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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2243113" data-attributes="member: 4937">Under who's rules?  Let's be clear about what a charge is under the rules.   A charge is not 40 yards in 6 seconds, which is a very fast run.   A charge is for characters of average speed, 20 yards in 6 seconds which is a moderate jog.  In other words, a person charging is running the 100 yard dash in just about half of a minute, less a second or two to haul off and hit something.  If the person is in platemail, a charge is about 13 yards in 6 seconds, which is nothing but a fast walk.  For balance reasons, the game does not allow you to charge at a dead run (x3, x4 or x5 speed).  I suppose it would be a nice feat to let you increase your charge distance at the cost of increasing penalties to your AC, or if you were a particularly generous DM you might just let 'reckless charges' be a combat manuever and have a feat that improved your ability to do it.   I haven't done that yet, but now that I mention it, I like the sound of it because normally when we think of a 'charge' we think of people running thier full speed.  At least under the RAW, they aren't.How fast is 20 yards in 6 seconds?  Just under 7 mph.  That's above walking speed, but well under the 17 mph attained by say a middle school athlete running the 100 yard dash, to say nothing of the 21 mph attained by an olympic athelete.   A character that actually could charge 40 yards in 6 seconds has a base speed of 60 ft., which translates (with the Run feat) into the superhuman top speed of 34 mph - just slower than say your average farm horse or hunting dog.Yes it does, if you weren't creating a straw man by doubling the speed involved I'd think you had a reasonably good argument.   But the fact of the matter is that you can sprint the 400 yard dash around a corner without appreciable loss of speed, and you can run a pattern across a football field flat out and still manage to curve your stride.   It certainly doesn't force you down to 7 mph to go around a curve.  The irony of that would be amusing, except that the irony of your position has kind of worn on me by now.  But anyway, why should the realism matter to you?   Should the fact that the rules sometimes produce ubsurd results when followed to thier letter ever be a factor in the way you arbitrate the game?   I mean, should the fact that an octagonal track could be sized such that a character of only average athletic ability in chainmail and an unencumbered olympic sprinter would run around it at exactly the same speed bother you in any way?  If it does, do you say to your PC's, "Even though this may never come up in the game again, we can't change the rule to let you win the race because we don't change house rules in the middle of the game.  That's a rule, and if we broke the rules we wouldn't be playing D&D would we?"</blockquote>

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