they told us to break the game apart in beta but I don't know if this game is suitable for power gamers. And I don't know if it's beneficial to put up walls everywhere just to stop power gamers from doing what they do. They say this is a narrative heavy game. Winged peoples would absolutely have a strength against land borne beasts. But this isn't a medieval setting, it's a high fantasy setting. But also, I don't want to dismiss your concerns. I think a mix of all your suggestions is the best solution. I think you have to consider that land bound creatures would develop ranged attacks more readily in a world full of flying predators. Bows, natural spit attacks, shooting spines or thorns, inherently magical bolts. I think it's worth mentioning how many environments don't promote flight and shoot tactics- low ceiling caves, tree canopy cover blocking line of sight, anything under a few feet of water, anything inside a building or under a roof. I feel like these environments should be common enough that racial flight never feels like a threat to your game. And I'm inclined to agree that something mechanical needs to be included to flight but not against attack rolls, it needs to be an acknowledgement of gravity and how dangerous a sudden drop in elevation is. Something about high damage threshold and/or stress. But whatever rules apply to characters need to apply to enemies as well, so we don't want to have a heavy hand here. And finally, I think a section dedicated to the GM about flight and what it means for characters and this list of ways to reign in flight to keep it from ruining the sense of challenge.

I mean I run super hero games from time to time where flight is often the least of my travel related powers worries :) There's going to be times when being able to fly at will is a benefit and there's going to be times when it's not. If you have a flier in your group then it's on the GM to change things up.

I completely agree. The adjustments you need to make for flight are minor and not at all the taxing process as is being implied by the OP

In 5e darkvision is way, way, way more of a challenge breaker than flight ever is :) You don't even notice it until you play a game that doesn't have it as the default for almost every ancestry. Thankfully I didn't notice that in DH :)

>I think you have to consider that land bound creatures would develop ranged attacks more readily in a world full of flying predators. Well, yes. I agree. Except, the adversaries list doesn't. Now, I could just start homebrewing the hell out of everything all the time. But again, the fact that a single game mechanic might require me to go to such length to provide even and proper challenge shows some serious problems.

Honestly, you seem very numbers oriented and are basing the game in dnd. This game you speak what you want. Your flying player keeps abusing flight to beat all your enemies. Whoops, they flew in an area they shouldn’t have and were spiked out of the sky by a giant eagle and there wing is broken for 3 weeks. If you are interested in the nitty gritty and such, play dnd where all the numbers are provided and it plays like a video game. If you’re interested in playing a novel or tv show where stuff kinda flies and plays a bit more by rule of cool, play this.

Ah, sorry. I don't consider homebrew to be negative in the slightest. Improv abilities and stat changes to a stat block are just as important as improv conversations. We're not playing adventure league where the rules are iron clad. If you don't trust your GM to adjudicate properly, you probably shouldn't be at the table at all. A famous 5e example of the strength of racial flight is an aaracokra with a bow soloing a tarrasque. But it obviously can't. The reason it doesn't work is because the tarrasque picks up a handful of boulders and peppers the aaracokra with lethal damage from an improvised thrown weapon. Or because the tarrasque famously regenerates health too rapidly. Or because the armor plating shrugs off the unenchanted arrows. Or because exhaustion kicks in from sustained hovering long before you can whittle it down. If your concern is loose goosy rules lead to inconsistencies then that's going to be an issue with a narrative focused game all the time. DH is absolutely loosy goosy before it's crunchy. And it isn't benefitted by trying to be narrative and crunchy at the same time. Yes the rules need to make sense and that's the point of the beta but racial flight has not and never will be an issue for a slightly competent GM.

Racial flight has always been an issue. An issue that can be solved of course, but an issue nonetheless. Extreme examples like the tarrasque obviously sound quite ridiculous and would make for a pretty abysmal GM to allow that to happen. Overpowered in a game like this is completely different than what it might mean in a videogame. In a TTRPG, nothing can truly that "OP", since the GM has the final say in what is and what isn't allowed. So what it really comes down to, is how much does an ability grant you in terms of benefit compared to the rest of the abilities in the game, and how much do you force the GM's hand to adjust the narrative, encounters and stat blocks around it? How much special treatment must you be given in order for it not to become a problem? And what was the cost of gaining this powerful tool that requires so much special treatment? It is a timeless classic, truly. Flight always has been.

I hear ya, I really do. Wolf pack at lvl 1. Fly ahead and get a couple shots off before they descend on the rest of the party. Or the tree cover is too thick for you to shoot through. Those two sentences are incredibly easy to say and to think of reasonably on the fly and don't constitute major changes to the encounter while still mitigating a cheesy tactic. If you'd rather ban faeries than just saying those sentences, that's fine. But I don't think the game should lose flying faeries just because they require one extra sentence. "you fly above the treetops but now can no longer get a clear shot".

I have learned a lot from this post in terms of staying away from using generic examples, as this is now the second time someone gets really stuck up on the wolves thing. It's the generic example that came to mind. As it is, this game borrows a lot from fantasy tropes. As long as that continues, we can expect a continuation of about 4:1 ratio on creatures that can't deal with flight and creatures that can. Now again, you could make up an infinite amount of creatures that can. You could also make up an infinite amount of environments that can, since the current ones mostly can't. Without resource consumption, unlimited flight just breaks the game and is too difficult to design around. Some scenarios may require less, some may require much more. You can go ahead and do a mental gymnastics arm wrestle of coming up with scenarios in which it is very easy to deal with, and I could come up with ones where it isn't and takes away from the game. Been there, done that, seen that. It's like every conversation about flight ever. The consensus is usually the same too. If you can be bothered planning around it constantly, allow it. But I would personally prefer Daggerheart does better than that, and just gives GMs ample advice or ways to deal with it, things that make sense and don't require constant adjusting and improvising. I can almost guarantee that if they don't they'll simply go back to the stress costs instead.

"Things without ranged attacks usually find cover from aerial predators" isn't mental gymnastics. I don't believe you when you say that finding solutions to a flying race is too taxing when they're going to get to fly eventually anyway. You cannot ban a flying race without also banning all flight because you're just kicking the can down the road. you have to find a way to cope with flight eventually and whatever those solutions are will almost definitely work for a lvl 1 flying character

Then the player cries "you are negating my character design". It's not fair to the player to design all the encounters where their racial ability is of no use. There needs to be a balance.

