Flying Ancestries could use a lore exploration on why Adventurers often don't fly

[Christopher#2411504]

Flying ancestries in PF2 are tricky mechanically, as permanent flight is a rather high level ability. The 1/5/9 Featline is a elegant solution from the mechanical point of view.

However, a recent discussion about the flight feats made me realize it does cause a disconnect between NPC and PC of the same ancestries:
- A Level 2 Strix NPC can fly.
- A Level 2 Strix PC can barely "jump good".
PC's can't fly, when seemingly everyone else can.

When making a Strix PC, I instinctively designed around that. I made him a Suli Geniekin, with a heavy earth slant on the element side. And that large amount of earth element in his body prevented him from flight (until he had trained to channel enough air power). That worked for my idea, but I think it would be nice if we had a more general Lore Exploration for this phenomenon.

Effectively, a low PC or a PC without those feats suffers a low-severity disability. They have the same issues in their society that a adopted Gnome would have.
The Strix have a interesting naming conventons for the Flight feats: Fledgeling, Juvenile, Full. Which made me think that maybe they used to measure biological development and thus age by the flight ability? Remnants of that era are propably still in some ancient laws and all over the Strix language. Even if they are more accomodating now and changed the social norms and village designs to accomodate non-fliers, it would still set adventurers apart during their formative years.

This could even tie into the reason to become adventurers in the first place. So many adventurers are late fliers or flightlesss:
- because people with that issue often become adventurers
- because they are were too driven to become adventurers and thus neglect flight training

Set over in the original thread had this idea:

Set wrote:

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

What the game is missing, is a Lore explanation for the discrepancy between adventurers without flight and "normal" members of the ancestry.

Something like "For unknown reasons, some get their flight only late into adulthood or never at all. As they have issues fitting into a society build around flying movement, many of them become adventurers".

And that could be kind of neat, leaning into mindsets of those who prioritize flight above all other things, and those who either cannot, or do not want to, devote years of their lives to strengthening their wings and take flight like their pre-sapient ancestors, and would rather focus on learning a craft, studying magic or leading their people.

There could be positive interpretations and groups that get along and value each others different contributions, and groups that do not understand or approve of each others choices, and see 'not able to fly' as some sort of disability or sign of failure (such as comparing flightless avians to some sort of 'degenerate' race like the flightless dire corbies of earlier editions, or conversely seeing avians who spend all their time on 'flying like birds' as trying to turn the clock back to the days before they had language and culture and society, when they were just animals).

There could even be more mechanical reasons for the different abilities, with one winged race not being naturally able to fly with any amount of training and exercise, but a series of magical transformations, or alchemical 'evolutions' (represented in-game by buying the appropriate feats!) could artificially give them this ability. And some might not want to embrace, or have access to, these transformations, leaving entire populations and communities of these winged folk, flightless, some by choice, some by circumstance.

[Souls At War]

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

Flying ancestries in PF2 are tricky mechanically, as permanent flight is a rather high level ability. The 1/5/9 Featline is a elegant solution from the mechanical point of view.

However, a recent discussion about the flight feats made me realize it does cause a disconnect between NPC and PC of the same ancestries:
- A Level 2 Strix NPC can fly.
- A Level 2 Strix PC can barely "jump good".
PC's can't fly, when seemingly everyone else can.

There is the whole thing about "game balance", then the "NPCs use different rules than the PCs" thing, Howl of the Wild also has that kind of thing, and not just for flight.

I agree that having lore reasons could be nice.

[Castilliano]

"Occasionally among us we'll find a fledgling incapable of flight."
*class laughs*
"No! Do not mock these folk. This is often the mark of true potential. And we want such kindred to feel as much a part of the community as any, even as their calling leads them afar. They'll define the sagas."
*child raises a wing* "But why?"
"Nobody knows. Nobody..."

[Christopher#2411504]

It kinda reminds me of Halflings, who carry the Hobbits duality: They like being comfortably at home, yet are also very comfortable out on adventures:

Quote:

While their curiosity sometimes drives them toward adventure, halflings also carry strong ties to house and home.

