So one of my players last night was playing a Birdman. Aaracokra, right?
They went with rogue, and a bow, and high dexterity. They were flying around getting elevation advantages, and since the enemies were typically within 5 ft of each other, it was just gruesome. I had some of the NPCs trying to hit them with a ballista net launcher and it just wasn't happening. I had decided it would take 1 round for 4 goons to load and fire, or longer if some of the goons were dead. They missed on the first shot, and then it was all over. The bird man picked them off, one by one. Even though the Ballista had the initial range advantage (no penalty out to longer range), it just didn't matter.
Bird man just popped them off. Disadvantage? Are you serious? These guys are like AC 12-13, and Bird man has to roll like a 7 or better. What, 16 on one roll and 11 on the other? What disadvantage? Dead. Delay, dead. Guy climbs up the stairs to back up the others. Dead. Guys shoot back with hand cross bows as bird man closes in, but bird man keeps coming. Dead. And dead.
Then the wolf pack in the forest. OMGWTFBBQ!!
Barbarian is getting pounced by a pile of wolves, using their rage and a decent AC to avoid getting killed. Perfect tank, no problem. But Bird man is just hovering over head, popping off the wolves, instant death on every hit. Of course they are within 5 feet of each other. Of course birdman has elevation. That would have been almost acceptable, except the wolves could lterally do nothing to Birdman. Nothing at all.
There are tons of monsters that Birdman can just solo without any chance at all for retaliation, and this was all very low level. I can't believe Wizards thought this was a balanced race option, but with archery and rogues, it's just awful. Like, i cant even guess the CR modifier for that combo.
I outright told my group that aarakocra would not be allowed. The ability to fly can really be used to nerf so many situations, unless you actively plan for it, say by having significant ranged enemies in every encounter.
shintashi wrote:
shintashi wrote:
flight bends 5e over its knee. Either give monsters from the books a lot more bows and training in them, put your adventures in a dungeon or cave, or don't let PCs have it.
If anybody ever survives a fight with this Aaracockra, he should tell his friends to get lots of armor and learn to use a bow-and-arrow. Let's see that aaracockra blow off somebody in AC 21 and shooting back.
Think about falling damage, and Sleep.
As DM, you have the option of buffing up the monsters with more HP - so they take more-than-one shot to go down.
Another option: aaracockra NPCs, paid to assassinate the PC. Don't use this until after he steps on somebody important's toes - like the Thieves' Guild or a Prince of the Realm.
iserith wrote:
They are not quite as nasty as you might think. Flying creatures do rule a battlefield, but only as long as they don't come into missile range - at that point they become pincushions because they are a high priority target.
Additionally, while they are great outdoors, they suck in dungeons. A 5ft wide (or even a 10 ft wide) passage just isn't big enugh to extend wings.
shintashi wrote:
Greenstone.Walker wrote:
this is what we have always done in our games with other people, and i have no idea where it comes from, but here's a quote from a review comparing 5e and chainmail: "* As with Chainmail, terrain can become important. Movement over certain terrain can be faster or slower, and high ground grants advantage over opponents below"
in general, we apply it to any flying/levitating/tower/top of wall shooter. Two flyers might battle each other seeking ever higher ground. Obviously there's people who never heard of interpreting the rules this way. Most of the flying things are DM run, as are most Tower Guards. So we use "elevation" like a sniper position from a Tower top or a Tree as an advantage condition. Normally, melee attacks for birds/dragons/etc. require a flying monster to swoop down, so they might lose advantage. But certain attacks, like a mounted Archer on top of a Griffon or Silver Dragon, for example, can provide advantage, in our games at least.
Good to know about the 5ft thing though. It would have mattered...eventually. And now i know. For the last several battles though, all the enemies were within 5ft of at least one of their own enemies. I was running group conflicts, like 8-20 good guys vs. 15-16 bad guys. My one regret is just before the PCs were ready to head into the dragon's lair, Bird Man got a call and had to leave. So the first time Bird man would get to fight a flying opponent that could pose a real challenge, he conveniently left the party.
There is no specific rule in D&D 5e that automatically grants a mechanical advantage for having the "high ground". That's entirely your call as the DM. If you're giving the aarakocra rogue advantage on every attack simply because he's above his enemies, then yes, he'll not only be hitting more regularly but also getting his sneak attack regardless of any other condition. Might I suggest not doing that for a while and see if you still feel the birdman is OP?
Like others have said, variety of terrain and monsters faced will balance. In addition to what has been said before, aarakcocra needs light in dark places too.
In one game of my campaign the aarakcocra PC did great outside and was able to fly down a fleeing goblin before it got to its cave. But when the party went into the cave, the Aarakcocra was seriously limited.
Out of curiosity if you're in a forest why don't the wolves just run under trees for cover or in brush thickets? Birdman has to land, Wolves knock him prone, raw chicken for the pack.
They may be wild animals but they aren't gonna run out or stay in dangerous conditions.
shintashi wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Some ideas off the top of my head:
1) Use critters that can knock the birdman prone. That way he'll fall out of the sky and take falling damage. (This is one of the things that makes the fly spell balanced; if you lose concentration, you fall!)