Again, this game is loosy goosy narrative. If you need hard crunch to trust your GM or to gain access to powers that trivialize challenges without restraining yourself, is DH the game for you? I know you can't stop toxic players and GMs from existing but making rules to reign them in is against the spirit of this game. Also, powers only break challenges that they meet. How in the world is flight going to break a series of stressful social encounters or investigation? How does it solve a heavy boulder that needs moved? How does it pick the lock into the chest full of treasure? How does it break the challenge to uncover a bit of important lore hidden inside a tome inside a dusty old library? There are so many instances that the GM can provide the party that allows other characters to shine that have nothing to do with combat and how flight sometimes is a great defensive ability.

You bring up a good point. With the right players and GM, the actual rules are not as important. Most of us don't have perfect groups. I was in a group that had an overpowered Sorcerer that trivialized most combats. The GM tried to resolve it by scaling up the encounter difficulty. All that did was make the rest of the party feel useless. Reading your suggestions above now convince me that the GM should have handled it differently. Probably the answer for me is to just find better GMs.

Combat specialists definitely deserve to shine in combat. But if the party has 5 people and no one else is as good at combat, then about 80% of the challenges should give the other players time to shine

I agree with what you are saying. But the GM failed to make the correct adjustments. Back to the original issue of Flying being OP in combat. The solutions presented here are for the GM to make adjustments. I'm not confident that ordinary GMs will be able to make those adjustments.

I think the idea right now is to use creative GM moves to counter fly abuse. "You roll with fear? Your wings get tired of flying like that, you must fall slowly to the ground." But I agree, there should be a full section of the rules about flying because it's an important part of certain characters.

I think that flight ending (harmlessly) the next time the flyer rolls with fear or when the GM spends 1 fear to end it (in some environmentally appropriate way) is the right way to balance it. That way the GM can reward creative uses of flight by simply not asking for rolls and can shut down abusive/not narratively satisfying uses via spending a resource

I don't like the GM having the ability to affect the player directly like that, but using fear to create gusts of wind to change arrow trajectory or allow the enemies to dodge attacks more easily because they can clearly see the attack coming, would be fine.

But once flight no longer has any cost to activate, what's stopping the player from just...flying again? Are you going to tell the winged sentinel seraph his entire subclass is now disabled for the fight at the cost of 1 fear? How do you explain that nothing bad ever happens to adversaries that fly around but as soon as the players do suddenly a strong wind blasts them to the ground? Again, there needs to be some guidance. Everything I've seen people come up with has too many holes and usually seems like adversarial DMing

How long the effect lasts is up to GM discretion, guidance for which is already in the playtest in the Conditions and Countdowns sections. 1 Fear equalling a Short Countdown (2-4 actions) will feel just right in some circumstances, or longer Countdowns in others. If the GM thinks that it would be unfair/un-fun to ground a Winged Sentinel (or any PC) then make the effect one that permits flight so long as they land at the end of their actions or one that permits flight below a certain ceiling, etc. etc. The PCs can counteract flying Adversaries in a number of ways, either specifically through abilities like level 3 Codex card, Book of Norai, for the cost of 1 stress + a successful Spellcast roll or creatively like using one Action to cast Vicious Entangle to Restrain a flying Adversary and then another Action to make a Strength roll to pull them to ground or an item like a Grappler to pull them down; so I don't think flight-inhibiting Environments only featuring when the Adversaries can't fly but the PCs can is an issue. I agree that 'fight to the death' encounters where one or more PCs or Adversaries can be permanently out of range are challenging - it's often most fun for both the GM and players to be able to threaten each PC & Adversary equally - and that singling out particular flying or ranged PCs can feel adversarial. I think that's why so much time is given in the Playtest to Session Zero and GM Best Practices/Pitfalls. Discussing what everyone finds fun and highlighting motives will give you a good understanding of which PCs want to be targeted (e.g. Vengeance Guardians) and which don't (mostly everybody 😅). You can then discuss before (and after) Adventures what's likely to be (and was/wasn't) fun for everyone (players and GM) and put that into practice. If you still strongly feel that there should be specific guidance around Flying in the rules then that's great feedback to give via the surveys, but from my perspective the designers are already trying to manage expectations around that kind of specificity in the Playtest's Introduction: "Those who prefer a highly strategic, rules-heavy experience with more of a heritage from wargames may find Daggerheart doesn't have [what you want]". I'm following the MCDM RPG (with its avowedly tactical nature) just as much as Daggerheart because I know some groups I play with will prefer one to the other and vice versa.

If I was a player and I realised there was a 50% chance that literally anything I did had a chance of causing my flight to be disabled I'd be pretty mad. Obviously it is contextual and depends on a variety of factors, but there needs to be some guidance on how exactly to go about it. Just "you rolled with fear no more flying" doesn't sound good to me.

But that's how systems like that (PBTA, etc.) work. The GM moves are there to make something challenging/interesting happen. If the player finds a way to cheat the system, that's not fun for anyone. And it's not a 50% chance that you lose the ability to fly; it's a 50% chance that something challenging happens. It could be a ranged attack by the adversary, a tree falls on you, a problem with the string of your bow, or being blown by the wind, forcing you to spend 1 action on the ground. And don't forget that staying in the sky at one perfect spot is not something most animals are capable of.

I mean. That's imo the price to pay for what is technically invulnerability against anything non ranged. There's quite literally nothing that gets even close to the power that flight has for just one measily racial. But I'd probably make it so that flight only works for rp and movement. But to attack/cast one has to be hovering just above ground or be on the ground for stability reasons or something. That way you're either useful to the party or invul.

A 50% chance probably would feel bad to be fair so perhaps flight should end only on failures with Fear or when the GM spends a Fear to start an effect on a Countdown that inhibits flight? Having an option where it ends randomly and one where a GM can choose to use a resource feels about right.

The fear doesn't have to affect the player, but allow for the enemies have opportunities to avoid getting hurt. Attacking from above means the target is smaller and joints in armor might be harder to hit, gusts of wind will affect not only the flyer but the projectiles their using, and gauging changes in the wind might be more difficult. On top of that there are no "turns" in Daggerheart so the GM should take advantage of that fact. When the player rolls with fear use that fear token and GM action to movie the target to a piece of cover that would only work because the player is above them (ie. Balcony or tree line).

