Forums of the Megaverse®

I need a recommendation for a flying monster to throw at my players. My campaign is currently taking place in a unique pocket dimension and I want to make going airborne a risky option. I want to avoid going with a dragon but I'm not entirely opposed to it. As for player statistics:

Total Players: 6
Max MDC: 500
Average MDC: 150
Max Damage per attack: 10D6
Average Damage per attack: 3D6

Any recommendations would be appreciated (please specify what book the monster is from).

From the pf:monsters and animals book: Gryphons, Hypogriphs, Dragondactyl, Drackin. dragon wolves, faerie folk, feathered death, floaters, flying turtles, gromek, harpies, Ki-Lin. Loogaroo, pegasus, suckers, waternix, wingtips, waterbat, yema, za

These should be in the RCB1 & RCB1r also.

If you just want to make air travel risky, air elementals are excellent, especially since some (all?) are invisible and they can throw lightning around so they have a ranged attack.

That'll keep the players on the ground.

--flatline

One or two Gargoyles

Sharknado

Jurassic Sharknado

Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I seem to recall some interesting flying things in World Book 15. I've always been a fan of the Dragonfish from Sourcebook 4. I do like the idea of air elementals.

Gromek Juicers??

Gromek Delphi Juicers??

Gromek Mega Juicers with Rune Spears???

Check out the air swimming fish from Wormwood.

--flatline

say652 wrote:Gromek Juicers??

Gromek Delphi Juicers??

Gromek Mega Juicers with Rune Spears???

Gromek Godlings

Hmmm.
Gromek Demigod Mutant Witches with the Gift of Union

I think 20 should be enough.

Or you could just use Gargoyles. Flying, high mdc, deal high end party damage. And some have fire breath. Challenging then adjust the numbers as you go. Some battles are last stands.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! The air elemental is a good idea but I want something more "visual" if that makes sense. I'll read up the suggestions, it sounds like most of them will get the job done.

Sharknado seems bit op. I want the players to actually come back to the table.

unique dimensional tears so if you fly above a certain height you risk running into one and getting badly damaged.
Unique dimension all underground
unique dimension 100 feet up is also the ground/celling

honestly a weird dimensional effect would probably work better than monsters. most flying monsters are not all that fast or tough compared to your typical rifts flying vehicles, and if they are common enough that everytime the group tries to fly they run into one, you run into two problems.. either your players lose the sense of realism because the critters are showing up way too often.. or they do so because they know that if the flting monsters are that common, the local ecosystem ought to have been wiped out long before. the first is more likely, but either way it is a problem.

but since this is a pocket dimension, if you say "flying above [altitude] causes you to run into their effects because of the nature of the pocket dimension", suspension of disbeleif should be preserved. the effects can be just about anything.. sudden high winds, leyline storms, rift events, taking damage.. or as in the anime Orguss (a great source of weird dimensional events), all of the above.

Kaiser_Hound wrote:I need a recommendation for a flying monster to throw at my players. My campaign is currently taking place in a unique pocket dimension and I want to make going airborne a risky option. I want to avoid going with a dragon but I'm not entirely opposed to it. As for player statistics:

Total Players: 6
Max MDC: 500
Average MDC: 150
Max Damage per attack: 10D6
Average Damage per attack: 3D6

Any recommendations would be appreciated (please specify what book the monster is from).

-Checkout Mutants In Orbit, the section on Mars with the mutant Insects.
-Phase World (main) has Space Wasps which IIRC have speed and firepower.
-Some of the Mutant Fliers in SA1 (Flying Tiger, and the Panther one right after it) and SA2 ( Condoroid, Falconoid), but these are intelligent beings
-Gene Tech (PW dimension books, forget which one) and the Gene Splicers (SB3/WB7) could also enhance/mix things up to so you aren't dealing with a strictly stock item.
-Reachers of the Deep (WB7), while not a flying menace, you could adapt them to serve the same purpose by coming out of the sky or up from the ground, staying low to the ground and you are "hidden" from them. Or use them as something that has to be dealt with before one can go above a certain height.
-Killer Satellites (Mutants in Orbit), or something akin to them (depending on how/why this pocket universe exists, it could be present as a control mechanism)
-If the Pocket dimension is being artificially created there could be actual physical boundaries, and those boundaries could influence how high one can go and such. That boundary could be like hitting a physical wall or force field they bounce off of. Then again it could be a field of energy that causes damage
-Create environmental conditions in the air that make air travel difficult impossible (high winds, soot, lots of lightning shooting around up there, etc), there is some precedent in the books for this
-Gravity or some other force works to prevent/hamper flight
-Air density drops of quickly the higher one goes, so that even though it might be X altitude in the pocket universe from the surface, it would be the equivalent of 100,000s of feet which could make tech systems not designed for vacuum/this high up not capable of flight (or tax them quicker). Magic/ability might also be hampered.
-Taking a cue from travelling in the Astral Realm, pilots could become easily disorientated, even with instruments

The Air Speed the players can execute is also important given most flying creatures speed is not all that impressive compared to even some low tech options. Something else to consider is what you mean by "risky". Not everyone may see X as risky alone, since a 10% chance of encountering a flying dragon is much different than a 50% chance of it happening.

