Movement Speed
When we play TRPGS, it’s only natural to focus on combat. D&D rose out of the wargaming hobby, so pointing most of our rules work towards the question of insert sword A into monster B makes a certain amount of sense. However, the hobby has grown beyond its 1970-something progenitors. We’ve got social encounters now. We’ve got item crafting. We’ve got subsystems for kingdom building, gambling, sanity, and hex-based exploration, and GMs can take them or leave them as they see fit. Regardless of what you think about the added complexity of new rules subsystems, there is one element that seems especially difficult to parse. Given today’s exercise in the 100 meter bear sprint, I think you can guess what I’m getting at.
Chases are hard to run, and that’s true regardless of system. Like I said up top, the bulk of TRPG rules have to do with combat, and that usually includes tactical movement. For examples, “How many squares can I move in a round?” is an important question if you’re gaming on a grid. The second you try to apply that mess to a dwarf (20 ft. movement speed) who happens to be running from a bear (40 ft. movement speed), you get into trouble. Gimli can never get away from Beorn? Really? Not under any circumstance? That is a steaming pile of suck for the vertically challenged folk of the multiverse, and that’s why you’ve got to include some kind of subsystem. And for all the same reasons that underwater combat is difficult to implement, running chase scenes can be a hassle as well. If your chase rules come up just once in fifteen sessions it means that they’re always going to be unfamiliar. Players and GMs alike will have trouble memorizing and applying them correctly, and your exciting dash through the alleyways of Waterdeep comes screeching to a halt as you introduce new movement rules to replace the movement rules that everyone thought they knew.
This is a problem in need of a solution, so what do you say we hash it out in the comments? What are your favorite chase rules? Have you ever run a chase? Was it tense and exciting, or was it an obnoxious rules headache? Let’s hear your stories of desperate escape and dogged pursuit down below!
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My chase rules tend to be just ‘make opposed checks, with a modifier of whatever’s happening around you’
To be fair, most things tend to have those rules when you get down to it
Does that ever feel simplistic in practice, or have you generally had a good experience with that strategy?
That’s how it works in Pathfinder. You make Constitution checks.
Evasion and Pursuit
In round-by-round movement, when simply counting off squares, it’s impossible for a slow character to get away from a determined fast character without mitigating circumstances. Likewise, it’s no problem for a fast character to get away from a slower one.
When the speeds of the two concerned characters are equal, there’s a simple way to resolve a chase: If one creature is pursuing another, both are moving at the same speed, and the chase continues for at least a few rounds, have them make opposed Dexterity checks to see who is the faster over those rounds. If the creature being chased wins, it escapes. If the pursuer wins, it catches the fleeing creature.
Sometimes a chase occurs overland and could last all day, with the two sides only occasionally getting glimpses of each other at a distance. In the case of a long chase, an opposed Constitution check made by all parties determines which can keep pace the longest.
If the creature being chased rolls the highest, it gets away. If not, the chaser runs down its prey, outlasting it with stamina.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/movement/
5e has chase rules. You can Dash a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier, then you have to start making saves against Exhaustion. I’ve never used these rules, but they seem sound. Rogues and Monks are good for quick getaways where they put distance between them and the pursuer, then hide. Martial types are good at long distance running. Casters will solve the issue with spells.
Cleric could have just cast Sanctuary and leisurely pursued the party for that matter.
Do spells like “fly” interact with the system at all, or do they just negate it by virtue of magic?
Fly gives you a flight speed of 60. With speed like that, you might not need to dash, which would save you some fatigue. However, there is no special chase rule regarding Fly or spells like it.
I run races like this:
You need to get 150 feet ahead of the monster.
Roll an athletics check? The DC is something like 12.
If you beat the DC by 1-10, roll a D10 and add your athletics modifier – that’s how many feet forward you got this round. If you beat the DC by more than 10, roll 2d10 and add your athletics.
