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

[Gorgoroth]

Well i didnt say nobody does, but its not one of the thing i usually see among group's houserules i play with so i dont know how popular this change is.

I wished it was in a Wandering Monster's poll so we see some results.

Since you have Mike Mearl's ear, why don't you ask him to do precisely that. If they "go by survey data", as they claim to, that should be a given.

Not sure if others in this thread can see the temp results or not, but all three options are virtually neck and neck so far. If you have to err, err on the side of caution, err on the side of tradition.

Changes for their own sake are a bad thing. Suddenly the DS crowd wants super-fast-legged halflings and gnomes, when they never, EVER complained about that in ANY forum venue before. I'd never even heard of a single person complain about that in real life, either. If you pick such a race, you are accepting their slower speed. Sometimes a handicap is a good opportunity for roleplaying and makes you more fully immersed in your character.

Uniform speeds wrecks immersion, it's simply ridiculous and gamist on its face. Sure, mythological dwarves and halflings could have disproportionately fast legs, just like Tolkien goblins, but they didn't in LOTR, and they haven't in most of D&D's 40+ year history.

Plague, get Mike's attention on this, and you'd be doing the entire community a service. Also, ask him what he thinks about apprentice fighters having 100% chance of successful attacks on every attack of their entire career. He definitely has been reading this stuff.

The finish line is near, I hope classic D&D mindset wins (which is that races are different, and fighters don't succeed on every single attack), so that I can put my money and time into this game.

 

[Minigiant]

Really it is a monor thing. But it does increase that feeling of "short humans, skinny humans, stout humans, and normal humans" D&D does.

One thing I loved about 4e was how race seemed to matter more as racial powers and feats were major things.

 

[Ichneumon]

I have a feeling they changed demihuman's speed to facilitate party's overland travel movement or something for the exploration module. I mean, they always had a slower speed than human and other medium sized creatures this for the last 40 years! Its not just an appeal to tradition for the sake of it, my group always felt it made sense, as does a great deal of people apparently.

I've never felt it necessary to worry about the slower speed of dwarves etc during overland travel. You just tell them there's lots of gold where they're going.

 

[Desdichado]

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?

Apparently AFAYK isn't very F at all.

I'd like to see some credentials before I can take this complaint seriously.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ideally each size should have a base speed which is then modified by strength and constitution.

I wouldn't determine it that way. Faster people are not necessarily stronger; and indeed, a look into the world of track and field suggests that being really fast involves being light and having very specialized musculature. Certainly, on an NFL field, the lineman would have the largest Strength scores, but are also the slowest, while smallish athletes can occasionally succeed based on speed.

Constitution to me is more about the duration of running than the speed.

If anything, I'd tie it to Dex, but to me it's somewhat of an independent commodity. It is, however, one that I think is amenable to a much higher degree of granularity than what we're seeing.

 

[Wulfgar76]

I wouldn't determine it that way. Faster people are not necessarily stronger; and indeed, a look into the world of track and field suggests that being really fast involves being light and having very specialized musculature. Certainly, on an NFL field, the lineman would have the largest Strength scores, but are also the slowest, while smallish athletes can occasionally succeed based on speed.

I agree, and made the same comparison earlier.
Why not make all the humanoid races speed 30 and settle any sort of dispute with a Dex contest (for a sprint) or a Con contest (for a longer run).

To stubbornly cling to the notion that smaller humanoids MUST be 5' slower smacks of belligerence, not reason.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To stubbornly cling to the notion that smaller humanoids MUST be 5' slower smacks of belligerence, not reason.

I think something more sensible, if we're sticking to 5 ft increments, would be to have a typical human have a speed of 35 (fast), 30 (normal) or slow (25), and then have racial modifiers in 5 ft. increments, thus making it theoretically possible for some people to be faster than others in spite of their racial norms.

 

[Wulfgar76]

I think something more sensible, if we're sticking to 5 ft increments, would be to have a typical human have a speed of 35 (fast), 30 (normal) or slow (25), and then have racial modifiers in 5 ft. increments, thus making it theoretically possible for some people to be faster than others in spite of their racial norms.

Your idea makes sense, but I prefer D&D Next's methodology of resolving everything with some sort of an ability check. The Dex vs. Dex, or Con vs. Con contest has an elegance and degree of randomness to it that I think better captures the essence of a pursuit or foot race. Flatly telling a character he has no chance of catching someone because his speed is 5' slower seems a bit undramatic and 'fun-terminating'.

 

[Wulfgar76]

Apparently AFAYK isn't very F at all.

I'd like to see some credentials before I can take this complaint seriously.

Gorgoroth has claimed he is a 'six-figure-earning professional game designer', so his opinion is not to be taken lightly.

 

[herrozerro]

As a matter of verisimilitude, halflings exist in real life (the term is over 200 years old and has been used to describe dwarfism), and they do not run either as fast as your dog, or a normal height-unchallenged person, even most children can outrun them.

Talking about your dog running faster than you is about as pertinent to to this topic, whether 3-foot tall halflings and gnomes in D&D should have the same base movement rate as an adult human, as the price of gas is to a bird.

And no, D&D Next should not be a meaningless sludgy soup of nonsensical, absurd and contradictory rules that make no sense and cause reasonable people to go, Hmmmmm, why did they make this change? Speeds were not broken before, and now they will be. They're adding bugs (to many people) to the game, while claiming to want a 2014 summer ship date. That's not how you ship a game that you want to sell.

Cheers!

Dwarfism is a bit different than fantasy Halflings. Halflings proportions closer to actual adults than that of children or those with dwarfism.