If you want to play a character who must contend with these opposing drives toward adventure and comfort, you should play a halfling.

The main difference is that people usually have a few sedentary Halflings back home.

While some of the flying Ancestries prefer to have their own villages, apart from the dangers of wider society (like Strix and Hobbits). So the adventuring ones will be the ones who shape the perception of the ancestry.

Tengu would definitely be more on the Halfling side of things.

[The Raven Black]

Better to leave this "Why?" for GMs to decide. Just like for Undead PCs.

[Christopher#2411504]

The Raven Black wrote:

Better to leave this "Why?" for GMs to decide. Just like for Undead PCs.

What would the GM have to do with a purely player facing question?

[The Raven Black]

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Better to leave this "Why?" for GMs to decide. Just like for Undead PCs.

What would the GM have to do with a purely player facing question?

Setting lore belongs to the GM first and foremost IMO.

[Mathmuse]

My PF1 Iron Gods campaign had a strix skald Kirii who could fly at 1st level. Flying is a strong ability, so strix's attribute boosts were a weak +2 Dexterity, –2 Charisma (his is on the 3d6 scale, so it would be +1 Dex, -1 Cha in PF2 Remastered notation). Furthermore, if the GM objected to to 1st-level flight, then they could insist on the Wing-Clipped alternative racial trait to cripple the strix's flying ability.

I had no trouble in my campaign with Kirii being able to fly. Her speed of 60 feet (equivalent to 50 feet in PF2's three-action system) while flying was more impactful, because she could scout and charge into battle more quickly than most characters. She also regularly exploited the Death from Above feat, but in PF1 exploiting feats is gameplay as expected. When the party recruited the NPC Val Baine into the party, I made Val a bloodrager with air elemental bloodline because that bloodline gained flight at 8th level, as opposed to 12th level for the Celestial, Draconic, and Phoenix bloodlines. I thought Val joining Kirii in the air would be fun.

PF2 is a different system devoted to careful balance of abilities. Low stats do not evenly balance against flying ability. Instead, the low stats would be especially weak sometimes and the flying ability would be especially strong other times, giving less predictability than the PF2 developers wanted. The level-based delay on flying ability is a purely mechanical restriction to preserve that sacred balance. And PF2 strix have a Fly speed of 25 feet (35 feet with a second Fully Flighted feat) rather than 50 feet.

Still, the explaining the difference between 2nd-level flying Strix Kinmate and PC non-flying strix ancestry in creative world-building is a worthy goal.

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

The Strix have a interesting naming conventons for the Flight feats: Fledgeling, Juvenile, Full. Which made me think that maybe they used to measure biological development and thus age by the flight ability? Remnants of that era are propably still in some ancient laws and all over the Strix language. Even if they are more accomodating now and changed the social norms and village designs to accomodate non-fliers, it would still set adventurers apart during their formative years.

That naming convention for the strix flight chain of feats, 1st-level Fledgling Flight, 5th-level Juvenile Flight, and 9th-level Fully Flighted, sketches a brief explanation. Kirii's player researched strix to the point of reading Liane Merciel's novel Nightglass, which includes events among the strix at Devil's Perch. She learned that strix have short lifespans, so she made Kirii only 17 years old (and named Kirii after a character in the novel). Thus, we could argue that strix start adventuring at a young age before they mastered flight. The 2nd-level Strix Kinmates could be older strix who stayed with the tribe; thus, they had time to master flight but not the experience to rise above 2nd level.

This would be more believable if the 2nd-level Strix Kinmates had the equivalent of 5th-level Juvenile Flight rather than 9th-level Fully Flighted. The Strix Kinmates came from pre-Remaster Bestiary 3, published in April 2021. The Strix ancestry came from the pre-Remaster Ancestry Guide, published in February 2021, so possibly the writers of the two sources did not see what the other was doing. This could be resolved by releasing a Remastered version of Strix Kinmate that has only Juvenile Flight, perhaps along with a 7th-level Strix Wingmaster with Fully Flighted.