2) Use more closed-in spaces. These don't even have to be indoor or underground environments. That encounter with the wolves in the woods - you could've made that a dense forest with a thick canopy, preventing the birdman from flying high up in the sky. He would've had to either descend to the ground or navigate through the thick trees, and there would've been plenty of obstacles to give the wolves cover, even from creatures above them.
I think it's fine for a player to flex his character's muscles and dominate every so often. It's even a good thing. That's the whole point of getting the fly spell or playing an Arakkoa. It's not going to happen every time like say... in a dungeon. Let him have his fun, but change things up sometimes.
Sometimes you can have a thick canopy of trees.
Sometimes the enemies can have ranged weapons.
Somteimes you can have the villagers warn adventurers about a wyvern that hunts these woods. (and will snatch a bird-man right out of the air)
But not every time!
Sometimes the Arakkoa can be an untouchable sniper god, and that's great. It's one of the reasons he picked that character. But if it happens too often it probably won't be all that fun for everyone at the table.
- Eck
our first battle was actually indoors, with well armed orcs. They had no trouble hurling javelins at the Bird Man. There was a thick canopy in a later battle when the player characters fell upon a feasting Ettin. Only the Wolves so far have suffered Total pwnage, the rest of the advantage effects draw easily from the fact that the Barbarian was always within 5 feet of the foes - classic tanking.
I guess plains, deserts, fields, valleys, and seas are all stomping grounds for Bird Man against melee monsters.. at least until they run out of Arrows... bwhahahaha! Ammo restrictions XD
Have a look at this thread where Iserith answers a similar question about a 10th level Necromancer being able to summon 30+ skeletons.
http://community.wizards.com/comment/52244621#comment-52244621
- Eck
shintashi wrote:
I would rule disadvantage on all attacks made whilst flying - as some others have intimated. Landbound characters can't attack as part of a 'dash' action, after all [edit: with some exceptions...]. Even if we assume the birdman is hovering not swooping, the beating of the wings would impact stability and aim.
[another edit] in fact I would say it's perfectly reasonable to say that an Aaracokra can't hover unless they take 'Hover' as their action 
Sounds like WotC manages to royally screw the Aarakocra up. The hands used to be on the wings preventing specifically this-- and even then, they should have given it disadvantage on using ranged attacks while flying and require that it move at least 15' forward every round while in the air.
I really got to wonder why it was even at the top of their prioriety list to write a racial write up of given that they clearly weren't ready to handle such a thing.
Hebitsuikaza wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
iserith wrote:
shintashi wrote:
There are limits on how the DM may change the encounters.
pukunui wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
An oversight perhaps. Poor design maybe. "A major screw-up"? 
We're talking about one easily ignored (or easily fixed) aspect of the game, not some core mechanic.
MechaPilot wrote:
Hebitsuikaza wrote:
Ralif_Redhammer wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
iserith wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
I guess I don't see much of an issue. Barring an entire party of flying PCs you're just shifting who takes more of the focus for the attacks. Let's say you have 3 encounters:
Encounter 1: Pack of wolves and dire wolves in an open field. Bird PC is fine, rest of party takes potentially more damage.
Encounter 2: Humanoids in a light forest. Bird PC will have limited shots and will be in about the same danger as the rest of the party, maybe a bit more if the humanoids have access to a ranged prone.
Encounter 3: An air elemental. If the bird PC stays airborne then the air elemental can tear into him while the rest of the party can eat popcorn and watch the dogfight. If the air elemental uses its special it might just kill the bird PC outright depending upon elevation.
The threat to the whole party is about the same in the 3 encounters. The bird PC is under little threat individually due to flight in the first and is under the greatest threat in the third.
This is different than something like wall of force, sleep, or slow where the enemies become useless or much weaker due to an effect.
I was comparing the Genasi and Aarakocra recently. The Aarakocra gets an unlimited, use any time flying ability. The Air Genasi, on the other hand, only had the ability to levitate per the spell, and needs a long rest before they can use it again. Sure, the Air Genasi gets some other abilities to boot, but there’s a clear difference in the airborn power introduced in the same product.
Maybe the way to make playing an aarakocra balanced is to insist they can only be beastmaster rangers...
I really don't understand why a flying character should get advantage just because they are above the target. Yes, they can overcome cover - a vertical wall, for example - but the target is often *smaller* from the air, plus the instability of flying (wind, for example) although that is not covered by the game mechanics of flying.
A giant, for example, would be a smaller target from above than from the ground, just by virtue of the angle from which it is being attacked. Why should the flying attacker get advantage, unless there is some other factor involved, such as weaker armor over its shoulders, or something like that?
The quick way I see to challenge an aaracockra PC is to set most of your encounters in / near some woods. Inside buildings or within dungeons works, too.
