10 April 2021

Movement Rates for Old School Essentials

Go to the Delvers and Denizens Index


So due to the absurd movement rates provided in classic D&D I'm finally putting forth my own take at revising it for realistic game use. I have done this before for D&D back in high school but I don't particularly like the rates I came up with then, and I also came up with standard rates for my own rpg system based on statistics of real world athletes, but this is for D&D which is an abstract system and I want something that plugs into the D&D rules already there.

I think everyone agrees that moving 120 feet every ten minutes is ridiculously slow if we assume the PCs are actually moving, that is 0.14 miles per hour. Sheesh! Someone didn't do some basic math. So I think we need a basic walking speed that is different. The base encounter speed of 40 feet per round is 2.7 miles an hour which is reasonable for the average person, so lets use that. the other huge problem is the given speed for running during a pursuit in the wilderness (40x3x3(because yards instead of feet) which is 360 ft per round, which can be maintained for 5 minutes! That is 24.5 miles per hours, which is humanly impossible. Usain Bolt reaches an average of like 21 or 22 miles per hour in the 100 meter dash(its been a while since I look up the stats), and he can definitely not do that for 5 minutes. So the running speed needs to be paired down. After talking to my brother, who ran cross country and track in high school and college, and doing some math I came up with different rates of speed for the unencumbered man.

Searching: 120 feet per turn. Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 hour.

This is the speed at which PCs explore dungeons at a cautious rate, looking for traps, secret doors, listening at doors, mapping, etc. When traveling at this rate a roll to find secret doors and traps is automatically made, and the players do not have to specify that they are searching. This could be interpreted as moving in a straight line down a hall or searching 12 10'x10' squares.

Walking: 40 feet per round (800 yards per turn, 2.7 miles per hour). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 hour.

This is your standard walking rate, both indoors and outdoors. This is the rate used for overland movement, and the players can decide when they want to rest.

Hustling: 80 feet per round (1600 yards or 0.91 miles per turn). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 turn.

This is the standard combat encounter speed.

Running: 120 feet per round (2400 yards or 1.36 miles per turn). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 20 rounds (3 after 1 turn)

This is your running speed during a pursuit. It can only be sustained for a few minutes. 

Sprinting: 200 feet per round. Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 round.

This the fastest a PC can go, they are bolting for their life their life here. This is also the speed used during a charge in combat.


The above speeds are for the unencumbered human and elf. Gnomes haves speeds of 30/60/90/150. Each Encumbering Item decreases speed by 10/20/30/50.

No comments:

Post a Comment