Wibble said:

Wings of Regiroth are a gold treasure from WoD which grant fly. It's rare, but if could happen. I actually missed the part about heroes not getting soar in our last campaign and used a Crushing Blow on those wings so that Kratz the plague couldn't be hit by a melee attacker. Also, along with Zyla comes the "Carried by Air" feat which gives a hero +2 speed and fly for a turn.

Big Remy said:

Well, there's one other obstacle (besides pits) that inflicts damage: lava. Maybe something else in RtL that I don't know about.

But your reasoning for scything blades and dart fields becoming obstacles appears to be "because I want them to." There's nothing in the rules anywhere that indicates that these are, or ever can be, obstacles, and there are multiple places in the rules where they are logically implied not to be obstacles (because there is an "obstacles" category that they are NOT listed in, and the reviesed Acrobat skill card gives scything blades and rolling boulders as examples of props that are NOT obstacles).

So you're welcome to house-rule that the fly ability negates them, but they are definitely not obstacles by RAW, which means that your line of reasoning is unsound.

Antistone said:

Sure

All this begs a better quesion: can a soaring creature soar over a boulder in an outdoor encounter (pretending that there was still a way to get a boulder outdoors)?

Badend said:

That´s an easy one, since Soarers ignore all obstacles. The Soarer wouldn´t be able to swoop in that space and make an attack, but that´s the only limitation I can see.

The Sky (not Skye) is the limit...

Edit: Oh, you mean Rolling Boulder not Rubble, right? Have to go read Soar again...

Well, since Boulders, Scything Blades and Dart Fields (and Moving Walls for that matter) are not obstacles by the definition most people agree on, Soarers wouldn´t ignore them. Which would be one of the silliest facets of Soar.

Of course there is the possibility to bring these traps outdoors in Lt. encounters via the appropriate trap cards (except Moving Walls).

Second Edit: I couldn´t find anything that Soar even ignores obstacles (made this up in my mind obviously). Soar ignores terrain, according to the FAQ. Of course you could extend that to "ignores anything that´s on this terrain space", but that may be a stretch.

According to RAW, Soarers couldn´t Soar over a rubble either, then. They can move past it, of course, since they have also Fly.

Just found this in the FAQ:

When large monsters move, they can sometimes find themselves moving across hazardous terrain (lava, scything blades) twice as often as other figures. Further, it can often be confusing whether or not beneficial terrain (trees, elevated terrain) should affect a creature only partly standing on it.

So, terrain not only comprises outdoor map elements like printed mud, water, trees, but also certain props and traps.

Since Soarers ignore terrain, they should ignore props and traps as well.

Confusing terms continued...

Of course, that exact sentence you quoted is known to be incredibly confused--specifically, it implies that large figures moving over lava can take damage more than smaller creatures, but WoD page 4 says that large figures are only affected by lava when every space they occupy is a lava space, so the reverse is actually true. It's very difficult to believe that the person writing that paragraph had any idea what he was doing, and using subtleties in its wording to interpret other rules is probably an incredibly bad idea.

Well, "terrain" is nowhere else defined as far as I know, so without that entry you are completely on your own what a Soaring creature can ignore.