Cast a spell? Hold Person (if it suceeds) gives everyone a free 2d10+athletics movement for each round the monster remains paralyzed. Eldritch Blast could give a free 10 feet of movement if you have that particular invocation. Misty Step is a free 30 feet. Dimension door can rather bypass the entire thing. Etc…
If you attack the monster with a lightning bolt or something, disadvantage on your athletics check to keep running.
In other words, I make it analgous to a monster, with a DC/AC and HP/distance to cover.
What if the PCs are the ones trying to catch somebody? Do you just invert the setup and say “you get 1d10 feet closer on a successful check?”
I ran a chase scene that went over fairly well a few years ago. I set it up by pausing the game for a second to tell everybody that we were entering a chase encounter, and that we would not be using grids or comparing movement speeds. With that expectation established, we bounced around the table getting reactions. Behind the screen, I had a little rough map with different routes the party members might take, alond with obstacles and DC’s. I kept track of relative distance between players and quarry, the idea being that the party needed to catch up in x number of rounds or the opponent escaped.
It was one of the more interesting encounters to GM in that campaign, and the players responded well.
Nice! What were you obstacles? What happened if they failed the check to overcome them?
It also sounds like you had more time to plan that out and set it up. Some GMs like to wing stuff a bit more though, so having some sort of rule to make up chase-encounters on the fly seems like a good idea, too.
Cleric may only have a speed of 25, (In good editions anyways) but his constitution means he can dash longer than everyone but fighter, and his constitution also means he’ll make the saves against exhaustion if he tries to dash more than that.
The 5E DMG chase rules (Pg. 252) are really solid.
Have you ever implemented them in a game? My basic concern is that “suddenly here’s a subsystem” breaks flow.
Yeah, it works great. Pretty simple, so it slots in and out painlessly.
So painlessly that I didn’t even notice the innuendo in my previous statement while I wrote it.
I had a trap that my party sprung in a dungeon recently. The ol’ Indiana Jones style rolling boulder. I gave them a pretty good lead, and a safe place to reach, but I made them make a dexterity check for a little added difficulty because “the ramp down is slippery with moss.” Assuming they all rolled halfway decently it should have been a nice little chace to get their hearts moving, but no one in real danger.
They all rolled terribly. Almost TPK’d them. I try not to fudge the dice much, but I did that day.
Huh. A “run away from the boulder” trap is an interesting point of comparison. Was it just that one Dex check, or did they have multiple rounds to try and get out of the way?
They were in a pretty tight corridor and the boulder took it all up, so they couldn’t really get out of the way, but at the bottom of the ramp was a doorway that the boulder couldn’t get through. Theoretically they only had to beat the DEX throw once (I think I set it at 10 or something), but when they failed, some miserably, they fell or slipped and had to roll again.
(Looks at the notes I typed up in my google drive)I ran it like a round of combat, except no initiative; the order of the party in the corridor was the order of movement, with the boulder coming last. The corridor was 100ft long. They tripped the trap halfway down. The boulder, picking up speed, rolled 15 feet in its first turn (not far enough to hit the furthest back character even if they hadn’t moved), then 30, then 45, then hit the bottom. Everyone rolled their dex save (In my notes I had it as a DC 15 to succeed, but I think I dropped that down to a DC 10 day of) on their turn, if they succeeded they could move their full movement each turn. They should have been able to make it to the bottom from where they were in 2 turns, and it would take the boulder 4. The math looked great!
Except most of them failed the DC on the first round, so they “fell” and didn’t move that turn. Then I had them roll again the next turn, and some failed then. I had originally put in some sort of percentile system where the boulder could run into the wall and be slowed down or something, but removed it because it seemed unwieldy and unnecessary. That showed back up real quick though, and the boulder was temporarily wedged in the hall, just long enough for them to escape. Felt like a cheap way to kill off a couple of PCs.
I think I could run it again with minor changes; mostly how failing the check affects you. Moving half speed or something would have been better, falling and having to get back up was probably a little bit much. They were genuinely scared for a bit though, so I guess that was successful!
My group likes using the 4e Skill Challenge rules for chases, even in systems like 3.5 and Pathfinder. Basically, the main checks for the chase are Str/Dex (for speed) and Con (for endurance), but you can make other checks in order to gain a bonus on those checks.
