D&D 5E 30 speed for all! Halflings, Gnomes, Dwarves were feeling left behind?

[Gorgoroth]

Is it just me or is D&D Next with its 30 speed demihumans going in the wrong direction?

Even fourth edition recognized there was an important difference between five squares of movement during combat, and six.

What is going on? I'm curious if I'm the only one who thinks upping their speed to 30 is an insult to the history of the game, it's comedic picturing how fast a 3 foot gnome's legs must move to keep up to a five or six foot tall human.

Time to get a poll going, because Wizards of the Coast apparently doesn't think consulting the playerbase is important anymore, before they ram through such sweeping changes on a whim without being vetted by the community.

As you can tell by my Avatar, I'm a HUGE fan of Dwarves, but it's not their speed that makes them appealing to me, it's what they can do when they get close up to you that matters most. Normalizing speeds to me takes flavor away, and tries to solve a "problem" which no one, to my knowledge, has ever complained about.

Wizards, why are you tampering with such an important core stat in the game, common to every edition (AFAIK), without even posting a single survey to validate how people feel about it?

 

[Remathilis]

For what its worth, Halflings and Dwarves had the same movement rates as Elves and Humans in Basic and OD&D. Call it OSR if you want.

 

[Mistwell]

I think they should have the slightly slower speed sometimes, but I don't care a lot.

I don't think it's highly important, I don't think it's an insult to the history of the game, I don't think it's a sweeping change, and I don't think this is the sort of issue that raises to the level where it's necessary to poll people and validate how people feel.

It's a minor change. It's a change that will mildly assist my non-grid-based games, and mildly annoy in my grid-based games.

 

[Derren]

It's a minor change. It's a change that will mildly assist my non-grid-based games, and mildly annoy in my grid-based games.

Its destroying another small part of verisimilitude for no good reason.

 

[koga305]

Although the poll options seem a bit slanted, I voted "it doesn't matter much either way." I mostly run Theater of the Mind, so movement speeds aren't really an issue, but if I did run a battle grid, I doubt many people would notice in everyday gameplay, and it does simplify things a bit (every character moves at the same rate = one fewer thing to remember). That said, I can see the lack of verisimilitude being an issue for some. Whatever satisfies the highest number of other people is fine by me.

I don't agree with every aspect of Next, however. For example, I think the lack of a Fighter-based warlord type is a mistake, and the new Dragonborn backstory is pretty bad compared to both 4E's and 3E's story. It seems a little silly to assume that going with whatever the devs decide on the speed issue means I approve of every choice they've made and ever will make.

 

[thewok]

Haven't we discussed this on this forum in another thread? Anyway...

I'm totally cool with shorties having the same combat speed as Mediums. It mqakes sense, anyway, since everyone has a 5-foot combat space. How are the Smalls going to cover that fighting space if not by moving around it faster? Combats typically take 30 seconds to a minute. Maybe even less time. That's a short enough time for Smalls to be able to exert themselves to move across the battlefield at the same speed of a human or elf.

The differences should come in modifiers to that speed. In overland travel, Smalls should have a lower base speed. In exploration, different races should have different terrains through which they excel. Elves are good at moving through woods, halflings and gnomes at moving through areas with low ceilings dwarves at moving through loose rubble, and so on. That can all translate into combat, as well, if the DM wishes to classify his different difficult terrains.

Another way to make a difference is to give each race its own Run multiplier. Of course, that means a reworking of the Hustle action, but I'd be fine with that.

 

[Sage Genesis]

Since when is a speed of 25 considered "classic" for these D&D races? They used to have one-half the speed of humans. They've been steadily increasing in speed over the past decade and a half. Making them all the same speed is humans is not really my personal preference, I'd like them quicker than one-half but still slightly below human, but the issue seems so minor to me that I can't muster up the will to really feel any concerns. So dwarves are now just as fast as humans? Big deal. Just because it's not what I'd normally expect doesn't mean it has to be a problem for me.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't care about their speeds as an aspect itself. I just dislike how races are becoming more and more similiar. Races feel more like cultures and nationalities than distinct specieseseses.

 

[Gorgoroth]

I don't care about their speeds as an aspect itself. I just dislike how races are becoming more and more similiar. Races feel more like cultures and nationalities than distinct specieseseses.

I agree. OD&D might have had super fast halflings, but we've progressed since then, and a change such as this (even if it doesn't go towards my preferences), should be vetted by the company during public playtests, not mentioned in passing that they were changing it post-closing beta-test phase.

I just found it very irritating that it was mentioned so half-hazardly, like, "oh, by the way we've decided to make dwarves 8 feet tall"

When I played a lot of 4e, with a character in Plate Armor, I had many instances where an extra square of moment per turn would have altered which targets I pursued, which paths I took to get there, and which order I approached my kills in.

I just find the homogenization of yet another aspect of the game, turning race into mostly just fluff, to be a step in the wrong direction. I played 1e once in my life, and 2e, 3e, 4e, and all the playtests of 5e, and never had I had a 30 speed dwarf or halfling character at any table.

Speed is one way to differentiate races, if they make it so that one speed fits all now, what does that say for the future? I mean, if halflings are 30 speed, why are wood elves still 35? And if wood elves are 35, why is it so bad that halflings are 25 instead of 30? It boggles the mind the way they think sometimes. I find it really disappointing they're making such a major change so late in the process, without any consultation, and essentially saying the number five is the same as the number six, more or less (hint : no, it isn't)

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I miss the minus to ability scores for some races.