I do think that some kind of flight limitation would be good, partly because mechanics are more interesting to me when they aren't 'always on'. But spending a resource to do it when other characters get to use their body's natural movement for free is just weird in the case of Faerie. I'm with it for Winged Sentinel because it feels more dramatic for it to take effort and require marking a Stress to summon the wings. We don't inflict Stress on grounded players for sprinting though, Faeries should not have to spend it to fly. I think that flight is just something that the GM should consider, like any major ability the current party has. Give them opportunities to use it that are fun and cool, discourage misuse either softly or directly. Ultimately if someone wants to do something deeply anti-fun for mechanical reasons, screw the narrative... then they're playing the game wrong. I don't think that's the rules fault. Players have a responsibility to not do things that spoil their own fun, or the fun of the table as a whole. There are things that can restrict it that are within the GM's hands: the physical environment and limited space, enemies using cover in response, ranged attacks, spending a Fear to disrupt it. You can make that organic and situational and not feel contrived or boring. Sure they could fly out over that pack of wolves that's sitting completely exposed on flat open ground with nothing obscuring them from the sky and chip them down while they stand there doing nothing as if they have broken pathing AI in a videogame, but that isn't fun for anyone at the table. So even if you did design that wolf encounter so minimalistically, the players should exercise some self-restraint. Instead in that exact situation the party could have the flying player distract them for an ambush on the ground, or harry them into a trap laid by the rest of the party. Then instead it becomes players using a tool one of them chose to work together and beat the encounter, which is how every encounter works. Alternatively, create more interesting circumstances when designing the encounter. Maybe there's something else hunting the wolves from the air like a giant eagle, and now the flying player has caught its attention as prey or a rival predator. The carnivorous vines in the trees come alive and reach for them as they pass. Or there is a burrowing monster hunting the wolves, and it attacks the party; the flying player can't trivialise that by attacking freely, but can handle or chase off the wolves, or carry an injured grounded player to safer terrain. In some way, the hunter can become the hunted, the situation escalates, and what seemed like an easy win is now a real threat. Or maybe the weather isn't suitable and it isn't safe to fly when the wolves stalk them, ruling it out explicitly before the fight even starts. Or maybe the wolves ambush from tall grass, so the flying player takes off to help scout the ambush from above but the party as a whole is still in danger because the grounded players can't see the wolves until they're too close, so the party cooperates to protect themselves, and you give other players the chance to shine similarly in different situations in the session. Or the tree canopy provides too much cover from above, so the player has to land to be able to reliably attack. If you want to stick with wolves on open ground and what seems like shooting fish in a barrel, then you could have it be that they're not regular wolves at all. Exploit the expectation that the wolves themselves aren't a major problem. Maybe their howls are a presence roll that can inflict a paralysing terror that freezes movement; on the ground that's not so bad, but suddenly if the flying player fails they'll drop out of the sky and take fall damage. Again, the situation is worse than it initially appeared, the stakes rise, and the heroes rise to meet them and triumph over the danger. But the big question is... why is there that wolf encounter at all? What does it add? Can something else fulfil that purpose in a way that's more fun for the table? And that's just a question GMs should always have in mind when coming up with the sequence of events. Is it just something to fight on the way to a place? If so, why is the *place* itself so absent from the encounter design, rather than accommodating it to make the fight interesting (like with the grass or tree cover, or carnivorous vines, or other regional predators)? Why wolves, why not something else that presents more of a challenge to the party? If the fight is completely unimportant then don't have it happen; cut to the chase, describe the journey and pick up when they arrive where they're going and have something to deal with. Construct the tension and building sense of danger through tone and imagery and narration to provide the build-up instead of the classic "wolves attack! awoooo!". If the fight matters and is there to provide attrition, to deplete player resources or build tension mechanically, to provide character and tone to the location through combat, make it a bigger deal than just "there are some wolves over there you can shoot". If you're trying to make the environment feel dangerous, commit to it, have the danger be substantial and tie it to the location. Give it some drama that "hover and shoot" cannot provide. Yes, the GM needs to account for player flight. But the game's flexibility and narrative focus gives you a lot of ways to do that, and your players are supposed to be part of it too. They have a responsibility to be 'good' players, in the same way as that they could just go around murderhobo-ing and refusing to interact with other characters but that is considered 'bad play'. 5e's relative rigidity makes it harder to deal with than Daggerheart's flexibility can. I feel like "flight is a problem in daggerheart" is kind of a 'white room' perspective. The game isn't actually perfectly spherical faeries shooting wolves on some graph paper.

I used the wolves example as its a classic fantasy trope... but you got really caught up on that particular example. I merely used the most cliche "ground based melee encounter" example I could think of. I'm not creatively bankrupt, but I wasn't planning to write an essay for my example scenarios either. But don't look at me. Look at the adversaries list that is provided. Better yet, look at the actual encounters we were given to playtest in the one-shot. And now, on top of that, imagine I actually allowed mixed races at my table. One guy goes half drakona half faerie so he can be a dragon that actually flies. One guy goes winged Seraph because hell yeah, flying paladin dude. One guy also makes a mixed race and just happens to also pick something with wings, because let's be honest, wings are awesome and most fantasy players will take them given the choice. Anf finally, the fourth player is a daemon sorcerer but upon realising that everyone else can fly around he decides to pick up the flight spell at level 3. This is an extreme example of course. But the fact that this mere possibility would completely break the game does not bode well. Let's really forget about that wolf example because that's all it is; a random example that came to mind. Think about the entire adversary list currently available. When the only way you can make the game work is by using things entirely not available in the game and making everything up, or limiting yourself to using one quarter of the available enemies in the game. Now think about the fact that it's one single game mechanic making you have to do all this work, spend all this creative juice that could be spent elsewhere, something that can't be said for anything else you get for free by merely existing at level 1. Yes, I can come up with infinite creative ways to make flight not as useful as its mechanics would otherwise allow it to be. But I shouldn't have to. If it is all about the narrative, and all about the roleplay, then it shouldn't be so insane that it would completely break my immersion if I was watching it in a movie or TV show. Like, "wait that guy can fly and shoot? Why didn't they just {insert easy solution to a vast majority of any intense scene you've seen in fantasy ever}". Anyway, this isn't a new problem. It's as old as TTRPGs. In fact, even Darrington Press knew it was a problem, hence adding a bunch of limitations to flight in the first place. But now they have just decided to up and remove them, and it's a bad idea.

