Enhanced speed

This is my first post...

Something I've had problems with in D&D is that all humans have the same speed. (base). There are no people who are naturally faster. So, what I decided to do is to add the character's dexterity score to their base speed. Does this seem balanced?

What you should do is either add their dexterity to a base of 20' (giving most humans a 30' base, but with the possibility of up to a 38' move), or be even more restrictive and add half their dex to a base of 25'. You don't want to just bump everyone up by a whole 10' of movement.

what i do IMC is add their str and dex scores together. Minor (dextrous) and major (strong) muscles work in tandem to help you move. For smaller races/dwarves, take 1/4 off their speed, rounded up or down to the nearest 5-foot increment.

ex. a dwarf with 17 str and 14 dex, wearing fullplate.

17+14=31

31/4=7.75

31-7.75=23.25.

22.5 would be rounded down, but since this is above the halfway mark, the dwarves speed would be upped to 25 feet, and would not be reduced since he is a dwarf, and armour doesn't impeed them as normal.

does that help you, Hand of Horus?

[threadjack, sorry]

btw - hey Luthien, haven't seen you in awhile! Or maybe i just didn't recognise your avatar . . . i think it changed since your armour specialist PrC that we created together . . .which reminds me that i found a PrC very close to what we made in a book called "Hammer and Helm" It's very neat A Green Ronin book, btw.

later! [sorry for the thread jack, /endthreadjack]

If everyone gets that bonus, it should theoretically be balanced. In practice, it's probably not. I don't even what to think about a monk with maxed dexterity boots of striding and springing, monk's belt and gloves of dexterity would be like ... I think it would also wind up increasing the importance of Dex (and hence dex gear) of other stats. Also, this benefits small characters more as they tend to have higher Dex scores. (Luthien's second suggestion is the least problematic, though I would simplify it to add the Dex bonus to a base speed, 30' for medium creatures)

Personally, I leave it speed alone and leave it to magic items, feats (such as Dash from Complete Warrior, and Speed of Thought from the Expand Psionics Handbook) and class features to distinguish an individual's speed.