The Ubiquitous 5' Step

[Matthias]

I also believe that the universal 5 ft step is unrealistic, though I wasn't aware of all the implications that a variable single-step could bring to the game.

The possibility of melee-focused characters having an extraordinarily adverse time of dealing with very large creatures is both frightening and fascinating at the same time. Denying them their full attack when dealing with very large monsters is entirely realistic. But really, why should one expect anything different? And why should this be necessarily unacceptable?

Mind you, monsters capable of making 10' steps are not siginificantly less vulnerable to ranged fire than the ones who can make 5' steps. Only the melee fighters are 'cheated'.

There are monsters that the team's spellcasters cannot deal with very well (monsters with a high SR, and monsters immune to magic outright) and there are other monsters that the team's combat specialists cannot handle very well (incorporeal monsters, monsters with a high DR, monsters with a high AC, and so on). Being ill-equipped to handle a monster, outside of simply being too weak to face it and win, isn't anything new.

Truthfully, however, it's up to the DM to decide what kinds of monsters a party faces. If every monster in the game could do 10' or 15' foot steps and deny the party's mele fighters their full potential, the DM wouldn't have much a choice and very rightly you could say that the variable steps would be ruining gameplay. But there are plenty enough critters in the monster books of an ordinary size and a lot of power to back it up.

If you ask me, extraordinary size is almost as much of a liability as it is an asset. You get adjustments to Strength and Constitution, but any improvement to AC you may get from natural armor is partially offset by your size penalty and your reductions to Dexterity.

Since a lot of monsters seem to operate within a range of 20-40 speed, it seems reasonable to base step size on that statistic. I agree that size in of itself shouldn't really enter into it, although a monster's speed is presumably appropriate for its size and so would its step size be. I can't help but see this as no different from a melee fighter not being able to confirm critical threats on a very large monster if the monster's vitals out of reach (or happens to be undead or a construct). It would just be another part of the game, and a specific shortcoming that requires a well-round character (or a well-rounded party) to overcome.

Base speed: step size
0-5 feet: n/a (any movement requires a move action)
10-30 feet: 5 ft
35-50 feet: 10 ft
55-70 feet: 15 ft
75-90 feet: 20 ft
95-110 feet: 25 ft
etc.


If variable steps truly ruin the game for melee fighters, you could always adjust the other aspects of the system to match: Consider the boosts of speed that the barbarian and monk classes get. If you tie in a creature's step size to the above chart, a 20th-level monk with an 80 or 90 base speed can very easily retain their full attack against most monsters, regardless of the size differential. There's also the Dash and Divine Vigor feats. If you wanted to allow Dash to stack with itself or somehow fix it so Dwarves can still fight those big bad giants while retaining their full attack in spite of the giants' faster movement, so much the better. Or use the following feats:

Long Stride
Your limber limbs allows you to move around in combat more easily.
Prerequisite: Dex 13+, speed 10+
Benefit: Your step size increases by 5 feet.
Normal: You can only make a 5-foot step while taking a full-round action in a given round.
Special: This feat does not increase your base speed.

Greater Stride
Your agility in combat is superior to most others'.
Prerequisites: Dex 15+, Long Stride, Run.
Benefit: Your step size increases by 5 feet.
Special: The effect of this feat stacks with that of Long Stride. This feat does not increase your base speed.

You could do something similar for the other movement modes than walking & running.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I can't help but see this as no different from a melee fighter not being able to confirm critical threats on a very large monster if the monster's vitals out of reach (or happens to be undead or a construct).

You're thinking of sneak attack, not criticals. You can score a critical hit on something whether or not its vitals are in reach, as long as its not immune (like, as you say, undead and constructs). Those vitals need to be in reach for a sneak attack, however.

-Hyp.

 

[phindar]

Tying it to base speed is problematic for me, if only because its a Single Step. It doesn't matter how fast you can take steps, or how far you can go in 6 seconds, its just the one step. (A quickling's single step will happen in the blink of an eye, but he's only gone a step over. A hill giant's step may be ponderously slow, but when he gets done with it he's going to be farther away from where he was than the quickling. But none of that really matters, since it all takes place on that creature's action, in the combat round.)

I did think of a way to tie size to speed, but it might only make sense to me, and even then I'm not terribly fond of it. Essentially, a creature's speed would be how many of its base it could go. A human (5' base) has a speed of 6, which is 6 squares or 30'. An Ogre (let's say, in my fantasy world) has a speed of 3, but a 10' base. It only gets 3 steps but each step is 10 foot, which is 30' same as a human. The reason I'm not going to use this is I don't feel like combing through the books and adjusting every creature's speed based on its size. That's a bridge too far for me. But saying a creature can take a free move equal to its base is something simple enough that I can keep track of it in combat. (Lo, how many wonderful rules I have come up with and discarded not because they didn't work, and not because I didn't like them, but because they were too cumbersome to keep up with. Misery, thy name is Fatigue Points.)

Come to think of it, I like the name Free Move better than Single Step. Single Step implies a single step, whereas a Free Move is just that, a free action to move a short distance. (It might not involve stepping at all as in the case of your oozes, floaty beholders, and slithery yuan-ti, among others.)