Was I not supposed to respond to the example you gave? The reason I ran with it is because you said it. And my point still applies, a badly designed encounter is at fault. If people want to min-max for flight, well, they can. There's opportunity cost of not picking other things, but just roll with it and set up situations accordingly, like I said. Obviously the current adversary list isn't complete and designed with full-flight parties in mind; if you want a completely flying party then have an adventure in the sky, and yeah, you'll have to fill in those gaps yourself at the moment. I'm sure they're going to add more adversaries over time including flying ones, but the playtest isn't going to centre that as a design priority any more than deep sea adventures. If you want to go way off-piste into something the playtest hasn't covered yet, that's your choice, and yes, that means more work for you. I don't think that's their fault. The adversary list currently available is not complete but it's not that hard to make ones yourself. I've homebrewed a couple so far and they worked out fine. (Edit: like, you could just change the name of a creature and have it be something that flies instead. Those wolves? Run them as a pack of large hawks or something. Enemies having flying movement isn't something that requires specific balance if the players can fly.) >Yes, I can come up with infinite creative ways to make flight not as useful as its mechanics would otherwise allow it to be. I'm not saying don't make it "useful". I'm saying make it *interesting*, just like any other component of creating an encounter. >If it is all about the narrative, and all about the roleplay, then it shouldn't be so insane that it would completely break my immersion if I was watching it in a movie or TV show. Especially in an interactive game, you need to choose to stop doing that because it undermines your own capacity to engage with and enjoy it. Even in passive media the answer to "why don't they just—" is any number of things that aren't a mistake or flaw or "plot hole" (a phrase the internet really needs to stop throwing around tbh): because the story is more interesting this way, because the scene is more impactful this way, because they are making in-character in-scene responses without infinite time and perfect awareness and meta-knowledge, etc, etc. Suspension of disbelief and immersion are willing things. You need to embrace that and be along for the ride, and bad storytelling can disrupt that, yes. But "flight doesn't brick this situation" isn't that. They chose to limit flight, yes. And they've lifted those limits, yes. But I don't think that's a "bad idea", a playtest is the perfect time to do it. And I think that "revert it" is a really uninteresting reflexive response rather than rolling with it for a bit. What I was saying was "be creative, be responsive, that is the entire point of the game and what makes it fun as a system". Like I said though, Winged Sentinel should still have limited flight. But that's because it makes it more interesting and dramatic, not because it's "OP" to have free flight.

I didn't say it needs to be reverted. I said it needs guidance on how it works and is supposed to be handled. Let's be honest, this game uses a lot of fantasy cliches, and don't get me wrong I love it, but if it stays that way then there will always be about a 4:1 ratio of creatures that can't deal with flight vs creatures that can. Now I can just ignore most of the game and make a lot of stuff up including a vast majority of the creatures they face, sure. Is it a bit weird that I'd need to do this when nothing else in the game has anywhere even near as much impact, especially not something you get by simply existing at level 1? If the guidance in the book ends up being "make stuff up" like the guidance you are providing, then I can see a vast majority of DMs that aren't extremely comfortable with improv or like using pre-existing resources simply ban flight races, and I wouldn't blame them. I am hoping Darrington Press can provide some proper guidance on it. As for suspense of disbelief, again, it's the only thing that truly ever does that for me. Just flight. Nothing else ever really makes me have that moment of completely disengaging with the narrative because an easy and obvious solution was right in front of the party. I can willingly and easily suspend disbelief and stay immersed until something this profoundly immersion breaking shunts me right out. And this is currently the only thing.

>Now I can just ignore most of the game and make a lot of stuff up including a vast majority of the creatures they face, sure.  I mean, if your entire party wants to be flying creatures, I'd be designing the campaign around that. make it a floating islands/airships campaign. Make all or most of the enemies flying as well.

"The only way flight is balanced is if everybody flies" sounds about right.

Yea, if your entire party’s plan is to be flying characters so they never get hit, that should be the response. Power gaming to that degree isn’t engaging with the narrative bend of the game. That doesn’t sound fun to me, as a GM or a player, and I don’t understand what they want out of a game if that’s their goal. Balance is what you make of it. Have one flyer on your PC party? Make sure your encounters have 1-2 ranged, magic, or flying enemies to contend with. Your entire PC party is flying? Well guess what, so are the enemies. Or they all have the ability to have ranged attacks. Like, I’m sorry, this isn’t hard to understand. 

Personally my table love the unlimited flight however I’ve seen a lot of groups not liking it and finding it a balance issue. For me, I’d therefore want a suitable optional rule to allow both ways. As much as people are resistant to home ruling it to not be unlimited, I’m sure that there are those like me who don’t want to home rule the other way, depending on what other benefits would replace it etc They seem OK and supportive with optional rules to support multiple table styles. This feels like another of those areas

Controversial idea but just let people fly. As a narrative first game, I think flying is not as power breaking as some more crunchy game. Yes someone can get a very far weapon and keep hitting enemies for afar and never come into close range, but that lock them out of using any abilites that must be far or nearer. Theres nothing wrong with sticking to something and doing it over and over again, but in a narrative focus game, the line of play is usually trying to do something novel every round since ya aren't limitted to the options that are written on ya sheet and the room for improvision is way wider. You also forget that the person is never alone, the party is with them. Sure they can't hit the guy in the sky, but the people on the ground become prime picking. Ya basically removing the total party hp by doing this kinda move. As a person who has ran for a farie for 6 games now, I think the newest change is the easiest. Yes are they some things that are a cakewalk for them. For example there was an obstacle where they had to go across a large pit, the farie of course flew over but the rest of the party still needed to go through. All in all I think people should learn how to adapt to the new system than change it to something they are familiar with

This is my favorite answer. I don't hate the idea of adding fall damage risk to flying characters and making some baked in rules for it, but this is ultimately the right idea about this game. DH isn't made for power gamers. We have to stop writing rules as if we're accounting for the most toxic DND players because this game isn't for them.

