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Titanium Dragon wrote:

The lastest Dragon article, Ritually Speaking, contains the Overland Flight ritual which gives the entire party overland flight 20.

After flight was so heavily controlled in the PHB (and with good reason!) I'm wondering why they included this ritual. It completely circumvents all travel eight levels before True Portal does, and means that all epic characters can pretty much always fly and thus completely negate all groundbound encounters which don't happen indoors.

This is massively better than actual class powers, so I'm wondering why they thought it was a good idea.

Ok I just spent 20 min writing a long post over why it isn't overpowered. However the board ate it, so I'm going to try for highlights instead.

-I can drive faster then this spell's flight speed(averages out to 10 mph) while I am in a school zone. They are hardly going to get all over the planet with this spell alone.
-Natural and unnatural obstacles can still stop them such as huricanes, magical cyclones, underdark, and oceans(which tend to be larger then 100 miles).
-Being attacked while using this flight spell==quick death
-Counter attacking while using this spell==quick and painful death
-The party still has to land every ten hours and stay there for half an hour, plenty of time for land encounters
-Griffons, which I believe have been stated to be paragon level appropriate mounts, would easily accomplish the exact same thing only with less dieing

And if we are comparing rituals(out of combat abilities) to powers(in combat abilities), I'm sure we could find lots of rituals that are better then powers, such as True Portal. However they also cost a lot to use, such as Overland Flight costing 5k a pop, which is only 2/25 of a 20th level magic item. However if you were to use it as your sole method of transportation, you would quickly be using up all of your cash on it. It is usefull for travelling in certain situations, where you otherwise can't get to your destination or if you need to get somewhere far away relatively quickly. However it is hardly a replacement for your legs when travelling.

Flying over the jungle really isn't as interesting as walking through it.

I disagree. But this disagreement is based entirely on opinion, as I find being able to explore places while airborne very interesting indeed.

Problem is that they can completely circumvent land-bound encounters for ten hours - just fly over them. THIS is the real issue with it, even more so than travel.

Then give skybound encounters a shot. Or put the action at the destination rather than on the road.

Which means no one will ever be attacked while using it. *taps head*

I think it means the opposite. If a player is going to use Overland Flight, he should accept the risk that he is making himself vulnerable to attack and make the necessary preparations (or at least not fly too high). This is even more true if he has made any enemies by that level who know of his access to flight. To think otherwise, that the DM won't throw such an encounter because it would quickly kill him, would be metagaming and that PC would deserve a gravity-induced grave next to his equally unprepared brothers Scalesa'Mountain, Sailsin'Plate, Foughta'Dragon, Flip'thelich, and Didinchek'Fortraps.

I shouldn't have to not allow it, and more to the point, everything in Dragon is usable in the RPGA.

At least as far as non-RPGA games are concerned, you don't "have to not allow it" if that's too much effort. You could instead continue to play the game the way you have been playing prior to reading the article or simply pay that section of the article no mind at all. You don't even need to spend the calorie to handwave it away.

I think that's why they didn't put rituals like Overland Flight in the PH and instead release it separately. PCs having access to flight doesn't fit everyone's playstyles. Some like that it allows PCs to bypass stuff and ingore, engage in, and/or have an advantage in certain types of encounters, other hate those aspects. But since it's not core, you are free(er) to ignore it or not at your discretion.