The Ubiquitous 5' Step

[phindar]

I apologize if this has been brought up before, but its been at the back of my mind for awhile and I thought I'd see what other people thought. In D&D, everybody (well, almost everybody) gets the 5' Step. It's free, it doesn't provoke, its a good little maneuver.

Here's my problem. A human takes a 5' Step. A house cat takes a 5' Step. A storm giant takes a 5' Step. The Tarrasque takes a 5' Step. That seems a little odd to me, as the cat is leaping many times its own body length, while the giant is barely creeping foward at all.

I am toying with the idea of making the 5' Step a Single Step, and making it equal to the base of the creature. So house cats get 2.5' Steps, humans keep the 5', ogres get a 10', storm giants a 15', and so on. Naturally, this makes larger creatures more powerful, a lot harder to creep away from, and gives them a greater distance they can move and full attack. It makes big creatures scarier, but that's the effect I'm going for.

What sort of CR increase (or decrease, for smaller creatures) do you think this would entail? +1 per Size Category? Would creatures smaller than Medium just keep the 5' Step for simplicity (no 2.5' gridded battlemats, after all), and to avoid nerfing smaller characters?

 

[Goolpsy]

Well... one thing you should consider, is that Big things tend to move slower...

imagine a russian doing one of their crazy danses.. kicking everywhere ..

and now imagine a giant do the same ?

Things like this are often portraited om film.. with the giants slow moves and the "earthquakes" that comes every time he hits the ground..

And think of it.. Big things does move slower...
btw ! a good example.. sperm cells... if we increased them to the size of a human being.. they would be moving with about... 2000 kilometres an hour...

 

[pressedcat]

Not sure about about the CR adjustment, but i'd be very careful about this ruling. If you as a DM can do this, then a player's enlarged scout might start asking why he cant do it also (and then take his full attack action with multiple skirmish damage and AC added in).

Although the the base 5' move doesn't make a whole lot of sense, changing it will have an awful lot of ramificationson, and i can garuntee that your players will be coming up with loopholes and opportunities for munchkinism faster than you can refuse them (or maybe i just game with the wrong type of crowd

 

[phindar]

pressedcat makes an excellent point that I should have phrased explictly in the original post. The Single Step would apply to pc's as well, so spells like Enlarge Person would be more powerful, and LA's on larger creatures should probably be adjusted. Likewise, my group uses AE, and giants are a pc race that can become Large with racial levels.

Off the top of my head, I'd say Enlarge Person would go to 2nd level, and creatures would take a +1 LA per Size Category. (AE giants I can work out on my own. It'll probably involve tweaking the racial levels, but I can burn that bridge when I cross it.) This is more of a exercise since I'm not currently running a campaign, but its something I'd like to work out for the next one I do run.

Edit: I realize I didn't really address pressedcat's point. I don't mind pc's searching out loopholes so much, since that's what they do. (They really are the best for finding weak points in a system.) If it turns out in play that it is just horribly, horribly broken, I can always change it back. It gives bigger creatures control of a lot more real estate, but then, that's the idea. I'd rather try to base the rule on a common sense theory (big creatures take bigger steps) and make the mechanics work, than build something that works mechanically but doesn't make much sense otherwise.

 

[bestone]

You know what? i really really like this idea. Im going to yoink it if you dont mind? I personally dont think the big things need the cr adjustment. And if your worried about skirmish type muchkin effects, you could drastically lower it by simply saying that the "5'" step doesnt count as an actual form of movement. That way, anything that buffs after move doesnt work with it. If the player wants to rationalize it and argue it out, you can just say, your bigger, your striders are longer, your not "moving" anymore, your just covering more distance.

Im going to try this, tonight infact, on my pc's, if i find it makes them too deadly i'll up the cr, but i dont think it will be that big of a deal.

Really love that flavourfull making big things meaner! thanks

 

[Harm]

It's handwaved for simplicity at larger sizes just like everything else in the game. They could make a table for every single thing to account for size properly but it would be just too much of a headache. Like lances dealing double on horseback... imagine a half giant monk with a lance... larger and faster than a horse, but still no double damage. It's just too much of a headache.

 

[Li Shenron]

Here's my problem. A human takes a 5' Step. A house cat takes a 5' Step. A storm giant takes a 5' Step. The Tarrasque takes a 5' Step. That seems a little odd to me, as the cat is leaping many times its own body length, while the giant is barely creeping foward at all.

Why does this bother you so much?

It certainly isn't a balance problem, so it must be that it's not "realistic" enough?

Don't think of it as a STEP, think of it just as an adjustment in the battlefield. It doesn'e even need to be strictly considered as a separate action: it is of course separate for game's sake, but from the character's point of view it might happen at the same time as something else.

Also consider that the 5ft step rule is a D&D rule artifact. It is NOT necessary for any realism, it is just there because the designers thought it might be needed in certain tactical situations (particularly with regard to AoOs: the 5ft step is just a way to help getting away from AoOs before casting a spell or using a bow...).

When you think about these things, there is no need to worry about whether a giant can "step" longer, because the giant doesn't actually "step" during a "5ft step". Forget about the "step" and focus on the "5ft"

(Eventually I may agree with you when a 5ft step is taken by very small or very slow creatures, whose full speed itself is less than a 5ft step.)

 

[Hypersmurf]

(Eventually I may agree with you when a 5ft step is taken by very small or very slow creatures, whose full speed itself is less than a 5ft step.)

A creature with a speed of 5 or less can't take a 5 foot step anyway.

Take 5-Foot Step
You can move 5 feet in any round when you don't perform any other kind of movement. Taking this 5-foot step never provokes an attack of opportunity. You can't take more than one 5-foot step in a round, and you can't take a 5-foot step in the same round when you move any distance.

You can take a 5-foot step before, during, or after your other actions in the round.

You can only take a 5-foot-step if your movement isn't hampered by difficult terrain or darkness. Any creature with a speed of 5 feet or less can't take a 5-foot step, since moving even 5 feet requires a move action for such a slow creature.

You may not take a 5-foot step using a form of movement for which you do not have a listed speed.

-Hyp.

 

[phindar]

Why does this bother you so much?

It certainly isn't a balance problem, so it must be that it's not "realistic" enough?

Well, as I said, I'd rather try to base the rule on a common sense theory (big creatures take bigger steps) and make the mechanics work, than build something that works mechanically but doesn't make much sense otherwise. (Though I would agree that can be a Pandora's box in D&D.)

I respect that people are going to disagree with the change, or think its more trouble than its worth. (If my ideas were the sort that would be automatically adopted by all gamers, I'd stop going on forums and start publishing books.) But that's not what I'm interested in. What I'm saying is, This is a rule I'm going to change. How do I make sure that I keep it balanced in the context of the system (CR, LA, and spells)?

 

[Harm]

As others pointed out size doesn't matter anyway. A giant that moves 30' should take the same 5' that a human that goes 30' would. If you want to be more realistic in this case you should base it on the base speed of the mover.