With certain builds, tabaxi feline agility, boots, haste, being a monk, etc. Eventually with all the plus and minuses and then doubling those, can end up with some insane movement speeds. I've heard of 1,000+ feet per round. Which basically means the player can move in to attack and move away (throw in a disengage action to keep from getting attacks of opportunity.)
How does a game come to the point where this is even possible? Anyway how would you handle it?
Embrace it. Ok, so this player can run anywhere. Range no longer matters. They are going to find the enemy they want to engage with, and engage. You can't stop it so you accept it.
But what about challenge?
Easy. Give this player more options than they can process. Like going to a grocery store and finding 100 different types of peanut butter. Which do you choose? Analysis paralysis is fun! if the player finds that there's no single best target. That choosing one means letting others wreak havoc... they still get to shine and run all over like crazy, but they can't stop the encounter. They can't break the encounter. They can navigate it.
There are specific mechanics to shut this down, but you can also let the player flaunt it and still give them more than they can handle in a round.
Also, take note that your speedster isn't actually bouncing around the battlefield like that every turn. I'm not 100% clear on the various maths, but I do know that the Tabaxi ability to double their movement speed for a turn is unusable again until they stay in one spot again for a whole turn. Also the Monk ability to Dash requires an expenditure of a Ki point and is a Bonus Action, meaning that it expends a limited resource and eats up part of the player's action economy. As for the various spells and magical items, Haste not only requires someone to cast the spell in the first place, but also comes with this drawback: "When the spell ends, the target can't move or take actions until after its next turn, as a wave of lethargy sweeps over it." and it is a concentration spell. The Boots of Speed require a Bonus Action to activate, potentially putting them in conflict with the Ki point expenditure.
So like, super movement character is essentially from Magic Christmas Land where everything always goes right and they have all the support they need ever. A normal player might be able to double or triple their movement speed every other turn or so for a limited number of times. I wouldn't stress out about it. Just do as the others suggest and accept it when it does happen and make the encounters work around it from time to time.
Think of a character like the Flash. Yes, if the challenge is only "get there fast" then it's a foregone conclusion that the challenge is overcome - but when the challenge is anything else? It's still a challenge.
And don't forget that there is always somebody like Reverse Flash around to make "get there fast" no longer so foregone a conclusion.
Another option is to vary the topography. Have ranged attackers in an elevated ground/platform/trees etc.. where the character can't just jump up there.
I ran an abandoned fortress encounter. Attackers with 1/2 cover from elevated heights with the only entrance from another room. The players would have had to leave the room to find how to get to them.
Giving them the choice between essentially abandoning the rest of the party to track down two wayward archers, or just dealing with the cover issue created some interesting drama that session.
See, I think a lot of this is solved if you try to slap a little realism on the game. If someone brings me a build and says "I can move 1000 ft in a round" I'd just say "nope!"
I interpret the Tabaxi "Feline Agility" as "You get double your base movement speed", which is 30 ft. So you can add a ton of other stuff to that and make it like 100, sure. But not 1000.
But basically, I do the multiplication FIRST, and then add stuff to it.
What happens is feline agility + haste + I think a pair of boots. So it ends up doubling three times. So 30 becomes 60 becomes 120 becomes 240. I can't remember all the steps to get to 1000. Pretty sure you have bonuses that increase your speed before its doubled for the first time.
All you have to do is only double the 30 though. So 30 becomes 60, which becomes 90, then 120 etc.
Or just add a cap. At a certain speed, bones are breaking because of acceleration.
Idk, I've never run into this problem because no one has wanted to play a Tabaxi, also I haven't really made them present in my setting.
However, I do think there are situations where you go: Well technically, yeah. The rules say this, but that makes NO sense. For instance, the fall damage rules. If you fall from low orbit as a Barbarian, you WILL die. Period. I don't even need to roll for it. That sort of thing. RAW only gets you so far, you have to use logic sometimes.
As a DM, you set the stage. So if you want this sort of thing to happen in your game, then you can put all the pieces together in such a way that it becomes possible. I don't know why you would, but hey, it's your game - you do you. By the time a character can pull off this sort of stunt, you've likely had a number of sessions with the person playing it, and you should have some options available to you, based off the campaign you're running and the story you're collaboratively telling with your players.
If it's a problem, well, that goes back to an old discussion on min-maxing versus power-gaming, and there are ARCHIVES worth of material on that subject. Look around, you'll find them.