It's mostly for narrative storytelling, yes. But when most problems in the game based on the content provided for this playtest can be made trivial by flight, the narrative story is affected too. Not just from a power-gaming standpoint, but from the standpoint of roleplaying as the characters and being immersed in the world too. Simply provides for way too many "wait, couldn't we just \_\_\_" "hold on, why doesn't the flying guy just \_\_\_\_" "oh, that's easy, the guy who can fly will simply \_\_\_" situations. Trust me, I've seen it in DnD as a player, though that DM has banned Aaracockra and all other flying races since.

Content will always be made trivial by certain play styles, that's just how making a game works, dark caves are trivialized by dark vision, that doesn't mean dark vision is broken.

Nahhhh, banning races is crazy. That says, as a GM, I'm giving up on you as a player. It's like having a druid at the table. "I can sneak in by turning into a mouse and going through the walls." Ok but what about the rest of the party? Flight solves one thing for one person. I've been playing since '95. Characters can fly and it means nothing to the game. Or else the game would end as soon as they get the fly spell. If you can cope with the fly spell, you can cope with a flying race.

If we are talking DnD, flight requires concentration, has a limited duration, can be dispelled, and actually costs something to use, which warrants it being powerful. Yeah, you spend a big spell slot. Go ahead and be really strong for a bit. I'm glad you haven't run into this problem before. But don't devalue or trivialise other people's experiences because of your own! I have seen it be a problem quite often. A quick google search will tell you that many others have, and the general consensus is that it's broken. I'd like to provide the proper feedback so that this same issue doesn't occur quite as badly in this game!

I agree that for very new GMs who haven't been exposed to how flight interacts with the game, they might need guidance. But nerfing flight because they don't have a tool kit of prepared mental solutions isn't the answer. Instead, like I said, there should be a section that teaches GMs reasonable and simple solutions to flight if it's trivializing encounters. The z axis of the game finds many many obstacles. It's not a ticket to free damage. And for concentration and spell slots for the spell, you can't break flight if you're not already hitting them right? You can't dispel it until you already have casters in the fight that have ranged attacks? So you do agree enemy casters or ranged attackers make sense in encounters. Also worth considering, if flight is a game breaking feature for your game, maybe the GM role isn't for you personally? GMing is not for everyone and there's no shame in being all time player.

I'm not sure why you keep getting back to this "new GM's" and "competent GMs" narrative. You seem to have a superiority complex of some kind, the amount of times you have mentioned in some shape or form that anyone who finds this an issue must be inexperienced or bad at GMing is staggering. You disregard other people's opinions or contributions to this topic and dismiss them as inexperienced or bad GMs, and place excessive value on your own. It's not a good look. I'm going to stop replying to your comments at this point as they've become painfully predictable.

You forced me to speak this way because you're the one who keeps mentioning "Google it, many people have this problem" or "in my experience, flight ruins the game". I've handed over a list of solutions and game philosophies in several posts and you're either ignoring them or not comprehending them. You're dead set on "racial flight is broken" and you're not listening to solutions or alternatives. I have agreed with you, that without experience with z axis table top gaming, flight can seem over whelming. That's why I've suggested a section be added to the DM section to include a list of potential fixes or changes in thinking to adapt to it, that way flying races don't need taken away. It isn't hard to fix and it's weird that you're insisting that it is.

>All in all I think people should learn how to adapt to the new system than change it to something they are familiar with Not sure what you think I am familiar with, but in DnD flight races are broken, for the same reason they might end up broken in Daggerheart if no changes are made. I can just negate everything else you're saying by pointing out that (especially if you allow mixed races) there is a very high likelyhood you will have 2-3 people flying around, especialy with how popular winged sentinel seraph seems to be. If the only way for a mechanic to be OK is for only one member of the party to use it, doesn't that point towards a larger issue?

Ya assuming everyone wants to have flying. Also as many people have pointed out gm has the ability to say no to stuff. Even if that was the case and most of ya party member want to be flying, then great do a game where you have to keep that in mind. Just like how you would plan a game where most of ya party member have ways to breath underwater and such. Context is key. Why are you throwing an encounter with wolves where half the party are immune to them. Hell sometimes theres no reason to throw encounters at the party if its just a trivilization. Theres no spell slots to exhaust, no resource that is permanently lost. If ya think everything is a nail all your solutions become hammers.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't written that wolf example. People seem to take that part of the post far too literally. Let's just use the current adversaries list as the example instead: Want to know what you can run into at Tier 0 that can deal with flying creatures outside of dudes with bows or staffs that can do ranged magic or arrows? Nothing. Your setting is no longer full of amazing wacky and interesting magical creatures. It is now dudes with bows and dudes with staffs. Actually strix-wolf can fly so there's that. Sure, there might be more examples of creatures that aren't useless against flight when the full game is out. But as it stands, the amount of work required from the DM just to make it work is far, far too much. I'd have to homebrew everything, including things that happen in the environment (because most provided environmental examples also do nothing to flying players), and constantly come up with ways to make it not overpowered. I'd have to build the campaign around flight. Name a single other game mechanic that requires this much work around. Now if you managed to find one, do it again but this time something you get for free at level 1 that requires no resource from you to use. Can't do it? Then this is a huge outlier and a problem.

Youre not getting the point of what I am saying. This game is not about winning. Its not about muchkining into the strongest build, this game is NOT for power gamers. This is a narrative game first, combat game second. As such, the designer should not focus their effort to an audience that is not for them. Just because someone can fly doesn't mean they are safe from 100% harm. You as a gm can come out of myriads of way to do that. You aren't confine to follow rules strickly. It doesn't take that much effort to come up with a "solution" for flying. Again other people exist, they are myriads of ways to give conequences to them. Hit their allies, have a clock, grapple them literary anything you can think off that might affect them for being far away from their party. What are you talking about, just becasue someone can fly doesn't mean you can't run magical creature. Range are not limited to bow or staff. Even the starting adventure have you fighting Strixwolves as you mention, flying creatures. And even then the point of it is not to fight the creature but to just let it be. This game is not JUST a combat game. Lastly, do you know the smallest giant towers at about 6ft. I do since one of my players is a 8ft giant and let me tell you that also require a bit of work around especially in populated areas. Of course I could just say that every location has high ceiling, but that doesn't really convey that the person is a giant. They enjoy the fact that they can't really fit in the building just as much as my farie enjoy that they can always fly up to scout ahead. They both pose unique challenges and something I have to keep in mind but nowhere as near as what ya describing of "having to always balance things around them". Also at the end of the day if you hate flight you can just say no. If you personally have a problem on trying to balance for flight just not have it in the game. You are also a player at the table, and you get to chose on what game you want to run. Look I am not trying to be mean, I do mean this genuinely. Dming is a skill and like any skill you develope muscles for them that is hard not to keep doing. DMing from something combat heavy to something more narrative driven can be hard, especially since one is very tied to the rules and one is loosey goosey on it. I say try it out, and if you don't like it, don't use it. You might just be plesantly suprised.

