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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xeviat" data-source="post: 7560723" data-attributes="member: 57494">Run ActionHi everyone. I’mcurrently working on a project that had me staring at the animalspeeds in the Monster Manual as well as actual animal speeds in thereal world, and I was reminded that 5E does not have a runningmechanic. Fly speeds are tremendously low to even do the cruisingspeeds of many birds; a cursory google search shows bird cruisingspeeds are in the 20-to-30 mph range.For quick reference,1 mph equals 8.8 ft/round specifically, though D&D often shorthands this to 10. 30 mph would be a speed of 264 … or 300 by D&Dsimple math. That’s … ridiculous. (3E had "overland flight" to help with this).3[SUP]rd[/SUP]Edition used to have the run action; it was a full-round action thatallowed you to run at x4 your speed (x3 if you were wearing heavyarmor).30 ft = 3.4 mph60 ft = 6.8 mph90 ft = 10.2 mph120 ft = 13.6 mphA quick googlesearch finds that 10-15 mph is considered “average” human runningspeed over short distances. I’ve seen 15 mph stated in a fewplaces, once even citing the “National Council on Strength andFitness”, with no citation. 3E’s numbers fall reasonably withinthis range. I did find 3.1 mph as “average human walking speed”(taken from watching people walk across cross walks and averaging),and average jogging speed listed as 6 mph.I even checkedmyself on a treadmill; I’m a bit overweight and have chronic footpain, but 3 mph is a comfortable walk and 6 mph is jog I can keep upfor a while (I didn’t have the guts to really blare the motor onsprinting; I topped out at 10 mph before giving up). And, again, I’mnot a fit adventurer.So, it’s simple,right? Just bring in 3E’s run action, modified for 5E’s language.The Dash action already allows us to double move. So the run actioncould be something like this:Run: As anaction, you can move up to 4 times your speed in a relativelystraight line. You cannot take your regular movement. If you arewearing heavy armor, your run speed is instead 3 times your speed.Alright, that’sthe end of it, right?Nope.5E throws us ourfirst curveball; the Monk and the Rogue can both take the Dash actionas a bonus action, allowing another increment of their movement rate.I’ll come back to this, because I do want to discuss this; should acharacter be allowed to “double dash” (action dash, bonus actiondash, and then move their speed with movement), or should the Monkand Rogue abilities be thought of more as them moving while doingsomething else. Let’s table this for a second and talk aboutSprinters.Humans can be fast.A study I found says, biomechanically, humans could maybe max out at45 MPH. But, the current top speed is Usain Bolt at 28 mph during his100 meter dash; but this speed was only held for 2 seconds. D&Ddoesn’t deal with increments that small. There’s alsoacceleration to take into account, right?Usain Bolt’s 100meter (328 feet) record is 9.58 seconds. His 200 meter (656 feet) is19.19 seconds. I was able to find breakdowns of his 100 meter dashsecond by second. At the 6 second mark, he had hit 56 meters, or 184feet.In 1 round, UsainBolt sprinted 184 feet. In just over 3 rounds, he sprinted 656 feet.9.58 doesn’t fit into rounds nicely, unfortunately for us, but wecan play with these numbers a little. I broke things down into feetper seconds/rounds and worked backwards, which helps account for thefractional rounds here.Round 1, his speedwas 184. Round 2 and 3, he averaged 215 feet per round. Over all 3rounds, he averaged 205. I know his peak speed of 28 mph (246ft/round) was held steady between the 6[SUP]th[/SUP] and 8[SUP]th[/SUP]seconds, we can say the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] round is the fastest. Somecrude estimates, and assuming a smooth speed drop off after the 8[SUP]th[/SUP]second through to the end, I get 184 for Round 1, 236 for Round 2,and 202 for Round 3.So, how do we buildUsain Bolt while we’re making these rules. I doubt his ground speedis significantly above the speed 30 (I can’t find anything abouthow fast he walks). Also, as he’s a regular person, I’d want tokeep levels limited and keep the resources we’re spending on his“build” to a minimum.The Mobile featgives +10 speed. It’s safe