Something I've never really been able to get my head around is when going half-and-half of one movement speed and changing to another mid-turn. Like having 30 ft walk but also 60 ft flying. If you use 20 ft of walking - how much flying do you have left?
I ask because I once saw someone with a Tabaxi try climbing and mentioned their 20 ft climbing speed. So they climb 20 ft and then say they have 30 ft walk speed which means they still have 10 ft of movement left over which they'll use to climb an extra 5 ft at half-speed. Seemed completely wrong to me.
I believe that this is covered in the movement rules (here).
Basically if you had speed like you mention in your first paragraph, and you chose to fly 30 feet, you couldn't then walk 30 feet -- as you have already used 30 feet of movement. However, you could fly 20 feet, walk 10 feet, and then fly 30 feet.
The rule:
If you have more than one speed, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your move. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed. The result determines how much farther you can move. If the result is 0 or less, you can't use the new speed during the current move.
But then surely it should just say 25 ft climbing speed? I basically just assumed that walk->climbing was already accounted for by the extra 5 ft climbing Tabaxi can do over everyone else.
It would make sense if they climbed for 20 and then walked for 10. Not climbed 20 and then used walking to climb an extra 5. Seems really iffy.
Saga is correct. And what isn't made as explicit as it could be is that 2-foot-per-1-foot costs tick against all your speeds, just like standing up from prone uses up half of your movement for all your speeds.
A creature with a Move 30, Fly 60 speed can normally Fly 60 feet, or walk 30 feet and fly 30 feet, or any ratio between those two end points. But if they are climbing or crawling or moving through difficult terrain with their Move speed and paying 2-foot-for-1-foot move cost, that means they can climb/crawl/walk 15 feet and still only fly 30 feet. Or if they were prone and stood up before walking/flying, they could at most fly 30 feet, or walk 15 feet and fly 15 feet, or any ratio between those two end points.
It's logically very straightforward, but a little tough to write out in a way that's a clear as it should be. You can use up all of your speed(s), but while moving with any of them you're ticking movement against all of them at the same rate.
Yea I understand it well for walking / flying because those two are very clear-cut. You can't fly without actually flying and flying speeds are usually (always?) faster or equal to walking speed.
What I find weird is using your climbing speed to climb and then using the rest of your walking to also climb. I mean imagine someone with 20 ft flying speed and 30 ft walking speed. They fly 20 ft and have 10 ft walking left over - so they decide to use the rest of their 10 ft walking to fly another 5 ft - by walking? That doesn't seem like it would be allowed - but for climbing it is?
Anyway - I realise it's a little off topic so there's no need to take it any further. I'll just keep the rule in mind for the future - it's not like it's the only one that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Well obviously that can't work for Flying, because a creature without a Fly speed can't fly no matter how much movement they're willing to spend on it. Climbing and Swimming are entirely different, since those are movement modes that the rules specifically identify are 2-foot-for-1-foot situations, unless you have a Climb or Swim speed.
But I do see your point... like say you're a Hippo or something, and have a speed of Swim 10/Move 30. That critter would be able to swim 10 using 1-for-1 Swim speed movement, and then swim another 10 using 2-for-1 Move speed movement with its leftover 20 move speed. But it might seem from their stat block like the authors only designed them to swim 10 each round, not 20 each round.
I get it, that is awkward. But not awkward enough to overwrite the clear direction in the rules that we do it that way.
Yea I understand it well for walking / flying because those two are very clear-cut. You can't fly without actually flying and flying speeds are usually (always?) faster or equal to walking speed.
What I find weird is using your climbing speed to climb and then using the rest of your walking to also climb. I mean imagine someone with 20 ft flying speed and 30 ft walking speed. They fly 20 ft and have 10 ft walking left over - so they decide to use the rest of their 10 ft walking to fly another 5 ft - by walking? That doesn't seem like it would be allowed - but for climbing it is?
Anyway - I realise it's a little off topic so there's no need to take it any further. I'll just keep the rule in mind for the future - it's not like it's the only one that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
You're right that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the flying example that the book explicitly describes doesn't make sense either. You're telling me I have the time/energy to fly thirty entire feet, but I can't take even one more step on the ground?