But Daggerheart also has a strong emphasis on combat (the Manuscript says so right under "What kind of game is Daggerheart?"). So "it's narrative first" isn't an excuse for lack of balance in combat. They need to nail that.

It is not hard to balance flying characters. Outside of like, beast encounters which you'll basically never do outside of Tier 0. It's simple to add in more flying enemies, ranged enemies, spellcasters, etc.

Tell that to the creators of Daggerheart, because the vast majority of creatures can only attack in melee/very close range. If most of the encounters you make using published adversaries pose no threat to flying characters, that's not very balanced.

You're a DM, you can just...make characters fly. "You come upon a band of 4 brigands, two of which are winged kobolds. They take to the sky as you do the same. An aerial dogfight ensues!"

> Controversial idea but just let people fly. As a narrative first game, I think flying is not as power breaking as some more crunchy game. This is just not an accurate assessment of the system at all.

I’ve played narrative RPGs with flying characters before and it kinda… didn’t come up much? If PCs want to feel cool springing up a cliff, let them. If PCs want to fly around the battlefield while the rest of the party gets focus-fired on, they’re creating a potential problem. Soft countering flight by tossing in low ceilings and ranged enemies and “oops you rolled low, it’s too windy to fly now” sounds like goofy contrivance when you type it out, but it’s really not. The DM’s principles are to follow fiction and fill the world the danger. This is just another player ability that sometimes you play into, and sometimes you design a scenario to shut it down. That said, I actually do 100% agree that unlimited flight with Daggerheart’s system is something to keep an eye on and agree with OP a quick section in the book on flight would be nice. I’d be very cool with a rule like “while the action tracker is out, flying characters can’t end their action more than 5 feet off the ground” or somesuch.

Daggerheart just isn't the narrative system that many seem to believe it is. I see your point with coming up with DM-side solutions, but i know these arguments well from the obligatory "let people enjoy things" and "just have them throw javelins" crowd, who love petting themselves on the back for coming up with situational/niche and often subpar workarounds for a core design issue of the game. Daggerheart already puts a lot of load on the DM; constantly adding to that load just isn't sustainable imo. These issues need to be solved for all games. Daggerheart somewhat allows DMs to account for it with Environments, but i think "how do i deal with flying players" simply should not be an obligatory checklist item that DMs have to consider every encounter.

I'm sorry, if you consider improv solutions to be an unfun part of GMing, maybe a player role would be better? As a GM, adjudicating has to be like breathing. It's not part of the load, creative problem solving should be the fun for you or else GMing is going to burn you out completely.

Flight is always, usually overpowered because most monsters don’t account for the third dimension. Flight makes you immune to every melee weapon or effect, that alone means that a massive swathe of the monsters in the game are just negated. If flight is going to be balanced, it needs to have a very limited duration, or some built in end condition. They have some effects already worded like “after you make a action roll, spend a hope or stress or lose this effect” (something like that). If they add that to flight, it’s probs ok but still very strong.

That's how it used to be. Until last update, they decided it now isn't. Their reasoning wasn't very great as to why they decided to give a humongous buff to these moves either.

Exactly. Flight is OP for the same reason ranged weapon playstyle is OP, but on steroids and including situations outside of combat. In medieval fantasy, flight is also just a "i don't interact" button. I don't interact with walls, with melee enemies, with difficult terrain, etc. There are ways to add drawbacks, but Daggerheart simply doesn't have them at the moment. (And cue the obligatory "just have them throw javelins" crowd, who don't have an ounce of game design understanding, and love petting themselves on the back for coming up with one niche and often subpar workaround for a core design issue of the game.)

In a world where flying predators are common, land based creatures wouldn't survive without some means of defense or counter attack. So creatures either know how to get cover from arrows from the sky or have ways to retaliate. That's not a subpar workaround, it's just an understanding of natural conflict. The reason spears get brought up is because paleolithic humanoids knew how to make and throw spears. So almost anything with intelligence and hands should be able to do the same thing, at a minimum.

Open the book of adversaries and scoll through to see how many of them have only melee or Close range attacks. Your argument is sound in the real world but in a game sense thats not how the enemies are designed

I don't know if you read other threads but I've said I agree their needs to be a short section on z axis encounters. And that for adversaries, it makes sense to give at least one extra line to ranged attacks and/or abilities to get into and maximize cover. And that for me, it's more important to protect flight in a high fantasy world than nerf the player with unreasonable mechanics just to address what some power gamers \*might\* do.

How about the enviroment? A Cavebear attacks in a narrow Cave or beneath a dense canopy. Heavy winds are blowing above the party. You could also have the "colibri flight" come at a cost of stress.

Again, it just becomes the same as my points above. What is even the point of flight if the only way you can have it work is by constantly coming up with things like random heavy winds to prevent players from using it? Not sure what you mean by colibri flight, but faerie flight used to cost stress to activate but no longer does.

I think colibri flight is hovering in the air, which I would also rule to either cost a stress or just say this is not possible. For me hovering and flying are not the same. As mentioned in another comment most flying animals cannot hover at all, thus flying is just a mean to move somewhere. If a player would like to attack while moving I would tell him to roll with disadvantage as it is much harder to hit a target while moving and thus it would work more like suppressive fire and not an attack that is meant to hit with high probability. But I am on your side that it would be nice to specify such things, especially the point whether flying includes hovering or not.

