Strategic vs Tactical flight. Lava and deep water.

[Rast]

Strategic flight: Some vaults have areas behind deep water or lava which you can reach only by flying. These areas typically have items that you want. If you don't have a temporary or permanent source of flight, you have to ctrl+F for one, go get it, and come back. If none has been generated yet, you have to remember to keep an eye out for one. If you are in a portal vault that needs flight, and have no flight source, you are out of luck, except that portal vaults sometimes include free potions of flight for just this reason.

In my opinion, strategic flight is uninteresting. A gear check to gain treasure is dumb. If you can kill the monsters on the level, you should get the items.



Tactical flight: You can use flight to gain an advantage in combat against monsters. Examples include:
Move over normally uncrossable terrain, where most monsters will be unable to follow you.
Fly over shallow water, where many monsters will be penalized in combat, but you won't be.
There is a spell that does less damage to flying players.

That's a short list, but at least it is interesting, and has potential.

I'll put my suggestions in the next post.

[Rast]

Deep water: All characters should be able to cross this without flight, though non-natural swimmers will suffer harsh penalties to movement speed and combat and gain an increase to spell failure.
Lava: All characters should be able to walk across this without flight, suffering AC-ignoring fire damage each turn. Flight should only slightly reduce the damage, because physics.

Potions of flight: These are super boring and should be removed
Evokable temporary flight on items: This is weak and annoying to use. It should be replaced by permanent flight.
Toggleable perma-flight items: This is fiddly and should be replaced by permanent flight.

Spells and effects like airstrike that penalize a flying player more than a non-flying: These should be changed so that player flight is never a disadvantage, just as resistances are never a disadvantage.

[dowan]

I like having airstrike as a player do more damage to flying creatures, but agree it's bad for monster airstrike to punish a flying player, as you say it's mostly just a fiddly thing.

However you could have monster airstrike do extra damage when you're over terrain where flight gives an advantage. For example, it could add a little extra damage if you're over shallow water, more damage if you're over deep water or lava.

[Rast]

How about monster airstrike turns off player flight for one turn? If you're over water, you're going swimming and taking the penalties that come with it. If you're over lava, you're going to eat a little more fire damage than you would otherwise. After one turn, the flight magic reasserts itself and you're back in the air.

Oh, another advantage to making lava and deep water into terrain that the player can survive entering, is that then monsters could trample players into lava and deep water. Fun for the whole family devs only!