Dungeon Master Assistance

5 responses to “D&D 5E – Combining Different Speeds”

1. DDOCentral July 11, 2021 at 2:05 pm

   Reblogged this on DDOCentral.

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2. Ollie Gärtner June 6, 2023 at 9:17 am

   A base Tabaxi has a Walking Speed of 30 and Climbing Speed of 20
   Level 2 Tabaxi Monk has a Walking Speed of 40 and Climbing Speed of 20
   Level 2 Loxodon (Elephant Race), Locathah (Fish Race) or Tortle(Turtle/Tortoise Race) Monks have a Walking Speed of 40 and no Climbing Speed
   A base Centaur has a Walking Speed of 40 and No Climbing Speed either

   The Climbing speed of the Tabaxi Monk has no Use with your solution, as 20ft Climbing with Climbing Speed are just as fast as Climbing with the 40ft walking Speed. Thus the Elephant, Fish and Tortoise Monks who don’t even posess fingers are just as quick and nimble climbers as the Cat Folk – and even the Centaur is just as good. A lvl2 centaur Monk would even surpass both Tabaxi in it’s cllimbing agility.

   I don’t have good solution to this, but it feels absolutely wrong, as Climbing and Swimming speeds that are half or less of your regular movement speed become worthless. I appreciate, that you’re trying to solve a problem, but i think you’re creating an even worse on

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   • Ollie Gärtner June 6, 2023 at 10:11 am

     The forced, nonlogical order of movement in the baserules is a pain in the buttocks. How could we solve this? Get rid of the forced order. One consequence of the PHB ruling is, that the total Movement speed can’t be higher than your max movement speed. Thus if we make that our new ruling, then we’d erase the issue with the order of the movement… Yet – if we were to give our Tabaxi, that could previously climb 20ft and then walk 20 ft in a single round a 80 ft of flying speed, we would create a new problem. The Tabaxi would be able to walk 40 ft, then climb 20 ft and then fly 20ft, the gift of flight made our Tabaxi walk faster…

     We could combine the two solutions,

     We could split movement into walkable (anything that could use walking speed – walking, swimming, climbing) and non-walkable (fly, hovering, burrowing etc) and use your proportional solution. The walkables within themselves use my first solution (basically PHB without strict order), and are compared to every other speed in proportion.

     Our Tabaxi would be able to fly 40ft (50% for nonwalkable, thus leaving 50% for walkable). After that he has a remaining max 20ft walk and max 10ft climb. The new max walkable is 20ft, so he could walk 20 (20<=20) ft – or walk 10ft and climb 10ft (10+10<=20).

     Lets give our Tabaxi a Hovering speed of 30ft.

     Tabaxi flies 10ft(12,5%), Tabaxi hovers 10ft(33,3%, total 45,8%, leaving 54,2%)
     Tabaxi has 54,2% of 40ft walkables left – for a max of 21,68ft walkable movement, thus 21,68ft walking, 10,89ft climbing. Tabaxi could walk 21,68 or use 10,89ft for walking + 10,89 for walking

     In Base Game Tabaxi could fly 10ft, hover 10ft and then walk 10ft
     or climb 20ft, hover 10ft, walk 10ft and then fly 40ft
     or fly 40ft and then not be able to move by any means but flying
     weird restrictions by order of movement

     With your solution our Tabaxi would be able to fly 10ft, hover 10ft and then have to choose between either walking 20,89 and walking 10,89. (order unimportant)

     With my first orderless solution our Tabaxi would be able to climb 20, hover 30, walk 20 and fly 10 (order uninportant)

     I like this combined solution, but the maths behind proportions is shiddy – I mean – I personally wouldn't mind it, but other's hate maths, it would take more time, and cause more trouble, than it would do good.