[vyshan]

Pretty sure that there is no lore reason, and no lore reason is coming as it is done that way purely for game balance reasons.

[Madhippy3]

The Raven Black wrote:

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Better to leave this "Why?" for GMs to decide. Just like for Undead PCs.

What would the GM have to do with a purely player facing question?

Setting lore belongs to the GM first and foremost IMO.

The setting by default is Golarion. The devs can write for that setting that like they do when they write for the Society and Religion entries.

I personally don't think finding lore justifications for game balance imposed by the devs is a GMs jobs. As always a GM is more than welcome to change/add/remove anything, but not everything needs to be made with the "GM fills the holes" in mind. That's why a lot of people left dnd5e for fuller pastures.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

I'm actually very fond of the lore explanation given for Awakened Animals - the process of awakening and gaining entirely new mental faculties sometimes scrambles old instincts that you never had to think about before, particularly for flying creatures who used to rely on a lot of unconscious factors to control their flight. They can still fly, but it takes some work to regain full control.

Meanwhile sprite do have a canon explanation that upon reaching adulthood some sprites never grow wings (or grow only weak wings, if they do) and that some of these are just late bloomers, but also for reasons not well understood, these wingless fae often demonstrate unmatched growth and potential in other areas.

These explanations aren't entirely universally applicable to all winged ancestries, but there's something to build on.

[Souls At War]

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

I'm actually very fond of the lore explanation given for Awakened Animals - the process of awakening and gaining entirely new mental faculties sometimes scrambles old instincts that you never had to think about before, particularly for flying creatures who used to rely on a lot of unconscious factors to control their flight. They can still fly, but it takes some work to regain full control.

But that kind of things wouldn't apply well to Were-Bats, Were-raptor, and many ancestries with flight... and it get harder to justify when a race has other balancing factors.

[Claxon]

Some explanation would kind of be nice. Especially when looking at Strix for instance where you can encounter low level NPCs with flight, but you're level 5 Strix PC can't fly as well.

I mean, as a GM I can "fix it" myself but some consistent reasoning would be nice.

I know it's primarily for mechanical reasons, but having lore to match the mechanics on this topic would be nice.

For Strix it could be that some strix are really adept at flying, beyond what their level should indicate. But flight capability is viewed as what "makes you an adult" in Strix society. So you can sometimes meet Strix "adults" that are advanced flyers but lacking elsewhere.

It could also give reason why Strix PCs leave the soceity because they think of themselves as adults, despite being behind in flight capabilities. But that would be sort of a forced starting point for all Strix PCs....which wouldn't be great.

[NoxiousMiasma]

There's a lot of reasons why an apparently flighted character would be unable to actually take off - for characters who aren't intending to ever pick up an ancestry feat for flight, just having them be too dang heavy to fly would work (not necessarily from being fat - though it certainly works! - I could also see a particularly tall, buff, or heavily-armoured character who's simply not flightweight for their wing proportions). Alternatively, a character with a permanent disability, who's left their homeland for accessibility reasons makes a lot of sense ("Don't strix stay in their aeries usually?" "Yeah, but I'll never fly again, and basically everything in an aerie except the nursery areas is built for flight, and I'm really bad with children.")

Alternatively, for low-level characters who are going to get flight feats as they progress, a wing injury a little before campaign start will handily justify a temporary grounding (and if getting to 5th-level is taking longer than you'd expect, maybe your character is a rubbish patient who keeps aggravating their injury?)

[Mathmuse]

My wife suggested that maybe the strix have a cultural taboo against flying when traveling with non-fliers. The strix PC really can fly, but feel so strongly against it that they won't do it to save their lives. Later, when their wizard teammate can cast Levitate, they relax about not flying, but still avoid showing off.

[Christopher#2411504]

vyshan wrote:

Pretty sure that there is no lore reason, and no lore reason is coming as it is done that way purely for game balance reasons.

Some of the best lore comes from game balance reasons.