If the player is moving that fast, stop giving them caffeine. ;)
Up front, I don't have stats for Tabaxi, so this is pretty generalized advice.
First, double and triple check the math. If the player objects, I'd have no problem saying, "This just smells wrong. I want to confirm before you get too used to it."
Second, as others have said, make sure the math is happening in the right order. Don't double bonuses, just the base. Not sure this is explicit, either way, in 5E. Where there is no explicit ruling, the DM gets to make the call. No, seriously -- the DM makes the call. Gygax often referred to the DM as "referee" because he's the one who deals with the application of abstractions.
Third, You're perfectly within your right, as DM, to call the player out as a power-gaming twit and tell him "no". I'm not saying you necessarily should say "no" but it's always an option for the DM.
Fourth, recognize that this character has pretty much only two impacts on play. The first is that distance in combat is entirely irrelevant to him. This actually happens somewhere around 200-ish feet per round, probably well below that. Unless you're going to block him to something below that, it's not even worth having the conversation. Just watch his path when he moves and take every single opportunity attack that could conceivable happen (which, having a monk PC in my group, is probably none).
The second impact is that he's very, very capable of getting himself into some serious trouble w/o any backup. No DM should ever pass up the opportunity to screw with a player who actually does that. In fact, I would take every chance I got to rib him about how boring it is to have to wait for the other PCs. He could have scouted the entire dungeon, already. It only takes one cave-in, portcullis, or shifting wall to really make him regret it. Also, if he never uses that extra speed out of combat, he's not really getting that much out of it -- something I'd definitely be pointing out. Every. Chance. I. Got.
Why, yes. I have had a player actually say, "Oh, crap. I just gave him my soul, didn't I? I think. Wait. Did I?"
Agile DM has great advice, but here's something to think about from the compendium:
Ready
Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready action on your turn, which lets you act using your reaction before the start of your next turn.
First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include "If the cultist steps on the trapdoor, I'll pull the lever that opens it," and "If the goblin steps next to me, I move away."
When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.
When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs. To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell's magic requires concentration. If your concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect. For example, if you are concentrating on the web spell and ready magic missile, your web spell ends, and if you take damage before you release magic missile with your reaction, your concentration might be broken.
Back in 4e there was a polearm tank build that used reach and knock to make it so enemies that tried to get into melee provoked and attack of opportunity, then got pushed back and knocked prone. The solution was to ready an action and all charge on one turn so the tank could only react to one person. Same solution works here. Enemies see the character running all over and go on the defense, they ready actions to hit him when he closes into range. Or to charge him if he attacks "that ally over there".
Also, from a real life experience: piano wire at neck height in the dark. One of my friends ran into some strung across a bike trail and was hospitalized by it.
Illusions are also fun. Perhaps my favorite is the small pit, say 10 feet, with an illusion making it look 10 feet farther back than it really is. So if anyone runs to the edge before jumping, they just fell in. An invisible wall on the back side is also good for a few laughs.
Then there's the ever popular classic punji sticks: put your foot into a square and it goes into a pit. Try to pull your foot out and you get shredded and impaled. Moving at 166 feet/second it could be harder than usual to stop in a single step.
But don't overdo it. Like others have said, this is the character's thing, They probably invested almost all of their build into doing this. Ruining it would be cruel. Use enough counters so they don't dominate the game, but let them have fun.
I believe there is precedence in Fantasy and Sci Fi literature that anyone doing such a thing over long periods of time come at a cost:
In Sci Fi, I think I've seen where a character may come across a similar ability. And, in those stories, the character has to deal with the real possibility of taking damage from trivial things, like a leaf floating on the wind. If you're hitting a small object at a high speed, it is still Force = Mass x Acceleration, and when you're travelling 1,000 feet/6 seconds (that converts to 113 mph)... well that hurts, and the hurt only increases with mass. If I was a smart NPC/monster, I'd only sit back and throw rocks at the guy who was moving so fast, cause a 1 lb rock (if it hit) would completely smash the guy's head in!
And then, there was that episode of X-files where the kids were able to move so fast that they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Well, they were constantly taking damage just from the energy of moving so fast. So much so, that if I remember correctly, they were suffering bone and soft tissue damage, essentially getting injuries seen in bull riding, and they hypothesized they would eventually die from it.
