WOTC Web Site: Going Metric?
- Thread starter Ashrem Bayle
- Start date
Wolffenjugend
First Post
Yah! Hopefully next week they'll do a US English to Canadian English translation! 
johnsemlak
First Post
Actually, I 'Imperial' would be an incorrect term, since the US (where WotC is based) doesn't use the Imperial system. Imperial measurements are slightly different to US measurements (something to do with liquid measures), though most of the terms are the same.Ferret said:
US measurements are sometimes informally refered to as the 'English' system as compared to the 'Metric' system in US.
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lukelightning
First Post
The US would be entirely metric by now if it wasn't for the Stonecutter conspiracy.
Len
Prodigal Member
No, I think most players would use the Imperial system. The only liquid measure I recall seeing in the rules is the pint. Given the propensity of powergamers to take advantage of the rules as much as possible, they would of course demand a full 20-ounce pint of lamp oil.johnsemlak said:
There are a few gallons here and there as well. I'm pretty sure the waterskin takes half a gallon, for example, and you can buy ale by the gallon as well.Len said:
Oh, and I think the magic items section states something about a potion generally being one ounce, but that's mainly flavor text.
Zappo
Explorer
Yeah. And 0.45 kg for a pound... IMO, that's too much accuracy. They should have used 2 meters per square, and half kg per pound. Who cares if it's not exactly the same, number of squares is what matters for movement and weights are only important relatively to carrying capacity. What's the point of using the metric system if you're going to introduce lots of decimals anyway? But since this is the way they have set it up, it has to be maintained.buzz said:
Something that came up on this thread over on wizards.com: the conversion from tactical (m/rnd) or local speed (m/min) to overland speed (km/hr) is *inconsistent* with the "English Units" table.
See, whereas in theory someone with a base speed of 30'/rnd could walk 300'/min and thus 18,000 feet per hour (roughly 3.4 miles), the designers conveniently rounded this down to 3 miles per hour, indicating that you can't just walk non-stop at your base speed for long periods of time. (Actually, 3 miles would correspond to walking roughly 53 minutes at a base speed of 30.)
However, on the metric side, someone with an equivalent base speed of 12m can walk 120m/min, and 60 x 120m = 7.2km per hour! Not only is this plainly inconsistent, but it also means that you get stuck with a big lookup table with decimal points. The simple, and much more consistent approach would have been to round down to 6km/hr, so distance per hour is simply 1/2 the base speed in meters (corresponding to 50 min of walking at base speed).
Sigh.
See, whereas in theory someone with a base speed of 30'/rnd could walk 300'/min and thus 18,000 feet per hour (roughly 3.4 miles), the designers conveniently rounded this down to 3 miles per hour, indicating that you can't just walk non-stop at your base speed for long periods of time. (Actually, 3 miles would correspond to walking roughly 53 minutes at a base speed of 30.)
However, on the metric side, someone with an equivalent base speed of 12m can walk 120m/min, and 60 x 120m = 7.2km per hour! Not only is this plainly inconsistent, but it also means that you get stuck with a big lookup table with decimal points. The simple, and much more consistent approach would have been to round down to 6km/hr, so distance per hour is simply 1/2 the base speed in meters (corresponding to 50 min of walking at base speed).
Sigh.
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