I skipped 4e, but I’ve always heard positive things about skill challenges as a handy “one size fits all” solution to my “too many subsystems” problem. I need to go back and examine that mess. I don’t suppose you’ve got a link to the rules handy?
Oh you missed out, it’s easily the second best edition after 5th.
I agree. Also I’ll never understand how we didn’t get a video game ONLY out of the one edition of D&D that was made perfectly for being one.
Skill challenge is get x successes before x/2 failures. Then they changed it to be x vs x-1 I think.
The simple explanation is that it’s just a few skill checks.
The interesting part was what there were no rules for, which was stuff like “until you can convince the baron that you’re cool, the DC for a diplomacy check is 25” to which characters might respond by trying a history check to recall a story about something awesome this baron did.
Dungeon World handles this by being dungeon world (focusing on the narrative and not having rules subsets). It isn’t a perfect TRPG, but hey what is?
I guess there’s a crunch/narrative continuum at work here. How many rules are you willing to put up vs. how few you’re willing to put up with.
Do you have any Dungeon World actual plays to recommend? I’ve never had the chance to sit down for a powered by the apocalypse game.
I have some I can recommend and some I cannot. The best production quality I’ve heard lately is comicstrip AP’s Alford Soultaker. You can find that one on youtube in a nicely organized playlist. Discern Realities has ok AP each episode, see their episode 49.5 for their AP at it’s best (http://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/discern-realities/ramshackle-crow-and-the-temple-of-the-peerless-star). Spout Lore is a bit too goofy, but their recent holiday episode is really good. One Shot, while generally a good podcast, didn’t do dungeon world justice with their episodes on it. I’ve recently added more, so I’ll report back when I have an opinion.
I like to do D&D 4e style Skill Challenges for chases and such things. While it doesn’t come up super often, at least my players will recognize it next time “weird situation B” comes up where success or failure has nothing to do with stabbing and has to be more than just one or two dice rolls.
I’ve asked in a couple of places already, but I don’t suppose you’ve got a link to these rules? My Google-fu is proving frustratingly weak, and I’d like to get the DL on this setup.
I don’t actually have the 4e stuff in a convenient location right now. But that’s ok because I more or less have houseruled various things about how it worked anyway.
The main focus is that a Skill Challenge is a series of rolls to overcome a challenge as a group. The players roll initiative just to see who goes in what order. Then each player’s turn is either making a skill check to try and beat a particular DC to gain a success or a failure OR they can make a skill check with a lower DC to aid someone else for something like a +2 bonus to that player’s next check. Basically the players are trying to get X many successes before Y many failures.
You add some extra stuff in there to make it a bit interesting. Like players can’t use the same skill they used last round and they can’t use the same skill the player before them used. These two things make it so that players aren’t using their best skills for everything (assuming they’re applicable) and they have a reason to not always be in the pattern of one player aids, the next makes the check.
Since this all happens in a narrative space, the players need to justify the skill use so you wind up getting all the players properly involved in group storytelling.
As a system for handling things, it adds a bit of spice and is a serviceable mechanic for a variety of situations. Still, like other spices, it’s best if you’re not just throwing tons of it out all the time on everything. Skill Challenges work best when they come up once in a while and aren’t something weird like the GM calling for one every time one or two skill checks would suffice.
Oh. I left out that the aid checks don’t count as successes or failures.
My Curse of Strahd GM is working on a homebrew with similar setup. I know that he grabbed this thing as a point of comparison:
http://paizo.com/products/btpy9tec?Skill-Challenge-Handbook
Now I’m wondering how much the system has in common with 4e.
I’ve been watching the Indiana Jones trilogy, and all the chases make use of making the encounter objective based. The opposing sides are always trying to grab the macguffin, control the vehicle, or reach a deadline first. Also, many chases take place ON something that’s moving, so there’s a lot of jumping, climbing, fighting, hiding. A bit of actual use for those vehicle proficiencies and animal handing can shine. I did that a bit last week when an Oni with a Solar’s Slaying Longbow ambushed the party’s ghost ship with a blizzard and shot them down.