The way it would work ideally is that speeds are spent in percentages and spending half your walking speed spends half of all your other speeds as well; i.e., if you have a 30ft walking speed and a 60ft flying speed, and you walk 15 feet, you have 30 feet of flight left (or another 15 feet of walking). But this gets mathematically intensive very quickly, and I understand why they didn't go this route for a tabletop game.
Saga is correct. And what isn't made as explicit as it could be is that 2-foot-per-1-foot costs tick against all your speeds, just like standing up from prone uses up half of your movement for all your speeds.
The second point is dubious under RAW, though it might be RAI. The way everything else works is "subtract the movement cost of the thing you just did from your speed in all available modes", or more simply "if your movement spent equals or exceeds your speed in a given mode, you cannot move further in that mode", and everything you do has a fixed cost (1/1 for normal movement, 2/1 for climbing or difficult terrain, etc). The two possible exceptions to this are Dash, which explicitly gets updated every time your speed changes, and Standing Up, which says absolutely nothing about what happens when your speed changes.
Given that Standing Up says nothing about what happens when speed changes, the implication is that it costs half the speed you have in the movement mode you're in at the time you do it, so a creature with speed 30 (flight 60), if knocked prone, can stand up for 15, then take off and fly 45.
Which is kind of dumb, but so is the rest of how movement in multiple modes works; 5e did movement to be simple, not to really make sense. The only alternative I can come up with that isn't hard to play is problematic in different ways: "your max movement in a turn is equal the lowest speed of any movement type you use during that turn".
Standing up takes more effort; doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed.
Standing up is not a type of walking, or swimming, or climbing, or flying. It is "standing up" to remove the Prone condition, an ability that creatures have which costs movement but which is not itself a type of movement. A creature with no movement mode other than Swim 30 can still be Prone, and will still need to "stand up" (costing 15 swim speed) if it wants to end the condition.
When you "stand up" it costs half your speed(s) an amount of movement equal to half your speed(s). Not one of your speed(s), or the speed you are currently using or planning to use, all of your speed(s). A creature with Move 30/Swim 30/Climb 30/Fly 30 instantly goes to Move 15/Swim 15/Climb 15/Fly 15 remaining when they "stand up," whether that "standing up" represented getting their feet back under them on the ground, or pulling themselves out of free fall in the air, or reorienting themself underwater.
I am very certain that it works the same way when you use 2-for-1 movement points, because I agree that the rule is "subtract the movement cost of the thing you just did from your speed in all available modes." In the interest of full disclosure though, this may be a case of clear RAI not quite lining up with RAW, because what the rules actually say is "subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed." It would be assinine for "the distance you've already moved" to mean anything in practice other than "the distance cost you've already spent," but hey, that isn't quite how it's worded.
But again, that's just some wiggle room for whether 2-for-1 movement ticks down all move modes equally, not whether standing from prone costs half of all your movements. Standing up is airtight, there's no way to read that as doing anything other than what it says.
Standing up does not cost half your speed, it costs movement equal to half your speed. If it actually cost half your speed, yes, it would work the way you describe.
What does "movement equal to half your speed" mean if not "half the movement points available in each of your speed pools"? If I have a Fly 30/Move 60 speed, are you arguing that I am allowed to pick my lowest speed and pay movement equal to half of it? Or are you arguing that "standing up" only ever really costs half of your "Move" speed, and never half of any other speed (possibly even if you don't have a "Move" speed)?
What does "movement equal to half your speed" mean if not "half the movement points available in each of your speed pools"? If I have a Fly 30/Move 60 speed, are you arguing that I am allowed to pick my lowest speed and pay movement equal to half of it? Or are you arguing that "standing up" only ever really costs half of your "Move" speed, and never half of any other speed (possibly even if you don't have a "Move" speed)?
You do not have movement pools. You have a single value that gets updated every time your speed changes (which includes, but is not limited to, changing movement types). Standing up costs you half the speed you have at the time you stand up, which is equal to the speed of the movement type you're using at the time (usually ground, but might be swim, or can be fly for hovering creatures).
What does "movement equal to half your speed" mean if not "half the movement points available in each of your speed pools"? If I have a Fly 30/Move 60 speed, are you arguing that I am allowed to pick my lowest speed and pay movement equal to half of it? Or are you arguing that "standing up" only ever really costs half of your "Move" speed, and never half of any other speed (possibly even if you don't have a "Move" speed)?