Lastly, look at the Quickling (example is in Volo's Guide page 187). They move incredibly fast, but at the expense of their internal aging clock also moves similarly fast.
I have built this out. It is actually pretty simple. You can even make it stupider. The trick: it is totally useless. No matter how fast you go, it will not help you in combat. And the haste wears off after 1 minute.
Really, the farthest they can go is 1 mile (1.6 kM) in a minute.
As with any player the goal is to both let them enjoy the game, and to not make anything too easy. Throw them the occasional speed challenge, but also make sure your other players have something to do. Unless your party starts abusing maneuvering strikes. Then feel free to intervene.
Base speed (30), monk (10-30), longstrider (10) mobile (10) transmutation stone (10) × tabaxi speed (2) haste (2) spending a ki, bonus action, action, action, movement (4)
This should put you above 1000. Provided they have an enabling transmutation wizard.
Also, the player does not, at any point, break the sound barrier. If my math is right, they barely hit 80 m/s of the 340 m/s needed.
This sort of thing is only a problem on paper. I have never encountered this sort of thing in an actual game. Sure you could stack a lot of bonuses to focus on speed but you will have given up choices that would have given you bonuses to AC, Damage and spells. The more specialised you become the less versatile you are.
So sure you can move a great distance, make an attack, and use your bonus action to disengage, but you won’t be doing lots of damage and you can’t use you bonus action to re-hide or do anything else. Only having 1 action, 1 movement and 1 bonus action keeps this sort of thing a problem on paper only.
Obscure the area with fog, and have enemy mages create wall spells, wall of fire, wind wall, etc around the battlefield. Or, do more underwater battles. Or, have enemy mages cast spells like hold person on them, after they see them moving that fast, so that it seems more logical, rather than you restricting their play style.
I just ran the first part of Return to Undermountain from 4e. One of the traps that they recommend is a special pit trap. My adventures felt pretty smug when they found that a rug covered up a pit trap. They were pretty excited to see body with some shiny bracers at the bottom of th pit. They were less excited when they jumped into Gelatinous cube lurking at the bottom. Engulfing your speedy character would be very satisfying.
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With certain builds, tabaxi feline agility, boots, haste, being a monk, etc. Eventually with all the plus and minuses and then doubling those, can end up with some insane movement speeds. I've heard of 1,000+ feet per round. Which basically means the player can move in to attack and move away (throw in a disengage action to keep from getting attacks of opportunity.)
How does a game come to the point where this is even possible? Anyway how would you handle it?
Mechanics, man, they can be built for all sorts of things.
Take the Sentinel feat and apply it to a few enemies. Disengaging doesn't have to mean no OppAttacks.
Lay some traps on the battlefield - a tripwire alone could do a lot if someone's travelling at 166 feet/second.
Embrace it. Ok, so this player can run anywhere. Range no longer matters. They are going to find the enemy they want to engage with, and engage. You can't stop it so you accept it.
But what about challenge?
Easy. Give this player more options than they can process. Like going to a grocery store and finding 100 different types of peanut butter. Which do you choose? Analysis paralysis is fun! if the player finds that there's no single best target. That choosing one means letting others wreak havoc... they still get to shine and run all over like crazy, but they can't stop the encounter. They can't break the encounter. They can navigate it.
There are specific mechanics to shut this down, but you can also let the player flaunt it and still give them more than they can handle in a round.
Let them be awesome, and if the player is even gracious enough to give you some opportunity attacks without disengage then just embrace it.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Also, take note that your speedster isn't actually bouncing around the battlefield like that every turn. I'm not 100% clear on the various maths, but I do know that the Tabaxi ability to double their movement speed for a turn is unusable again until they stay in one spot again for a whole turn. Also the Monk ability to Dash requires an expenditure of a Ki point and is a Bonus Action, meaning that it expends a limited resource and eats up part of the player's action economy. As for the various spells and magical items, Haste not only requires someone to cast the spell in the first place, but also comes with this drawback: "When the spell ends, the target can't move or take actions until after its next turn, as a wave of lethargy sweeps over it." and it is a concentration spell. The Boots of Speed require a Bonus Action to activate, potentially putting them in conflict with the Ki point expenditure.
So like, super movement character is essentially from Magic Christmas Land where everything always goes right and they have all the support they need ever. A normal player might be able to double or triple their movement speed every other turn or so for a limited number of times. I wouldn't stress out about it. Just do as the others suggest and accept it when it does happen and make the encounters work around it from time to time.