How’d you handle it mechanically? Were you just asking for Str + Athletics checks and Dex + Stealth checks every couple of ticks?
I asked that to maneuver the vehicle from the path it was already on would take a bonus action. And if there was some reason, like the pilot serving, to make checks to hold on, I asked for them. Overall it’s like playing on pieces of map that are shifting and moving.
Wait… What system are you in?
The mention of Solar makes my first guess Exallted?
I thought so too, but the mention of 5e style bonus actions threw me. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember if that’s an Exalted term too…?
In terms of BAD chase mechanics by favorite is in the classic D&D based computer game “Champions of Krynn” in which, at the end of the first dungeon, it is actually possible to rest for eight hours while trying to catch the villain before he flees
Maybe… I mean… Maybe the villain was tired too?
My favorite so far is the obstacles that require different choices.
Having played through the first book of Crimson Throne, I think you know what I mean.
Nothin like a little parkour. XD
Starting book 2 on Monday. #Stoked.
And you’re right, that is indeed the system I’m most familiar with. It’s fairly portable into other systems (choose to make X check or Y check to advance). However, it’s not without its problems either. Ima go into that down below in Rosc’s comment though.
Damn straight Gimli can’t outrun Beorn! Have you ever seen how fast a bear can run?! The **average** sprint speed of a bear is 40km/h, while Bolt reached 37km/h in peak performance. Which means that unless a dwarf (or most humanoids for that matter) found a pair of Boots of Speed, they have no business even attempting to outrun a bear.
Though there is one line in the 3.5e rules that I interpret a bit specifically: “Generally, a character can run for a minute or two before having to rest for a minute.” I rule that as “Bipedal creatures can run for two minutes + Con modifer rounds before having to make exhaustion saves. Quadrupedal/flying/slithering creatures do so after one minute + Con modifier rounds.” This matches up well with the fact that IRL humans are better long-distance runners than most animals, which generally rely on bursts of speed.
So it’s only worth running if one can dodge 10 Attacks of Opportunity…and the wild animals in my games usually give up before that.
Also, imagine that the word in double asterisks is bolded. Got used to Reddit/Discord formatting a bit too much…
I’m in agreement here- none of the methods for dealing with bears IRL include “run away”, specifically because they ARE faster than you. Like most animals over short distances.
I know Colin is just using a bear as a stand-in for any creature, but really if something is significantly faster than you and there are no extenuating circumstances (trees to climb, rivers to dive into, narrow spaces to squeeze between, etc) then why SHOULDN’T it catch you?
I like Doge’s rule about running for 1-2 minutes before making checks, but otherwise if you can’t outrun something and you can’t outfight it, then you screwed up, and there will be consequences.
If there aren’t any obstacles you’re right: it’s a bit silly for a dude to get away from a horse on open ground. I’m not sure I’d ever design that encounter though. There ought to be rivers you could swim through or trees to climb. In the Gimli / Beorn example, there might be a head start. There might even be a house you could duck into. Maybe you could bar the door and then move on to a social encounter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9fSwCoU3g&t=2m20s
I guess that “I break and run from the fight” isn’t a great way to bring in the chase rules (whatever those happen to be). I think they’re more appropriate in situations like, “OK. Now that all the guards are dead, I search the count’s body.”
“It’s not there. You do, however, see the flash of red cape disappearing down an alleyway.”
I long time ago, I basically stole this house rule: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/chases/
However, I used a standard deck of playing cards with these modifications (I used this like 6 years ago for a Pathfinder game, the DCs would have to be modified for 5E):
Randomized Obstacles! Used for chases and investigations (as of yet)
Hearts: Animate obstacle
Clubs: Movable inanimate obstacle
Diamonds: Immovable inanimate obstacle
Spade: Dangerous obstacle
# 2-5: DC 17
# 6-10 : DC 21
Jack: DC 23
Queen: DC 25
King: DC 28
Ace: DC 33
So if you got an Ace of Spades a really dangerous obstacle would show up, so if this was a chase through a dungeon it could be a very nasty blades-from-out-of-the-walls trap that would wreck you’re day if you failed the appropriate save.