You do not have speed pools. You have a single value that gets updated every time your speed changes (which includes, but is not limited to, changing movement types). Standing up costs you half the speed you have at the time you stand up, which is equal to the speed of the movement type you're using at the time (usually ground, but might be swim, or can be fly for hovering creatures).
You always have all your speeds. There is absolutely no textual reason to think otherwise.
Regarding the actual contention here, it's ambiguous because the rules on standing up are clearly written under the assumption that the actor only has a walking speed and no other speeds. But "standing up costs half of each of your movements" makes more sense than "standing up costs half of the movement you're currently using," because standing up doesn't use a specific speed; you're not "currently using" any of them.
When you stand up, you remain in one square and are not yet walking/flying/swimming anywhere (yes, even if you are Prone in the sky in freefall and have been plummeting towards the ground prior to the start of your turn). An interpretation that requires you to pick your "speed you have at the time" to find out what that costs is unworkable, and unsupported by any text specifically directing you to to do that. Overall I find it a less reasonable interpretation to just adding "(s)" on the end of "speed."
What does "movement equal to half your speed" mean if not "half the movement points available in each of your speed pools"? If I have a Fly 30/Move 60 speed, are you arguing that I am allowed to pick my lowest speed and pay movement equal to half of it? Or are you arguing that "standing up" only ever really costs half of your "Move" speed, and never half of any other speed (possibly even if you don't have a "Move" speed)?
You do not have speed pools. You have a single value that gets updated every time your speed changes (which includes, but is not limited to, changing movement types). Standing up costs you half the speed you have at the time you stand up, which is equal to the speed of the movement type you're using at the time (usually ground, but might be swim, or can be fly for hovering creatures).
You always have all your speeds. There is absolutely no textual reason to think otherwise.
Sure there is. Per Movement and Position, "If you have more than one speed, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your move. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed. The result determines how much farther you can move."
That is quite clear. You have only one movement pool; every time you change speed, you recalculate.
When you stand up, you remain in one square and are not yet walking/flying/swimming anywhere.
You have a movement type when prone (it's whatever you would spend in order to crawl. This is usually walking, but hovering or swimming creatures might use something else).
Reading "you have more than one speed..." as "you only have one speed pool, but you can change it..." doesn't pass the sniff test for plain English language meaning. Nope, you're reaching here to try to make the language twist to conform to your ruling.
Sure there is. Per Movement and Position, "If you have more than one speed, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your move. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed. The result determines how much farther you can move."
That is quite clear. You have only one pool; every time you change speed, you recalculate.
Absolutely nothing about anything you quoted suggests that you don't have your fly speed when you're walking.
When you stand up, you remain in one square and are not yet walking/flying/swimming anywhere.
You have a movement type when prone (it's whatever you would spend in order to crawl. This is usually walking, but hovering or swimming creatures might use something else).
Prone is a condition, not a movement type. The movement types you have when prone are precisely the same movement types you have while not prone, laying on the ground (or in the sky, or in the depths) is no indication of your future plans for that round. It is simply that being Prone has made those movements more expensive, and ending prone costs half your movement points (from each of these speeds).
Reading "you have more than one speed..." as "you only have one speed pool, but you can change it..." doesn't pass the sniff test for plain English language meaning. Nope, you're reaching here to try to make the language twist to conform to your ruling.
You're confusing speed and movement (admittedly, I miswrote that the first time).
Absolutely nothing about anything you quoted suggests that you don't have your fly speed when you're walking.
Sure, but that doesn't matter, because what you spend is movement, not speed, and you do not have 'fly movement', you just have movement.
It absolutely does matter, because the amount of movement you expend is "equal to half your speed." If you have a 30ft walk speed and a 60ft fly speed, "your speed" without qualification is simultaneously both 30ft and 60ft. The book does not tell us how to account for this fact. I'm just saying that "it's half of all your speeds" makes a lot more sense than "it's half of whatever speed you arbitrarily choose," which is what your position amounts to, because again, you're not "currently using" any specific speed when you rise from being prone.
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I believe that this is covered in the movement rules (here).
Basically if you had speed like you mention in your first paragraph, and you chose to fly 30 feet, you couldn't then walk 30 feet -- as you have already used 30 feet of movement. However, you could fly 20 feet, walk 10 feet, and then fly 30 feet.