to say he is trained in Athletics. Ithink we can safely assume he also has “expertise” in Athletics,either from a skill feat, the Prodigy feat, or levels. Lets alsothink about whether the Monk or Rogue’s bonus action dash isneeded.With a 40 ft basespeed, his Walk (move), Jog (dash/move), Run (4xMove) speeds become:40 ft = 4.5 mph80 ft = 9.1 mph160 ft = 18.2 mph160 is pretty closeto 184.But then heaccelerates and ends up faster on Round 2 and then loses some speedon round 3 (but still faster than Round 1).A quick aside; I’velooked at other race records, and here’s some different feet perround scores for all of them. I even went through the trouble ofgraphing them and it’s very linear; average speed is flat for the100 and 200 meter dashes, then it slows down rather smooth the 400and 800 meter dashes. Speed loss levels out after this for the 1 kmrace. “Long distance running” is apparently at 8 kms and up, butspeed loss really begins to slow after the 600 meter race, notexperiencing a sizable dip in speed until we go from the 40 km to the50 km. Apparently, endurance athletes can jog for a really long time.Distance: Averagespeed in ft/round (time to complete)100 m: 205 (9.58 s)200 m: 205 (19.19 s)300 m: 192 (30.81 s,5 rounds!)400 m: 183 (43.03 s,7ish rounds!)500 m: 171 (57.69 s,nearly 1 min)600 m: 162800 m: 1561 km: 1491.5 km: 1432 km: 1383 km: 1345 km: 12610 km: 12515 km: 12020 km: 119 (we’reat 0.92 hours here)25 km: 11530 km: 11340 km: 113 (we’reat 1.93 hours here50 km: 100100 km: 89 (thisrace took 6.15 hours)So, what I think weneed is some way to use the Athletics skill to boost speed. I thinkwe also need to decide on the “double dash” situation. I don’tnecessarily want every athlete to have to be a rogue (but then again,aside from thieve’s cant, thief’s tools proficiency, and sneakattack, the abilities are useful). Also, the running technique forthe shorter 100 and 200 meter dashes are likely different than the400 and 800 meter races, but the smooth speed progression from 200 to400 to 800 does level off above that. Maybe sprinters and endurancerunners take a different feat? Why don’t we have an enduranceskill.Now, should a“sprint” action be handled with athletics checks? I do not thinkwe need to get so granular as to model the round by round loss ofspeed, and the d20 has too much variety to really be putting amultiplier in. These elite sprinters aren’t botching runs with suchfrequency for it to be on a d20, but if we’re looking at somethinglike a 12-14 Str/Con/Dex, with Expertise and maybe 4-5 levels theycould have a +5 to +8 Athletics bonus. A DC 20 check to sprint mightnot be too bad.But, again, if welook above, our joggers are maintaining speeds in excess of 100 ftper round up until around 50 km, and still nearly 90 at 100 km. Theseathletes aren’t just “double moving” for 6 hours straight, evenwith a 40 ft speed from Mobile.The Chase rules inthe DMG say you can freely use the Dash action a number of timesequal to 3 + Con mod; each additional dash action it takes requiresthe creature to succeed on a DC 10 Con check at the end of its turnor gain one level of exhaustion. Above, our hero moved at 89 speedfor 6 hours, and it would be safe to project maybe 80 over 8 hours;with a 40 speed, that’s 4,800 dash actions; I don’t think they’resitting on 28 Constitution scores.And even the forcedmarch rules in the PHB are woefully below this. 80 speed would be 9mph. The PHB sets Fast overland travel at 4 mph.Now, all of theseare from absolutely unencumbered people using “masterwork tools”(I liked that concept back in 3E). Maybe modern running shoes wouldcount as magic items, I don’t know. I guarantee you these speeds would be lower with anything more than light clothing on, and even what counts as a "light load" would be some heavy work.Now, after thatlarge post, what are your thoughts? I don't need to be able to recreate everything here, but I think it would be good if we could add more to a high speed chase with some better sprinting rules, and overland travel with some better hustling rules. Not all PCs are super athletes, but a fair amount of them are and I could easily envision some Lord of the Rings-esque "We need to get there before nightfall" marathons for some parties.</blockquote>

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