Movement rates and speed

[Outsider]

I've toyed with the idea of divorcing a character's running speed from his speed stat. A character's initial running stat would be 12"/Turn, and buying it up would cost 1 point per 1" per turn. How far the character moves in a given phase then becomes his inches per turn divided by his spd stat. I would also put an absolue limit of 1.5x normal maxima on buying past the normal maxima (ie, normal = 20, limit = 30)

 

Theory being that, if a player wants his character to be fleet of foot, he should be buying running, not speed. Also, haivng the two tied together allows for characters to easily outpace world class sprinters.

 

Normally :

Speed 4, 10" running (normal maxima, without even spending double on anything) = 30 mph, non-combat.

or

Speed 4, 15" running (maximum with double spending) = 45 mph, non-combat (!)

 

With the changes proposed :

Speed Irrelevant, 30"/Turn (normal maxima, spending double on last 10") = 22.5 mph non combat.

[Hierax]

if a player wants his character to be fleet of foot, he should be buying running, not speed.

 

Again, Agreed.

 

Movement per Turn divided by the number of phases totally makes more sense that movement by SPD.

 

Keeps the two things seperate and easier to stick to the pay-for-what-you-get premise of HERO.

[Talon]

Totally agree. I have done this and found that it works well.

[Rick]

I've always thought that once a character goes to non-combat movement (the true test of fleet footedness) they were out of phase and moving on every phase.

[austenandrews]

I've done this in the past. One thing to remember is to modify the extra damage for Move Through & Move By (I think I used (inches per turn)/6 for Move Through and /10 for Move By). It also does interesting things with half-moves.

 

-AA

[Markdoc]

>>>I've always thought that once a character goes to non-combat movement (the true test of fleet footedness) they were out of phase and moving on every phase.<<<

 

Change moving every phase to "moving every turn" and this is what I do. That way a normal human (move 6", or 12" non-combat) covers about 7.2 km per hour at top sustainable speed (jogging, or run, walk, run, walk), or a bit less than 4 km an hour if they are walking and looking carefully about (ie: travelling at combat speed). Both are realistic.

 

If the character is sufficiently encumbered that they cannot sustain full movement plus expend the END for the STR needed to carry their gear, then I just calculate how fast they can move, and take it from there - so carrying a lot of stuff can really slow you down on the road, even though you can move normally for short bursts.

 

Of course you can move at non-combat speed IN combat (with appropriate modifiers) but in that case you stil move on your SPD.

 

So SPD allows you to cover more ground in Combat, but if you want to cover more ground, then you need to buy up your movement.

 

As far as I know, this is how it supposed to work.

 

cheers, Mark

[Talon]

I use per-Turn movement rules, so that if you want to move faster in combat, you buy up movement, and if you want more actions in combat, you buy up SPD.

 

My long-distance travel rules are based on LTE loss, so that if you want to travel farther over long distances, you buy up your REC.