Nice to have a one size fits all. If you’re a talented GM, I think that can be a cool fix. However, some of my favorite Pathfinder style obstacles include things like “Cranky rooftop tomcat! Roll Handle Animal or Sense Motive.” I’m afraid I’d have trouble thinking up that kind of interesting obstacle on the spur of the moment, and instead default to, “There’s a thing to jump over! Roll Acrobatics or…erm… A combat maneuver to push it aside?”
I really like the idea of using a deck-of-cards for spontaneous chases that you don’t have time to plan.
The only caveat I might add is that you vary the arrangement based on the environment the chase is happening in. For example, I wouldn’t expect a dungeon, a city street, and a wheat-field to have the same level of dangerous traps that you needed to dodge.
Ahahaha, the chase mechanic. Pathfinder Society has thrown a few of these at me, and they’ve mostly been a mix of hilarious and frustrating.
The first half of its lifespan meant that each node could -only- be defeated by one of two skill checks, and the nodes had enough variation that most characters would find a spot where they were basically praying for an 18+ on the die to be allowed to play the game. And don’t mind the parts that break logic, like flying only giving you a +10 bonus to a climb check to get past a locked gate, or the fact that using disable device to pass the gate does not leave it open for the party members to pass.
Silliness aside, I’m pre-pre-predeveloping a “Max Max, but with spells and horses” setting for a post apocalyptic Pathfinder game. I have a fun idea for a ‘chase’ system where the whole map just scrolls 4-10 feet per round (depending on the speed of the chase) with slightly modified movement rules and updated/refined rules for riding a mount. For context, being mounted will be a basic expectation of the game, with companion classes highly encouraged, and having a reliable steed will be super accessible.
It was the first book of “Crimson Throne,” and Laurel was playing a cabalist vigilante. Given her Vigilante persona of “Blackbird,” it goes without saying that she took this spell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9fSwCoU3g&t=2m20s
Imagine her irritation when, in that adventure’s famous chase sequence, she busted out the spell on the first card only to fail the high DC climb check. I made up some vague mess along the lines of, “You burst out of the window, but it’s a narrow alleyway out there. There’s no room to maneuver! You scrabble at the wall, but find yourself unable to get any lift in the narrow confines. You’re forced to retreat to the apartment lest you fall to the streets below.”
I think this points back towards the basic design problem posed by chase sequences. On the one hand, you’ve got Pathfinder that makes an attempt at taking every conceivable action and codifying it into a coherent system. That results in a clunky rules dump. On the other you’ve got 5e, which (apparently) stops working as intended when someone casts the “fly” spell.
So far it sounds like the best solution may lie in the one-size-fits-all approach of 4e’s skill challenges. (Now if only somebody could link me the friggin’ rules!)
Chases in later seasons became much more manageable when the rules allowed the players to bypass obstacles using reasonable tactics. At the very least, it lets you get creative and use class abilities. The most fun I’ve had in a chase scene was in a scenario where the entire party is trying to run from a rampaging T-Rex, and they can push bad guys into its path to slow it down.
But yeah, in general I’ve found chases are split by level tiers. You’re either high enough level to completely invalidate it with magic, or you suffer with awkward skill checks.
Huh… Is there a rules supplement that details the change to allow that whole “players may bypass obstacles using reasonable tactics” thing? I’ve only seen the basic rules presented on the SRD, so if there’s some additional guidance out there I wouldn’t mind giving it a look.
I haven’t looked at how it runs in the proper ruleset, but I know that certain subsystems (chases, mass combat, social combat) sometimes end up as a set piece in a scenario, and sometimes the rules are altered for ease of play.
I get the feeling scenario writers have largely realized that going full No Items Fox Only Final Destination frustrates players, and have made the adjustments as needed.