     It's maddening, that every possible solution has it's flaws :[

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   • Ronny June 6, 2023 at 10:53 am

     I don’t think that Climbing and Swimming speeds that are half or less of your regular movement speed are worthless. Yes, the Climbing speed of the Tabaxi Monk with a 20ft Climbing Speed are just as fast as Climbing with the 40ft walking Speed. A Tabaxi’s base walking speed is 30ft. Its climbing speed is 20ft. Which is 5 feet faster than other characters with a base speed of 30 feet. But, when it’s base speed increases its climb speed doesn’t improve until, as a monk, its base (unarmored) speed reaches 45 (at 6th level) which then makes its climb speed 22.5 feet, which doesn’t help much – or it reaches 50 (at 10th level) which makes its climb speed 25 feet. This problem isn’t with the Tabaxi, its with the monk class. This class does not appear to have climbing races in mind. If you allow these races in your game, you may want to modify the monk class to account for races that have a natural climb speed.

     But I see what you mean. Here is how I handle these situations.
     First you are wrong on one point – the Elephant, and Tortoise Player Characters have fingers on their forearms, and the Fish Player Characters have finger-like fins.
     If it can hold and use a sword or spear, it can climb if it has both hands free. If it can climb and doesn’t have a climb speed, every foot of movement costs it 1 extra foot of movement. As a house rule, I would take any physical characteristics that a race has into consideration when it comes to climbing. Some may not be able to climb at all. For most, such as the Loxodon, it looks to me like they cold only climb with great difficulty, so I would say as a house rule that every foot of climbing costs it 2 extra feet of movement.
     As for Centaurs, the “Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica” says that they have a base walking speed of 40 feet. It also says that “any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet, instead of the normal 1 extra foot.” That would equal a 5ft. climb speed.
     [40ft base speed + 10ft for being a lvl 2 monk, cut that in half for a normal swim speed, than divide that by 5 for counting each 5ft as 1 ft, gives you a 5 ft climb speed.] (40ft.+10ft.)/2/5=50ft/2/5=25ft/5=5ft.

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     • Ronny June 6, 2023 at 1:41 pm

       I think your proposal is too complicated. And I like the way initiative is currently handled.

       Mine may also be too complicated, but I think is a better solution. I don’t think what I propose is all that hard.

       Using your example: Lets say the PC, forgetting specifics of race and class for now, has a walk speed of 40′, climb speed of 20′ and a fly speed of 80′.
       We could make 3 simple tables (rounding fractions down, minimum 1 second):

       to Walk 40′ takes 6 seconds
       to Walk 35′ takes 5 seconds (5.25 sec. before rounding down)
       to Walk 30′ takes 4 seconds (4.5)
       to Walk 25′ takes 3 seconds (3.75)
       to Walk 20′ takes 3 seconds
       to Walk 15′ takes 2 seconds (2.25)
       to Walk 10′ takes 1 second (1.5)
       to Walk 5′ takes 1 second (0.75)

       to Climb 20′ takes 6 seconds
       to Climb 15′ takes 4 seconds (4.5)
       to Climb 10′ takes 3 seconds (3)
       to Climb 5′ takes 1 second (1.5)

       to Fly 80′ takes 6 seconds
       to Fly 75′ takes 5 seconds (5.625)
       to Fly 70′ takes 5 seconds (5.25)
       to Fly 65′ takes 4 seconds (4.875)
       to Fly 60′ takes 4 seconds (4.5)
       to Fly 55′ takes 4 seconds (4.125)
       to Fly 50′ takes 3 seconds (3.75)
       to Fly 45′ takes 3 seconds (3.375)
       to Fly 40′ takes 3 seconds
       to Fly 35′ takes 2 seconds (2.625)
       to Fly 30′ takes 2 seconds (2.25)
       to Fly 25′ takes 1 second (1.875)
       to Fly 20′ takes 1 second (1.5)
       to Fly 15′ takes 1 second (1.275)
       to Fly 10′ takes 1 second (0.75)
       to Fly 5′ takes 1 second (0.375)

       So if you walk 15 ft. (2 sec.), climb 10 ft. (3 sec.) you could then fly up to 25 ft. further (1 sec.).
       You could make a simple table for each of your speeds and divide your combat round into 6 movement sections.

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