The rule:
But then surely it should just say 25 ft climbing speed? I basically just assumed that walk->climbing was already accounted for by the extra 5 ft climbing Tabaxi can do over everyone else.
It would make sense if they climbed for 20 and then walked for 10. Not climbed 20 and then used walking to climb an extra 5. Seems really iffy.
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The rules only care about what speed you're using, not what you're using that speed for.
Saga is correct. And what isn't made as explicit as it could be is that 2-foot-per-1-foot costs tick against all your speeds, just like standing up from prone uses up half of your movement for all your speeds.
A creature with a Move 30, Fly 60 speed can normally Fly 60 feet, or walk 30 feet and fly 30 feet, or any ratio between those two end points. But if they are climbing or crawling or moving through difficult terrain with their Move speed and paying 2-foot-for-1-foot move cost, that means they can climb/crawl/walk 15 feet and still only fly 30 feet. Or if they were prone and stood up before walking/flying, they could at most fly 30 feet, or walk 15 feet and fly 15 feet, or any ratio between those two end points.
It's logically very straightforward, but a little tough to write out in a way that's a clear as it should be. You can use up all of your speed(s), but while moving with any of them you're ticking movement against all of them at the same rate.
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Yea I understand it well for walking / flying because those two are very clear-cut. You can't fly without actually flying and flying speeds are usually (always?) faster or equal to walking speed.
What I find weird is using your climbing speed to climb and then using the rest of your walking to also climb. I mean imagine someone with 20 ft flying speed and 30 ft walking speed. They fly 20 ft and have 10 ft walking left over - so they decide to use the rest of their 10 ft walking to fly another 5 ft - by walking? That doesn't seem like it would be allowed - but for climbing it is?
Anyway - I realise it's a little off topic so there's no need to take it any further. I'll just keep the rule in mind for the future - it's not like it's the only one that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
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Well obviously that can't work for Flying, because a creature without a Fly speed can't fly no matter how much movement they're willing to spend on it. Climbing and Swimming are entirely different, since those are movement modes that the rules specifically identify are 2-foot-for-1-foot situations, unless you have a Climb or Swim speed.
But I do see your point... like say you're a Hippo or something, and have a speed of Swim 10/Move 30. That critter would be able to swim 10 using 1-for-1 Swim speed movement, and then swim another 10 using 2-for-1 Move speed movement with its leftover 20 move speed. But it might seem from their stat block like the authors only designed them to swim 10 each round, not 20 each round.
I get it, that is awkward. But not awkward enough to overwrite the clear direction in the rules that we do it that way.
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You're right that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the flying example that the book explicitly describes doesn't make sense either. You're telling me I have the time/energy to fly thirty entire feet, but I can't take even one more step on the ground?
The way it would work ideally is that speeds are spent in percentages and spending half your walking speed spends half of all your other speeds as well; i.e., if you have a 30ft walking speed and a 60ft flying speed, and you walk 15 feet, you have 30 feet of flight left (or another 15 feet of walking). But this gets mathematically intensive very quickly, and I understand why they didn't go this route for a tabletop game.
The second point is dubious under RAW, though it might be RAI. The way everything else works is "subtract the movement cost of the thing you just did from your speed in all available modes", or more simply "if your movement spent equals or exceeds your speed in a given mode, you cannot move further in that mode", and everything you do has a fixed cost (1/1 for normal movement, 2/1 for climbing or difficult terrain, etc). The two possible exceptions to this are Dash, which explicitly gets updated every time your speed changes, and Standing Up, which says absolutely nothing about what happens when your speed changes.
Given that Standing Up says nothing about what happens when speed changes, the implication is that it costs half the speed you have in the movement mode you're in at the time you do it, so a creature with speed 30 (flight 60), if knocked prone, can stand up for 15, then take off and fly 45.
Which is kind of dumb, but so is the rest of how movement in multiple modes works; 5e did movement to be simple, not to really make sense. The only alternative I can come up with that isn't hard to play is problematic in different ways: "your max movement in a turn is equal the lowest speed of any movement type you use during that turn".
Standing up is not a type of walking, or swimming, or climbing, or flying. It is "standing up" to remove the Prone condition, an ability that creatures have which costs movement but which is not itself a type of movement. A creature with no movement mode other than Swim 30 can still be Prone, and will still need to "stand up" (costing 15 swim speed) if it wants to end the condition.