My Kobold (Gunslinger at the time; now Slayer) was unable to pass the wall either, and our Bard rolled almost everything like a boss. His intimidate check for the crowd on a narrow walkway (he rolled high) was supplemented by yelling “THE HELL KNIGHTS ARE COMING!” (I forget if our GM made him roll bluff or not). Not a soul was on the walkway by the time he reached it.
I had an idea for a chase where the player is the one being chased and his checks would impart a penalty on him or divert his path, but not halt his progress. The goal of the chase would not be to get away from his target, but to lead it into a trap, so using magic to fly away would be counter-intuitive…
I also had multiple destinations planned out with different modifiers for the fight once he reached an endpoint (I.e. Gore on the floor imparting difficult terrain or steam geysers creating a fog that obscures vision).
Flow would be something like this:
1a: cross of bridge (acrobatics or climb)
-FAIL: make Reflex save when falling
-PASS: catch vine and slow descent enough to avoid fall damage; path diverges to stream bed
…
2c: Underbrush (Strength check to charge through or Acrobatics to dive in
-Acrobatics FAIL: Reflex save to avoid big spider web
-FAIL: -2 to all perception checks until removed or -4 on next round while removed
2d: Perception check to notice correct path through trees (-4 to remove web)
-PASS: now on correct path again
…etc…
I was recently thinking about speed [this is in D&D 3.5 btw], because I was working on some homebrewed standard races to increase variety for players. All of the standard races (and most of the low LA+ ones, too) have movement speed of either 20 or 30 feet per round. Also none of them are Large-size, like WotC is terrified of giving players options outside of a narrowly defined range despite the fact that magic can already do anything.
Anywho, I had a few 40-foot per round races, and I knew I wanted to add in more ways (feats, class abilities, items, etc) for people to increase their speed. So I was looking at a situation where it wouldn’t be to hard for one character to be able to move at several times the rate of another. When I raised the topic on the forum though, most of the response was pretty much “meh”.
Running fast SOUNDS powerful, but in a high magic setting most people seemed to think there were better things to do with your resources. In part at least because a party is only as fast as it’s slowest member. Eventually I decided I could handle speed in 5-foot increments, and changed it from 20/30 to 25/30/35, so that I could have faster and slower races without crashing into the Speedy-Gonzales scenario immediately.
Moving on, I think there’s opportunities here for more in-depth tactics than just “roll X and then add Y to see if you escape”. For movement overland, the party can look into investing in transportation, whether it’s mounts or a cart or, a flying carpet, or at higher levels a levitating ship, etc. For short “chase sequences” what you’re really looking at is the ability to disengage from a fight. And there are so many more interesting ways that you can do that than “I turn tail and flee”.
I think it’s worth noting that in pre-modern warfare, the majority of casualties in battle often came when the enemy finally broke and ran. Turning your back and dividing the formation allowed the enemy to ride you down with impunity, and a slow-but-orderly retreat would probably save far more troops than just having all your soldiers sprint for themselves.
If you HAVE to “run away” from a faster opponent, then look for ways you can do it smartly. Have the magic-user drop some sort of barrier spell, or carry some kind of concealment (invisibility, etc), or use the terrain to find a choke-point and conduct a fighting withdrawal. Plan your fight before starting it so that you have an exit strategy if things turn sour. I don’t believe in protecting players from bad tactical choices when/if they screw up.
If you march out into the middle of a big, empty field and challenge 6 dragons to a duel, then IMO you deserve every bit of the ass-beating you’re about to get.
Wholeheartedly agree on planning your escape beforehand. Probably why most of my characters invest in a handfull of caltrops early on. Heck, even throwing a cloak in your pursuers’ path is a viable tactic.
On a tangent, there is a Large sized creature, the half-ogre, at a reasonable +2 LA, and spike chain builds still flock to it. With the Inhuman Reach feat and the Enlarge Person spell that character would have a lulzy 40 ft reach.
I’d forgotten about RoD- I honestly never paid much attention to that book because the first race was humans (who are boring) and the second two were half-elves/orcs which I don’t like and don’t show up in my setting, and at that point I lost interest.
