>From: CJ <cj_at_...>
>
Judging by the concern about
>flying magic here, should i have denied the player this for his starting
>hero? They got round the wind direction by the Hedkoranth godi calling
>up winds as required: I seem to recall he could wealk on wind as well,
>and did so frequently!
We've been over this before, haven't we? (My paranoid side thinks this is some attempt to get me up in arms just for the fun of seeing if somebody can get me to rant). There's been some sage advice here, but as usual I have a tad more radical opinion. I don't see a flying ability as any more "gamebreaking" than I do "Run Fast." Outside of Glorantha I don't bother with increased TNs for the "inherently difficult magic" (who am I kidding, when I run in Glorantha I don't pay attention to those rules there either).
The only way any particular ability can be problematic, is if
To be sure, I've argued before that abilities can be trumps in certain situations. I mean, if the contest is to fly to yon cloud, and you have a flying ability no matter how narrow, and I don't, well, you win. If you want a mechanical explanation for this, I try to use my "Run Fast" ability being the closest thing I can find on the character sheet, and the Narrator rules by the Improv Penalty rule that it's an automatic failure.
So, yeah, fly trumps run in this case. Now, let's say we're in a cave, and it's got low cielings with stalactites and absolutely no room to maneuver, and you're some huge winged being that can only move by flying, and you want to try to catch me. Well, guess what, my Run Fast just trumped your Fly High ability.
I won't even get down on "combat" here, because I don't have to. Flying simply isn't a trump in that case. What was the example? Flying just outside of arrow range, and dropping rocks? OK, let's see, you're skill in rock dropping is...oh, you don't have that on your sheet? Well, heck, even if you did, at the speed a rock drops, and from that height, all the defender would have to do is step out of the way. And that's, of course, assuming you can fly with the weight. I'm seeing people having to go back and forth - to the ground, of course - to get rocks.
Oh, you mean in massed combat? With lots of people on both sides? Is this actually something that comes up all the time in your game?
I mean, the real problem people seem to have with flying characters is that it implies flying troops, and that implies a huge advantage in mass combat. I don't disagree that flying should be rare and special...it's a cool ability, and is less cool if it's common. But even then, as we all agreed last time (IIRC), if your guys have magic to allow them all to fly, then my guys likely have magic to ground them and or make a mess of their flight.
In the end, unless you decide to put a huge situational penalty on people fighting flying folks, a Fly Like a Bird 17 is just a +2 augment to something like fighting. Does that seem "unrealistic?" I dunno, are there no trees or shelter that the groundbound people can take to, in order to force you to come down nearby?
Ah, but you say, what if they don't have ranged weapons? Then I say, then the contest can't be "who shoots who first" can it? This is the "combat system" mindset. If you're shooting at me, and I can't shoot at you, then I can't very well say that my goal is "to shoot you" now can I? It'll have to be something like, "Get to shelter before I'm shot" or the like. Once you've shot me, or I've gotten to shelter, then we'll move on to the next contest, "which'll be your character defending against my character tearing your character's phyche a huge mental hole with his verbal skills for being so cowardly."
I had a winged character in play for 19 sessions at one point. It was simply not a problem. Somehow her wings just didn't matter when the contest was whether or not she could barter for the souls of her demon-hunted friends. That's not to say that they never came in useful, they did quite often. But it hardly made the character a "Gamebreaker."
Mike
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