When you "stand up" it costs
half your speed(s)an amount of movement equal to half your speed(s). Not one of your speed(s), or the speed you are currently using or planning to use, all of your speed(s). A creature with Move 30/Swim 30/Climb 30/Fly 30 instantly goes to Move 15/Swim 15/Climb 15/Fly 15 remaining when they "stand up," whether that "standing up" represented getting their feet back under them on the ground, or pulling themselves out of free fall in the air, or reorienting themself underwater.I am very certain that it works the same way when you use 2-for-1 movement points, because I agree that the rule is "subtract the movement cost of the thing you just did from your speed in all available modes." In the interest of full disclosure though, this may be a case of clear RAI not quite lining up with RAW, because what the rules actually say is "subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed." It would be assinine for "the distance you've already moved" to mean anything in practice other than "the distance cost you've already spent," but hey, that isn't quite how it's worded.
But again, that's just some wiggle room for whether 2-for-1 movement ticks down all move modes equally, not whether standing from prone costs half of all your movements. Standing up is airtight, there's no way to read that as doing anything other than what it says.
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Standing up does not cost half your speed, it costs movement equal to half your speed. If it actually cost half your speed, yes, it would work the way you describe.
What does "movement equal to half your speed" mean if not "half the movement points available in each of your speed pools"? If I have a Fly 30/Move 60 speed, are you arguing that I am allowed to pick my lowest speed and pay movement equal to half of it? Or are you arguing that "standing up" only ever really costs half of your "Move" speed, and never half of any other speed (possibly even if you don't have a "Move" speed)?
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You do not have movement pools. You have a single value that gets updated every time your speed changes (which includes, but is not limited to, changing movement types). Standing up costs you half the speed you have at the time you stand up, which is equal to the speed of the movement type you're using at the time (usually ground, but might be swim, or can be fly for hovering creatures).
You always have all your speeds. There is absolutely no textual reason to think otherwise.
Regarding the actual contention here, it's ambiguous because the rules on standing up are clearly written under the assumption that the actor only has a walking speed and no other speeds. But "standing up costs half of each of your movements" makes more sense than "standing up costs half of the movement you're currently using," because standing up doesn't use a specific speed; you're not "currently using" any of them.
When you stand up, you remain in one square and are not yet walking/flying/swimming anywhere (yes, even if you are Prone in the sky in freefall and have been plummeting towards the ground prior to the start of your turn). An interpretation that requires you to pick your "speed you have at the time" to find out what that costs is unworkable, and unsupported by any text specifically directing you to to do that. Overall I find it a less reasonable interpretation to just adding "(s)" on the end of "speed."
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Sure there is. Per Movement and Position, "If you have more than one speed, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your move. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you've already moved from the new speed. The result determines how much farther you can move."
That is quite clear. You have only one movement pool; every time you change speed, you recalculate.
You have a movement type when prone (it's whatever you would spend in order to crawl. This is usually walking, but hovering or swimming creatures might use something else).
Reading "you have more than one speed..." as "you only have one speed pool, but you can change it..." doesn't pass the sniff test for plain English language meaning. Nope, you're reaching here to try to make the language twist to conform to your ruling.
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Absolutely nothing about anything you quoted suggests that you don't have your fly speed when you're walking.
Prone is a condition, not a movement type. The movement types you have when prone are precisely the same movement types you have while not prone, laying on the ground (or in the sky, or in the depths) is no indication of your future plans for that round. It is simply that being Prone has made those movements more expensive, and ending prone costs half your movement points (from each of these speeds).
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Sure, but that doesn't matter, because what you spend is movement, not speed, and you do not have 'fly movement', you just have movement.
You're confusing speed and movement (admittedly, I miswrote that the first time).
It absolutely does matter, because the amount of movement you expend is "equal to half your speed." If you have a 30ft walk speed and a 60ft fly speed, "your speed" without qualification is simultaneously both 30ft and 60ft. The book does not tell us how to account for this fact. I'm just saying that "it's half of all your speeds" makes a lot more sense than "it's half of whatever speed you arbitrarily choose," which is what your position amounts to, because again, you're not "currently using" any specific speed when you rise from being prone.