Shadowrun added the whole "Essence" thing pretty much to balance against "stacking cyberwear and magic". But it evolved into it's own major setting element.

[The Raven Black]

My "one size fits all" reason would be that, whatever the Ancestry, only those who have trouble fitting with their flying peers because of their lack of such an ability ever become the kind of adventurers that PCs are.

[Chocolate Milkshake]

It's too late to do so for the canon setting, but I think a better approach would be to make flightlessness the rule rather than the exception. Being able to fly in short bursts is useful enough on its own, so if I were running a campaign I'd just say that the level 1 flight feat is the baseline and being able to stay airborne forever is the kind of thing that qualifies you to become a folk hero.

[Zoken44]

Is it not true that a level 1 PC has more skills and abilities than most NPC's? more power? This may not be a question of natural capability as they chose to focus their efforts and strengths elsewhere.

[Chocolate Milkshake]

Zoken44 wrote:

Is it not true that a level 1 PC has more skills and abilities than most NPC's? more power? This may not be a question of natural capability as they chose to focus their efforts and strengths elsewhere.

Not sure if this is a reply to what I said, but if so, that's kind of what I was getting at. As it stands currently, low-level PCs of flying ancestries (sprites and strix mainly) have a more limited flight capability than NPCs of the same level, with it up to the players to explain the discrepancy. My suggestion was to make lore changes so that the level of flight a PC character has is the racial standard and adjust NPC templates to match.

In the case of strix, for example, you could say that their wings develop more slowly than the rest of their bodies, so a young adult strix only being able to fly in short bursts (i.e. level one flight feat) is completely normal because they've just become old enough to fly properly.

[Zoken44]

it was more of a counter to The Raven Black; they do not adventure because their ability to flight is impared, their ability to fly is impaired because they prepared to adventure.

[Madhippy3]

But flight is an extremely powerful adventuring ability. The reasoning falls apart when we remember how useful in exploration and combat flight is. Even if a level 1 Strix adventurer has a max to hit of +3, they would ultimately be doing better than other level 1 adventurers.

[Zoken44]

what I'm saying is that instead of spending time practicing flying, exercising the muscles necessary for endurance flying, maybe they spent their time practicing with swords instead, or learning investigation techniques, or connecting with a source of magic, or etc, etc, yeah, flying is good, but you need more abilities to adventure. It's why an artisan NPC could make a living selling goods they craft while an PC never could, they're just better at it because that's what they focused on.
I'm just not a fan of bio-essentialism, so that's why I was counterpointing Raven Black's point.

[Claxon]

That is a fairly reasonable in world explanation to explain why some members of an ancestry are good at something, and others are not.

It's kind of like how humans "super power" was long distance running. Because of our bipdeal upright walking we can breath better and run more efficiently over very long distances. In fact, that's how ancient humans hunted. We wouldn't fight animals to our or their death. We would scare them and chase them. And scare them and chase. For miles. Probably days. Until the prey was too tired and just collapsed. And then we'd show up and finish it off.

But a lot of modern humans wouldn't have the persistence (because there are easier ways to get food) nor the physical condition to run/walk for days.

[The Raven Black]

Zoken44 wrote:

what I'm saying is that instead of spending time practicing flying, exercising the muscles necessary for endurance flying, maybe they spent their time practicing with swords instead, or learning investigation techniques, or connecting with a source of magic, or etc, etc, yeah, flying is good, but you need more abilities to adventure. It's why an artisan NPC could make a living selling goods they craft while an PC never could, they're just better at it because that's what they focused on.

I'm just not a fan of bio-essentialism, so that's why I was counterpointing Raven Black's point.

Thank you for explaining the why of your stance. I had not realized I was doing this.

I was trying to find a way to explain why all standard NPCs of a flying ancestry could easily fly where PCs could not. And I was using the common "PCs are different from standard" trope as a springboard.

[Zoken44]

and I'm following your lead, I'm just reverse the cause and effect. They are not adventurers because they can't fly, they can't fly because they are adventurers.