The Illogic of Flight

[Xietor]

Eating peanuts is a bit different than hitting a flying target, and also, as someone else already mentioned, not all tramplers have a trunk. I was just using the elephant as an example.

And no, the trunk is a separate attack, it is not like trample.

[Archonsod]

At the basic level though, if the flyer is close enough for a melee attack, it's close enough to be attacked back. Who's to say the flier didn't collide with the trampler (imagine the effect of a crow flying into a charging elephant...) and KO itself, or the trampler simply swatting the flier out of the air and proceeding to jump up and down on them?

You don't really need to model a mechanism to take this kind of thing into account to be honest. A dodge chance for fliers (assuming they're agile enough. Not all natural fliers are necessarily good fliers)would be sufficient.

[Xietor]

But that is what i am saying, if the flyer is in melee range, then let the trampler have its normal attack versus the flier rather than a trample. I am not implying that the trampler cannot attack the flier, but i think the appropriate attack is the trunk(in the case of the elephant) not a trample.

Makes more sense, and is easy to do. And not all flyers are small birds. Take the gorgon for instance. She is not going to be swatted anywhere by a trunk attack, assuming she and other skilled fliers are clumsy enough to get hit by a trunk.

I think those charcoal demons would fly and come in from behind to attack. They just do not look dumb enough to fly straight in and smack into the elephant like a bug on a car windshield.

[Sombre]

Still following Xietor's logic on this one. Most tramplers have relatively effective melee attacks anyway, so it wouldn't be like fliers were their bane,... although one could use fliers to distract tramplers by forcing them to use their melee attacks rather than crushing whole squads of heavy infantry. The dragonfly swarm spell, for instance, would be quite useful against elephants. To me, that makes sense, since elephants would be rather distracted by large flying creatures biting/slashing/stabbing at them and might not manage to trample the main enemy force of infantry when thus harassed.

[Psientist]

That might be interesting... if flyers could be given that partial benefit against tramplers, it would be useful then to have an attack order of "Attack Tramplers"!

[MaxWilson]

I'd oppose that for the same reason I'd oppose "Attack Mages": Units shouldn't be able to identify whether something is a trampler from looking at it. "Attack Large Monsters" does pretty much the same job and is something units could reasonably be ordered to do.

-Max

[Archonsod]

MaxWilson said:
I'd oppose that for the same reason I'd oppose "Attack Mages": Units shouldn't be able to identify whether something is a trampler from looking at it.

You know, when you think about that, it makes no sense. Surely it would be somewhat easy to spot a trampler - it's the big guy running straight at you

[PyroStock]

Archonsod said:
You know, when you think about that, it makes no sense. Surely it would be somewhat easy to spot a trampler - it's the big guy running straight at you

Not all big guys running straight at you have trample.

[thejeff]

Yeah, Elephants would be obvious, but what about Minotaurs?
Attack Large Monsters is likely to get the same results.

[Fate]

Ok, here is the way trampling works:

When a unit gets trampled, they make a defense check. If they fail, they take 8 + 2xSize AP damage (I assume the trampling units size). If they succeed, they only take 1 damage point. Either way, there is a minimum of 1 damage point.

Fliers could simply not take the minimum damage on a successful check.

The assumption is that the advantage of flight is already accounted for in the defense (their ability to realize "Elephant! Fly up now!"). A flier which avoids has flown completely out of the way (vertically or otherwise), and so doesn't take the minimum 1 damage.

I believe that isn't too complicated, and gives credence to this issue?