Problem with flying monsters are, they usually have very low speeds compared to common flying Rifts tech. Just out run em, then hit em with mini missiles 1 mile away (which is possible because the targets are flying and the radar can pick them up even if you cannot see that far optically).

Kagashi wrote:Problem with flying monsters are, they usually have very low speeds compared to common flying Rifts tech. Just out run em, then hit em with mini missiles 1 mile away (which is possible because the targets are flying and the radar can pick them up even if you cannot see that far optically).

As long as you aren't using mini-missiles with half-mile ranges, and make a successful Read Sensory Equipment skill roll to target them.

Glistam wrote:

Kagashi wrote:Problem with flying monsters are, they usually have very low speeds compared to common flying Rifts tech. Just out run em, then hit em with mini missiles 1 mile away (which is possible because the targets are flying and the radar can pick them up even if you cannot see that far optically).

As long as you aren't using mini-missiles with half-mile ranges, and make a successful Read Sensory Equipment skill roll to target them.

an ongoing battle between multiple forces the thing that I would do is give them a couple warnings, but essentially its the equivalent of trench warfare in ww1 / ww2 you stick your head up enough to draw attention and you get popped (or at least shot at)

the idea is that the sides are closely enough matched that everyone is paranoid about "anything" tipping the balance, so anything coming off the "ground" that doesn't broadcast a friendly IFF code gets shot at. unfortunately no one is going to have a friendly IFF for "all" the sides.

kind of. We are talking about advanced radar here, where you may be able to identify a target based on the fidelity of the picture the radar paints. If it has wings like a gargoyle, its prolly a gargoyle. Although no palladium text says so, Id assume radar is a lot more advanced than a blip on a screen like they had in WWII.

For a flying monster encounter. Jungle environment.

1 Gargoyle Mage.
3 Gargoyle Lords.
7 Garhoylites.
10 Gargoyles.
20 Gromek Titan Juicers.
6 Gromek Delpi Juicers.
4 Gromek Mega Juicers.
1 Adult Ice Dragon.


Gargoyles All armed with Railgun. 800round drum. 6000' burst 40 rounds 1D6×10md one round 2D6md range 10,000'
Heavy combat ForceField:320mdc.
Gromeks.
Titan plate. 190mdc.
Mankiller. 110mdc.
Mega Juicer130mdc.
Left arm Grenade launcher.
Right arm FIWS.
Railgun. 6000' range 40 round burst 1D6×10md single round 2D6 md 10,000' range. 800round drum.

Kagashi wrote:kind of. We are talking about advanced radar here, where you may be able to identify a target based on the fidelity of the picture the radar paints. If it has wings like a gargoyle, its prolly a gargoyle. Although no palladium text says so, Id assume radar is a lot more advanced than a blip on a screen like they had in WWII.

More advanced than WWII, but probably no better than what we've got today. Rifts radar is tremendously miniaturized compared to today's radar, but I would not expect it to be in any way more capable. Today's radar is already pushing against the limits of physics, so there's no significant room for improvement as long as Rifts radar is still radar.

--flatline

See I disagree while rifts radar has more variations of search patterns the range is severely reduced without Satellite feed.
Max ground should be more than ten miles terrain permitting and Airborne should be max 50miles with communication range limited to Ten Miles.

flatline wrote:Check out the air swimming fish from Wormwood.

How many glances did everyone give this RCC until they noticed that sweet scary auto-dodge? I wasn't keeping track.

Pretty sweet dodge bonus which totally applies to auto-dodges since they are not crazies or juicers

say652 wrote:See I disagree while rifts radar has more variations of search patterns the range is severely reduced without Satellite feed.

I can't make heads or tails out of this statement. What are you trying to say?

Max ground should be more than ten miles terrain permitting and Airborne should be max 50miles with communication range limited to Ten Miles.

The arbitrary ranges assigned are pretty naive, but that's super easy to correct. Just let the GM rule if the target is within radio line-of-sight and has enough of a reflection to be detectable against the background/horizon.

--flatline

Tor wrote:

flatline wrote:Check out the air swimming fish from Wormwood.

How many glances did everyone give this RCC until they noticed that sweet scary auto-dodge? I wasn't keeping track.

Pretty sweet dodge bonus which totally applies to auto-dodges since they are not crazies or juicers

The first time we went to Wormwood, these were the monsters we feared the most.

Years later, I played one as a character when we did a monsters campaign. Pretty sweet.

--flatline

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I should have been more specific with the terrain conditions when I posted this. I have decided to go with a combination of dimensional instability (which the players are already somewhat aware of) and the Yema that Drewkitty suggested (this was very close to what I pictured in my mind and the players have no magic to combat it properly, though they do have silvered ammo if they think about using it). I really liked the air swimming fish but I think I will save those for another time.

Once again, thanks everyone!

Perhaps early-90s Wormwood inspired this 1996 thing: http://www.mariowiki.com/index.php?oldid=674662