That's totally cool. You're doing it with your eyes open, you know why you're doing it, you're doing it to make the game more exciting, and you're keeping an open mind in case it doesn't work. Sounds great to me. You sound like the kind of DM I personally like.

I think if I were in your game, though, I'd cast enlarge a lot.

I appreciate that, Piratecat. As for Enlarge Person, I guess it depends how dramatic the 10' Step for Large Creatures really is. I was thinking of making it a 2nd level spell, but if its that powerful, I'd consider tacking on a material component (ala Stoneskin), or moving it to 3rd level. Or making it 1 round per level. (2nd level, 1 round per level?)

 

[Darklone]

Throw a Bbn level on the ogre and it'll be far, far scarier than an orc with 4 class levels, even though they'll both technically be CR4. Stick a 16 in Str (before racial adjustments) and you've got an ogre that's at Str 30 when raging, doing +15 dmg from Str with a two-handed weapon.

You don't need to mess with the 5 ft step to make ogres really scary. I've beaten down 11th lvl PCs with CR 6 ogres.

Agreed. Playing with 9 level 4 chars I got horribly close to a TPK against just two ogres: one with 2 bbn levels, the other with a fighter level, Combat Reflexes and a polearm.

 

[Piratecat]

As for Enlarge Person, I guess it depends how dramatic the 10' Step for Large Creatures really is.

Put it this way. I'm considering allowing a 10' step as an epic feat, and in OA you can make a 10' step if you make a DC 40 tumble check. There's a big power gap between those and a low level spell, and that makes me nervous about player implications. That's why I suspect that you're possibly opening a bag of worms.

 

[Celebrim]

Tying it to base speed is problematic for me, if only because its a Single Step. It doesn't matter how fast you can take steps, or how far you can go in 6 seconds, its just the one step.

Errrr... I think that is where you are getting confused. It is not a single step. I don't know any human who has a 5' natural stride. The 'five foot step' is an abstract step. It represents an in combat adjustment which occurs as a natural part of the combat over the course of 6 seconds without distracting from it. It doesn't represent any creatures single 'stride'.

A large sized creature and a small sized creature with the same speed, make a different number of strides in a move action, but they each still move the same distance in the same time. Likewise, as a natural part of combat, the quickling might make many small strides, where as a frost giant might not even complete a full stride but only raise a leg and shift its ponderous weight. But both actions are "five foot steps". In six seconds, you should qualify for a larger adjustment only if your speed is significantly greater than average. I can definately see this as something fast moving fliers with perfect manueverability ought to qualify for, but I don't see what size has to do with it at all.

"Come to think of it, I like the name Free Move better than Single Step. Single Step implies a single step, whereas a Free Move is just that, a free action to move a short distance."

Yeah, now you get it.

"(It might not involve stepping at all as in the case of your oozes, floaty beholders, and slithery yuan-ti, among others.)"

Yes, that's what I'm saying.

 

[0-hr]

I've always thought of the 5ft step as more a "5ft adjustment" put in place because the world really isn't divided up into squares. When you take a 5ft step, you move the center of your fighting space (or centroid) that last inch to make you count as in the next square. It's like driving from Nevada to California - a long drive if you start from the middle of Nevada, but not very far if you start out on the border. And since characters are like electron clouds statistically distributed over their fighting area, you may just as well assume that they were close to the border before taking a "step".

So (regardless of size) you just move a little bit - just enough to put you over the border into the next square. The total distance moved is equal to the space between squares plus an infinitely small amount - a distance which anything from a cat to a storm giant could do without having to think about it (ie. no AoO).

I can see a logical problem with really little things (that take up only a quarter square or less) but that just doesn't come up all that often.

 

[phindar]

Its still odd to me, if for no other reason than the cat is leaping many times its own body length (say, x5), and the Storm Giant is moving roughly a quarter of his height.

Personally, I think you can probably change the 5' step and not bring down the pillars of heaven. It might change the tactics people have to use in combat, like encourage people to take more reach weapons, or to be more reluctant to go toe-to-toe with the building-sized monsters; but that's not entirely a bad thing. In fact, if thats the effect you are going for, changing the 5' Step is probably a better way of going about it than pumping up the HD of the monsters.

But the discussion does make me wonder what would be the effects of simply taking the free 5' Step out. It doesn't change the speed that creatures move at all (since you can't take a 5' Step and Move in the same round), it would just mean either you stand there and full attack, or you move and take a partial.

 

[Victim]

It means that once you engage a creature, you can't move without an AoO. I think the incentives for not moving for most characters are perhaps too strong already.

 

[phindar]

Well, technically it means you can't move 5' and full attack without drawing a AoO; you can still take the Withdraw Action for a double move the draws no AoO from the threatened hex you are leaving (though opening you up to others down the line). There's also the Tumble check, for the dexy-skilled types.

Now, to be honest, I haven't really put the idea through the proper paces; running the likely scenarios through my head and then trying some stuff out at the table. But I think that the main effect of taking out the 5' Step would be that every couple of combat rounds someone would say, "You can't move 5' and Full Attack."