I’ll go back and re-read about the half-ogre though, just for completeness. A quick glance shows that it seems to be the fairly standard “semi-monstrous” race. Big, stupid, and likes being a Barbarian. I swear that “barbarian” must be the most favored class given how often WotC throws it on anything even the slightest bit savage. Its like, welcome to D&D 3.5: the game where you can do anything but get severely penalized if your characters don’t match up with every trope codified by Tolkien.
I know I’m getting off-topic here, but it really bugs me how awful the game is for trying to make anything bigger than a medium-sized caster. And a half-ogre’s base land speed is STILL JUST 30 FEET!!!
Seems like an appropriate conversation for a movement speed comic.
So how fast should an ogre run? Why do you suppose d20 system tries to stick close to the 30′ baseline?
Well, a human has a base speed of 30 feet and a full-blooded Ogre can move at 40 feet.
(30+40)/2=35
Seems alright to me.
My frustration isn’t just about half-ogres though: it’s with the fact that NO standard or low-LA race could move faster than 30 feet, like it was an inviolable law of the universe.
I’m really only familiar with 3.5, but from what I heard about 4e and 5e WotC tried some innovative and interesting new stuff. They just insisted (and keep insisting) and setting their brand-new experience in the exact same framework. Other games do what D&D does for the same reason that D&D did what Tolkien said- because for a while, that was THE definitive definition of fantasy (and tabletop gaming).
If the game(s) ever want to really advance though, there are some sacred cows that need to be killed and turned into hamburger. For example, there is (IMO) a much better way to do the whole timing system instead of sticking to the same old “standard action”, “move action”, “full round action”, etc, but WotC seems wedded to what they did in the past.
Here’s a link to the basics of how I think it should work, if you’re curious: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521471-A-New-Way-to-Handle-Actions-and-Timing
Follow up to my other comment: with 3.5 I think WotC kind of wrote themselves into a corner. Once they designed core races with a 20-foot movement speed, they couldn’t add races with a faster-than-20-feet speed because it FEELS unbalanced. And rather than errata it or just let groups work things out for themselves they doubled down on bad decisions.
That’s just 2cp though.
*faster than 30 feet movement speed
Movement Speed. I can feel Clerics Pain, while i haven’t been a Dwarf yet, i know how it is to be the slow Heavy Armor Guy. You Fight with them, you protect them from Nasty Monsters, you save that Frail Wizard more than once, because he falls over if something looks at him funny, and then you suddenly meet this big big nasty Monster. Now what happens, do they Fight?
No they Run like hell leaving you alone with the Monster knowing you can’t escape. Then after a Fight, if you managed to beat it, by the Hair, they Crawl back, and want some of the Loot like they worked for it!
Sometimes,… Sometimes i think i should just crush all they’re skulls while they Sleep! – A Fighter that got left behind. More than Once.
Other than that, i mostly handle races Narrativly, with a few dice Rolles here and there, (jump over that Cliff Acrobatics check and such), screw Rules if they are bad.
MFW: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/elves-dont-sleep
7th Sea actually had a pretty good chase system and included options for vehicles. I can’t remember the details well at all, but basically how it worked was that it was roll offs against the chaser and chased. If the difference became 0 the chaser caught up, if the difference got too large (dependent on environment) the chaser loss track of the chaser and had to switch to tracking. Additionally 7th Sea encouraged creative solutions. So for example, if your athletics sucked but your archery was great, you could try to cut to rope holding a batch of barrels and this would result in your archery replacing your athletics for that check. Meanwhile those that chose to attack instead of chase would either roll the equivalent of 0 to represent they didn’t move, or take a penalty to the attack and chase rolls to represent they attacked while chasing.
The end result was a system that was pretty quick, exciting, and satisfying.
Every time I hear about 7th Sea I’m tempted to make the call and run a pirates game. People seem to love that John Wick fellow.
Just in case you never found a link to the 4E rules:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd%2F4ex%2F20080505a
Nice! Thanks for that. 🙂