Fly skill and Turning without checks

[lbxzero]

I am reading through the fly skill and trying to understand the wording. It says that you can turn "up to" 45 degrees at the sacrifice of 5ft of movement without making a check. This is very vague because of all the other flying rules.

What I am compiling from the rules is at the start of the turn you set a direction to fly. Then, you can't deviate from that direction more than 45 degrees without a skill check. It does not specify if the "up to" 45 degree movement is per square of movement or for overall turn.

[Ravingdork]

Turning in any direction for any amount in between turns is FREE. You only need to make the check and pay the movement cost when you are turning on your turn (such as to zig-zag past a bunch of castle towers in your way).

[lbxzero]

Yes, but that does not answer the question.

In one round, is the "up to 45 degree" shift in movement applied per square I move in the round or for the entire movement of the round? Given enough movement speed and area, can the character make a half-moon route (180 degree turn in an arc) for one move action without making a fly check?

[Xenrac]

lbxzero wrote:

Yes, but that does not answer the question.

In one round, is the "up to 45 degree" shift in movement applied per square I move in the round or for the entire movement of the round? Given enough movement speed and area, can the character make a half-moon route (180 degree turn in an arc) for one move action without making a fly check?

Seems legit, you'd be sacrificing 5ft with every turn, and you'd be taking a significantly less intricate flying maneuver. I mean, making an arcing turn is easier than a sharp 180 while flying. So why not?

[lbxzero]

I am asking a question and getting answers not meant for it. Let me ask the question differently as a response to the given reply.

But I made a 180 degree turn for my move action, that should require a check even if the route is an arc, right?

[Akasharose]

lbxzero wrote:

I am asking a question and getting answers not meant for it. Let me ask the question differently as a response to the given reply.

But I made a 180 degree turn for my move action, that should require a check even if the route is an arc, right?

I would not require the check if there was straight flight movement between each 45 degree turn.

try this with a figure on a map -
Example: Straight 5'. turn 45 (5' move), straight 5', turn 45 (5' move), straight 5', turn 45 (5' move), straight 5' (but cost 10' as second diagonal move), turn 45 (5' move), straight 5' ... your figure should now be 15' over from where you started and facing the other direction (a 180 degree turn on an arc) .. and you just used 50' of total movement.

The truth is I have found no clear place for rules on this so I made up house rules. I used this system based upon a medium creature and as a GM I require one more square of straight movement between turns for each size bigger than medium (so a huge dragon would need to travel 3 squares between each 45 turn)...
or let them do 2 45 moves before moving straight if small ... so if you were fine in size you could do 180 (4 45 degree turns) on a dime without a check.

Hope this is not too confusing .. I find for those who use fly often it becomes understood quickly.

[Ilja]

Quote:

It can also turn up to 45 degrees by sacrificing 5 feet of movement, can rise at half speed at an angle of 45 degrees1, and can descend at any angle at normal speed. Note that these restrictions only apply to movement taken during your current turn.

I believe the restriction is for the whole round - that is, if you have say a speed of Fly 60 ft, you can without making a check as a move action:

A. Move 60 ft. in a straight line in any direction.
B. Move 55 ft. including no more than 45 degrees of turning.

If you did (A), you can make the same choice again for as another move action (double move). If you chose B, you can only move in a straight line as a move action unless you make a check.

This is how I interpret it, but I agree that it is vague and could be interpreted differently.

[lbxzero]

But Akasharose, that example would require checks for each of the 4 rounds you spent moving unless your flight speed is 20 feet.

The problem I am having is that I have not found anywhere in the core rulebook specifies that rotating the character occurs per round or per tile.

[GreenMandar]

Looking at the 3.5 rules these are based on, I would say it's per square. While it worked a little different, the bit about spending 5ft of movement to turn is a combination of the "Turn" and "Turn in place" lines from the Maneuverability chart.
Description for the Turn line: "How much the creature can turn after covering the stated distance". These were
Perfect: Free
Good: 90º/5 ft
Average: 45º/5 ft
Poor: 45º/5ft
Clumsy 45º/10ft

So even clumsy creatures could still mke mutiple 45 turns without difficulty.

The turn in place line just let Good and Average maneuverability creatures sacrifice 5 ft of movement to increase turn by 90º or 45º respectively.

There were no fly skill ckecks to attempt harder things.