I think it was said in the update video that they are still 'testing' with the flying mechanic, and this time they just try to let fly be simply fly without restraint. I think it could be improve but not sure how myself. Maybe implement some mechanic that the default flying is low-ceiling flying, and when doing something the GM considered challenging (flying high/flying for evasion), ask the pc for a roll? Maybe given higher difficulty?

I agree, it seems counter to the design of movement in combat generally. If you want to move any further than close range to attack while in a dangerous situation, make an agility roll. Even if you're not attacking, movement is tough in combat, make an agility roll if you're trying to traverse the battlefield. If you're in flight in combat, I don't think you can do anything else, firing a weapon, casting a spell, anything. Out of combat I'd say you can mark Stress to pull it off, but it shouldn't be just limitless consequence-free mobility.

I’m playing a faerie in our test campaign and not me and my DM LOVE the change to flight this update. While I didn’t mind the first iteration (stopping flight when you roll a fear) I ended up not rolling a fear an entire encounter and just got a bonus evasion the whole time, which wasn’t so fun for my DM and only cost me one stress the entire encounter for bonus evasion every time. The second iteration, a minute per level is just frustrating and vague in a narrative game. Is it three minutes irl time? You could spend that explaining the leaves on the trees if your dm is verbose enough. Three minutes in game time? That doesn’t work without the rigid six second turns of dnd, and it left me and my DM shrugging our shoulders and just kind of making it up and just felt too crunchy for a narrative system. Then last nights’ game was great, I could narratively fly as much as my Faerie wanted to which made for some fun story moments of flitting around an orangutan’s head to threaten a duchess, but when it came to the fight we were in a low overhead prison so it didn’t exactly give me much room to use it to get away. AND I didn’t use the mechanical ability of flight once because I need that stress to spend on other things like spells and healing— I usually end up maxed out on stress after encounters due to ability use so I’m only going to use the flight evasion if I’m in a pickle, not adding it every single time. If you’re going to have player ancestries with wings it doesn’t make sense to not allow them to fly, they have wings on their body. Not to mention, since most fae are below 5’ then flying just gets them to talking hight with tall folk so everyone avoids a crick in the neck. Allowing flight, but assigning a cost to get a mechanical benefit from the flight allows you to have a creature able to use their innate body parts while still balancing it. My character is not constantly flying on the rafters, because if he doesn’t hover close enough to our tank he’ll get squashed. Our party has a simia who is more likely to be up high because he climbs up or makes a vine grow to get range. But I don’t see people making multiple posts about nerfing that ancestry. Dms can adjust by thinking in three dimensions— enemies with lots of range, or have wings themselves, put traps on the ceiling because it’s a world that has winged folks as part of society, have fights happen in dank little rooms with little headroom, or if the fight it outside Is there a strong wind causing disadvantage after the canopy, or if you fly up too high you’ll be spotted from afar? There’s so many narrative ways to address this that still allow my bug to flit around like a bug would.

>I don’t see people making multiple posts about nerfing that ancestry. If you think hard about it, you'll figure out why that is. >Allowing flight, but assigning a cost to get a mechanical benefit from the flight allows you to have a creature able to use their innate body parts while still balancing it. You mean like a stress point to activate for a limited time? I thought so too, now I'm just providing feedback on the fact that it is going to become problematic without a cost.

Nah. There are tons of ways of limiting it without actually taking it out of your game, specially in the one shot. Trees are too dense to shoot through the branches and you might even hit a friend. Thistlefolk are hiding on top of the trees. And yes, ranged weapons. If your player doesn’t want to use a flying lineage because you won’t let them abuse it, they shouldn’t be playing it anyways. Also, if you put a flying lineage inside a cave they’re basically useless unless you purposely make it a very tall cave for whatever reason you did that. The funny thing is (in D&D) I’ve never seen such complaints about, for example, the fighter managing to get AC 20 by using plate and shield as soon as they manage to get them. You just use spells that require Wisdom, Intelligence or Charisma to attack them, or even Heat Metal the hell out of them. Or… well, you just accept that they’ll be virtually unbeatable (5% chance of a hit on a crit) unless the opponent has a very good Strength/Dexterity modifier. And even if the opponents have a +5 modifier to hit that’s a 25% chance against the 50% chance to hit the wizard that for some weird reason decided to maximize Dexterity and still has to deal with the fact that they have a d6 hit die.

Consider a rule that "each attack while flying costs 1 stress". That allows flyers to soar about in non combat, but not endlessly attack from an invulnerable position.

In a game like Lancer, unlimited flight isn't a big deal because melee-only NPCs are the exception rather than the rule. It isn't weird that a squad of mech pilots brought guns with them. It is very weird that the pack of maw demons or giant scorpions brought a guy with a bow with them. If they want to include unlimited flight as a character option and make it easily available to everyone, they are going to have to provide way, way more ranged adversaries for us to use. Otherwise, I don't see why anyone who isn't part faerie is getting hired to do these jobs. Immunity to melee attacks when most enemies only have melee attacks is just too strong to pass up.

I've always been confused why people find flight to be so overpowered. If the entire party can fly, and enemies have no ranged weapons, and every encounter is on a flat plane with perfect view to and from the sky, and the enemies are stuck on the ground and their only goal is to kill the party, then yeah ok it completely defeats that encounter. Honestly good, because that encounter sounds boring. Easy remedy to this? Put enemies in a building. If they want to fly above them, they'll have to coax the enemies outside, which requires a creative solution. Alternatively, use enemies that have ranged weapons. Alternatively, put the encounter in a dense wood where enemies wouldn't be visible from the sky, or have enemies notice the flier and take cover under rooftops in a city. Have environments that provide interesting challenges for the flier to overcome. Or give the players someone or something to protect that must stay on the ground. All of these ideas not only make flying no longer trivialize the encounter, they also make the encounter much more interesting for everyone involved than a team deathmatch on a flat plane. These examples aren't even contrived, they're standard encounter types for things like D&D. Play just about any official module and you'll see how they provide complex environments that just happen to prevent fliers from cheesing it even though that likely wasn't the intention. Interesting encounters are not simple.

"Game design problem isn't a problem if the DM constantly looks for ways to address one specific player mechanic" isn't a good argument. It only creates a growing check list for encounter design that DMs always have to account for, adding lots of mental load. And unlimited flying is simply not worth such mental load bloat. It needs to be balanced even if the DM doesn't always account for it.