Think of a character like the Flash. Yes, if the challenge is only "get there fast" then it's a foregone conclusion that the challenge is overcome - but when the challenge is anything else? It's still a challenge.
And don't forget that there is always somebody like Reverse Flash around to make "get there fast" no longer so foregone a conclusion.
Another option is to vary the topography. Have ranged attackers in an elevated ground/platform/trees etc.. where the character can't just jump up there.
I ran an abandoned fortress encounter. Attackers with 1/2 cover from elevated heights with the only entrance from another room. The players would have had to leave the room to find how to get to them.
Giving them the choice between essentially abandoning the rest of the party to track down two wayward archers, or just dealing with the cover issue created some interesting drama that session.
See, I think a lot of this is solved if you try to slap a little realism on the game. If someone brings me a build and says "I can move 1000 ft in a round" I'd just say "nope!"
I interpret the Tabaxi "Feline Agility" as "You get double your base movement speed", which is 30 ft. So you can add a ton of other stuff to that and make it like 100, sure. But not 1000.
But basically, I do the multiplication FIRST, and then add stuff to it.
What happens is feline agility + haste + I think a pair of boots. So it ends up doubling three times. So 30 becomes 60 becomes 120 becomes 240. I can't remember all the steps to get to 1000. Pretty sure you have bonuses that increase your speed before its doubled for the first time.
All you have to do is only double the 30 though. So 30 becomes 60, which becomes 90, then 120 etc.
Or just add a cap. At a certain speed, bones are breaking because of acceleration.
Idk, I've never run into this problem because no one has wanted to play a Tabaxi, also I haven't really made them present in my setting.
However, I do think there are situations where you go: Well technically, yeah. The rules say this, but that makes NO sense. For instance, the fall damage rules. If you fall from low orbit as a Barbarian, you WILL die. Period. I don't even need to roll for it. That sort of thing. RAW only gets you so far, you have to use logic sometimes.
As a DM, you set the stage. So if you want this sort of thing to happen in your game, then you can put all the pieces together in such a way that it becomes possible. I don't know why you would, but hey, it's your game - you do you. By the time a character can pull off this sort of stunt, you've likely had a number of sessions with the person playing it, and you should have some options available to you, based off the campaign you're running and the story you're collaboratively telling with your players.
If it's a problem, well, that goes back to an old discussion on min-maxing versus power-gaming, and there are ARCHIVES worth of material on that subject. Look around, you'll find them.
https://dreadweasel.blogspot.com/
If the player is moving that fast, stop giving them caffeine. ;)
Up front, I don't have stats for Tabaxi, so this is pretty generalized advice.
First, double and triple check the math. If the player objects, I'd have no problem saying, "This just smells wrong. I want to confirm before you get too used to it."
Second, as others have said, make sure the math is happening in the right order. Don't double bonuses, just the base. Not sure this is explicit, either way, in 5E. Where there is no explicit ruling, the DM gets to make the call. No, seriously -- the DM makes the call. Gygax often referred to the DM as "referee" because he's the one who deals with the application of abstractions.
Third, You're perfectly within your right, as DM, to call the player out as a power-gaming twit and tell him "no". I'm not saying you necessarily should say "no" but it's always an option for the DM.
Fourth, recognize that this character has pretty much only two impacts on play. The first is that distance in combat is entirely irrelevant to him. This actually happens somewhere around 200-ish feet per round, probably well below that. Unless you're going to block him to something below that, it's not even worth having the conversation. Just watch his path when he moves and take every single opportunity attack that could conceivable happen (which, having a monk PC in my group, is probably none).
The second impact is that he's very, very capable of getting himself into some serious trouble w/o any backup. No DM should ever pass up the opportunity to screw with a player who actually does that. In fact, I would take every chance I got to rib him about how boring it is to have to wait for the other PCs. He could have scouted the entire dungeon, already. It only takes one cave-in, portcullis, or shifting wall to really make him regret it. Also, if he never uses that extra speed out of combat, he's not really getting that much out of it -- something I'd definitely be pointing out. Every. Chance. I. Got.
