5 foot steps that aren't exactly 5 feet

[Jeph]

Would it be reasonable to give 5' steps beyond 5' to larger and faster creatures? It would go like this . . .

Increase step length by 5' for every full 2 size categories beyond Medium
Increase step length by 5' for every full 60' of speed beyond 30'.

So, a Collossal dragon with speed 60' would have a 20' step distance. Sound accurate-ish? balanced-ish? good-idea-ish?

 

[CRGreathouse]

Creatures with larger "5-foot steps" that the PCs could take them every round to deny the PCs of their full attacks. Since I don't want PCs to lose their cool extra attacks and don't think dragons should tapdance across the battlefield D), I'd drop it.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Bad idea. Creatures with reach and longer 'steps' would have an overwhelming advantage in melee. Big creatures usually are really good in melee, they don't need more advantages.

Eg: Normally a 11th level Fighter and a Cloud Giant have three attacks each. With this house rule, the Fighter would get one attack and the Giant would get four, most of the time.

Geoff.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Bad idea. Creatures with reach and longer 'steps' would have an overwhelming advantage in melee. Big creatures usually are really good in melee, they don't need more advantages.

Eg: Normally a 11th level Fighter and a Cloud Giant have three attacks each. With this house rule, the Fighter would get one attack and the Giant would get four, most of the time.

Geoff.

I'd rather adjust the CR for the sake of realism than accept some of the sillier things you get with big creatures.

Other fun big monster issues : displacement moves them 5 ft and gives a 50% miss chance... on a creature with a 20 ft facing... hey, lets back up and aim for the middle.

I'm also in favor of a quick calculation to increase damage for very big creatures from area effects...

Kahuna Burger

 

[the Jester]

I've used something like this for a while- basically a creature with a natural reach of greater than 5' due to its size gets a step equal to its reach. It just seems to me that a giant (f'rex) would move farther with a single step than a human or elf.

I've been reconsidering it lately, though. But I never found that it really unbalanced things too much.

Another interesting and related topic: say something has a face of 20x40 (or a similar non-square face); can it change its direction of facing as a step, as a freebie (and move 5'), or what? Especially since there's no facing (direction) in 3e, I've always found that to be an interesting situation- and yes, it comes up quite a bit. Even large (long) creatures often present this problem. Has anyone else had this be an issue?