Make sure your NPCs are smart enough to run between the trees when arrows are shot at them from overhead.
iserith wrote:
I usually let my players play whatever they want, and don't really restrict races etc. If they want to play an Aasimar they can. However, ranged or casting Aarakocra are just not allowed as any idiot can just look at that race and build the most exploitative bullshit character imaginable. If you want to play a melee Aarakocra, be my guest. That limits the combat power of flying substantially, and out of combat flying is just a nice perk (compensating for the fact that a grounded Aarakocra is weaker than average), giving the character a chance to shine in some situations.
You should tell your player that letting him play a ranged Aarakocra was a mistake on your part and ask him to make a new char with the same xp/converted gear. If he refuses, bye bye. Now I don't say that lightly, but why would you want someone who's only interested in basically exploiting how badly 5e handles flight messing up your game constantly. Think about how the rest of the party feels having an untouchable sky-rogue raining death with advantage completely outshining them. A high ground house rule sounds good in theory, but really shouldn't allow mechanics that lets someone have perma-advantage either (especially rogues!).
Making special npcs/monsters to knock the Aarakocra out of the sky is a terrible solution, and basically makes him crater to his death each time it lands (1d6 bludgeoning damage per 10ft fallen is the rule, hello 60d6 20d6 from max longbow range 200ft). You think this will encourage him to stay on the ground but it won't. It the entire premise of his character. He will just risk getting cratered instead. If you really want to let him play his sky rogue you basically have to remove his advantage and always have plenty or ranged attackers in your encounters, but that will make that character feel like he's being countered specifically.
tldr; Just say no to Aaraochra kids.
Rhym wrote:
pukunui wrote:
my wife and i both agree, Aara Coca Cola is best.
pukunui wrote:
One idea that comes to mind is to decrease the amount of experience the players get for the encounters where they used that tactic. The reason being that the xp gained for an encounter is based on the challenge rating of that encounter, the overall dificulty. If they consistantly use tactics that make challenges less difficult then the Xp rewards should lower to equal the challenge.
Frankly, it doesn't sound like most of your problems would be solved by losing the aarokocra - the player would still be hitting without advantage , and would still be one-shotting his opponents. The only difference is that you are apparently altering your encounters to defeat him specifically, and in the process making your encounters weaker (yay! 4 guys get ONE attempt to weakly attack per round! Effective!).
My suggestion would be that you stop handing out advantage for altitude, because it's silly. Previous editions gave out a +1 or +2 bonus. Advantage is worth a ton more than that. Next just play, and make sure that you mix things up with ranged and flying opponents every so often. And stop being surprised when a character one-shots low level mooks.
If you give the aarokokra advantage on attacks, do you give all flying and large creatures advantage on attacks? Or anyone mounted on a horse against walking stuffs? Cuz...taller.
That is a significant deviation from the regular rules.
in many circumstances, flying creatures and very large creatures get advantage on attacks, in many other circumstances, they don't. I pretty much keep a minimum amount of elevation in mind, something like 10-20 feet... After the creature is way too high, too far away, or too low to the ground, they lose their 'fish in a barrel" bonus.
So bird man threw their dice in the air and quit. First they didn't like the arcane trickster being restricted to illusion/charm. Then they didn't like the javelins using strength bonus instead of dex. Then they got upset when they discovered sneak attack only added +2d6 and not +2d8. When they started imaginationing away enemies, from 12 down to 9, and I refused to make 3 lizardfolk disappear in an Orwellian act of Handwavium, they had their popeye moment and stormed out.
Some players will never be happy, even when they get broken advantages that might not even be legal
Wow, so they quit because they didn't have a "you win" button. Well hopefully you can find a better group to game with.
Saeviomagy wrote:
shintashi wrote:
shintashi wrote:
Wow, sounds like you’ll be better off without this guy at the table, though that sort of drama is always unpleasant. As I’ve wondered before, what is the excitement of having an unbeatable, rules-broken character? Adventures shouldn’t be impossible, but neither should they be cakewalks.
shintashi wrote:
It sounds like the DM just didn't bother to modify the encounters or to play the bad guys intelligently. Four mooks with long bows would have been more effective than all 4 of them on the ballista. The wolves should have (as somebody pointed out) sought cover. A caster with Sleep would have put Birdman in his place.
And, yeah, no Advantage for elevation. I notice the quote in question said "advantage" lower-case. That's not the same as "Advantage" upper-case.
I would, however, like a clarification on the movement/hover question. I would be inclined to let birdmen (see how I'm avoiding trying to spell it?) hover in the sense of occupying one 5' square, but still with some movement, akin to treading water. So if you can't move freely you plummet.
Finally, and for the same reason as the above (plus the metagame reason that it's more balanced) there should a penalty to ranged attacks while flying, maybe with the Sharpshooter feat negating it.
Byakugan01 wrote:
Elfcrusher wrote:
Elfcrusher wrote:
I had suspicions before, but after your description of his antics, I'm now fairly sure he was also fudging both his attack and damage dice rolls, which would have compounded the issues you were seeing.
I forget who said it here, but the phrase “If you suspect someone is cheating, then they are most likely cheating” comes to mind.
Saeviomagy wrote:
Saeviomagy wrote:
Coredump00 wrote: