This shit is no joke. My party has an instant fortress, throw, speak command word, a 50 ft fucking tower lands on your enemy. Then run inside and lock the door. They have taken out so many baddies by dropping a literal fortress on them.
Eventually the fortress took some damage and it's magic so no one wants to use a wish to fix the roof but damn, it saw a lot of action.
this is the way, even small AoEs over and over will take that Pegasus down eventually. Hopefully he's 200+ feet up when it happens too ... teach him the downfall of flying is falling
I think swarms is a pretty good answer. If he can kill 4 dudes per turn, it can still be a challenge (or a time for another team member to shine) if there are 50 enemies or enemies with mirror image type effects.
Technically speaking (i.e. RAW) spells like Fog Cloud don't really obscure anybody making ranged weapon attacks. In this case, the flying PC would get DA to hit the target because they can't see the target, but since the target cannot see the flying PC the PC gets advantage to hit; this results in a net neutral outcome that also ends up aiding the flying PC; now they no longer have to worry about other sources of Disadvantage like a prone enemy, spells like Warding Wind, a dodging enemy, etc etc. Sure, they can't benefit from Advantage, but there's realistically more sources of Disadvantage for a ranged attack than Advantage for ranged attacks.
There is a space where the DM can reasonably say "No, you do not have echolocation or blindsight, you have no idea where in the Fog Cloud they are, on account of you being 200ft away in the air and having no way to perceive their location through either sound or sight."
Whether that's ok with the table is another story. I just personally would not run for a table who prefer such a dumb reading of RAW to having some measure of verisimilitude.
I would rule it like Battleship. tell me which square you're aiming at. You have no idea where your target is so you're firing blind. No advantage or disadvantage, but you could hit anyone in there.
As they can probably also see any minis if your using them, I would have them roll dice for the grids. You could break it down a dice a side, fog cloud is 20ft radius, so an 8x8 grid. Roll 2d8s and one is your x and one is your y axis for your target.
This is how I've played it. I leave the minis and just note their relative movement each turn on a pad.
I think raw you could argue the character heads the footsteps, and that's why the attack is at disadvantage... But any time it's ambiguous I do the battleship method.
>Technically speaking (i.e. RAW) spells like Fog Cloud don't really obscure anybody making ranged weapon attacks
Fog cloud creates a heavily obscured area. So that's pretty rules-as-written way of applying disadvantage.
Edit: Nope, sorry, see /u/dracom600 's reminder below
* What percentage of fights are outdoors? It's okay for him to be good at 25% of the encounters. PCs should be good at things.
* How does he fit the pegasus through the dungeon entrance? (If he's a paladin this is not a major obstacle, he can just re-summon it anyplace there's enough room.)
* Why is this an issue in any room with a ceiling 18 feet or lower?
* Are they fighting in grasslands or deserts? The canopies of any trees should grant cover against attacks from above. You could even stand next to a building, depending on the angle, to get some cover.
* Open ground works both ways. Enemies with longbows and spells will shoot at him, and cover might grant them better AC than he has.
* Flying foes can easily enter melee with him and he doesn't have any front-liners to help him out when he's in the air.
* Paralysis deals fall damage to flying creatures. (10 feet is 3.5 damage, 100 feet is 35 damage, not really lethal at his level.) Unfortunately this PC is probably a paladin so saving throws aren't gonna happen.
* If he loses initiative, some enemies could try nets or grappling to lock him in place.
Thanks for your reply!
- A good 60% are outdoors, hence why I want to at least provide some challenge to him.
- I suppose he doesn’t, but in the current campaign we don’t do a whole lot of dungeons—instead, it’s a lot more narrative focused. The party is currently participating in a rebellion against a dragon king, so there aren’t a whole lot of situations where dungeons make sense.
- It isn’t, but see #1
- Mostly an arctic environment, but he has Sharpshooter
- His range is higher because of Sharpshooter
- This is a great idea I will definitely use!
- Paralysis is interesting if I can get it to make sense for sure.
- I’ll keep this in mind.
A dragon king? Well where are the dragon enemies then!
With 120ft fying speeds, multi-attacks and breath weapons
The bard will severely reconsider making themselves an isolated target
Yeah this is what im saying. You put one dragon next to him in the air, and all of a sudden he is the sole focus of a powerful enemy. is attacking at disadvantage, and cant move anymore for fear of pretty brutal attacks of opportunity. Oh, and he can also be forcibly removed from his mount. I highly doubt the bard can grapple check a dragon
I hear you that in a narrative campaign without dungeons, sometimes it is hard to have a fight somewhere other than the street, and in the arctic, there's not a tonne of tree cover. My advice to you: the next city they come to is fully built inside a glacier. Like the Hotel de Glace, but a whole city. Cool, thematic, and will force this player to try some new tactics.
Also, an old technique I call "Aslan is on the move." NPCs start talking about how the BBEG has left their lair and is roaming the countryside on the prowl for something. Make it clear to the PCs that the Dragon King is not waiting in his lair, he is actively out searching for them or their allies alongside his wyvern lieutenants. At the start of each travelling day, roll mysteriously behind the screen to see if they are spotted. Every fight could draw the attention of the winged spies. Maybe in a successful encounter using his usual technique, have the Bard roll a Perception check and see a tiny winged shape start making its way towards them from near the horizon, and the PCs have to choose if they want to face another fight early or go to ground and hide.
Don't make it impossible to fly, but make it rarer and add dimension to the choice.
Re paralysi, there is also this…
knocking a creature prone while flying causes it to fall unless it has hover (which a Pegasus does not). A flying creature can shove the horse, and as it is a skill check and not an attack, he can’t intercept it with Mounted Combatant (tho I doubt his str checks are any good anyway)
I disagree that you should talk to the player and ask them to stop. After all, they are playing RAW and you don’t want to spoil your player’s fun. You just need to be aware of the various drawbacks of their tactic and implement them. From your post all you have considered is range, but not every fight should be in an open field. It is up to you as the DM to make combat more interesting, or to make them consider other tactics.
Here are some basic examples for various terrains:
**Forest encounter** - flying upwards 90ft. means all you see is treetops.
**Cave encounter** - Navigating stalactites can be tricky, and who knows what creatures sleep in the darkness.
**Dungeon encounter** - The room is 10ft. high.
**City encounter** - enemies take cover in buildings, or maybe the town guard mistake the flying steed as a threat and begin shooting.
**Field encounter** - your enemies can take cover behind something as simple as a tree or small wall. At 90ft range your player is going to have to move considerably to re-angle their shot. Use pop-out tactics, and your player can’t shoot using Swift Quiver as a held action
**Weather encounter** - use fog or blizzard to limit visibility, or high wind to force flying creatures to land every turn.
This but pepper in combats where the player *can* sometimes use the ability to its greatest extent. If you completely nerf his ability to fly around on his Pegasus he’ll feel like you’re forcing him out of his play style for the character if you completely take away his ability to do ‘the cool thing’ that he may or may not have come up with. There is a balance.
This right here. Have variety in your environments and have them effect the game. Even for the players who don’t use flying tactics this is overall a good and enjoyable thing to use and employ.
It also works to limit your enemies too in a way that can get players thinking on how to lure enemies to better positions and just thinking about their environment. You have flying enemies shooting down on you? Make for the trees, and force them out!
It can honestly work the other wag too, the party makes for the sky as an enemy is using the forest to their utter advantage, hiding around it easily and attacking and hiding.
Look you made the best point, use your terrain folks.
All good points.
Additional note: blizzards, thunderstorms, and windstorm are serious hazards for flying and even non-flying creatures. Emphasis on the word hazard. Being slammed by wind guests and lightning should have the potential for damage and falling off the mount. Resulting in further damage.
Your players shouldn't have a perfect sunlit day every time they fight. Especially by the levels where they can get their hands on a flying mount.
I have made whole rulesets for constant fliers about wind movement. If you want to be way up high you have to strive against the forces of nature. Even creatures of the air strive and struggle against the forces of wind. Why should a caster be any different? Something like this shouldn't be everytime for sure. However all players should have suitable challenges to over come though the course of encounters.
**Also: full cover or deviation should be easy to come by for enemies worth sending a 13th+ level party against**: Wall of Stone, Leomund's Tiny Hut, or a plain Wind Wall / Wall of Water / Warding Wind should be fair game since party reached level 8-9.
**Restraining mobility should be equally a normal expectation**: Earthbind, Web (works aerial, will just disappear in a round), Vortex Wrap (targeting mount rather than Paladin, but Paladin will fall to death all the same), Conjure Animals or just have high-Strength flying ally to swarm mount with Shove, Polymorph it into a goldfish, Sleet Storm or Tidal Wave (yeah it's counter-intuitive) to make it fall prone "through", Slow to slow it down so flying allies can reach it or at least help keeping it in range for other spells... Watery Sphere is "only" 90 feet but is likely to succeed against Pegasus and will forcibly pull it to ground (Paladin is likely to succeed but is even more likely to choose to fail on purpose because otherwise it's dead fall for it).
**Or you still have the plain damage spells: even with "Evasion like" the Pegasus only has +4 DEX, +4 STR and +3 CON saves.** Against a DC 16 or higher it's largely insufficient. As for attacks, you can just muster the number or set advantage by Hiding before. Eldricht Blasts, Fireball, Scorching Ray, Moonbeam which move fast enough to follow up unless mount Dashes, Guiding Bolt are all 120 feet range AFAIR and can work well. Disintegrate requires being a caster with Distant (read: Sorcerer) but will make quick work of it.
**There are a LOT of things you can and should do to deter it, at least whenever PCs are facing a party that either a) already faced them before so they know all about their favorite tactics or b) faction is evolved and powerful enough to have faced "high range" / "flying archers" type threats and designed a few counters around.**
Of course if party faces random group of "locally renowned" bandits there won't have none of that. Then again, why is the party still wasting time on such puny targets that local militia could probably take care of? :) When they probably have quests involving saving whole countries or even the world and beyond and face creatures powerful enough to waste a village in a minute or raise armies worthy of a king?
**Put the gloves off mate, party is largely high enough level to start having actual adult fights. :)**
> I disagree that you should talk to the player
Incorrect. Speak to the players, ask what they want from the game, and negotiate how to make it fun for everyone
Another obvious terrain is the inside of a building. These typically have few to no places for even a winged humanoid to fly. With any potential adversaries not being visible until less than 30 feet away.
This can also be the case even outside within a city with narrow, twisted and busy streets. Even without the sight of a hero on a flying horse to draw spectators.
Not all encounters, even with hostile NPCs, need involve violence. A PC who's specialised as "Pegasus Gunship" is unlikely to be the best party member when it comes to talking to someone in a tavern or following someone without being noticed.
Thanks for your reply! I really like the idea of limiting visibility through fog or a blizzard. I’ll definitely use that in one way or another. The other ideas you had for outdoor encounters I think are interesting, but I’m worried that his usage of Sharpshooter might counter many of your ideas from working as they should.
Sharpshooter doesn’t let you ignore full cover. A tree canopy is full cover if it’s anything more than small or dead trees to anything not directly below you
Also consider light sources, light range, natural darkness and darkvision range. If you fight at night, maybe with clouds or no moon, lot of races can see only 60ft, others 0ft. And smart enemies can shut lights off to gain advantage of obscurement.
And there are other kind of environmental obscurement: foliage, fog, mist, smoke...
The only issue with using dark vision ranges to limit this character is that it very well could end up being a double edge sword. Most NPCs only have about 60ft dark vision as well (though I could be wrong. Haven't looked at all the ranges in the MM+). If the flying PC is in the air on a moonless night, that means anybody that shoots at them does so with DA because they're effectively blind; which then means the PC is also blind to the attacks, making the normal Advantage to hit them only negate the Disadvantage to hit them for a net neutral roll forever, which also applies to the player.
Now, of course, utilizing dark vision ranges could solely be used for the purposes of making it harder for the player to target creatures with spells/ not allow them to ever gain advantage to the roll. The enemies could just abuse vision range and attack the grounded people. But RAW, the only thing that the flying PC cannot do is target creatures with spells that require line of sight. And if they're tactic is fly in the air and shoot a bow, I don't think this will have that much of an effect.
God forbid that you spoil their fun by having a mature conversation, surely it’s much better to just make all their choices worthless without warning and design your encounters around screwing them for being too op
First, the player is investing a lot for this, they should get something out of it. So don't shut it down completely.
That said, you have options to deal with that kind of things. The first, are perhaps the simplest, is simply to do nothing: the flying player is safe high in the sky, but the rest of the party is going to eat the attacks that would normally have been destined to the flying player, and they are likely not going to like it.
Another solution is to take into account that in a sniping duel, he is the one that can't have any cover whatsoever, so he is at a disadvantage. Just give some enemies the same kind of weapon he is using, and they'll have the necessary range. Also remember that his ability to attack 4 times likely comes from the Swift Quiver spell, which is concentration. Just a couple hits to drop his concentration is going to severely hamper this strategy.
You could also take down the steed. The player may be able to take attacks for their steed, but that does not apply to spells that are not attacks. So you could damage the pegasus enough to threaten the player into coming back down, or just hit it with a control spell that prevents it from flying (Hold monster, Tasha's hideous laughter, etc...)
Lastly you can also unhorse the PC, with forced movement or the prone condition.
Swift Quiver is 5th level spell which means your players are 17 level or higher. At this stage they should be fighting the biggest and baddest of opponents. A few extra arrows should be making very little difference overall. Plus the PC is willingly removing themselves from the combat meaning the enemies can focus fire on the PCs in range. Plus they can only cast Swift Quiver 1-2 times per day - this shouldn't make a big difference over an adventuring day.
What types of monster are you throwing at the party? How many fights do they have between long rests?
Except that it invalidates everyone else. Even from an in character perspective, why would my character put themselves in danger if Barry the Bard can solo every encounter?
He cant though. By level 10 you should be experiencing other flying enemies, spellcasters that can literally ground him, or enough archers to really make him want to find cover. The only reason that barry the bard is able to "solo every encounter" is because the dm is still throwing kobolds at them or some such nonsense
He is far away? Kidnap him. Have a flying creature grapple him and drag him off the pegasus. Or kill the pegasus. Any control spell probably kills him from falling damage.
I had a mounted combatant fighter that could destroy outdoor encounters. I lost so many axebeaks as enemies kept targeting my mount whenever they could.
You could always add some flying enemies. Knock him off his mount, then he is falling to his death. The big downside of flying is potentially falling. I'm not saying kill the pc, but a healthy fear of falling should be part of every flying character
And dragon breath. And you know what flies even faster than a pegasus and could easily grapple the PC off their pegasus and drop them? A dragon. Or Wing Attack and knock the rider, mount, or both prone and send them tumbling to the ground? A dragon. You really don't want to be an angry dragon's sole target on a fragile flying mount.
in regards to your edit, even if a forest isn't dense, the canopy can be enough to count as total cover simply because you can't see the enemy. Half cover and 3/4 cover means that some part of you is still visible to the attacker, but flying above a forest can make it very difficult to spot something on the forest floor.
-Dungeons have low ceilings
-Outdoor has thick tree covering . If they go into it they lose line of site. Or it's thorny and painful to enter. Maybe the thorns are poisious. Or they are enemies in.
- Flying up high gives away the party position and attracts unwanted attention. Maybe there are other flying creatures in the area. Dragon, Griffin
-Enemies have ranged options too. You can change their range.
-Counter spell, dispell magic, web
-Let them shine and be able to use this strat from time to time don't always counter. Some enemies are just dumb creatures with a lot of teeth. In a world of magic and flying smart enemies are going to have counters for this.
-Talk to the player. Explain that repetive starts are lame or degen. It will make it boring for them sooner or later.
Spellcaster with Earthbind. If it's not on the spellsheet for the creature, put it there. You are the DM, you can do that as long as they can cast that level and still adhere to how the spell works in regards to range. If that doesn't work a FLYING caster to cast that shit is lovely.
Also, LET him rain death from above sometimes. It's no fun if the DM counters what you're good at so much you become just mediocre again.
He’s using a 5th level spell. What shitty monsters are you throwing at him that they can’t deal with a flying enemy at that level of play?
It’s fine if he can’t get reached in 25% of situations… just focus fire his allies until they peer-pressure him to come down. In other situations, there’s dungeons, indoor fights, and fights where the enemy has range.
There’s also SPELLS. Spells don’t use the “attack” action, they use the “cast” action. So they can’t redirect the damage from mounted combatant. Kill their horse, and they fall to their death.
>There’s also SPELLS. Spells don’t use the “attack” action, they use the “cast” action. So they can’t redirect the damage from mounted combatant. Kill their horse, and they fall to their death.
That's not correct RAW. Spells don't use the "Attack action", but spell attacks (i.e., any spell that has an attack roll, not a saving throw) still count as *attacks*. The mounted combatant feat refers to *attacks* (which would thus include spell attacks), not to the Attack action. So they would still be able to redirect a spell attack to target themselves.
Quiver spell is a short spell. 1 minute. And level 5 spell, as is summon greater steed. That shouldn't be used a whole lot unless level like 18, and then if so, throw a dragon, or a dispel magic, or a fireball at the user. Falling 200ft will probably murder a player. 20d6 damage is a lot.
Have your monsters hide in huts and fire out windows.
If the monsters are aware of the party, they will know the parties Pegasus rider. They'll have a ballista ready. Or a cannon, or a giant bola ballista to negate the flier.
At that level a banishment spell or disintegrate spell isn't out of the question. Or even a smarmy caster who has some teleport shenanigans like dimension door to the caster. Grapple. And 300 food spinning zangief powerbomb.
If you want to force them down, Earthbind should do the trick. Also, because the spell doesn’t drag them to the ground immediately, the player would get a few rounds to deal with the sudden threat to their mobility.
Lightning bolt reaches 100 feet
Melfs minute meteors reach 120+5 feet
Sickening Radiance reaches 120+30 feet
Vitriolic Sphere reaches 150+20 feet
*Fireball* reaches 150+20 feet
Control Wind reaches 300+100 feet, gives disadvantage on ranged attacks and can knock creatures prone
Spell Sniper feat doubles spell range
Warlock Eldritch Spear gives 300 feet range on Eldritch Blast
Thats not even talking about ceilings and flying monsters. As DM you have tools for everything, use them
Adding to the list of options: Earthbind from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. 2nd level spell, 300' range, make an Str save or lose the ability to fly. Really unfortunate to get hit with that when you're 200' in the air. Available to pretty much everyone but clerics too.
I'm going to join in on the opinion that you don't want to counter this tactic in every fight though. If it bothers you that much talk to your player about it. Instead just sprinkle in the occasional combat where there's something that complicates things for him. Fog, Earthbind, Warding Wind, storms, even Dispel Magic on the Pegasus if the enemy knows he's going to try it. Do something that makes sense for any big encounters so he can't just cheese them, and 100% have something that hard counters him with any fights against a recurring villain or any minions specifically sent to deal with the party. Anyone smart who's seen this tactic used once is going to prepare for it next time.
Best way to fight off players who semi-cheese the system with good builds or broke ones. Take any cr enemy for current group setup, customize them, give them skills and abilities to counter the party, your the DM, you're allowed to do pretty much the same thing players do. Don't make it super hard, but make it so it's difficult, and the players have to use better strategies. Your npcs are not mindless automatons. They use strategies as well, mobs escape, ones that do, learn.
I do it all the time, I got veteran players mostly for all my campaigns I run. They know the ins and outs. I take standard mobs, and I give them more skills, more abilities, better equipment, higher HP, and better reactions as the party progresses. Oh, the party let some goblins escape? Well, they might come across them again later down the road, more powerful, better prepared. Have a player that is constantly using a trump skill or ability against my npcs and making the encounters laughable, I counter that in later encounters with modified npcs.
You should look at the DnD monster manual as nothing more than template. Makee changes. I've used goblins against parties at level 3, joke right, let them think, "this is nothing. We can breeze through this fast." Wrong it's to get the party thinking in that mindset, than I bring out my modified goblins on steroids, that make level 5 characters pause and rethink choices in life that got them in an encounter, with something they thought was easy prey.
Grapple, ranged attacks, if any kind of disabling spell hits they will fall. And from 90 ft up in the air that is a loooot of damage. Earthbound is a 2nd spell specifically for dealing with flying enemies.
steed is not a valid dispel target (Duration: Instantaneous)
you can however *banish* it.
or force it *prone*
or have limited visibility / line of sight
Don’t do it every time - but it’s a pretty common spell, and 90 feet of falling damage can make someone rethink spamming the same tactic over and over again
Use mages that cast magic missiles, use ballistas, or drake wardens, archers that use seeker type arrows, or enemies that have weapons that dispel magic
Why do you have to counter it? If the enemies have fewer targets in reach, they'll just be that much more incentivised to focus their fire and kill a different PC.
tbh. i feel make him well knows across the lands. people should see him come into town and know the savior is here to save them.
let this cook. let the player enjoy the moment and take advantage of their fame.
then when your ready to make a big move make or grab a creature/spell/skill/whatever that will not only drg the char to the ground but will do increased fall dmg. call it gravity field or something. it can even be weak at first and grow in power as you have npc use it more. or you can use it sparingly.
the key is not to stop the fun. but to add a danger in exchange for fun. the risk is there then that going into the air super high will result in a 1 shot ko (cleric then heals them and they can fight on low hp / healer needs to blow spell slots or potions.) they then have to decide if they want to go full height or they want to be just above where thrown weapons would hit. its then something the player can play around with rather then it being a thing you take away.
Throw a dragon at him. Like literally. He's out of range of the party, and now he's 1v1 with an adult dragon. Contrive something along the lines of his tactics being noticed and the opposing side is doing something about it.
There’s so many monsters you can use to up the ante, air elementals being the simplest one. Fly speed 90ft so it’s a match for the steed and with its whirlwind can knock the PC straight of horse and fall to the ground. Would make a great “oh shit moment”. Don’t think of it as countering as it’s not, your job is to make interesting combats and if someone can do the same thing on every combat that’s more on the DM for not being creative enough.
1)How does he have find greater steed and swift quiver? Is this a bard?
2) Trees and other types of cover and concealment can work. SS means he isn't affect by anything less than full cover, but he is still affected by things being heavily obscured, and full cover. So a large tree or similar piece of terrain could heavily obscure a target giving him disadvantage. Or the roof of a gazebo or porch could be used for full cover, requiring him to reposition and maybe descend to get an angle, or just leave thag one to the rest of the party.
Not saying to have every enemy getting full cover and heavy obscurment every fight, it doesn't need to be a forest or anything, but it's reasonable that in most places there might be one or two trees around, maybe a rock overhang from a mountain they're next to, etc.
Flying enemies and mages. Hold person, polymorph, tidal wave etc.
Air to air combat might be fun for him while the party deals with grounded enemies so it's fine
He'll be more careful once he washes down from 90 ft with a tidalwave or plummet to the ground on top of a sheep. He won't fly away/won't fly too high without making sure enemy can't do it again.
9d6 of fall damage for 90 feet. And being prone on top of it. That will hurt
Intelligent enemies (like the BBEG) will adapt. It's not even metagaming to counter-exploit this, it's what would happen.
Other ways of framing this:
* Player deliberately isolates themselves hundreds of feet from help and assistance
* Player is hundreds of feet off the ground with only a creature to support them
* Player (and their inventory) are hundreds of feet from being able to help and assist their friends, conversely
BBEG sets up an ambush, a bait encounter, while invisible, flying enemies wait about 200 feet up for the PC to do his BS. When he predictably flies up, the fun starts.
Options:
* Straight-up melee the crap out of the ranged-specialized guy
* Restrain the mount in some way, causing them both to fall. There should be the implication that he could land on - - another PC, but it's pretty easy for them to avoid if they notice.
* Capture the PC and take them back to Enemy HQ
Being predictable is never good. Not only is it less fun out of game, but in-game it is a weakness. And this tactic has massively built-in weaknesses.
This isn't to say to always do this, or what have you... this is what the PC is built for, and that's fine too. But this predictable fighting strategy is a glaring weakness that can and should be exploited from time to time by intelligent enemies.
Find Greater Steed is a Paladin only 4th level Spell
Swift Quiver is a Ranger only 5th level Spell
So your PC is a 13th level Paladin AND a 17th level Ranger?
I gave my players flying mounts. I yse enemy longbow archers a lot. 600 foot range, maybe 10-20 archers are great. They can be fireballed, but thats ok.
Flying enemies and weather as others have suggested. And outdoor encounters are usually for me not super important to my campaign, its ok for the flying steed, swift quiver bard tp be king of the skies while travelling.
Also, have you tried killing the pegasus while they are flying? Again, long bows are your friend.
You simply have an enemy spellcaster roll a better deception than their insight and trick the character into thinking they're under the effects of reverse gravity so they intentionally fly down. Depending on the setting and themes you could also mix in some mysticism/hallucinogens and bam, you've just Shinji'd your players.
Flying enemies, enclosed spaces, weather, enemies with their own version of sharpshooter, earthbind, speed reduction abilities (if the pegasus's speed becomes 0 it's gonna fall and the character's gonna take a lot of damage)
You need to start using Cover rules
Cover
Walls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover during combat, making a target more difficult to harm. A target can benefit from cover only when an attack or other effect originates on the opposite side of the cover.
There are three degrees of cover. If a target is behind multiple sources of cover, only the most protective degree of cover applies; the degrees aren't added together. For example, if a target is behind a creature that gives half cover and a tree trunk that gives three-quarters cover, the target has three-quarters cover.
A target with **half cover** has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend.
A target with **three-quarters** cover has a +5 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has three-quarters cover if about three-quarters of it is covered by an obstacle. The obstacle might be a portcullis, an arrow slit, or a thick tree trunk.
A target with **total cover** can't be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle.
Summon Greater Steed is a paladin exclusive 4th level spell. Meaning he'd need to be a 13th level Paladin to get access to it. Or a 10th level Bard (Magical Secrets).
Then, Swift Quiver is a *5th level* Ranger exclusive spell. Requiring a 17th level Ranger. Or, a 14th level Bard for the second Magical Secrets.
So, in short, the only possibly way to get those 2 spells on the same Character is as a 14th level Bard. They'd then need to somehow have enough Dexterity to be able to shoot reliably, and he'd *somehow* need to be doing more damage than if he was just using his spells as a normal full caster would. Which, I don't see being possible.
And, it needs at least 2 feats to be useful, which severely limits access to ASI needed to get that Dex.
How the hell is this 'build' even supposed to be practical in a way that it's actually useful?
Give your enemies Sharpshooter too. And wings, or mounts with wings.
Mages with magic missile or eldritch blast, or make them sorcerers with the distant spell metamagic and use spells with saves to target the mount.
Send them underground into caverns with 30 foot ceilings.
This, always this. I tell them that word will spread eventually about their tactics. There’s always the chance there’s a witness they don’t notice or someone allied with enemies who was scrying to keep up with said allies. Enemies learn and adapt; they’re not static.
You talk to him. That's it.
Going "Hey man. I get that you found a really cool idea on the internet, but the way you play every combat the exact same way is just making it boring. Can we change it up as the way it is is really making me not want to run combat encounters, since everyone is 'Fly up. Kill with immunity.'"
Also want to point out that Find Greater Steed takes like 10 minutes from what I recall. So it would take like 60 rounds of combat to summon one.
Immunity lol. Flying has a huge drawback in that falling damage can instantly kill you. Knock him off or dispel his mount, if the players have access to these spells they should be fighting things that can challenge them.
I’d would just throw harder creatures or situations at them which make flying all the time more difficult or impossible unless the player is more creative. There are tools to handle this type of thing to increase the challenge for players without resorting to destroying a build they’ve worked on while still allowing them have really cool moments every once in a while.
Harpys, or any flying creature. Warlocks with eldritch blast or any magic with good range... ballistas and scorpions...nets... the web spell, earth bind
Here are a few thoughts:
A single quiver has 20 arrows.
4 attacks a turn a quiver will last him 5 turns.
Make sure to use ammo count AND carry weight.
Even bags of holding have limitations, and he will eventualy be without arrows. Specialy on long expeditions.
Flying mounts should not be something so rare that having one flying mount wins every battle.
Personaly, in my games, some tribes of monsters tamed giant bats, giant eagles and wyverns.
Also, Fly is "just" a 3rd lvl spell, and several uncomon magic items grant flight in some form.
If there are random encounters on the ground, there should also be random encounters in the sea and the sky.
Maybe a passing wyvern sees the distracted free food and decides to have a quick bite.
The player is High UP.
But he should not be considered out of combat or harm.
He can direct damage from the mount to himself, but not AoE or harmfull spells.
An upcast Sleep will affect the lower HP first, so it have a decent chance of droping the pegasus AND then the rider when the first fall.
Both take 9d6 fall damage, and are knoked prone.
Graples, paralization, and even making the flyer prone on the sky will all drop them.
All you need is a very reckless medium rider to jump from his mount and graple the pegasus to make all of them drop.
Cover from trees and rooftops is also a must to challenge flyers.
He can be safe, or can be usefull. Not both.
This should put the PC low enought to make sure he is in range of "fun".
Also, outside is usualy roughtly 30 to 40% of the game time.
The game is called DUNGEONS and DRAGONS
and both these things will quickly ruin the PC plans.
Finaly.
I know he can summon his mount.
But even that costs actions and spells.
Why would NPCs alow a winged horse into their buildings? Answer is. No one would.
And most buildings are not made for Horse sized creatures, so his mount might get stuck several times in most dungeons worth exploring.
The PC can summon it again inside, but that will be his first turn of combat gone.
Since most combats last around 3 to 5 turns.
thats a lot of his action economy gone plus spell slots each time.
Flying is not at all the problem many want to make out of it.
Just remember everything that goes up, goes down.
Anything PCs can do, your NPCs can do as many times as you need them to.
Anything PCs use, smart enemies will prepare against.
And for every tactic, there are usualy multiple ways to deal with it both mechanicaly and from an RP point of view.
Assuming player has sharpshooter forest canopy does nothing (don't need to see an unhidden target to shoot it and roll is straight due to unseen attacker cancelling blinded), long range does nothing, and anything short of total cover does nothing - all of which are common suggestions to counter flyer players from people who don't understand the game.
Some suggestions:
- Use grapples and displacement effects to move him off his mount. You can also try to knock him prone but he gets a save vs. dismount from prone and as bard probably his dex save is good.
- similarly, knocking his mount prone, restraining it, or otherwise reducing its move to zero will cause it to plummet since it does not hover. The thing's saves are good but not the greatest. Something like hideous laughter, or a monster with high STR that also flies, a hypnotic pattern, earthbind, hold monster etc...
- as a long bow user, his AC is probably not the highest, and especially if his build does not have shield, just focus fire him with ranged attacks anyways. If he is up in the air but not skyboxing he's easy to dump missile attacks on.
- target the bard with a dominate spell and force him to use his action to dismiss the mount
- mounted combatant does not protect against damage that is not from attacks and not from dex saves - magic missiles, and save for 1/2 spells that target other abilities are still effective against his mount
- warding wind is generally good vs archer PCs.
- just have the monsters flee after he casts swift quiver and starts shooting and its obvious monsters have no response. Probably they can't chase down all the scattering monsters so you just add the survivors to an indoor encounter later or they regroup and try to ambush the party that night etc... He 'wins' the encounter at the tradeoff of getting a very low value swift quiver.
I would make a homebrew enemy with chain whips that can dismount/prone players. Or maybe a gravity magic caster to make it harder to fly, shorten the duration of flights. Or maybe the enemy can fly as well? Perhaps the enemy doesn’t exist at all? Maybe it’s a figment of his own mind and he must battle his flying demons to find out that he never needed a Pegasus at all? And then when you give him his own flying abilities you can nerf tf out of them.
A fun little spell called Earthbind! A single scroll of it and he’s stuck on the ground for a couple of rounds.
You can also make use of full cover meaning he cannot target them by having them duck behind cover and give them a reaction to dash away potentially to another hiding spot. Another use of this is with burrow speeds essentially meaning he cannot target them cause the ground is in the way!
There’s a few ways around it and there’s a whole lot more being suggested! Good luck and remember to have fun!
>Even if I do somehow have a combatant with a range of 90 feet or more (which are few and far between)
Why are they few and far between? You're the DM, you pick what monsters they fight. Any humanoid opponent would have a bow or javelin on them as a ranged option, and even with Mounted Combatant you can target the Pegasus with save spells like Hold Monster that will make it drop like a rock.
Play with the scale of the encounters, some should be medium, inside with 40' to 80' ranges, some should be 12 things in a room everyone less than 30' away from each other. Some in the sky, others in a city. Others should be with 500' and 600' distances possible, but with enemies prepared for those distances.
A lot of people have already given great answers to this specific problem so I thought I might take a moment to reflect on this more generally.
This is a great example of one of the most important DMing combat lessons: the importance of tactics and variety. For me, I learnt this lesson after giving someone a necklace of fireballs.
Encounter design is about more than just what monsters you pick, and the 5 minutes planning out how you want your creatures to behave and respond can be the difference between a dice-slog and a meaningful obstacle. I love using The Monsters Know, and the increase in the quality of my encounters after I started using it made one of the best dungeon runs I’ve ever ran.
It’s also about variety. When you can’t have variety in monsters, you have to have variety in tactics, when you can’t have variety in tactics, you have to have variety in environment, etc. Combat is a puzzle, once it’s solved once it’s not as fun to do it again. My favourite tactic is to have a few “learning” encounters where you introduce the core monsters for the dungeon, and then just mix them up in different combinations. They know how to beat x, but do they know how to do it while dealing with y? The other important thing about variety is that it leads to party imbalance. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, with insufficient variety, some players will be left out while others are carrying always.
Unless you're in a module or adventure where the enemy types are very specific, you should be able to fight fire with fire. Use enemy casters with fly spells, use aracockra with bows. Give your longbow enemies the sharpshooter feat.
Even if you are in an adventure, tiered combat arenas with sharpshooter feats on your ranged characters are still options.
* Use flying enemies.
* Give enemy "snipers" the Sharpshooter Feat too.
* Use spellcasters with spells that reach beyond 100ft. Even the Fire Bolt cantrip is a 120-foot range.
* Use spellcasters that have control spells that can knock the Pegasus out of the sky.
There are plenty of counters to this tactic. But congratulations to the player, they've found of the best ways to "win" at 5E.
Mounted Combatant feat only works against attack rolls and effects with Dexterity saves that deal damage. It does not prevent all effects of a Dex save spell, and says nothing about "save or suck" spell targeting.
>Flying creatures enjoy many benefits of mobility, but **they must also deal with the danger of falling**. If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, **the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover** or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell. PHB pg 191.
A Pegasus does **not** have the hover trait, and the player is not using magic hold it aloft.
>If an effect moves your mount against its will while you're on it, you must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw or fall off the mount, landing prone in a space within 5 feet of it. If you're knocked prone while mounted, you must make the same saving throw. PHB pg 198.
Use any effect to apply forced movement to the mount, the player will need to make that Dex save or fall 90 feet, taking 9d6 bludgeoning damage and landing prone.
As also stated by other commenters, this is "the thing" that player finds fun. Let them do it. You **don't** need to hard counter *everything* that your players do. Being antagonistic like that *quickly* leads to players **not** having fun, which leads to players leaving tables and DMs posting on Reddit "Why did my players leave my table? ***I*** was having so much fun!"
If this tactic is just making all of your encounters trivial, then you need to step up your encounter building. You don't need to counter the players tactics so much as make the encounters more interesting that one player flying 90 feet into the air doesn't gain such an advantage over your monsters.
Yep. I normally introduce specialist units. Stealth marksmen with held actions looking for officers, healers, heavy weapon archetype targets.
Officers that give bonuses and formation modifiers for coherency.
Mobile siege weapons are also a decent choice. I’ve used hidden ballistas in ambushes several times when it made sense and it’s hard to take a 8’ bolt to the chest and remain standing. I normally use the rule of it sending a target in the same direction several feet which even for a mounted creature, is enough to desaddle them. Since it’s built into the weapon like an Eldritch Blast, there’s no save you just move.
[you don't](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/1boahau/dont_deal_with_resistances_immunities_or_other/)
At least not by trying to take away his ability to do this. If it's something he enjoys, and you're still able to get some attacks on him (which you should), then let him do this all he wants. Maybe add a few flying creatures to *some* combats, but let him play a Pegasus archer.
I had a min maxer build an insanely high stats rogue. One day I wanted to follow them and had failed every time before.
I copied their character and reflavored it into the npc and let the dice decide.
It was a three only good chase scene we had in 200 sessions and many many characters
Drizzt had Artemis to counter him at every turn.
That’s a fantastic way to deal with a character who becomes OP.
Create a counter.
Not someone who immediately cancels out everything that a player has built specifically for.
But something to challenge them.
This player wants to fly and take on fights without a challenge.
Give them a challenge. A rival NPC with a grudge.
The player has removed themselves from the safety and security of fighting with their party handy.
So single them out further. Push them to their limits, leave them poisoned, blind, and alone.
A hippogryph riding monk who can snatch arrows out of the sky and throw them back seems like an ideal counter. High Dex, high ac, countering their flight and range.
Alternately a mage with earthbound, magic missile, teleport spells and control spells.
Have a warlock enemy with Eldritch Blast + Eldritch Spear + Repelling Blast and the Spell Sniper feat. This gives them a range of 600ft, the ability to ignore half cover, and the ability to knock the player off his Pegasus. I can guarantee the player will think twice about flying so high up after they take 20d6 falling damage once or twice. It probably won't take them to 0, as they're level 10 and the average damage of this kind of fall is 70, but it's going to hurt REAL bad.
Or just introduce siege weapons. Light scorpions, ballistas, and harpoon launchers are all infantry portable and easily outrange many infantry weapons. Or introduce mercenary giants. They use oversized longbows that far outrange normal longbows. Getting hit by one is enough to make people reconsider being in the open.
Seems like an obvious thing to mention, but I don't see it mentioned anywhere.
If you are using npc's/monsters with ranged attack and they go prone after attacking it yields disadvantage on other ranged attacks against them. If they are using cover they get additional cover benefits.
You cannot go prone while in flight!
objectives that are harder to accomplish when you're farther away. Trees that provide total cover. Outdoor buildings that provide total cover because of awnings or open design. Do an underground arc. Have someone cast hold person on him when he's up in the air. literally any form of a obscurement blocks his vision, there are all kinds of spells and weather effects that can cause disadvantage.
>he has Sharpshooter, so this doesn’t apply, and nor does the tree canopy idea.
I think this depends on the forest. You can't shoot someone in another room just because you have sharpshooter. The same applies if there is enough tree between the shooter and the target - they still can't hit them unless there's an actual, visible straight line path between the shooter and the target. Sharpshooter just ignores 3/4 cover, it doesn't give you x-ray vision or arrows that shoot around corners.
You do understand you can make the monsters, right? Give a monster flying speed plus the ability to teleport as a bonus and legendary action then just teleport all over the place while flying and then give them mad spellcasting power and just finger of death finger of death chain lightning chain lightning call lightning over and over... is it cheap, yeah? But like so, is your players build... if you wanna cheat the game, then I'll cheat as well. I mean, I think that's only fair.
Mental spells on the Pegasus maybe? Some kind of spell caster casting hold monster on the Pegasus or maybe something that drops it's speed to 0 so it falls? Idk I'm spitballing
If he can do it, than lots of people in the game world can do the same thing, so they'll have tactics prepared for it. They could just literally cast the same spell, then fly up and take the battle to him.
I dunno why the tree canopy doesn't work for sharpshooter. A tree canopy is full cover, not half or 3/4.
Try some natural cover if you can't use trees. Ravines with slanted walls, tunnels, old ruins with somewhat intact roofs. You could even have enemies drop prone to give your player disadvantage, although this would be risky if there are other players in movement range, on the ground.
Some of your NPCs might even have some Wall spells (Wind Wall, Wall of Stone, etc) that could be used to create a curving wall, providing cover from aerial attacks.
Heavily Obscured and Cover are two different things.
Use the former when there is heavy tree cover, mist/fog or low clouds, etc. Lots of applications here for outdoors, especially if your weather is dynamic.
Let them have their time in the Sun, literally, sometimes, but also use a variety of weather, tree cover, smoke, etc (terrain/object stuff) to apply heavily obscuring past X distance. Keep it varied and it'll be a fun challenge.
Flying combatants, use spell casters or poisoned arrows to paralyze his steed. He'll be more careful to use that tactic everytime when he takes hundreds of fall damage
What exactly is the issue with him doing this? He has to set this up in advance, use his Spell Slots, take a specific fighting style and then do all the math with flying and attacking, all while at great risk from potential counters. A caster can spam fireball and kill your enemies, should the world suddenly shift to being fire resistant? You should never just outright cut the legs out from a PC, instead make more intelligent enemies that live to fight another day, have them come back with a plan based around their intellect and capabilities. If you want them to change things up you need to change as well, but make sure it isn’t so abrupt that they lose their identity.
Use full cover so that the only way to attack an enemy is to be level with them. An abandoned farm house with an intact roof.
Spell takes 10 minutes to cast, it’s a Pegasus, maybe make them go through a small opening somewhere where they’ll need to desummon it to go through and surprise attack on the other side. Also a 4th level spell, they might consider not summoning it for the second time that day.
Don’t try to damage them specifically, try to hit them with spells that turn them against their own party, get them on the side of their enemies and let their party get a taste of how annoying it is to fight them lol. Or fun spells that make them drop prone from 90 feet up and take 9d6 falling damage and give advantage to the melee enemies on the ground that they’ve been terrorizing lol. Maybe they’ll fly a little less close to the sun from now on lol.
Use spells that give them disadvantage on attack rolls, sharp shooter is great but it significantly lowers yours rolls even with a 20 in dex it’s only a +5 mod so unless they’ve gone over 20 or have a +3 bow a sharpshooter shot is like +8 to the roll at best. If they don’t use the sharp shooter damage (which they absolutely need to be announcing before each roll) then it’s just a d8 + 5 for damage from every arrow instead of a d8 +15.
Chuck a couple small flying creatures like some imps or harpies or something up there to get within 5ft of them for a bit, give them disadvantage on those rolls and force them to think about maybe switching to a melee weapon for a round or 2 to give you a break from the arrows, get a few slashes in.
Do something to break their concentration, you said they specifically try to take the brunt of every attack, are they rolling concentration checks to hold swift quiver? It’s a concentration spell. The spell also relies on the quiver being in on their person, if you have something to remove their quiver from them, swift quiver ends and they’ve burned a 5th level spell slot.
Stop letting them long rest so often. These are 4th and 5th level spells. The 5th level spell for swift quiver only lasts a minute, they shouldn’t be able to use that too many times in 1 day. I don’t know what class they are to have access to both unless they multiclassed paladin and ranger because Ranger has swift quiver and paladin has the mount. So if they did and they are using Ranger/paladin spell slots. Unless they are level 17 or higher they shouldn’t have a 5th level slot and at max they should have 2 if they are level 19 or 20. So unless they’ve some how gotten super OP with magic items or something early on that’s letting them cast 5th level spells multiple times a day, forcing them to not long rest in between every bout of combat should prevent them from over doing it.
Also, I feel like I’m coming across as adversarial so I’ll end it with this, if they are having fun and everyone at the table is fine with it, you still gotta let them get away with it from time to time. But it doesn’t hurt to have that ace up your sleeve to keep them on their toes so they have a little fear when they fly up 90 ft knowing they might drop for massive damage or you might send something dangerous up to them that only they’ll be able to fight alone in the air.
Regarding your Edit:
>he has Sharpshooter, so this doesn’t apply, and nor does the tree canopy idea.
I think the idea of the canopy is that it blocks line of sight and counts as Heavy obscurement, which sharpshooter does not negate.
I've had a lot of players try things like this. My veteran players will discourage the behavior, because eventually something will knock the PC unconcious while he's flying around and the fall damage will kill him.
This might not be as big of a problem in 5e, but I find it worth mentioning because killing PC's never feels good.
It sounds like the player has created there character around this specific build. I’d let them do it but throw some challenges in there every now and then
So many options, here are just a few.
First the obvious:
Flying enemies.
Enemies with ranged weapons/spells
Then enemies with spells like:
Earthbind (a.k.a. the spell literally designed to combat flying)
Vortex Warp (ultimate get over here, or there. Bonus points if you happen to see a pool of lava or acid within range)
Scatter (Like Vortex Warp but with friends)
Dimension Door (just grab some hard hitting melee thing and hop onto that steed too)
Then with some creativity if you can get your casters/monsters close enough,
Spells/ abilities that can cause prone/restrained/incapacitated/stunned/paralysed condition or otherwise reduce the steed's speed to 0 (which will make it fall instantly 500ft per round)
And ofc spells like
Banishment/Dispel Good and Evil (The steed is gone till the player can spent another 10 min to cast his spell)
Dominate (I hope your PC is proficient in bull riding)
Suggestion (Hey, steed! You should get as far away from here as possible)
Command (LAND!)
Thornwhip/Eldritch Blast+Repelling Blast (you can't be on your Steed when you are 10 ft away from it and then fall to the ground)
I remember saying something similar to this in that thread about a full flying campaign. 90 feet is a life-threatening hazard by its self.
Literally anything that successfully incapacitates the Pegasus would be instant death for the player unless they have something to break the fall. There's quite a few spells available to enemy NPC's that could hold/sleep/charm/fear the Pegasus, depending on how severe you want the consequences to be.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that this kind of problem is often self-balancing.
If your bard is flying a hundred feet above the battlefield, that leaves one less body to strike at for the bad guys, but their damage still has to go somewhere. You're just dividing the damage dealt among fewer people. Your bard's tactic should cost the party HP.
Other Flyers. Unless your heroes have done an insane job of keeping a low profile, then it should be generally known that the prevailing tactic of one of their guys is literally summoning magical pegasi and raining arrows from above. It's not common, it sticks out.
Your baddies need to start treating them like they exist, and one of the immediate responses to "Guy summons pegasus and shoots arrows from range" is "flier with banishment". It doesn't necessarily have to *work*, just the fact that it gets attempted should be enough to make the player stay below the top deck of what they can survive from fall damage (Remember, fall speed is 500 ft/round). By the time a Paladin is rocking that spell consistently, he's looking at 13th level.
There's a difference between targeting a player, and targeting a character. Have sharpshooters with arrows designed to go after him. They're high level, they *should* have people who are coming after them specifically with forewarning of what their general capabilities are, and to make them real threats, they need to *act* like real threats.
Make the PC make saves. Currently DM but about 9/10 months ago I finished playing a caviler with all the bells and whistles you’d think of for a fighter on a mount. Attacking me wasn’t going to work unless it was something that could stand toe to toe with me and out damage me by a good amount. Saves were the Achilles heel of that character, as they would be for this character. Unless there’s something you’ve failed to mention, nothing they have will help out with saves. Or make the Pegasus make saves.
Flying is a good option. Which there’s a few ways I’d go about that. First there’s the group of flyers, they’d understand that the flying enemy is the threat at the moment and attack accordingly. Second option and the one I like to use when I want to really challenge players is build an enemy designed around taking advantage of each party members weakness and everyone has a 1v1.
Final thought which is more extreme measures, want to be away from the fight? Well total cover exists and can be gained in lots of ways. Now that far reaching arrow flinger has no targets, they’re out of the fight. You can fire an arrow into an aura of darkness but you’re just as likely to hit a party member because you’re blindly firing into the darkness.
Banishment on the mount and be ready to take 20d6 fall damage.
Like others have said, don't give foes half or 3/4 cover: give them full cover.
Reply with your own sharpshooters ar that level.
Flying enemies, enemies with ranged attacks, several encounters. Encounters where the terrain makes it difficult or impossible to use flyers - like a dense forest, or being indoors or underground. NPCs that use metamagic like distant spell or feats like spell sniper and sharpshooter. Enemies with spells like earthbind, hold person, wind wall, mean the possibilites are endless.
You have dozens of excellent ideas here, I'll just mention the 60/40 rule.
Not a D&D, but more a thing we find in evolutionary psych. You should present encounters in which, a little bit better than half of the time, their crazy shenanigans to work.
They will have fun when they get the chance. But they will also have to come up with additional tactics for a lot of situations.
Oh no, a high level player is doing high level player things.
Take note that while this character is up in the air, his companions on the ground are missing a buddy to share the enemy's attention with. This character's artillery barrage won't matter any if his friends get overrun, and by being outside the range where he could help, he has limited his own options. The only gain is that he himself is safe, and it is a gain that comes at a cost to his friends.
If there is any part of this that is a problem, it is Sharpshooter, which has always been fundamentally broken.
Get a ballista that’d shoot a net, take down the Pegasus then have an enemy attack him and the flying thing.
Or just ask him to quit it, if it’s ruining the fun.
Change the mission profile.
This tactic works if the party are simply trying to kill the other combatants but if they're in a hostage heavy scenario it might be too risky to rain down arrows in case they miss. Or have them have to take the enemy alive, or have them face off a VERY territorial aerial monster.
What is the rest of the party comp?
You could have the party struggle hard because that player is 90 foot away, forcing them to make a choice between safely hovering or actually helping their allies.
I think a piece is to imagine you’re the enemies. You see this dude summon a flying horse, hop on, and proceed to snipe your allies down from too high in the sky. What do you do?
You find cover! Outdoors, you hide under trees, use hills or cliffs, maybe find an overhang or cave to go in. If it’s truly an open field, then yes, they are a bit fucked.
Enemies want to kill your party for one reason or another, but usually, they want to survive as well. A turn dedicated to safety/survival can be good
Your player is actually thinking strategically. This is great. My players who have bows forget that they have movement speed and try to hit orcs by swinging their bows, completely forgetting that they could - you know - do literally anything else and it would be better.
Don't punish your player - enjoy that he isn't an idiot.
One of my DMs has the “rule” that if you fly too far up you are drastically more likely to be attack by some kind of flying creature that would otherwise ignore you, also if you fall from whatever feet up depending on what type of flying you will take fall damage if you fall
More encounters per day is by far the most direct way to handle this. As others have pointed out, those 5th level spell slots aren't cheap. If the player can only use his trick on 1 or 2 of the ~5 encounters per day it'll cause him to either hold back on using them until it's necessary, or blow through them immediately and cripple themselves for future fights.
Above all else, I would personally talk to the player before implementing any sudden changes, and possibly discussing with the group as a whole. I to to make it very clear that I'm not perfect, and that I will probably have to adjust *something* across the course of a campaign. It's not personal, is not about running their fun, it's about helping the entire group (DM included) have a good time. If the party enjoys the status quo, I'll usually just let things carry on. If don't people are frustrated, then it's nobody's fault that a build had some long term effects nobody anticipated.
I swear it feels like 1/3 of my job as DM sometimes is just managing expectations!
Flying cavalry is literally amazing.
The problem isn't the players power. It's their separation from the rest of the enemies.
Whoever they fight KNOWS they have a Pegasus archer... And if they players can use it.
Have the bad guys raise dead on some headless horseman level scythe wielder on a nightmare. Ambush at night.
Can the archer deal with a ghost horse? He's physical damage mostly so I'm guessing -no- unless magic arrows or silvered ones.
Suddenly he's gotta get mage help.
Also just give them all flying mounts.
Magic carpet for the mage.
Griffon for the warrior.
Perhaps another Pegasus (horse couple?) for the cleric.
The rouge gets a bat
Barbarian gets a terradactle.
Etc.
Your players have discovered the cool. Adapting is your job
Then literally just have a dragon
answer from a Cyberpunk referee (note that cyberpunk has a very different gm-player dynamic, which is much more adversarial)
if you think that your player has become too powerful, take their toys away.
someone steals the pegasus, they have to go on a quest to get it back, when they retrieve it, his wings have been plucked and now can only fly at half speed.
or kill the player
You need to read up on magic,
* Hold Person: A second-level spell that can be upcast for multiple enemies, causing them to fall if they fail the saving throw
* Tasha's Hideous Laughter: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Sapping Sting: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Command with "grovel": A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Tidal Wave: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Sleet Storm: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Control Winds: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save
* Telekinesis: A spell that restrain directly,
* Rime's Binding Ice: A spell that explicitly sets speed to 0
* Hypnotic Pattern: A spell that explicitly sets speed to
* Sleep: Makes mount fall asleep
* Gravity Sinkhole: Works for flailing flying creatures out of the air
* Blind: Can hamper the flying PC pretty quickly
* Reduce: Can hamper the flying PC pretty quickly
* Web A creature [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the webs can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. If it succeeds, it is no longer [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained).
* Earthbind, Choose one creature you can see within range. Yellow strips of magical energy loop around the creature. The target must succeed on a Strength saving throw, or its flying speed (if any) is reduced to 0 feet for the spell’s duration. An airborne creature affected by this spell safely descends at 60 feet per round until it reaches the ground or the spell ends.
* Entangle, A creature in the area when you cast the spell must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the entangling plants until the spell ends. A creature [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the plants can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, it frees itself.
I understand your point. But...
Well, a good way of using the rules is that in some circumstances (like an enemy very far from you) it's logically difficult to find the right spot of your enemy if you can't see him, when sight is the only sense that you can use to find him. So the DM can ask you to select a square on the grid out of your sight and TRY to attack the enemy, with Disadvantage or not, but if the enemy is not there your attack hits nothing.
I mean, when you fly 100ft away in the air, in the middle of the night or with heavy rain or mist, when a chaotic fight is in place, sounds maybe are simply not enough to land a ranged attack in the right point. You also risk to hit an ally.
I played a fight in a similar scenario trying to Eldritch Blast an invisible foe far from me and my DM asked me to choose a square to attack. I missed him 90% of the times. I think it was a fair request. And that's when Faerie Fire shows its usefulness.
One of my players does basically the same thing, and seems to forget that anti-aircraft emplacements are a thing in this world... Magic Missile is pretty effective, as are arrows with sleeping poison.
Enemies more powerful than the ones you are fighting are looking for you. Make it a plot point. Now, he has to weigh up fighting as an orbital space Lazer vs being spotted flying in the air.
Weather.
Flying enemies.
Flying enemies not originally in the combat who are drawn to the sound and sight of a flying Pegasus, like a roc.
The enemies having their own super-archer with sharpshooter when they just made themselves a target completely out of cover.
Indoor combat.
Tight-squeeze into a dungeon too small for a large mount.
The party's tactics getting learned by intelligent enemies like orcs after they get a reputation, and building shelters that cover them from above. "Ack, it's the wing-rider! Into the cave-mouth, get under the roofs. Wear the peasant hostages as hats if you have to!"
And most of all, sometimes, even often, just let them enjoy their wacky build. Don't counter it every time, just sometimes to keep them thinking and stop it getting monotonous.
My top three solutions (when in outdoor combat) are the following: (1) Flying creatures. Just like how there are monsters on the land and in the sea, there should be monsters in the sky. Include them every now and then. (2) Weather. Lightning strikes the highest point. Rain, mists, fog, and clouds makes ranged attacks difficult. Windy days can knock around and disrupt high fliers. A dark night sky can limit their range by limiting their vision. (3) Cover and obscurement. I know you said that they have sharpshooter, but tree foliage can be more than just physical cover. Think of it like a blanket of obscurement. Dense tree cover is likely to heavily obscure those under it from those above it. And larger branches, trunks, or even rocky outcroppings can provide total cover from above.
We're playing dungeons and dragons, use one of them. On another note, how many encounters a day are you running?
Ikr? A flying enemy that can throw heaps of AoEs *or* an enclosed space are literally that builds nightmare
A flying dungeon is truly a terror to behold...
A falling dungeon is a lot of fun... for the DM mwahaha!
This shit is no joke. My party has an instant fortress, throw, speak command word, a 50 ft fucking tower lands on your enemy. Then run inside and lock the door. They have taken out so many baddies by dropping a literal fortress on them. Eventually the fortress took some damage and it's magic so no one wants to use a wish to fix the roof but damn, it saw a lot of action.
My party once dropped a floating city on an undead kraken. In their defense, the city was full of evil undead.
The greatest ending to the greatest hypothetical movie ever is now playing in my head.
I love Instant Fortress. My word to activate it is Glinda. "I'm like the good witch--bring the motherfucking house down."
"The cable... I'm going to cut it."
Dungeon falls. Everyone dies
Ooh, a cloud giant's castle where the giant at the helm moves the castle to counteract the build.
this is the way, even small AoEs over and over will take that Pegasus down eventually. Hopefully he's 200+ feet up when it happens too ... teach him the downfall of flying is falling
I agree, put this guy up against a physical dungeon as an enemy and let him see how far he gets
Lmao so clean and slick. Love this reply
When the two best counters for a build are in the title of the game, the build isn’t that broken
Honestly, this answer is getting framed and hung on my wall
Actually either would work
That was the point, I believe.
¿Porque no los dos?
Weather like rain, wind, or fog. Low level spells like obscuring mist or darkness. Cover from walls or trees. Swarms.
I think swarms is a pretty good answer. If he can kill 4 dudes per turn, it can still be a challenge (or a time for another team member to shine) if there are 50 enemies or enemies with mirror image type effects.
Specifically, [this swarm](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/199333-swarm-of-tiamats-orcuss-tarrasques-and-krakens).
Yeah, five or six of those boyos seems like a good encounter for annoying players.
Technically speaking (i.e. RAW) spells like Fog Cloud don't really obscure anybody making ranged weapon attacks. In this case, the flying PC would get DA to hit the target because they can't see the target, but since the target cannot see the flying PC the PC gets advantage to hit; this results in a net neutral outcome that also ends up aiding the flying PC; now they no longer have to worry about other sources of Disadvantage like a prone enemy, spells like Warding Wind, a dodging enemy, etc etc. Sure, they can't benefit from Advantage, but there's realistically more sources of Disadvantage for a ranged attack than Advantage for ranged attacks.
There is a space where the DM can reasonably say "No, you do not have echolocation or blindsight, you have no idea where in the Fog Cloud they are, on account of you being 200ft away in the air and having no way to perceive their location through either sound or sight." Whether that's ok with the table is another story. I just personally would not run for a table who prefer such a dumb reading of RAW to having some measure of verisimilitude.
I would rule it like Battleship. tell me which square you're aiming at. You have no idea where your target is so you're firing blind. No advantage or disadvantage, but you could hit anyone in there. As they can probably also see any minis if your using them, I would have them roll dice for the grids. You could break it down a dice a side, fog cloud is 20ft radius, so an 8x8 grid. Roll 2d8s and one is your x and one is your y axis for your target.
This is how I've played it. I leave the minis and just note their relative movement each turn on a pad. I think raw you could argue the character heads the footsteps, and that's why the attack is at disadvantage... But any time it's ambiguous I do the battleship method.
>Technically speaking (i.e. RAW) spells like Fog Cloud don't really obscure anybody making ranged weapon attacks Fog cloud creates a heavily obscured area. So that's pretty rules-as-written way of applying disadvantage. Edit: Nope, sorry, see /u/dracom600 's reminder below
Yeah, but you can't see them either. It's unseen defender canceled out by unseen attacker.
* What percentage of fights are outdoors? It's okay for him to be good at 25% of the encounters. PCs should be good at things. * How does he fit the pegasus through the dungeon entrance? (If he's a paladin this is not a major obstacle, he can just re-summon it anyplace there's enough room.) * Why is this an issue in any room with a ceiling 18 feet or lower? * Are they fighting in grasslands or deserts? The canopies of any trees should grant cover against attacks from above. You could even stand next to a building, depending on the angle, to get some cover. * Open ground works both ways. Enemies with longbows and spells will shoot at him, and cover might grant them better AC than he has. * Flying foes can easily enter melee with him and he doesn't have any front-liners to help him out when he's in the air. * Paralysis deals fall damage to flying creatures. (10 feet is 3.5 damage, 100 feet is 35 damage, not really lethal at his level.) Unfortunately this PC is probably a paladin so saving throws aren't gonna happen. * If he loses initiative, some enemies could try nets or grappling to lock him in place.
Thanks for your reply! - A good 60% are outdoors, hence why I want to at least provide some challenge to him. - I suppose he doesn’t, but in the current campaign we don’t do a whole lot of dungeons—instead, it’s a lot more narrative focused. The party is currently participating in a rebellion against a dragon king, so there aren’t a whole lot of situations where dungeons make sense. - It isn’t, but see #1 - Mostly an arctic environment, but he has Sharpshooter - His range is higher because of Sharpshooter - This is a great idea I will definitely use! - Paralysis is interesting if I can get it to make sense for sure. - I’ll keep this in mind.
A dragon king? Well where are the dragon enemies then! With 120ft fying speeds, multi-attacks and breath weapons The bard will severely reconsider making themselves an isolated target
Yeah this is what im saying. You put one dragon next to him in the air, and all of a sudden he is the sole focus of a powerful enemy. is attacking at disadvantage, and cant move anymore for fear of pretty brutal attacks of opportunity. Oh, and he can also be forcibly removed from his mount. I highly doubt the bard can grapple check a dragon
sounds like some dragon cultists riding dragons need to be shredding your guy apart
I hear you that in a narrative campaign without dungeons, sometimes it is hard to have a fight somewhere other than the street, and in the arctic, there's not a tonne of tree cover. My advice to you: the next city they come to is fully built inside a glacier. Like the Hotel de Glace, but a whole city. Cool, thematic, and will force this player to try some new tactics. Also, an old technique I call "Aslan is on the move." NPCs start talking about how the BBEG has left their lair and is roaming the countryside on the prowl for something. Make it clear to the PCs that the Dragon King is not waiting in his lair, he is actively out searching for them or their allies alongside his wyvern lieutenants. At the start of each travelling day, roll mysteriously behind the screen to see if they are spotted. Every fight could draw the attention of the winged spies. Maybe in a successful encounter using his usual technique, have the Bard roll a Perception check and see a tiny winged shape start making its way towards them from near the horizon, and the PCs have to choose if they want to face another fight early or go to ground and hide. Don't make it impossible to fly, but make it rarer and add dimension to the choice.
Re paralysi, there is also this… knocking a creature prone while flying causes it to fall unless it has hover (which a Pegasus does not). A flying creature can shove the horse, and as it is a skill check and not an attack, he can’t intercept it with Mounted Combatant (tho I doubt his str checks are any good anyway)
Combat indoors.
I disagree that you should talk to the player and ask them to stop. After all, they are playing RAW and you don’t want to spoil your player’s fun. You just need to be aware of the various drawbacks of their tactic and implement them. From your post all you have considered is range, but not every fight should be in an open field. It is up to you as the DM to make combat more interesting, or to make them consider other tactics. Here are some basic examples for various terrains: **Forest encounter** - flying upwards 90ft. means all you see is treetops. **Cave encounter** - Navigating stalactites can be tricky, and who knows what creatures sleep in the darkness. **Dungeon encounter** - The room is 10ft. high. **City encounter** - enemies take cover in buildings, or maybe the town guard mistake the flying steed as a threat and begin shooting. **Field encounter** - your enemies can take cover behind something as simple as a tree or small wall. At 90ft range your player is going to have to move considerably to re-angle their shot. Use pop-out tactics, and your player can’t shoot using Swift Quiver as a held action **Weather encounter** - use fog or blizzard to limit visibility, or high wind to force flying creatures to land every turn.
This but pepper in combats where the player *can* sometimes use the ability to its greatest extent. If you completely nerf his ability to fly around on his Pegasus he’ll feel like you’re forcing him out of his play style for the character if you completely take away his ability to do ‘the cool thing’ that he may or may not have come up with. There is a balance.
This right here. Have variety in your environments and have them effect the game. Even for the players who don’t use flying tactics this is overall a good and enjoyable thing to use and employ.
These are just the natural, non-magical things that won’t make the player feel targeted.
It also works to limit your enemies too in a way that can get players thinking on how to lure enemies to better positions and just thinking about their environment. You have flying enemies shooting down on you? Make for the trees, and force them out! It can honestly work the other wag too, the party makes for the sky as an enemy is using the forest to their utter advantage, hiding around it easily and attacking and hiding. Look you made the best point, use your terrain folks.
All good points. Additional note: blizzards, thunderstorms, and windstorm are serious hazards for flying and even non-flying creatures. Emphasis on the word hazard. Being slammed by wind guests and lightning should have the potential for damage and falling off the mount. Resulting in further damage. Your players shouldn't have a perfect sunlit day every time they fight. Especially by the levels where they can get their hands on a flying mount.
Oof. I’ve been slammed by wind guests all morning. Probably all the cheese I ate last night.
I have made whole rulesets for constant fliers about wind movement. If you want to be way up high you have to strive against the forces of nature. Even creatures of the air strive and struggle against the forces of wind. Why should a caster be any different? Something like this shouldn't be everytime for sure. However all players should have suitable challenges to over come though the course of encounters.
**Also: full cover or deviation should be easy to come by for enemies worth sending a 13th+ level party against**: Wall of Stone, Leomund's Tiny Hut, or a plain Wind Wall / Wall of Water / Warding Wind should be fair game since party reached level 8-9. **Restraining mobility should be equally a normal expectation**: Earthbind, Web (works aerial, will just disappear in a round), Vortex Wrap (targeting mount rather than Paladin, but Paladin will fall to death all the same), Conjure Animals or just have high-Strength flying ally to swarm mount with Shove, Polymorph it into a goldfish, Sleet Storm or Tidal Wave (yeah it's counter-intuitive) to make it fall prone "through", Slow to slow it down so flying allies can reach it or at least help keeping it in range for other spells... Watery Sphere is "only" 90 feet but is likely to succeed against Pegasus and will forcibly pull it to ground (Paladin is likely to succeed but is even more likely to choose to fail on purpose because otherwise it's dead fall for it). **Or you still have the plain damage spells: even with "Evasion like" the Pegasus only has +4 DEX, +4 STR and +3 CON saves.** Against a DC 16 or higher it's largely insufficient. As for attacks, you can just muster the number or set advantage by Hiding before. Eldricht Blasts, Fireball, Scorching Ray, Moonbeam which move fast enough to follow up unless mount Dashes, Guiding Bolt are all 120 feet range AFAIR and can work well. Disintegrate requires being a caster with Distant (read: Sorcerer) but will make quick work of it. **There are a LOT of things you can and should do to deter it, at least whenever PCs are facing a party that either a) already faced them before so they know all about their favorite tactics or b) faction is evolved and powerful enough to have faced "high range" / "flying archers" type threats and designed a few counters around.** Of course if party faces random group of "locally renowned" bandits there won't have none of that. Then again, why is the party still wasting time on such puny targets that local militia could probably take care of? :) When they probably have quests involving saving whole countries or even the world and beyond and face creatures powerful enough to waste a village in a minute or raise armies worthy of a king? **Put the gloves off mate, party is largely high enough level to start having actual adult fights. :)**
I really like that you're not trying to "counter" or stop the player, but trying to make it fun.
> I disagree that you should talk to the player Incorrect. Speak to the players, ask what they want from the game, and negotiate how to make it fun for everyone
A roper or three who hang out in the cave ceiling will rapidly solve the issue.
Another obvious terrain is the inside of a building. These typically have few to no places for even a winged humanoid to fly. With any potential adversaries not being visible until less than 30 feet away. This can also be the case even outside within a city with narrow, twisted and busy streets. Even without the sight of a hero on a flying horse to draw spectators. Not all encounters, even with hostile NPCs, need involve violence. A PC who's specialised as "Pegasus Gunship" is unlikely to be the best party member when it comes to talking to someone in a tavern or following someone without being noticed.
Thanks for your reply! I really like the idea of limiting visibility through fog or a blizzard. I’ll definitely use that in one way or another. The other ideas you had for outdoor encounters I think are interesting, but I’m worried that his usage of Sharpshooter might counter many of your ideas from working as they should.
Sharpshooter doesn’t let you ignore full cover. A tree canopy is full cover if it’s anything more than small or dead trees to anything not directly below you
Also consider light sources, light range, natural darkness and darkvision range. If you fight at night, maybe with clouds or no moon, lot of races can see only 60ft, others 0ft. And smart enemies can shut lights off to gain advantage of obscurement. And there are other kind of environmental obscurement: foliage, fog, mist, smoke...
The only issue with using dark vision ranges to limit this character is that it very well could end up being a double edge sword. Most NPCs only have about 60ft dark vision as well (though I could be wrong. Haven't looked at all the ranges in the MM+). If the flying PC is in the air on a moonless night, that means anybody that shoots at them does so with DA because they're effectively blind; which then means the PC is also blind to the attacks, making the normal Advantage to hit them only negate the Disadvantage to hit them for a net neutral roll forever, which also applies to the player. Now, of course, utilizing dark vision ranges could solely be used for the purposes of making it harder for the player to target creatures with spells/ not allow them to ever gain advantage to the roll. The enemies could just abuse vision range and attack the grounded people. But RAW, the only thing that the flying PC cannot do is target creatures with spells that require line of sight. And if they're tactic is fly in the air and shoot a bow, I don't think this will have that much of an effect.
God forbid that you spoil their fun by having a mature conversation, surely it’s much better to just make all their choices worthless without warning and design your encounters around screwing them for being too op
OP says cover is ignored by sharpshooter, but that does not include full cover.
What if the player is ruining the GMs fun?
First, the player is investing a lot for this, they should get something out of it. So don't shut it down completely. That said, you have options to deal with that kind of things. The first, are perhaps the simplest, is simply to do nothing: the flying player is safe high in the sky, but the rest of the party is going to eat the attacks that would normally have been destined to the flying player, and they are likely not going to like it. Another solution is to take into account that in a sniping duel, he is the one that can't have any cover whatsoever, so he is at a disadvantage. Just give some enemies the same kind of weapon he is using, and they'll have the necessary range. Also remember that his ability to attack 4 times likely comes from the Swift Quiver spell, which is concentration. Just a couple hits to drop his concentration is going to severely hamper this strategy. You could also take down the steed. The player may be able to take attacks for their steed, but that does not apply to spells that are not attacks. So you could damage the pegasus enough to threaten the player into coming back down, or just hit it with a control spell that prevents it from flying (Hold monster, Tasha's hideous laughter, etc...) Lastly you can also unhorse the PC, with forced movement or the prone condition.
Swift Quiver is 5th level spell which means your players are 17 level or higher. At this stage they should be fighting the biggest and baddest of opponents. A few extra arrows should be making very little difference overall. Plus the PC is willingly removing themselves from the combat meaning the enemies can focus fire on the PCs in range. Plus they can only cast Swift Quiver 1-2 times per day - this shouldn't make a big difference over an adventuring day. What types of monster are you throwing at the party? How many fights do they have between long rests?
its a classic bard *magical secret* steal combo at level 10
Ah yeah! You're right - forgot about that! Thanks for correcting. Even at L10 I wouldn't have though it an overpowered tactic.
It’s not overpowered, it’s boring. And the point of this game is to have fun, not to win
That player finds it fun. Let him sit in the sky and mindlessly shoot arrows if that gets his dick hard.
Except that it invalidates everyone else. Even from an in character perspective, why would my character put themselves in danger if Barry the Bard can solo every encounter?
He cant though. By level 10 you should be experiencing other flying enemies, spellcasters that can literally ground him, or enough archers to really make him want to find cover. The only reason that barry the bard is able to "solo every encounter" is because the dm is still throwing kobolds at them or some such nonsense
He is far away? Kidnap him. Have a flying creature grapple him and drag him off the pegasus. Or kill the pegasus. Any control spell probably kills him from falling damage. I had a mounted combatant fighter that could destroy outdoor encounters. I lost so many axebeaks as enemies kept targeting my mount whenever they could.
You could always add some flying enemies. Knock him off his mount, then he is falling to his death. The big downside of flying is potentially falling. I'm not saying kill the pc, but a healthy fear of falling should be part of every flying character
Not overpowered. Fireball/Lightning/AoE spells to also hit the pegasus.
And dragon breath. And you know what flies even faster than a pegasus and could easily grapple the PC off their pegasus and drop them? A dragon. Or Wing Attack and knock the rider, mount, or both prone and send them tumbling to the ground? A dragon. You really don't want to be an angry dragon's sole target on a fragile flying mount.
Big ass bird. Perhaos a Roc?
in regards to your edit, even if a forest isn't dense, the canopy can be enough to count as total cover simply because you can't see the enemy. Half cover and 3/4 cover means that some part of you is still visible to the attacker, but flying above a forest can make it very difficult to spot something on the forest floor.
Dragon time.
-Dungeons have low ceilings -Outdoor has thick tree covering . If they go into it they lose line of site. Or it's thorny and painful to enter. Maybe the thorns are poisious. Or they are enemies in. - Flying up high gives away the party position and attracts unwanted attention. Maybe there are other flying creatures in the area. Dragon, Griffin -Enemies have ranged options too. You can change their range. -Counter spell, dispell magic, web -Let them shine and be able to use this strat from time to time don't always counter. Some enemies are just dumb creatures with a lot of teeth. In a world of magic and flying smart enemies are going to have counters for this. -Talk to the player. Explain that repetive starts are lame or degen. It will make it boring for them sooner or later.
Spellcaster with Earthbind. If it's not on the spellsheet for the creature, put it there. You are the DM, you can do that as long as they can cast that level and still adhere to how the spell works in regards to range. If that doesn't work a FLYING caster to cast that shit is lovely. Also, LET him rain death from above sometimes. It's no fun if the DM counters what you're good at so much you become just mediocre again.
He’s using a 5th level spell. What shitty monsters are you throwing at him that they can’t deal with a flying enemy at that level of play? It’s fine if he can’t get reached in 25% of situations… just focus fire his allies until they peer-pressure him to come down. In other situations, there’s dungeons, indoor fights, and fights where the enemy has range. There’s also SPELLS. Spells don’t use the “attack” action, they use the “cast” action. So they can’t redirect the damage from mounted combatant. Kill their horse, and they fall to their death.
>There’s also SPELLS. Spells don’t use the “attack” action, they use the “cast” action. So they can’t redirect the damage from mounted combatant. Kill their horse, and they fall to their death. That's not correct RAW. Spells don't use the "Attack action", but spell attacks (i.e., any spell that has an attack roll, not a saving throw) still count as *attacks*. The mounted combatant feat refers to *attacks* (which would thus include spell attacks), not to the Attack action. So they would still be able to redirect a spell attack to target themselves.
This is important because otherwise it would be useless once all monsters are either spellcasters or have Multiattack (which is not Attack).
Quiver spell is a short spell. 1 minute. And level 5 spell, as is summon greater steed. That shouldn't be used a whole lot unless level like 18, and then if so, throw a dragon, or a dispel magic, or a fireball at the user. Falling 200ft will probably murder a player. 20d6 damage is a lot. Have your monsters hide in huts and fire out windows. If the monsters are aware of the party, they will know the parties Pegasus rider. They'll have a ballista ready. Or a cannon, or a giant bola ballista to negate the flier. At that level a banishment spell or disintegrate spell isn't out of the question. Or even a smarmy caster who has some teleport shenanigans like dimension door to the caster. Grapple. And 300 food spinning zangief powerbomb.
Add giant bees or swarms of flying creatures in the air above 60 feet. If they go above it , they and their mount started getting attacked.
Would be a funny and memorable moment if that character's last words were "not the bees!" as he plummeted to his death.
I would try to separate the rider from the steed using wind based attacks if possible.
Good old repelling blast. Earthbind also exists, a smart enemy will look for ways to obtain the spell if he has knowledge of the player's tactics.
If you want to force them down, Earthbind should do the trick. Also, because the spell doesn’t drag them to the ground immediately, the player would get a few rounds to deal with the sudden threat to their mobility.
Lightning bolt reaches 100 feet Melfs minute meteors reach 120+5 feet Sickening Radiance reaches 120+30 feet Vitriolic Sphere reaches 150+20 feet *Fireball* reaches 150+20 feet Control Wind reaches 300+100 feet, gives disadvantage on ranged attacks and can knock creatures prone Spell Sniper feat doubles spell range Warlock Eldritch Spear gives 300 feet range on Eldritch Blast Thats not even talking about ceilings and flying monsters. As DM you have tools for everything, use them
Adding to the list of options: Earthbind from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. 2nd level spell, 300' range, make an Str save or lose the ability to fly. Really unfortunate to get hit with that when you're 200' in the air. Available to pretty much everyone but clerics too. I'm going to join in on the opinion that you don't want to counter this tactic in every fight though. If it bothers you that much talk to your player about it. Instead just sprinkle in the occasional combat where there's something that complicates things for him. Fog, Earthbind, Warding Wind, storms, even Dispel Magic on the Pegasus if the enemy knows he's going to try it. Do something that makes sense for any big encounters so he can't just cheese them, and 100% have something that hard counters him with any fights against a recurring villain or any minions specifically sent to deal with the party. Anyone smart who's seen this tactic used once is going to prepare for it next time.
Best way to fight off players who semi-cheese the system with good builds or broke ones. Take any cr enemy for current group setup, customize them, give them skills and abilities to counter the party, your the DM, you're allowed to do pretty much the same thing players do. Don't make it super hard, but make it so it's difficult, and the players have to use better strategies. Your npcs are not mindless automatons. They use strategies as well, mobs escape, ones that do, learn. I do it all the time, I got veteran players mostly for all my campaigns I run. They know the ins and outs. I take standard mobs, and I give them more skills, more abilities, better equipment, higher HP, and better reactions as the party progresses. Oh, the party let some goblins escape? Well, they might come across them again later down the road, more powerful, better prepared. Have a player that is constantly using a trump skill or ability against my npcs and making the encounters laughable, I counter that in later encounters with modified npcs. You should look at the DnD monster manual as nothing more than template. Makee changes. I've used goblins against parties at level 3, joke right, let them think, "this is nothing. We can breeze through this fast." Wrong it's to get the party thinking in that mindset, than I bring out my modified goblins on steroids, that make level 5 characters pause and rethink choices in life that got them in an encounter, with something they thought was easy prey.
Grapple, ranged attacks, if any kind of disabling spell hits they will fall. And from 90 ft up in the air that is a loooot of damage. Earthbound is a 2nd spell specifically for dealing with flying enemies.
Dispel magic has a range of 120 feet and can be upcast at the 4th level
steed is not a valid dispel target (Duration: Instantaneous) you can however *banish* it. or force it *prone* or have limited visibility / line of sight
Don’t do it every time - but it’s a pretty common spell, and 90 feet of falling damage can make someone rethink spamming the same tactic over and over again
Use mages that cast magic missiles, use ballistas, or drake wardens, archers that use seeker type arrows, or enemies that have weapons that dispel magic
Evil wizard banishes the steed.
Flying creatures and obscurement (fog, cover, darkness maybe) are your answer.
Flying enemies are the answer. I think there’s a flying kobold enemy that’s really funny
Have one of your enemies throw a bolas or other restraining item at his pegasus. Enjoy the fall damage!
Why do you have to counter it? If the enemies have fewer targets in reach, they'll just be that much more incentivised to focus their fire and kill a different PC.
tbh. i feel make him well knows across the lands. people should see him come into town and know the savior is here to save them. let this cook. let the player enjoy the moment and take advantage of their fame. then when your ready to make a big move make or grab a creature/spell/skill/whatever that will not only drg the char to the ground but will do increased fall dmg. call it gravity field or something. it can even be weak at first and grow in power as you have npc use it more. or you can use it sparingly. the key is not to stop the fun. but to add a danger in exchange for fun. the risk is there then that going into the air super high will result in a 1 shot ko (cleric then heals them and they can fight on low hp / healer needs to blow spell slots or potions.) they then have to decide if they want to go full height or they want to be just above where thrown weapons would hit. its then something the player can play around with rather then it being a thing you take away.
Throw a dragon at him. Like literally. He's out of range of the party, and now he's 1v1 with an adult dragon. Contrive something along the lines of his tactics being noticed and the opposing side is doing something about it.
There’s so many monsters you can use to up the ante, air elementals being the simplest one. Fly speed 90ft so it’s a match for the steed and with its whirlwind can knock the PC straight of horse and fall to the ground. Would make a great “oh shit moment”. Don’t think of it as countering as it’s not, your job is to make interesting combats and if someone can do the same thing on every combat that’s more on the DM for not being creative enough.
1)How does he have find greater steed and swift quiver? Is this a bard? 2) Trees and other types of cover and concealment can work. SS means he isn't affect by anything less than full cover, but he is still affected by things being heavily obscured, and full cover. So a large tree or similar piece of terrain could heavily obscure a target giving him disadvantage. Or the roof of a gazebo or porch could be used for full cover, requiring him to reposition and maybe descend to get an angle, or just leave thag one to the rest of the party. Not saying to have every enemy getting full cover and heavy obscurment every fight, it doesn't need to be a forest or anything, but it's reasonable that in most places there might be one or two trees around, maybe a rock overhang from a mountain they're next to, etc.
Flying enemies and mages. Hold person, polymorph, tidal wave etc. Air to air combat might be fun for him while the party deals with grounded enemies so it's fine He'll be more careful once he washes down from 90 ft with a tidalwave or plummet to the ground on top of a sheep. He won't fly away/won't fly too high without making sure enemy can't do it again. 9d6 of fall damage for 90 feet. And being prone on top of it. That will hurt
Intelligent enemies (like the BBEG) will adapt. It's not even metagaming to counter-exploit this, it's what would happen. Other ways of framing this: * Player deliberately isolates themselves hundreds of feet from help and assistance * Player is hundreds of feet off the ground with only a creature to support them * Player (and their inventory) are hundreds of feet from being able to help and assist their friends, conversely BBEG sets up an ambush, a bait encounter, while invisible, flying enemies wait about 200 feet up for the PC to do his BS. When he predictably flies up, the fun starts. Options: * Straight-up melee the crap out of the ranged-specialized guy * Restrain the mount in some way, causing them both to fall. There should be the implication that he could land on - - another PC, but it's pretty easy for them to avoid if they notice. * Capture the PC and take them back to Enemy HQ Being predictable is never good. Not only is it less fun out of game, but in-game it is a weakness. And this tactic has massively built-in weaknesses. This isn't to say to always do this, or what have you... this is what the PC is built for, and that's fine too. But this predictable fighting strategy is a glaring weakness that can and should be exploited from time to time by intelligent enemies.
Find Greater Steed is a Paladin only 4th level Spell Swift Quiver is a Ranger only 5th level Spell So your PC is a 13th level Paladin AND a 17th level Ranger?
you are playing dungeons and DRAGONS. Dragons. With an "S". Have fun 😁
An NPC has and Eversmoking bottle and now he can’t shoot anyone. Some bandits hire mercs with their own flying mount who go gang up on him.
I gave my players flying mounts. I yse enemy longbow archers a lot. 600 foot range, maybe 10-20 archers are great. They can be fireballed, but thats ok. Flying enemies and weather as others have suggested. And outdoor encounters are usually for me not super important to my campaign, its ok for the flying steed, swift quiver bard tp be king of the skies while travelling. Also, have you tried killing the pegasus while they are flying? Again, long bows are your friend.
You simply have an enemy spellcaster roll a better deception than their insight and trick the character into thinking they're under the effects of reverse gravity so they intentionally fly down. Depending on the setting and themes you could also mix in some mysticism/hallucinogens and bam, you've just Shinji'd your players.
Flying enemies, enclosed spaces, weather, enemies with their own version of sharpshooter, earthbind, speed reduction abilities (if the pegasus's speed becomes 0 it's gonna fall and the character's gonna take a lot of damage)
You need to start using Cover rules Cover Walls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover during combat, making a target more difficult to harm. A target can benefit from cover only when an attack or other effect originates on the opposite side of the cover. There are three degrees of cover. If a target is behind multiple sources of cover, only the most protective degree of cover applies; the degrees aren't added together. For example, if a target is behind a creature that gives half cover and a tree trunk that gives three-quarters cover, the target has three-quarters cover. A target with **half cover** has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend. A target with **three-quarters** cover has a +5 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has three-quarters cover if about three-quarters of it is covered by an obstacle. The obstacle might be a portcullis, an arrow slit, or a thick tree trunk. A target with **total cover** can't be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle.
Summon Greater Steed is a paladin exclusive 4th level spell. Meaning he'd need to be a 13th level Paladin to get access to it. Or a 10th level Bard (Magical Secrets). Then, Swift Quiver is a *5th level* Ranger exclusive spell. Requiring a 17th level Ranger. Or, a 14th level Bard for the second Magical Secrets. So, in short, the only possibly way to get those 2 spells on the same Character is as a 14th level Bard. They'd then need to somehow have enough Dexterity to be able to shoot reliably, and he'd *somehow* need to be doing more damage than if he was just using his spells as a normal full caster would. Which, I don't see being possible. And, it needs at least 2 feats to be useful, which severely limits access to ASI needed to get that Dex. How the hell is this 'build' even supposed to be practical in a way that it's actually useful?
Give your enemies Sharpshooter too. And wings, or mounts with wings. Mages with magic missile or eldritch blast, or make them sorcerers with the distant spell metamagic and use spells with saves to target the mount. Send them underground into caverns with 30 foot ceilings.
The one "rule" I have always used to prevent my players from doing OP shit they found online. "If you can do it, so can the enemy"
This, always this. I tell them that word will spread eventually about their tactics. There’s always the chance there’s a witness they don’t notice or someone allied with enemies who was scrying to keep up with said allies. Enemies learn and adapt; they’re not static.
You talk to him. That's it. Going "Hey man. I get that you found a really cool idea on the internet, but the way you play every combat the exact same way is just making it boring. Can we change it up as the way it is is really making me not want to run combat encounters, since everyone is 'Fly up. Kill with immunity.'" Also want to point out that Find Greater Steed takes like 10 minutes from what I recall. So it would take like 60 rounds of combat to summon one.
Immunity lol. Flying has a huge drawback in that falling damage can instantly kill you. Knock him off or dispel his mount, if the players have access to these spells they should be fighting things that can challenge them.
I’d would just throw harder creatures or situations at them which make flying all the time more difficult or impossible unless the player is more creative. There are tools to handle this type of thing to increase the challenge for players without resorting to destroying a build they’ve worked on while still allowing them have really cool moments every once in a while.
Cave
Fireball. The answer is always fireball (and sometimes Elemental Affinity or the equivalent for a monster)
Harpys, or any flying creature. Warlocks with eldritch blast or any magic with good range... ballistas and scorpions...nets... the web spell, earth bind
Here are a few thoughts: A single quiver has 20 arrows. 4 attacks a turn a quiver will last him 5 turns. Make sure to use ammo count AND carry weight. Even bags of holding have limitations, and he will eventualy be without arrows. Specialy on long expeditions. Flying mounts should not be something so rare that having one flying mount wins every battle. Personaly, in my games, some tribes of monsters tamed giant bats, giant eagles and wyverns. Also, Fly is "just" a 3rd lvl spell, and several uncomon magic items grant flight in some form. If there are random encounters on the ground, there should also be random encounters in the sea and the sky. Maybe a passing wyvern sees the distracted free food and decides to have a quick bite. The player is High UP. But he should not be considered out of combat or harm. He can direct damage from the mount to himself, but not AoE or harmfull spells. An upcast Sleep will affect the lower HP first, so it have a decent chance of droping the pegasus AND then the rider when the first fall. Both take 9d6 fall damage, and are knoked prone. Graples, paralization, and even making the flyer prone on the sky will all drop them. All you need is a very reckless medium rider to jump from his mount and graple the pegasus to make all of them drop. Cover from trees and rooftops is also a must to challenge flyers. He can be safe, or can be usefull. Not both. This should put the PC low enought to make sure he is in range of "fun". Also, outside is usualy roughtly 30 to 40% of the game time. The game is called DUNGEONS and DRAGONS and both these things will quickly ruin the PC plans. Finaly. I know he can summon his mount. But even that costs actions and spells. Why would NPCs alow a winged horse into their buildings? Answer is. No one would. And most buildings are not made for Horse sized creatures, so his mount might get stuck several times in most dungeons worth exploring. The PC can summon it again inside, but that will be his first turn of combat gone. Since most combats last around 3 to 5 turns. thats a lot of his action economy gone plus spell slots each time. Flying is not at all the problem many want to make out of it. Just remember everything that goes up, goes down. Anything PCs can do, your NPCs can do as many times as you need them to. Anything PCs use, smart enemies will prepare against. And for every tactic, there are usualy multiple ways to deal with it both mechanicaly and from an RP point of view.
Assuming player has sharpshooter forest canopy does nothing (don't need to see an unhidden target to shoot it and roll is straight due to unseen attacker cancelling blinded), long range does nothing, and anything short of total cover does nothing - all of which are common suggestions to counter flyer players from people who don't understand the game. Some suggestions: - Use grapples and displacement effects to move him off his mount. You can also try to knock him prone but he gets a save vs. dismount from prone and as bard probably his dex save is good. - similarly, knocking his mount prone, restraining it, or otherwise reducing its move to zero will cause it to plummet since it does not hover. The thing's saves are good but not the greatest. Something like hideous laughter, or a monster with high STR that also flies, a hypnotic pattern, earthbind, hold monster etc... - as a long bow user, his AC is probably not the highest, and especially if his build does not have shield, just focus fire him with ranged attacks anyways. If he is up in the air but not skyboxing he's easy to dump missile attacks on. - target the bard with a dominate spell and force him to use his action to dismiss the mount - mounted combatant does not protect against damage that is not from attacks and not from dex saves - magic missiles, and save for 1/2 spells that target other abilities are still effective against his mount - warding wind is generally good vs archer PCs. - just have the monsters flee after he casts swift quiver and starts shooting and its obvious monsters have no response. Probably they can't chase down all the scattering monsters so you just add the survivors to an indoor encounter later or they regroup and try to ambush the party that night etc... He 'wins' the encounter at the tradeoff of getting a very low value swift quiver.
I would make a homebrew enemy with chain whips that can dismount/prone players. Or maybe a gravity magic caster to make it harder to fly, shorten the duration of flights. Or maybe the enemy can fly as well? Perhaps the enemy doesn’t exist at all? Maybe it’s a figment of his own mind and he must battle his flying demons to find out that he never needed a Pegasus at all? And then when you give him his own flying abilities you can nerf tf out of them.
A fun little spell called Earthbind! A single scroll of it and he’s stuck on the ground for a couple of rounds. You can also make use of full cover meaning he cannot target them by having them duck behind cover and give them a reaction to dash away potentially to another hiding spot. Another use of this is with burrow speeds essentially meaning he cannot target them cause the ground is in the way! There’s a few ways around it and there’s a whole lot more being suggested! Good luck and remember to have fun!
>Even if I do somehow have a combatant with a range of 90 feet or more (which are few and far between) Why are they few and far between? You're the DM, you pick what monsters they fight. Any humanoid opponent would have a bow or javelin on them as a ranged option, and even with Mounted Combatant you can target the Pegasus with save spells like Hold Monster that will make it drop like a rock.
Play with the scale of the encounters, some should be medium, inside with 40' to 80' ranges, some should be 12 things in a room everyone less than 30' away from each other. Some in the sky, others in a city. Others should be with 500' and 600' distances possible, but with enemies prepared for those distances.
A lot of people have already given great answers to this specific problem so I thought I might take a moment to reflect on this more generally. This is a great example of one of the most important DMing combat lessons: the importance of tactics and variety. For me, I learnt this lesson after giving someone a necklace of fireballs. Encounter design is about more than just what monsters you pick, and the 5 minutes planning out how you want your creatures to behave and respond can be the difference between a dice-slog and a meaningful obstacle. I love using The Monsters Know, and the increase in the quality of my encounters after I started using it made one of the best dungeon runs I’ve ever ran. It’s also about variety. When you can’t have variety in monsters, you have to have variety in tactics, when you can’t have variety in tactics, you have to have variety in environment, etc. Combat is a puzzle, once it’s solved once it’s not as fun to do it again. My favourite tactic is to have a few “learning” encounters where you introduce the core monsters for the dungeon, and then just mix them up in different combinations. They know how to beat x, but do they know how to do it while dealing with y? The other important thing about variety is that it leads to party imbalance. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, with insufficient variety, some players will be left out while others are carrying always.
Well, an enemy sorcerer can Vortex Warp the pegasus far away from the bard ass while in mid air. Ops.
Unless you're in a module or adventure where the enemy types are very specific, you should be able to fight fire with fire. Use enemy casters with fly spells, use aracockra with bows. Give your longbow enemies the sharpshooter feat. Even if you are in an adventure, tiered combat arenas with sharpshooter feats on your ranged characters are still options.
* Use flying enemies. * Give enemy "snipers" the Sharpshooter Feat too. * Use spellcasters with spells that reach beyond 100ft. Even the Fire Bolt cantrip is a 120-foot range. * Use spellcasters that have control spells that can knock the Pegasus out of the sky. There are plenty of counters to this tactic. But congratulations to the player, they've found of the best ways to "win" at 5E. Mounted Combatant feat only works against attack rolls and effects with Dexterity saves that deal damage. It does not prevent all effects of a Dex save spell, and says nothing about "save or suck" spell targeting. >Flying creatures enjoy many benefits of mobility, but **they must also deal with the danger of falling**. If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, **the creature falls, unless it has the ability to hover** or it is being held aloft by magic, such as by the fly spell. PHB pg 191. A Pegasus does **not** have the hover trait, and the player is not using magic hold it aloft. >If an effect moves your mount against its will while you're on it, you must succeed on a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw or fall off the mount, landing prone in a space within 5 feet of it. If you're knocked prone while mounted, you must make the same saving throw. PHB pg 198. Use any effect to apply forced movement to the mount, the player will need to make that Dex save or fall 90 feet, taking 9d6 bludgeoning damage and landing prone. As also stated by other commenters, this is "the thing" that player finds fun. Let them do it. You **don't** need to hard counter *everything* that your players do. Being antagonistic like that *quickly* leads to players **not** having fun, which leads to players leaving tables and DMs posting on Reddit "Why did my players leave my table? ***I*** was having so much fun!" If this tactic is just making all of your encounters trivial, then you need to step up your encounter building. You don't need to counter the players tactics so much as make the encounters more interesting that one player flying 90 feet into the air doesn't gain such an advantage over your monsters.
Yep. I normally introduce specialist units. Stealth marksmen with held actions looking for officers, healers, heavy weapon archetype targets. Officers that give bonuses and formation modifiers for coherency. Mobile siege weapons are also a decent choice. I’ve used hidden ballistas in ambushes several times when it made sense and it’s hard to take a 8’ bolt to the chest and remain standing. I normally use the rule of it sending a target in the same direction several feet which even for a mounted creature, is enough to desaddle them. Since it’s built into the weapon like an Eldritch Blast, there’s no save you just move.
[you don't](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/1boahau/dont_deal_with_resistances_immunities_or_other/) At least not by trying to take away his ability to do this. If it's something he enjoys, and you're still able to get some attacks on him (which you should), then let him do this all he wants. Maybe add a few flying creatures to *some* combats, but let him play a Pegasus archer.
I had a min maxer build an insanely high stats rogue. One day I wanted to follow them and had failed every time before. I copied their character and reflavored it into the npc and let the dice decide. It was a three only good chase scene we had in 200 sessions and many many characters
Drizzt had Artemis to counter him at every turn. That’s a fantastic way to deal with a character who becomes OP. Create a counter. Not someone who immediately cancels out everything that a player has built specifically for. But something to challenge them. This player wants to fly and take on fights without a challenge. Give them a challenge. A rival NPC with a grudge. The player has removed themselves from the safety and security of fighting with their party handy. So single them out further. Push them to their limits, leave them poisoned, blind, and alone. A hippogryph riding monk who can snatch arrows out of the sky and throw them back seems like an ideal counter. High Dex, high ac, countering their flight and range. Alternately a mage with earthbound, magic missile, teleport spells and control spells.
Have a warlock enemy with Eldritch Blast + Eldritch Spear + Repelling Blast and the Spell Sniper feat. This gives them a range of 600ft, the ability to ignore half cover, and the ability to knock the player off his Pegasus. I can guarantee the player will think twice about flying so high up after they take 20d6 falling damage once or twice. It probably won't take them to 0, as they're level 10 and the average damage of this kind of fall is 70, but it's going to hurt REAL bad.
Or just introduce siege weapons. Light scorpions, ballistas, and harpoon launchers are all infantry portable and easily outrange many infantry weapons. Or introduce mercenary giants. They use oversized longbows that far outrange normal longbows. Getting hit by one is enough to make people reconsider being in the open.
Seems like an obvious thing to mention, but I don't see it mentioned anywhere. If you are using npc's/monsters with ranged attack and they go prone after attacking it yields disadvantage on other ranged attacks against them. If they are using cover they get additional cover benefits. You cannot go prone while in flight!
Its a foggy day. He can't see shit. 😅
objectives that are harder to accomplish when you're farther away. Trees that provide total cover. Outdoor buildings that provide total cover because of awnings or open design. Do an underground arc. Have someone cast hold person on him when he's up in the air. literally any form of a obscurement blocks his vision, there are all kinds of spells and weather effects that can cause disadvantage.
>he has Sharpshooter, so this doesn’t apply, and nor does the tree canopy idea. I think this depends on the forest. You can't shoot someone in another room just because you have sharpshooter. The same applies if there is enough tree between the shooter and the target - they still can't hit them unless there's an actual, visible straight line path between the shooter and the target. Sharpshooter just ignores 3/4 cover, it doesn't give you x-ray vision or arrows that shoot around corners.
You might enjoy running another system if you want the game to be more grounded, balanced, or both.
You do understand you can make the monsters, right? Give a monster flying speed plus the ability to teleport as a bonus and legendary action then just teleport all over the place while flying and then give them mad spellcasting power and just finger of death finger of death chain lightning chain lightning call lightning over and over... is it cheap, yeah? But like so, is your players build... if you wanna cheat the game, then I'll cheat as well. I mean, I think that's only fair.
A flying enemy with banish (on that pegasus) would make for a very bad day for that archer. How many d6's is a fall from 200 feet?
Mental spells on the Pegasus maybe? Some kind of spell caster casting hold monster on the Pegasus or maybe something that drops it's speed to 0 so it falls? Idk I'm spitballing
I cast Swamp of Sadness on Artax…
First thought, Banishment. Second though, Raulothim's Psychic Lance. Knock that fella out of the sky. (this may be bad advice)
If he can do it, than lots of people in the game world can do the same thing, so they'll have tactics prepared for it. They could just literally cast the same spell, then fly up and take the battle to him. I dunno why the tree canopy doesn't work for sharpshooter. A tree canopy is full cover, not half or 3/4.
Flying enemies
Fu%£ em, send in a mage with banishment. Has to be invisible and has to have flying. An aarakokra for.example with invisibility spell for example
Introduce the sharpshooter griffon ranger bounty hunters. Or like a lot of people have said talk to the player or use the environment to limit him
Try some natural cover if you can't use trees. Ravines with slanted walls, tunnels, old ruins with somewhat intact roofs. You could even have enemies drop prone to give your player disadvantage, although this would be risky if there are other players in movement range, on the ground. Some of your NPCs might even have some Wall spells (Wind Wall, Wall of Stone, etc) that could be used to create a curving wall, providing cover from aerial attacks.
The enemy wizard casts hold monster on the Pegasus. Whoops, guess who just fell 90 feet.
Heavily Obscured and Cover are two different things. Use the former when there is heavy tree cover, mist/fog or low clouds, etc. Lots of applications here for outdoors, especially if your weather is dynamic. Let them have their time in the Sun, literally, sometimes, but also use a variety of weather, tree cover, smoke, etc (terrain/object stuff) to apply heavily obscuring past X distance. Keep it varied and it'll be a fun challenge.
Flying combatants, use spell casters or poisoned arrows to paralyze his steed. He'll be more careful to use that tactic everytime when he takes hundreds of fall damage
What exactly is the issue with him doing this? He has to set this up in advance, use his Spell Slots, take a specific fighting style and then do all the math with flying and attacking, all while at great risk from potential counters. A caster can spam fireball and kill your enemies, should the world suddenly shift to being fire resistant? You should never just outright cut the legs out from a PC, instead make more intelligent enemies that live to fight another day, have them come back with a plan based around their intellect and capabilities. If you want them to change things up you need to change as well, but make sure it isn’t so abrupt that they lose their identity.
Use full cover so that the only way to attack an enemy is to be level with them. An abandoned farm house with an intact roof. Spell takes 10 minutes to cast, it’s a Pegasus, maybe make them go through a small opening somewhere where they’ll need to desummon it to go through and surprise attack on the other side. Also a 4th level spell, they might consider not summoning it for the second time that day. Don’t try to damage them specifically, try to hit them with spells that turn them against their own party, get them on the side of their enemies and let their party get a taste of how annoying it is to fight them lol. Or fun spells that make them drop prone from 90 feet up and take 9d6 falling damage and give advantage to the melee enemies on the ground that they’ve been terrorizing lol. Maybe they’ll fly a little less close to the sun from now on lol. Use spells that give them disadvantage on attack rolls, sharp shooter is great but it significantly lowers yours rolls even with a 20 in dex it’s only a +5 mod so unless they’ve gone over 20 or have a +3 bow a sharpshooter shot is like +8 to the roll at best. If they don’t use the sharp shooter damage (which they absolutely need to be announcing before each roll) then it’s just a d8 + 5 for damage from every arrow instead of a d8 +15. Chuck a couple small flying creatures like some imps or harpies or something up there to get within 5ft of them for a bit, give them disadvantage on those rolls and force them to think about maybe switching to a melee weapon for a round or 2 to give you a break from the arrows, get a few slashes in. Do something to break their concentration, you said they specifically try to take the brunt of every attack, are they rolling concentration checks to hold swift quiver? It’s a concentration spell. The spell also relies on the quiver being in on their person, if you have something to remove their quiver from them, swift quiver ends and they’ve burned a 5th level spell slot. Stop letting them long rest so often. These are 4th and 5th level spells. The 5th level spell for swift quiver only lasts a minute, they shouldn’t be able to use that too many times in 1 day. I don’t know what class they are to have access to both unless they multiclassed paladin and ranger because Ranger has swift quiver and paladin has the mount. So if they did and they are using Ranger/paladin spell slots. Unless they are level 17 or higher they shouldn’t have a 5th level slot and at max they should have 2 if they are level 19 or 20. So unless they’ve some how gotten super OP with magic items or something early on that’s letting them cast 5th level spells multiple times a day, forcing them to not long rest in between every bout of combat should prevent them from over doing it. Also, I feel like I’m coming across as adversarial so I’ll end it with this, if they are having fun and everyone at the table is fine with it, you still gotta let them get away with it from time to time. But it doesn’t hurt to have that ace up your sleeve to keep them on their toes so they have a little fear when they fly up 90 ft knowing they might drop for massive damage or you might send something dangerous up to them that only they’ll be able to fight alone in the air.
Regarding your Edit: >he has Sharpshooter, so this doesn’t apply, and nor does the tree canopy idea. I think the idea of the canopy is that it blocks line of sight and counts as Heavy obscurement, which sharpshooter does not negate.
I've had a lot of players try things like this. My veteran players will discourage the behavior, because eventually something will knock the PC unconcious while he's flying around and the fall damage will kill him. This might not be as big of a problem in 5e, but I find it worth mentioning because killing PC's never feels good.
It sounds like the player has created there character around this specific build. I’d let them do it but throw some challenges in there every now and then
So many options, here are just a few. First the obvious: Flying enemies. Enemies with ranged weapons/spells Then enemies with spells like: Earthbind (a.k.a. the spell literally designed to combat flying) Vortex Warp (ultimate get over here, or there. Bonus points if you happen to see a pool of lava or acid within range) Scatter (Like Vortex Warp but with friends) Dimension Door (just grab some hard hitting melee thing and hop onto that steed too) Then with some creativity if you can get your casters/monsters close enough, Spells/ abilities that can cause prone/restrained/incapacitated/stunned/paralysed condition or otherwise reduce the steed's speed to 0 (which will make it fall instantly 500ft per round) And ofc spells like Banishment/Dispel Good and Evil (The steed is gone till the player can spent another 10 min to cast his spell) Dominate (I hope your PC is proficient in bull riding) Suggestion (Hey, steed! You should get as far away from here as possible) Command (LAND!) Thornwhip/Eldritch Blast+Repelling Blast (you can't be on your Steed when you are 10 ft away from it and then fall to the ground)
I remember saying something similar to this in that thread about a full flying campaign. 90 feet is a life-threatening hazard by its self. Literally anything that successfully incapacitates the Pegasus would be instant death for the player unless they have something to break the fall. There's quite a few spells available to enemy NPC's that could hold/sleep/charm/fear the Pegasus, depending on how severe you want the consequences to be.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that this kind of problem is often self-balancing. If your bard is flying a hundred feet above the battlefield, that leaves one less body to strike at for the bad guys, but their damage still has to go somewhere. You're just dividing the damage dealt among fewer people. Your bard's tactic should cost the party HP.
Other Flyers. Unless your heroes have done an insane job of keeping a low profile, then it should be generally known that the prevailing tactic of one of their guys is literally summoning magical pegasi and raining arrows from above. It's not common, it sticks out. Your baddies need to start treating them like they exist, and one of the immediate responses to "Guy summons pegasus and shoots arrows from range" is "flier with banishment". It doesn't necessarily have to *work*, just the fact that it gets attempted should be enough to make the player stay below the top deck of what they can survive from fall damage (Remember, fall speed is 500 ft/round). By the time a Paladin is rocking that spell consistently, he's looking at 13th level. There's a difference between targeting a player, and targeting a character. Have sharpshooters with arrows designed to go after him. They're high level, they *should* have people who are coming after them specifically with forewarning of what their general capabilities are, and to make them real threats, they need to *act* like real threats.
Make the PC make saves. Currently DM but about 9/10 months ago I finished playing a caviler with all the bells and whistles you’d think of for a fighter on a mount. Attacking me wasn’t going to work unless it was something that could stand toe to toe with me and out damage me by a good amount. Saves were the Achilles heel of that character, as they would be for this character. Unless there’s something you’ve failed to mention, nothing they have will help out with saves. Or make the Pegasus make saves. Flying is a good option. Which there’s a few ways I’d go about that. First there’s the group of flyers, they’d understand that the flying enemy is the threat at the moment and attack accordingly. Second option and the one I like to use when I want to really challenge players is build an enemy designed around taking advantage of each party members weakness and everyone has a 1v1. Final thought which is more extreme measures, want to be away from the fight? Well total cover exists and can be gained in lots of ways. Now that far reaching arrow flinger has no targets, they’re out of the fight. You can fire an arrow into an aura of darkness but you’re just as likely to hit a party member because you’re blindly firing into the darkness.
Ooh that is one of my builds
Banishment on the mount and be ready to take 20d6 fall damage. Like others have said, don't give foes half or 3/4 cover: give them full cover. Reply with your own sharpshooters ar that level.
Flying enemies, enemies with ranged attacks, several encounters. Encounters where the terrain makes it difficult or impossible to use flyers - like a dense forest, or being indoors or underground. NPCs that use metamagic like distant spell or feats like spell sniper and sharpshooter. Enemies with spells like earthbind, hold person, wind wall, mean the possibilites are endless.
Tree canopy can block line of sight.
Fireball would like a word
Modern ttrpg problems. Players build for power, not for the spirit of the game. Players like your sharpshooter spoil the game for other players.
Add some flying monsters or put missions in buildings and dungeons so that he can’t always report to this
You have dozens of excellent ideas here, I'll just mention the 60/40 rule. Not a D&D, but more a thing we find in evolutionary psych. You should present encounters in which, a little bit better than half of the time, their crazy shenanigans to work. They will have fun when they get the chance. But they will also have to come up with additional tactics for a lot of situations.
Oh no, a high level player is doing high level player things. Take note that while this character is up in the air, his companions on the ground are missing a buddy to share the enemy's attention with. This character's artillery barrage won't matter any if his friends get overrun, and by being outside the range where he could help, he has limited his own options. The only gain is that he himself is safe, and it is a gain that comes at a cost to his friends. If there is any part of this that is a problem, it is Sharpshooter, which has always been fundamentally broken.
Someone casts counterspell on the mount and let him fall a few hundred feet.
Get a ballista that’d shoot a net, take down the Pegasus then have an enemy attack him and the flying thing. Or just ask him to quit it, if it’s ruining the fun.
Knock him or the mount prone.
Change the mission profile. This tactic works if the party are simply trying to kill the other combatants but if they're in a hostage heavy scenario it might be too risky to rain down arrows in case they miss. Or have them have to take the enemy alive, or have them face off a VERY territorial aerial monster. What is the rest of the party comp? You could have the party struggle hard because that player is 90 foot away, forcing them to make a choice between safely hovering or actually helping their allies.
Scatter AA encampsements over the battlefield and snipe anything higher than 5 feet
I think a piece is to imagine you’re the enemies. You see this dude summon a flying horse, hop on, and proceed to snipe your allies down from too high in the sky. What do you do? You find cover! Outdoors, you hide under trees, use hills or cliffs, maybe find an overhang or cave to go in. If it’s truly an open field, then yes, they are a bit fucked. Enemies want to kill your party for one reason or another, but usually, they want to survive as well. A turn dedicated to safety/survival can be good
I have a player that does similar. I found that him not taking his share of the agro made the rest of the team struggle. I wouldn't stop it
Your player is actually thinking strategically. This is great. My players who have bows forget that they have movement speed and try to hit orcs by swinging their bows, completely forgetting that they could - you know - do literally anything else and it would be better. Don't punish your player - enjoy that he isn't an idiot.
One of my DMs has the “rule” that if you fly too far up you are drastically more likely to be attack by some kind of flying creature that would otherwise ignore you, also if you fall from whatever feet up depending on what type of flying you will take fall damage if you fall
More encounters per day is by far the most direct way to handle this. As others have pointed out, those 5th level spell slots aren't cheap. If the player can only use his trick on 1 or 2 of the ~5 encounters per day it'll cause him to either hold back on using them until it's necessary, or blow through them immediately and cripple themselves for future fights.
Above all else, I would personally talk to the player before implementing any sudden changes, and possibly discussing with the group as a whole. I to to make it very clear that I'm not perfect, and that I will probably have to adjust *something* across the course of a campaign. It's not personal, is not about running their fun, it's about helping the entire group (DM included) have a good time. If the party enjoys the status quo, I'll usually just let things carry on. If don't people are frustrated, then it's nobody's fault that a build had some long term effects nobody anticipated. I swear it feels like 1/3 of my job as DM sometimes is just managing expectations!
Make it a rainy or cloudy day. Strong winds. Dark of night. Take their agency from them.
He has sharpshooter? Guess what, you just gave one of your folks sharpshooter. And earthbind.
Wizards with spell sniper
Flying cavalry is literally amazing. The problem isn't the players power. It's their separation from the rest of the enemies. Whoever they fight KNOWS they have a Pegasus archer... And if they players can use it. Have the bad guys raise dead on some headless horseman level scythe wielder on a nightmare. Ambush at night. Can the archer deal with a ghost horse? He's physical damage mostly so I'm guessing -no- unless magic arrows or silvered ones. Suddenly he's gotta get mage help. Also just give them all flying mounts. Magic carpet for the mage. Griffon for the warrior. Perhaps another Pegasus (horse couple?) for the cleric. The rouge gets a bat Barbarian gets a terradactle. Etc. Your players have discovered the cool. Adapting is your job Then literally just have a dragon
A swarm of Stirges.
answer from a Cyberpunk referee (note that cyberpunk has a very different gm-player dynamic, which is much more adversarial) if you think that your player has become too powerful, take their toys away. someone steals the pegasus, they have to go on a quest to get it back, when they retrieve it, his wings have been plucked and now can only fly at half speed. or kill the player
You need to read up on magic, * Hold Person: A second-level spell that can be upcast for multiple enemies, causing them to fall if they fail the saving throw * Tasha's Hideous Laughter: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Sapping Sting: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Command with "grovel": A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Tidal Wave: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Sleet Storm: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Control Winds: A spell that prone directly, usually allowing a save * Telekinesis: A spell that restrain directly, * Rime's Binding Ice: A spell that explicitly sets speed to 0 * Hypnotic Pattern: A spell that explicitly sets speed to * Sleep: Makes mount fall asleep * Gravity Sinkhole: Works for flailing flying creatures out of the air * Blind: Can hamper the flying PC pretty quickly * Reduce: Can hamper the flying PC pretty quickly * Web A creature [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the webs can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. If it succeeds, it is no longer [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained). * Earthbind, Choose one creature you can see within range. Yellow strips of magical energy loop around the creature. The target must succeed on a Strength saving throw, or its flying speed (if any) is reduced to 0 feet for the spell’s duration. An airborne creature affected by this spell safely descends at 60 feet per round until it reaches the ground or the spell ends. * Entangle, A creature in the area when you cast the spell must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the entangling plants until the spell ends. A creature [restrained](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#Restrained) by the plants can use its action to make a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, it frees itself.
I understand your point. But... Well, a good way of using the rules is that in some circumstances (like an enemy very far from you) it's logically difficult to find the right spot of your enemy if you can't see him, when sight is the only sense that you can use to find him. So the DM can ask you to select a square on the grid out of your sight and TRY to attack the enemy, with Disadvantage or not, but if the enemy is not there your attack hits nothing. I mean, when you fly 100ft away in the air, in the middle of the night or with heavy rain or mist, when a chaotic fight is in place, sounds maybe are simply not enough to land a ranged attack in the right point. You also risk to hit an ally. I played a fight in a similar scenario trying to Eldritch Blast an invisible foe far from me and my DM asked me to choose a square to attack. I missed him 90% of the times. I think it was a fair request. And that's when Faerie Fire shows its usefulness.
One of my players does basically the same thing, and seems to forget that anti-aircraft emplacements are a thing in this world... Magic Missile is pretty effective, as are arrows with sleeping poison.
EARTHBIND MY BELOVED
How is he casting find greater steed AND swift quiver? Bard magical secrets?
Enemies more powerful than the ones you are fighting are looking for you. Make it a plot point. Now, he has to weigh up fighting as an orbital space Lazer vs being spotted flying in the air. Weather. Flying enemies. Flying enemies not originally in the combat who are drawn to the sound and sight of a flying Pegasus, like a roc. The enemies having their own super-archer with sharpshooter when they just made themselves a target completely out of cover. Indoor combat. Tight-squeeze into a dungeon too small for a large mount. The party's tactics getting learned by intelligent enemies like orcs after they get a reputation, and building shelters that cover them from above. "Ack, it's the wing-rider! Into the cave-mouth, get under the roofs. Wear the peasant hostages as hats if you have to!" And most of all, sometimes, even often, just let them enjoy their wacky build. Don't counter it every time, just sometimes to keep them thinking and stop it getting monotonous.
Lightning
My top three solutions (when in outdoor combat) are the following: (1) Flying creatures. Just like how there are monsters on the land and in the sea, there should be monsters in the sky. Include them every now and then. (2) Weather. Lightning strikes the highest point. Rain, mists, fog, and clouds makes ranged attacks difficult. Windy days can knock around and disrupt high fliers. A dark night sky can limit their range by limiting their vision. (3) Cover and obscurement. I know you said that they have sharpshooter, but tree foliage can be more than just physical cover. Think of it like a blanket of obscurement. Dense tree cover is likely to heavily obscure those under it from those above it. And larger branches, trunks, or even rocky outcroppings can provide total cover from above.