Winged humanoids

>razorblade strapons

Good points, except againts archers, where 1) is the last thing you want and 3) is inconsequential.
I'm not sure how many holes a bat-style wing can take before 2) becomes a moot point. Umm... Research.

Why the fuck wouldn't you be flying around like some helium filled war pony with its trusty k-night zipping around its foes and charging home wherever an opportunity presents itself?

Well, the primary way to kill birds before guns was with bows, no?
And I assumed that the wings in question would be similar to the ones in the OP.

You wouldn't if you're flightless, which is a possibility, whether you're just not strong enough to flap those wings, they're just vestigial or your wings are ripped by pesky archers.
It's hard to find pictures of winged humanoids wielding swords and having wings that are not huge. Let's think about wings around the size of pic related.

They'd basically work as cavalry. Swoop in, hit a charge, then fly away. Repeat as needed.

>Winged humanoid in fantasy.
>Is flightless.
U wut m8?

Plenty of demonic beings are represented with wings that amount to little more than capes. And flightless birds exist, with wings being a vestige.
I'm working on a setting where the resident winged humanoids have long since lost flight, due to muscular atrophy due to lack of use and interbreeding with humans. Something along the lines of the muscles that used to move the ears. Before anyone questions the interbreeding, the "humans" of the setting just lost their wings first, the bones and muscles are still present in a vestigial form similar to the limbs of snakes.

In that case it seems like there would be an even lesser chance that the wings would be hit.

What system are you using? I personally wouldn't make this a mechanical thing if the race can't even fly.

D&D 4th edition. I'm not planning to make this into a mechanic, my group just obsesses with those details. Not that I usually mind.

>Not having a set of armored wings that you can attack with as well

I bet you guys don't also have organic rocket boosters for wing arms either.

I see two options:
Either tell them that it's a game and not a simulation
or
Tell them that the race has learned to move in such a way that their wings usually aren't in danger

Then your humans won't be human any more...

Wouldn't they just fold them up?

They're the closest thing to humans in the setting, so they are counted as humans. Apart from bulges on the back were the wing bones are, they are exactly like us. Explaining the hybrids got out of hand when the resident biologist of the group got involved and started ranting about sneks and whales.
I was wondering what to do apart from that and bitch-slapping with razor strapons ()

This thread is confusing. The OP really needs to restate his assumptions w/r/t the utility, anatomy, physiology, and thaumaturgy (if any) of winged humanoids.

Once you've laid out your assumptions/constraints we can help you.

better question
what if you suddenly and unexpectedly grew wings during a fight.

Very well. Here goes.

The wings are a natural part of the body, a third set of limbs present from birth, not a result of a spell.
The average wingspan is about one-and-half to twice the armlength of the individual among adults. The base of the wings is located just bellow the shoulder blades, which are shorter than human ones (Homo sapiens, not the "human" equivalents of the setting). Anatomically, they are bat-type wings.
The muscles are atrophied and are not capable of sustaining flight or taking of. They could allow the individual to glide. However, vigorous training could possibly allow them to flap the wings during flight, but not taking off.
The wings are vestigial (think ostrich) but still as swift as the arms, rather than just hanging lumps of meat. They help regulate body temperature, according to the resident biologist.
As for utility, they're used mostly as a social tool to look imposing, disuade potential challengers, appear attractive, etc. They are a medieval civ, much like the humans.
Utility of the wings in combat is what I'm asking about.

And I believe that's about it.

These wing placements always trigger me because they'd have to be closer to the small of the back, never mind being like 15' long per wing minimum on top of the HUEG MUSCLES required to use them in order to gain any kind of lift.

Sorry for the autism.

>It's hard to find pictures of winged humanoids wielding swords and having wings that are not huge

Why would you give your flying humanoids swords? Give them bows and let them snipe from inaccessible positions.

Also, have some Tactics Ogre.

...

...

A thing to note...

Since most winged humanoids are based of humans, and by extention of mammals - winged humanoids would have mammal bones.

Heavy bones, not very suited to flight. Any disruption of flight would cause broken bones above a certain height. That is why bats always fly relatively low.

A bird has a more advanced bone structure, pioneered by the dinosaurs who grew absurdly big, and required stronger and lighter bones than reptiles and mammals have.

A bird can fall from much higher than a bat and be unharmed because of their lighter weight and stronger bones.

>Fisical
>Fi
>Si
>Cal

It's physical* my man.

Also, why the fuck would we assume they have wings purely for aesthetics? Why have wings at all if you can't fuckin' fly?
But hey, let's go with this.
Armored wings.
If you can't fly with them, fucking strap some chainmail on them and bitch slap your foes and block arrows. Like in that movie "Legion", but somehow even more stupid.

Well the non-possessing angels from the movie Legion had plated and bladed wings, and utilized them in battle defensively as shields, for added leverage and mobility, and for added slashing/beating.

Eurgh, that film was so disappointing. One really cool Angelic swordfight, lots of extremely boring people standing on rooftops shooting guns.

Wouldn't the fact that they have to constantly flap those big wings in order to sustain flight make for a very unstable shooting position?

I meant have them land on top of something that either takes climbing checks to reach without flight, or can't be climbed up at all. Obviously, trying to aim while flying would give massive penalties. Heck, even the video game those two are from doesn't let you do that.

