Got a question from a player about flying and want to confirm the action economy. The question is does moving and hovering in place use 1 action or two actions?p/b]
Link to the Maneuver in Flight rules, for reference.
So my initial impression is that moving and hovering would be two separate actions, but I want to make sure because using up 2 actions is a lot in combat and if they aren't hovering in place...what exactly happens? Does their momentum keep them going forward as they use their 2nd-3rd action to fire a crossbow and reload? If so, how far do they go?
Is there something I'm missing? How do you handle it at your table?
[b]EDIT: oh hey, here's the part I missed! On the rules for Fly it states "You move through the air up to your fly Speed. Moving upward (straight up or diagonally) uses the rules for moving through difficult terrain. You can move straight down 10 feet for every 5 feet of movement you spend. If you Fly to the ground, you don’t take falling damage. You can use an action to Fly 0 feet to hover in place. If you’re airborne at the end of your turn and didn’t use a Fly action this round, you fall."
The strange one to me is that the Fly rules say that you can just spend an action to fly 0 feet. But the Maneuver rules say that it requires Expert proficiency in acrobatics and a skill check in order to hover in place - but only in the example maneuver list. It also doesn't give a DC for it, so I expect that I would use the standard Expert proficiency DC of 20.
In a home game I was running, I would probably only ask for a maneuver check if there was some reason that automatic fly 0 feet would be opposed by something and therefore actually being a difficult maneuver - strong winds, maybe trying to line up a difficult ranged attack, carrying close to an encumbering amount of weight,... Something like that.
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As for taking two actions, no. I don't think that is right. Fly rules say that you fall if you don't take any fly actions during your turn, but Maneuver action says that it counts as a fly action.
You try a difficult maneuver while flying.
I'm sure there are people who will argue against that, but it seems clear enough to me. And requiring a Maneuver action and then an additional Fly action to avoid falling just seems punishing.