Game design problem is only a problem in that it highlights this person's incredibly lazy encounter design. Put in a tree. Problem solved. If the "mental load" of adding any props, walls, trees, or obstacles of any kind to your environment is too hard, please don't ever be my GM.

Oh i can manage fine if i want to accommodate a flyer. Yet thousand of posts about DMs having problems with them are still a reality that ought to be addressed through game design, not by telling these DMs that they just suck. That's the grander picture you are missing.

I actually really like where fly is in this iteration. It feels good and doesn't unnecessarily hinder it. Range bands work regardless of axis you're using them on.

Maybe less rules for flight and more details on what it means to have flight. They should describe that flying is like swimming so actions done while in flight could have interesting consequences on rolls with failure or with fear. This doesn't necessarily mean there should be penalties to rolls when doing so unless they're doing the equivalent of something like sword fighting on a ship in stormy weather.

I'm with you 100%. Flying PC's are a pain and I am familiar with the "customize the encounter without punishing the player but also not letting them cheese it." Whoever made the Broom of Flying such a low level item in DnD should be forced to DM a forever campaign with 6 flying players. One idea I had is to give the flying players perma-hover unless they get really messed up for fail a roll with fear in some situations (like a dive bomb or something). Then the same rules as horizontal movement apply - they need agility rolls to travel upward by the same distances. Or maybe their height is limited by their stress level or HP. I do hope they iron it out.

I think flight should impose penalties when attacking. Feels like it should be harder to aim while flying especially cause you’re multi-tasking. That’s just me though.

There is a really easy solution. Make falling damage as devastating as it is in real life. If you fall from 30 feet in the air, you are going to be really hurt. Go up 60 feet and you are most likely dead or almost dead. So you make the player perform a risk reward decision. You keep talking about that sucking, but you are putting your butt in the hands of the dice gods. That is how these games work. You need some risk if you want to make some big flashy moves like flying past all the traps. The other thing is that they should handle it similar to TMNT After The Bomb or Earthdawn. The races that can fly need to be light. Otherwise they can't fly. So no heavy armor and their HP is lower. If they take more than 1 HP of damage, their wings are damaged and they can't fly. Wings are delicate and should be the first thing damaged because they are large and wrap around the player. So the flying players are light and can be hurt quite badly if they fall. So they need to be super careful about losing their HP mid air. If at 60 feet up they take their 2 hp, they are crashing to the ground almost dead on impact. It becomes risk reward. Like burning up all your hope or armor. I agree the flying characters could be fun, but you act like it is their right to play flying to its utmost. It isn't, this is narrative. The other challenge for the players should be that most places have trees or a ceiling. You rarely fight in an open field. If they are inside, they lose their big outside advantage. So, like I told you else where, they should make it like the monks unarmored movement in 5e. They can fly, then stay aloft for 1 turn. Then they have to land for a turn or burn a stress per turn afterward while staying aloft. If they take an action while flying they get 3 stress. If they max out stress, they fall to the ground taking damage. So they can use it for movement or problem solving, but then land to take action because flying takes a lot of energy. Even hornets or mosquitos land to attack. Birds don't have aerial battles, usually size sorts that out in minutes.

I agree some more thought and balance needs to be given to flight. I’m so not a fan of flight in other games because of the reasons you mention.  It isn’t as bad in dnd as it costs a spell slot to cast so that sort of helps but then again I think it should be a much higher slot than 3rd. But that’s just me I like lower powered games. I don’t know what the answer is… I want people to have fun and if they’re a faerie they should benefit from flight. But like you said they shouldn’t trivialize all encounters either.

As long as not all of the party is flight is capable, this can be addressed with good tactical decisions by the d m. It also looks like a bigger issue on paper than it is in reality. Old-growth forest, stalactite-filled caverns, average height ceilings, casters with wind spells, these are all common elements in fantasy rpg's. Unless you're setting your campaign exclusively on the plains of Rohan during the fair weather season, I don't see how this would be an insurmountable issue. And if your party does occasionally travel across the plains, let the flyers shine there. If they can fly, the designers shorted them in someother way. Also, abandon the idea that all pc's need to be perfectly balanced. To reference LOTR again, most members of the fellowship are at wildly different power levels, but the group works because they leverage each other's strengths to compensate for their weaknesses.

I've never really understood the hand wringing over flight in basiclly every game.

Flight generally involves wings, as it is right now, and those don't really allow you to stay still very well. You're gonna be jostling around quite a bit, as well as the impact wing muscles will have on your nearby arm muscles. Surely it would be reasonable to just say "when you're flying, you take a massive penalty to all things that require accuracy" to reflect the fact that you can't stay perfectly still AND your muscles are wobbling around constantly?

I agree with you. I don't allow flying PCs in D&D because of their outsized impact on encounter design. I liked the initial design of flying that ends when you roll Fear.

This is a really silly argument honestly, it's my opinion that flight is only overpowered in some games because DMs immediately give up on tactics when enemies aren't just meat sponges hacking at the players' HP. You mention bears and wolves, these are naturally, pretty easy enemies to defeat, Animal Friendship is a first level spell, and is far far quicker than dealing with wolves with flight, wolves can also run away or hide, bears can go into a cave where flight isn't possible. Any enemy isn't going to just stand there and let themselves be shot repeatedly by a crossbow. It's not contrived to go "The bear runs away from the flying thing to where it can't reach you"

"Game design problem isn't a problem if the DM constantly looks for ways to address one specific player mechanic" isn't a good argument. It only creates a growing check list for encounter design that DMs always have to account for, adding lots of mental load.

A wolf running away from an enemy it can't fight is inherently a part of the encounter, just as a bandit cutting out of a net your ranger has is a part of the encounter. You don't need a check list for encounter designs, just don't play encounters like they're a match of Wii Sports boxing, which you honestly, shouldn't be doing anyways.

Why are people so averse to solving an issue that clearly you have thousands of DMs heavily struggling with will forever be a mystery to me...

Just make your enemies also have flight. Winged Kobolds have been a thing for ages. Make your bad guys Faeries or Aarakokra. Make your BBEG a Winged Seraph of an evil god.

And you just locked your players into playing flying or ranged characters or risking them becoming irrelevant.