>Vestige
>Ve
>STIGE
OK man, it's Vestigial. You are fucking with my inner "Let's use words we know how to spell" Nazi.
You seem to have a grasp of the English language. You just seem to like to use big words you don't fully know how to spell. That's OK, but if you see that little red underline like I know you saw with "fisical" you have spelled it wrong and need to google your shit before posting.
Also, I'm now going to shitpost on this thread by pointing out every fucking mistake, because I've been reading for thirty seconds and you've triggered me twice.

Shoot while gliding. Most large birds go long stretches without flapping their wings. At that point, you've probably got a more stable firing platform than a galloping horse, and people have been shooting from horseback for centuries.

That's not how it works...bats have developed their own methods for making the skeleton lighter, including making the bones just really skinny and narrow but strong, whereas other bones can be bent to some degree but bounce back.

In terms of measurements of overall "lightness" (strength and size versus weight), bats are pretty close to birds, and miles away from any groundpounder.

Vestige is an actual noun, vestigial is the adjectival form. Such structures in animals are technically termed vestigial structures thoughm

It's still vastly inferior to what birds can do with their skeletons. Also, we are not discussing bats.

We're discussing winged humanoid simians.

That's often shooting a lot more arrows at much larger targets, or more often groups of targets.
Not saying it can't be done and mastered, but you'd be trading efficiency for mobility and/or safety every time.

Horseback archery is a thing even against single targets. And a combination of gliding instead of galloping and the main distance being vertical instead of horizontal would likely make it a little bit easier.

Diving on the target would be easier. Having gravity, your direction of motion, and the arrow's intended flight path all line up makes the whole the much simpler.

That is sport archery however.

You can't really compare that kind of archery with actual military archery where you use heavier bows with heavier arrows and arrowheads, and you don't just move to get to the target, but also move to avoid getting hurt yourself.

Tell that to the mongol archers

What kind of Mongol archers? The horse archers or the foot archers?

:^)

Exactly

The Mongols didn't need pinpoint accuracy. They were shooting at formations of men while riding by just out of a pike's reach.
There's no reason winged humanoids couldn't do similar fears, but outside an elite group, you'd rarely see sharpshooters. It's easier to bury them in arrows than train an army of marksmen.

But this is fantasy, so I dunno. Maybe the have super stabilizer wings or something.

But he actually did it ? I don't know if "vestige" can be used in the english language and I was sure it was but anyway he used "vestigial" correctly and with the right orthography.

>I don't know if "vestige" can be used in the english language
Do you fuckers even try? It's literally the noun version of the adjective vestigial. English really isn't that hard.

Well sorry, I was convinced it could be used but since it's latin in origin and used in most of the languages I know, I thought I was mistaken in thinking so, but thanks to you I now know that it can, indeed, be used.

Somehow the thread ressurected after I gave up. A grammar nazi and some people staying on topic.

I'm spanish, I sometimes mess up, even in french, which happens to be my mother tongue. The fact that they had lost flight is a plot point in the campaign. Covering the wings in chainmail does sound like a good idea, given that the extra weight is not an issue. Are you by any chance? And the noun form of "vestigial" is "vestige", a usage which is correct in the context in which I use it.
Just as points out.

The reason for which they use swords is the same we do. And they are flightless, though I agree that if they could fly, they would surely favor spears for diving and bows. And various explosives for dive-bombing.

That is an interesting point. The squeletons of the winged humanoids would be fragile compared to a human's. That could make them favor maces and other blunt weapons for close quarters.

I believe a rain of arrows is the modus operandi of any medieval force consisting of archers.

So many thoughts about this, i debated about even posting for a while. Anyways, here is a cliff notes version of what i have been thinking.

Leave it purposefully unexplained, trying to work logic into winged people will not work. If you want them to have a feather fall or glide than fine but dont try to explain it with biology or physics.

Short wings positioned next to regular arms would get in the way of just about everything while giving you nothing. They couldnt bear the weight of the individual. They would mess up any complex arm motion. Try devising any kind of armor to cover four ball socket limbs grouped that closely. You couldnt draw a bow unless your wings were very flexible and you certainly couldnt use the wings and bow together.

Just trying to imagine the extra musculature needed in the chest to make wings strong enough to glide with on a 180 pound person with 50 pounds of gear... oh how do they carrying things? Baskets slung from belts? Makes for awkward landings that way though.

Maybe have them use winched crossbows that they brace against their stomachs for cranking? Aerial charges with spears where they just hold and aim instead of really stabbing with arm motions? Those wings would be a huge liability against anything that can shoot back though.

To the notion that bows in combat were high poundage... not every archer was an englishman, most of the world did very well with 35-70 pound draw in combat. But in this case you cant draw a bow with those wings in your back.

>Also, we are not discussing bats

>Since most winged humanoids are based of humans, and by extention of mammals - winged humanoids would have mammal bones.
>Heavy bones, not very suited to flight. Any disruption of flight would cause broken bones above a certain height. That is why bats always fly relatively low.
>A bird has a more advanced bone structure, pioneered by the dinosaurs who grew absurdly big, and required stronger and lighter bones than reptiles and mammals have.
>A bird can fall from much higher than a bat and be unharmed because of their lighter weight and stronger bones.

The post above is literally talking about bats, using them as an example of an animal that flies but has "typical mammal bones". Bats do not have typical mammal bones, their bone structure is weird compared to typical terrestrial mammals.

Plus, bird flight and bat flight are two completely different things. Birds are faster and more powerful fliers, but bats on average are much more agile and maneuverable in the air than most birds (unless you add in weird birds like hummingbirds). Bat flight is limited more by features like a mammalian respiratory system than bone microstructure.