Why, yes. I have had a player actually say, "Oh, crap. I just gave him my soul, didn't I? I think. Wait. Did I?"
you could build an enemy and homebrew an item to make them faster than your player and have them be the rival of that player
Agile DM has great advice, but here's something to think about from the compendium:
Back in 4e there was a polearm tank build that used reach and knock to make it so enemies that tried to get into melee provoked and attack of opportunity, then got pushed back and knocked prone. The solution was to ready an action and all charge on one turn so the tank could only react to one person. Same solution works here. Enemies see the character running all over and go on the defense, they ready actions to hit him when he closes into range. Or to charge him if he attacks "that ally over there".
Also, from a real life experience: piano wire at neck height in the dark. One of my friends ran into some strung across a bike trail and was hospitalized by it.
Illusions are also fun. Perhaps my favorite is the small pit, say 10 feet, with an illusion making it look 10 feet farther back than it really is. So if anyone runs to the edge before jumping, they just fell in. An invisible wall on the back side is also good for a few laughs.
Then there's the ever popular classic punji sticks: put your foot into a square and it goes into a pit. Try to pull your foot out and you get shredded and impaled. Moving at 166 feet/second it could be harder than usual to stop in a single step.
But don't overdo it. Like others have said, this is the character's thing, They probably invested almost all of their build into doing this. Ruining it would be cruel. Use enough counters so they don't dominate the game, but let them have fun.
I believe there is precedence in Fantasy and Sci Fi literature that anyone doing such a thing over long periods of time come at a cost:
In Sci Fi, I think I've seen where a character may come across a similar ability. And, in those stories, the character has to deal with the real possibility of taking damage from trivial things, like a leaf floating on the wind. If you're hitting a small object at a high speed, it is still Force = Mass x Acceleration, and when you're travelling 1,000 feet/6 seconds (that converts to 113 mph)... well that hurts, and the hurt only increases with mass. If I was a smart NPC/monster, I'd only sit back and throw rocks at the guy who was moving so fast, cause a 1 lb rock (if it hit) would completely smash the guy's head in!
And then, there was that episode of X-files where the kids were able to move so fast that they couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Well, they were constantly taking damage just from the energy of moving so fast. So much so, that if I remember correctly, they were suffering bone and soft tissue damage, essentially getting injuries seen in bull riding, and they hypothesized they would eventually die from it.
Lastly, look at the Quickling (example is in Volo's Guide page 187). They move incredibly fast, but at the expense of their internal aging clock also moves similarly fast.
Be careful what you Wish for... your DM may just give it to you!
I have built this out. It is actually pretty simple. You can even make it stupider. The trick: it is totally useless. No matter how fast you go, it will not help you in combat. And the haste wears off after 1 minute.
Really, the farthest they can go is 1 mile (1.6 kM) in a minute.
As with any player the goal is to both let them enjoy the game, and to not make anything too easy. Throw them the occasional speed challenge, but also make sure your other players have something to do. Unless your party starts abusing maneuvering strikes. Then feel free to intervene.
Base speed (30), monk (10-30), longstrider (10) mobile (10) transmutation stone (10) × tabaxi speed (2) haste (2) spending a ki, bonus action, action, action, movement (4)
This should put you above 1000. Provided they have an enabling transmutation wizard.
Also, the player does not, at any point, break the sound barrier. If my math is right, they barely hit 80 m/s of the 340 m/s needed.
This sort of thing is only a problem on paper. I have never encountered this sort of thing in an actual game. Sure you could stack a lot of bonuses to focus on speed but you will have given up choices that would have given you bonuses to AC, Damage and spells. The more specialised you become the less versatile you are.
So sure you can move a great distance, make an attack, and use your bonus action to disengage, but you won’t be doing lots of damage and you can’t use you bonus action to re-hide or do anything else. Only having 1 action, 1 movement and 1 bonus action keeps this sort of thing a problem on paper only.
And this is what happens when they stop:
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
Obscure the area with fog, and have enemy mages create wall spells, wall of fire, wind wall, etc around the battlefield. Or, do more underwater battles. Or, have enemy mages cast spells like hold person on them, after they see them moving that fast, so that it seems more logical, rather than you restricting their play style.
I just ran the first part of Return to Undermountain from 4e. One of the traps that they recommend is a special pit trap. My adventures felt pretty smug when they found that a rug covered up a pit trap. They were pretty excited to see body with some shiny bracers at the bottom of th pit. They were less excited when they jumped into Gelatinous cube lurking at the bottom. Engulfing your speedy character would be very satisfying.