Stacking movement penalties

[Tobold Hornblower]

To attempt to be stealthy while moving, you need to slow your speed.
[SRD(Hide):"The character can move up to one-half normal speed and hide at no penalty." SRD(Move Silently):"The character can move up to one-half the character's normal speed at no penalty"]

To use Wilderness Lore to try and scavenge food while moving, you need to slow to half speed. [SRD: "Move up to one-half the character's overland speed while hunting and foraging"]

While moving overland, the party's Ranger scouts out in front of the rest of the party and wagon. He wants to Hide and Move Silently without penalty while doing this. He also wants to collect any edibles and shoot any game that presents itself.

How do these multiple halvings work?

Can he move one-half of his overland speed and do all three without penalty? Should the halves multiply so that he must move move one-eigth his overland speed?

I ruled that he could do all three while moving one-half his normal overland speed, but suffers a -2 circumstance penalty on the Wilderness Lore check for stealthy scavenging. Also, during the brief periods while he's shooting a rabbit or digging up some roots, he isn't Hiding/Moving Silently. The scavenging isn't important, just more interesting to the story than subtracting trail rations. Whenever the Ranger stops being stealthy, he isn't moving forward, and he's less likely to be beginnning an encounter. So, I gave a one in 30 chance that a random encounter would take place while the Ranger had relaxed his stealthiness to scavenge--gotta use that d30 for something.

If I've missed a core rule or sage pronouncement covering this, please educate me.

 

[Artoomis]

I'd say it works like normal multipliers in D&D.

1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 would not be 1/8th, but instead be 1/4.

That's because 2+1+1 = 4, using the multiplying rule in D&D.

This seems to fit in well with other rules.

 

[Number47]

Let's see. Each minus one-half should be applied as a separate modifier to the base movement. So, assuming that he moves at a base speed of 30, he'll move at a new rate of 15, in reverse.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I would use the same rules as by doubling something, two doublings are equal a trippling. So he moves at 1/4 of is base speed, assuming it is 30ft he would move with 7.5ft instead. That what i guess it would work out.

 

[Tobold Hornblower]

1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 would not be 1/8th, but instead be 1/4.

Thanks for the feedback, but I can't go along with that.

Doubling is done that way because you're adding-as-much-again.

double(double(double N)) = N + N + N + N

To apply the doubling rule would mean to subtract-as-much-again. So, like Number47 said, that would mean:

half(half(half N)) ?= N - 1/2(N) - 1/2(N) - 1/2(N) ?= you can only go backwards half speed???

So, apparently this wasn't covered in the rules, answered by the sage, or already argued in this forum. I'm surprised. Seems like it would have been.

 

[melkoriii]

This was a problem in one game I was in.

Ogres in Half-Plate so movement of 20. Moving in knee high water so ½ movement. Then hit by multiple tangle foot bags each for ½ movement.

So that would be 10 or 5 or 0 movement?

If they are less then 5’ move can they still take there 5’ step tho it is less then there speed?

 

[Tobold Hornblower]

So, my way looks good. The rules say that if you move half-speed, you don't take a penalty. There's no need to stack anything.

melkoriii, your problem isn't as simple, though. You actually need to enforce a movement reduced by half for multiple reasons.

Maybe a bump for the morning shift on America's East Coast will help.

 

[Artoomis]

Still, I think my way of resulting at 1/4 move is within the spirit of the "multiplier" rule. It also seesm quite reasonable that each of these activities requires slower movement so that you end up much slower when trying to do them all at once.

It all seems reasonable and wihtin the spirit of the rules to me.

 

[ashockney]

I've seem advantages and multipliers work one of two ways:

1) Take the worse/best of the group
2) Add them together then divide (ie, funny DnD math).

I think in Tobold's situation, I would rule as follows:

Hide/MS - take the worse, really doing same thing
Forage - mulitplier kicks in

Therefore 1/2 +1/2 = 1/3 movement to hide/ms/forage. I know it's a little weird, but it's pretty logical when you think about it. I also like the idea of a penalty to one or both skills for attempting to multi-task. Interesting question for all skills...multi-tasking penalties? Climb and Balance?
Jump and Balance?
Concentrate and Jump?
Concentrate and Spellcraft?
There doesn't seem to be precedent for this kind of thing.

In Melkorii's example, I'd have to go with 20' move from the half plate. It sounds like both "moving in water" and "tanglefoot bags" apply 1/2 move penalties that overlap. I'd say 10' move, until you hit him with enough tanglefoots to entangle him.

 

[dead_radish]

I have a problem like this in the campaign I'm running - we have a dwarf, in medium armor, who has barbarian levels.

And he's about to get boots of striding and springing.

The headaches are immense.

Does he have 20' base, upped to 30', then down to 20' again? Does he have 20' base, down to 15', then up to 25'?

What happens when something like a tanglefoot bag comes into play?

And with his ring of jumping, he can jump 10-15' farther than his movement often times.

It hurts.