Hustle

[ThirdWizard]

Maybe, but the 3.0 Standard Action was more complicated and less intuitive. It was probably changed along with this, since the double move is now really just a move action and standard action instead of a stand-alone action.

 

[Beale Knight]

What we agreed

I'm a DM in the group and the one that brought up the question to the group in the first place. We'd had a session where we'd moved double our listed speed (30' for most) and attacked, and since that didn't feel right I investigated afterward. What I found led me to believe what most of you are saying (that I'd been right in the first place) and a PC can move his/her listed speed/move rate as a Move action and then Attack (or whatever) as the Standard action of the round.

But when we reviewed things before the next session we found the quote on Tactical Movement Hypersmurf posted.

TACTICAL MOVEMENT
Use tactical movement for combat. Characters generally don’t walk during combat—they hustle or run. A character who moves his or her speed and takes some action is hustling for about half the round and doing something else the other half.

The very specific use of Walk, Hustle, and Run suggested that the default movement rate in combat is the Hustle. And that made (and still makes) a great deal of sense - you're fighting, you're moving faster than you would be while just walking around. We played that night with this ruling and it worked out great.

Reviewing everything here though, and the post of someone in the group that wasn't there that night, I think I was really right the first time. The final argument being this from HS:

A character who takes an entire round to move his speed and do nothing else is walking. A character who takes an entire round to move twice his speed, or an entire round to move his speed and take another standard action, is hustling.

The assumption is that everyone hustles in combat all the time. If you want to amble casually in combat, you'd actually have to move at half the normal combat pace.

To paraphrase (and simplify the time scale for clarity):

You can move your speed in 6 seconds if you're walking. You can move your speed and do a Standard Action in 6 seconds if you Hustle so you can move your speed in 3 seconds and devote the other 3 to the Standard Action. If you want to move a distance equal to double your speed you have to Hustle the whole six seconds, which doesn't leave time for the Standard Action.

I think we'll run it this way next session and, frankly, go with whichever we happen to like better (since the rule will apply to the foes too).

So all this puts Running, moving at x4 (or x3) your speed, as a Full Round Action then?

 

[Caeleddin]

Yes. Run is a full round action. It must also be in a straight line, IIRC, and you definitely lose your Dex bonus to AC until your next turn.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I think maybe the terminology is making this a bit more cumbersome than it needs to be.

You can move your speed in 6 seconds if you're walking. You can move your speed and do a Standard Action in 6 seconds if you Hustle so you can move your speed in 3 seconds and devote the other 3 to the Standard Action. If you want to move a distance equal to double your speed you have to Hustle the whole six seconds, which doesn't leave time for the Standard Action.

During your turn, you can do:

1. A move action and a move action
--or--
2. A move action and a standard action
--or--
3. A full-round action
--AND--
4. A swift action
--AND--
5. As many Free actions as the DM lets you get away with

Anything other than that is descriptive text. Hustle is descriptive text, and means "jog."

So, if you move your speed (a move action) and attack (a standard action), you were jogging. If you move your speed (a move action) and do nothing else, you were walking. If you charge, you were probably jogging in a straight line.

It really has no appreciable in-game effect.

So all this puts Running, moving at x4 (or x3) your speed, as a Full Round Action then?

Yes.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Yes. Run is a full round action. It must also be in a straight line, IIRC, and you definitely lose your Dex bonus to AC until your next turn.

Unless you have the Run feat, of course.

 

[Greylock]

It must also be in a straight line, IIRC...

Oooooh. I can't tell you how much this annoys me.

To be able to make a simple adjustment while running, you must have DEX 15 and burn two feats. Running IRL is usually a straight line action. It's certainly much easier like that. But making minor direction changes is not a major feat of athleticism.

 

[Celebrim]

Oooooh. I can't tell you how much this annoys me.

To be able to make a simple adjustment while running, you must have DEX 15 and burn two feats. Running IRL is usually a straight line action. It's certainly much easier like that. But making minor direction changes is not a major feat of athleticism.

No, not minor direction changes. But to be able to change direction by 90 degrees or more without stopping or slowing down is a major feat of athleticism.

Again, this is one of those situations where the DM will need to excercise some judgement. The purpose of the rule is to keep players from taking a run action and then zig-zaging across a crowded battlefield avoiding all threat zones - unless of course you are Barry Sanders or Erik Dickerson. The purpose is not to prevent the character from running at a mild constant curve - otherwise how could normal people run around a track - or to prevent the character from making slight deflections in thier course even in the middle of a turn - otherwise a fast runner could go around an octagonal track no faster than a slow one because both runners would have to stop at every corner.

The same thing applies to charge. A DM that always insists on perfectly straight lines, or a PC that gets upset with the monster charges through a gentle bend is being IMO rather hidebound.

But exactly how you want to handle this is and what limits you want to put on the angles of deflection is up to you.