September 3, 2022 6:02 PM PDT
Flying mobs is a perfect opportunity to further push the quadrinity design (tank + heal monkey + DPS + CC). Give the CC classes various abilities which can down / root /slow /etc and the party will be fine.
Melee might struggle more, but they will still be able to participate. If the flying mob is only melee, it can dive bomb and get in a single attack, but the melee will have an attack queued up as well, so they are basically balanced. If the flier has ranged attacks, melee can often duck behind cover, forcing the flier in close.
I like the idea of character weight being a factor with some hijinks tactics, though I don't expect this will actually be in game.
Flying-related ideas:
- Some fliers should attack by dropping items (like rocks, molotov cocktail-like flameworks, melee NPCs, nets, etc.
- A very dangerous, large night-only flier with a terrifying, iconic shreik. We should only see a night sky shadow and it should cause us to want to flee.
- Fliers that pick up characters and drop them (heavier characters don't get carried up as high as lighter ones).
- Fliers that are so camouflaged with their perch that they are nigh invisible until they dive at you from close range.
- When hit, birds will have some feathers fall out.
- Fliers are either out during day or night, depending upon what type they are.
- Carrier pigeon-like species that can be captured and have a portal rune attached to it. When released, it flies back to where you captured it and drops the portal rune, opening a temporary portal to that specific spot.
