House Rule: Removing Fly as a skill

[ckdragons]

Just had a long conversation with my players about how the Fly skill, and flight overall, is poorly worded and can hinder the game with the number of skill checks involved to do most anything in combat while flying, mostly hovering. While this can be easily overcome with either a Headband of Intellect +2 (Flying), or dumping ranks in the Fly skill, overall it becomes another "tax" within the game.

So, instead I'm thinking of making a house rule that remove Fly skill from the game, in the similar manner that others have removed Perception. Aside from the obvious change that this skill is no longer used or needed for anything, what other mechanics will be affected by this change? Characters with a fly speed will be able do about everything person on level ground can do, increasing altitude will be treated as difficult terrain, and decreasing altitude will double your speed (5 ft movement to move up to 10 ft). I know Hover will become a unnecessary, and it will be easy enough to replaced as needed.

Anything else I should keep my eye out for?

[LordKailas]

It does remove advantages that naturally agile fliers have. Maneuverability class can be a 16 point bonus difference alone (clumsy vs perfect). Size can also have a considerable impact. It's why something like a dragonfly can make the check to hover with minimal skill point investment, while something like a dragon practically requires the hover feat in order to be an effective flier.

As for it being a skill tax, it's as much of one as the ride skill is. You don't need to invest points into it if it's not something you're doing in combat. Even then it can depend on how you are flying. Spells like Fly and Overland Flight effectively come with ranks as they give you a scaling bonus to the fly skill based on caster level.

if you're going to remove the skill I don't think it's an issue so long as you introduce some sort of penalty or benefit based on the creature's maneuverability class and/or size.

[Lady Asharah]

Hovering while fighting *should be difficult* even most (ok, this is a guess, I haven't actually looked through all monsters, but it applies to the most I've seen) flying monsters can't really hover that well and have Flyby Attack instead.

Remember turning at the start of your turn requires no fly check, so as long as you don't perform crazy turns on your turn, you can spend most of a fight without rolling much, probably just if you get hit, and that's a relatively simple DC. You are looking at DC10 to fly less than half speed (this will happen without flyby attack if you want to avoid attacks of opportunity), and DC10 to avoid dropping 10ft in altitude after taking damage, which isn't actually a huge deal.

By the time a party reaches a point where they can reliably *fight in the air* their Fly skill should easily beat DC10 with just a few ranks in it (1 should be sufficient if Fly is a class skill... which it is for a surprising amount of classes).

For the higher DCs, all those are optional, and difficult, maneuvers to pull off in the air that most flying creatures will have trouble with. Most creatures *living* in the air will have trouble with a 180 degree turn. Keep that in mind.

If you absolutely need to remove Fly, I would replace it with Acrobatics. It is likely the most similar skill to what Fly is actually called for to check (aerial acrobatics pretty much in most cases)

[Mudfoot]

I would keep the skill, though the rules might want to change. When the Sorcerer IMC in a 3.0 game picked up Fly and Fireball, he suddenly became the Luftwaffe and broke the game. 3.0 had no Fly skill (and the Fly spell lasted 10 mins/level).

Flying is so good, you need to restrict it.

Also, remember that there is no rule that says that Flying is silent. You might sound like a 747.

[Zero the Nothing]

Maybe you could condense Fly skill checks into Acrobatics. Just use the Fly skill modifiers for flight grade to adjust the Acrobatics skill check.

I've already considered lumping Escape Artist in Acrobatics as well.