flight and knockDOWN

mirtexxan · 01-26-2019, 10:30 AM

What happens if a flying creature (flight advantage B56) gets knocked down (for istance due to a major wound)?

It is clear that a stun by itself does nothing if the creature can hover.
But what about the "falling prone" part?

Anaraxes · 01-26-2019, 12:17 PM

mlangsdorf collected all the 4e flying rules here, along with a couple of house rules.

- It makes a difference whether the Flight has "Cannot Hover" (as would realistic, aerodynamic fliers)
- Knockback can move you just fine
- Stun means you can't control your flight until you recover, not that you stop dead in the air. (Again, I'd take into account the details of the ability and the genre. A chi-empowered Zen robot gliding along in the lotus position might just stop. A flying superhero brick probably keeps going so they can plow into a building.)
- Knockdown is a hit hard enough to make a normal human-like combatant on the ground lose their footing. It's not so much that they get slammed straight to the ground as they're off balance and stunned, which results in them falling because they can't correct their balance. A literal duplication of the human warrior afoot would just be a 1m loss of altitude.

But to make things exciting and keep the event one that causes more jeopardy, you could treat knockdown as mlangsdorf's "wipeout" -- loss of control, but also disrupting your aerodynamic stability and attitude. You have no lift until you recover, so you fall 10 m per second, cumulative. (Add that downward speed to your own when you recover.) You have no control, so you keep moving horizontally at your previous speed.

You're likely to slam into something (if you're in a little dungeon room), likely to lose a lot of altitude but recover if you have room (say, getting knocked into a spin for those Cannot Hovers), but might crash at low altitude.

There's a lot of room to invent your own house rules. Fliers that can hover without a need for consciousness might largely ignore knockdown -- antigrav sleds or magic carpets or balloons might just spin around but not lose altitude, for example.

mirtexxan · 01-26-2019, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

But to make things exciting and keep the event one that causes more jeopardy, you could treat knockdown as mlangsdorf's "wipeout" -- loss of control, but also disrupting your aerodynamic stability and attitude. You have no lift until you recover, so you fall 10 m per second, cumulative. (Add that downward speed to your own when you recover.) You have no control, so you keep moving horizontally at your previous speed.
There's a lot of room to invent your own house rules. Fliers that can hover without a need for consciousness might largely ignore knockdown -- antigrav sleds or magic carpets or balloons might just spin around but not lose altitude, for example.

Thanks man for the link, very useful!
I guess that using the loosing altitude from "lose control" (5 m/s) or "wipeout" (10 m/s) rules (depending on circumstance) and computing eventual fall damage by B431 is a good fit for "living" users.

BTW, your suggestion about ignoring knockdown for objects, it is RAW, according to B484 ;)

Plane · 01-26-2019, 02:09 PM

The idea of falling prone certainly becomes weird when we think of flyers. In basic rules you move full speed in a standing posture, for example, but even though it's possible for people to fly with a vertically aligned torso, that doesn't tend to be how we envision them when moving at maximum speeds.

Same thing with swimming. Even things without "Horizontal" or "Semi-Upright" are probably assumed to be in a "torso horizontal" alignment with their medium, be it water or air.

Maybe the way to do it is to do a 90 degree rotation to the frame of reference for these? You are "standing" when the head>pelvis line is parallel with direction of travel and "crawling" when the line is perpendicular to it?

This would be like the "treading water" pose, or the pose Superman might make when slowly lowering someone to the ground rather than "fist ahead, boots behind" pose we expect to see when he streamlines himself for max speed.

01-26-2019, 10:30 AM	#1
mirtexxan Join Date: Jan 2019 Location: Italy	flight and knockDOWN What happens if a flying creature (flight advantage B56) gets knocked down (for istance due to a major wound)? It is clear that a stun by itself does nothing if the creature can hover. But what about the "falling prone" part?

01-26-2019, 12:17 PM	#2
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: flight and knockDOWN mlangsdorf collected all the 4e flying rules here, along with a couple of house rules. - It makes a difference whether the Flight has "Cannot Hover" (as would realistic, aerodynamic fliers) - Knockback can move you just fine - Stun means you can't control your flight until you recover, not that you stop dead in the air. (Again, I'd take into account the details of the ability and the genre. A chi-empowered Zen robot gliding along in the lotus position might just stop. A flying superhero brick probably keeps going so they can plow into a building.) - Knockdown is a hit hard enough to make a normal human-like combatant on the ground lose their footing. It's not so much that they get slammed straight to the ground as they're off balance and stunned, which results in them falling because they can't correct their balance. A literal duplication of the human warrior afoot would just be a 1m loss of altitude. But to make things exciting and keep the event one that causes more jeopardy, you could treat knockdown as mlangsdorf's "wipeout" -- loss of control, but also disrupting your aerodynamic stability and attitude. You have no lift until you recover, so you fall 10 m per second, cumulative. (Add that downward speed to your own when you recover.) You have no control, so you keep moving horizontally at your previous speed. You're likely to slam into something (if you're in a little dungeon room), likely to lose a lot of altitude but recover if you have room (say, getting knocked into a spin for those Cannot Hovers), but might crash at low altitude. There's a lot of room to invent your own house rules. Fliers that can hover without a need for consciousness might largely ignore knockdown -- antigrav sleds or magic carpets or balloons might just spin around but not lose altitude, for example.

01-26-2019, 02:09 PM	#4
Plane Join Date: Aug 2018	Re: flight and knockDOWN The idea of falling prone certainly becomes weird when we think of flyers. In basic rules you move full speed in a standing posture, for example, but even though it's possible for people to fly with a vertically aligned torso, that doesn't tend to be how we envision them when moving at maximum speeds. Same thing with swimming. Even things without "Horizontal" or "Semi-Upright" are probably assumed to be in a "torso horizontal" alignment with their medium, be it water or air. Maybe the way to do it is to do a 90 degree rotation to the frame of reference for these? You are "standing" when the head>pelvis line is parallel with direction of travel and "crawling" when the line is perpendicular to it? This would be like the "treading water" pose, or the pose Superman might make when slowly lowering someone to the ground rather than "fist ahead, boots behind" pose we expect to see when he streamlines himself for max speed.