Allow or No Allow: Flying Player Characters in D&D

 Hello everyone.  It's Mr. Jon again and for this little blurb of my brain, I thought I would start a segment called "Allow or No Allow" where I cover various different topics that most of the time I get heavily engaged in with discussions, arguments, etc.  I will also do video segments on my other social media channels regarding this as well.

For this topic, I will be discussing my opinions on the Dungeons and Dragons topic of to allow or not to allow a player to have a natural ability to fly (meaning not acquired through experience, level, or magical means - aka they were just born with it).

I will begin by saying this is a very hot-button topic as of recent weeks/months on most of the Facebook pages I follow that some of you reading this follow also.  People going back and forth about rules as written (RAW) vs. rules as interpreted (RAI) vs. DMs stifling creative freedom vs. DMs just allowing it and having to adjust to the spectrum.

IN MY OPINION (because that's what blogs are for right?) this should most definitely be a session zero conversation, no matter what anyone on the social media feeds, other blogs, DNDBeyond, or the rules creator's twitter feed says otherwise.  

The sessions zero conversation gives the DM and the player to discuss to pros and cons of the player, and to allow the two of them to set boundaries.  This allows the flying player to:

* not overshadow or derail the entire campaign

* put undue stress of any kind of the rest of the party

* put any undue stress on the DM, the planned and unplanned part of the story

Once the session zero is done, then there is still the matter of gameplay.  This falls on the DM to keep the game just as challenging for the naturally flying player as it is for the "grounders" who weren't born with wings.

I try to mitigate this by setting a series of boundaries that are city-wide, region-wide, or world-wide which were developed for my custom world, but my brother has found they are very adaptable to the Forgotten Realms and we've both found they are excellent in various parts of Ravenloft.

Now i've been in several discussions about how these "stifle a player's creativity" which i promptly counter with my comments above regarding session zero.  At no point should any of the below become arbitrary or "everywhere" just to bully the flying player.

1.  Laws are created for the peace of everyone.  Add your reasoning behind it (previous demon attacks, fear of dragons, etc.) and have reasonable laws for no flying in town without a license (something cheap like 5g).  Similar to how Baldur's Gate has "no mounts in town" laws.  

2.  This one is my favorite:  on a flat board, once i drop tiles, if you leave the game area, you are considered "fleeing" and thus removed from the encounter until it is resolved.  With flying characters, I set this distance to "outside of the flying characters ranged attacks without disadvantage" whatever that happens to be.  Example:  say the range of the weapon is 150/300.  Once i'm vertically outside of 150 feet, i'm considered "fleeing the battle".  

Before you get your panties in a twist, the extension to that is this:  if the player chooses to reenter the battle, they roll a new initiative with disadvantage.  This disadvantage is a mitigation tool to avoid player abuse.

Final note:  as DM, at your discretion, set a "routed" point of fleeing.  I set it as once half the party flees, the players are "routed" - everyone flees, combat is over, and all players make a con save 8+CR of fight or gain one level of exhaustion.

3.  The final point, which I tell players "you are in a high monster population area.  split party is not advised,"  is if the flyer flies too high, they are considered split from the party and treated as such.

Treat the area as a 3-dimensional column.  I treat the column having three layers:  ground, low altitude, high altitude.  Then whip up a quick 10-12 count of monsters that would fly less than 1000' and more than 1000' and go from there.

"oh but Mr. Jon, that singles out the player....."  which i promptly counter with "you've previously learned this is a high monster populous area, and you've previously learned ________ monsters patrol the skies.....  you're the dumbass who went too high up and invoked the wrath of ________ monster you encountered."

4.  Final point:  social interactions.  I do this with ALL winged and monstrous looking races, and every race from Volos.  Period.  Set an average amount of races in the city.  In older modules and campaign settings, this was normally listed as part of the bio of the city.  "Welcome to Arabele.  Predominant species are human, elves, dwarves; secondary species are gnomes, halflings, goblins."  - NOW, if an Aarokokra, Thri-Kreen, or Fairy walkes up into Arabele as described, they are going to have some social interactions to deal with until their FAME or INFAMY increase in that town.

"oh but Mr. Jon this adds arbitrary bullshit to my game" .....  again, session zero, challenge the players, but keep the game fun.  I do it once, maaaaaaaaybe twice per location.  My wife is currently playing an elven sorceress, dragon bloodline, lv 14 - big dragon-like wings protruding from her elven frame.  I had to explain to her that she will no doubt be mistakened 

In the end, it all is a matter of balance between player and DM.  If you're a DM remember its a win if you and your table are having fun.  Set challenges so that the winged adventurer has fun but feels challenged by the concept of wings.