Why are Dire animals so slow ?

[Chacal]

Wow ! This thread has grown big ! Thanks for all the replies and especially to Daniel for keeping "my side" of the debate alive while I was in such a long weekend.

now some reactions :

If you want to house rule things that's up to you but there is a forum for lobbying for house rules and this isn't it.

I didn't knew that questionning the rules was out of line in this forum.
You might disagree, but IMO these base movement need errata. Would have it been more politically correct if I have asked for an errata that I knew didn't exist ?

But I think that you're mixing fantasy and real-life elements together in un-necessary and over-complicated ways.

Why Is it bad only on one side of the argument ?

It is true that creatures usually gain 10' movement each size class but this can increase or decrease for specific monsters.

The dire shark moves 90' instead of 60' for a regular shark. Dire horses are faster than a heavy warhorse but are still the same size category.

Now this is interesting. thanks for pointing at it. This shows that it's not awfully wrong to increase movement for some dire animals.

This thread should be Why don't Dire Tigers have 50' instead of 40' moves.

Thanks for telling me what question I really wanted to ask.


Chacal

 

[Pielorinho]

A snail is about as immobile as a plant. If your move is 5 then your 5' step is a ME action. You have to have at least 10 move to get 5' step as a "free" action.

Actually, this isn't true. A snail is far more mobile than most plants. Snails can move from place to place (albeit slowly); plants cannot. I'm talking real-world here, natch.

As for your statement that a creature with a 5' move can only take a 5' step as a ME action, can you give me a cite on this? or is this a house-rule that you made up to keep the game sensible? If it's a house-rule -- well, I'll avoid the obvious temptation .

As I stated before, I try not to be a slave to the rules when they produce absurd results. Although the movement rules are generally very good, at the extremes, the simplicity of the rules produces bizarre situations (the 5'-stepping snails, for example). Similarly, I think it's silly for creatures with large pace not to move faster than similarly-built creatures with small pace; rather than say "Them's the rules!", I'll make spot decisions to keep things sensible.

Doing so, I believe, is one mark of a good DM.

Daniel