A recent discussion propped up about the ability of a person or creature running for long periods of time, and the variances in speed in a party.
The first problem that came up was how long can someone run/dash before getting exhausted or making con checks for exhaustion.
I think under Travel Pace under the PHB and Basic Rules there's a little section for Mount and Vehicles
Mounts and Vehicles. For short spans of time (up to an hour), many animals move much faster than humanoids. A mounted character can ride at a gallop for about an hour, covering twice the usual distance for a fast pace. If fresh mounts are available every 8 to 10 miles, characters can cover larger distances at this pace, but this is very rare except in densely populated areas.
So the first sentence makes me believe that most things can run for an hour before getting tired/exhausted. Unless this is explicit to horses?
Second problem was a humanoid pulling a wagon vs a horse pulling a wagon and trying to achieve the horse's dash speed. From my understanding of the reference above the "gallop" is equivalent to a dash at 80 ft per six seconds, which is close to ~9.1mph. Assuming both the wagons were light enough for the creatures' pulling capacity and that the humanoid's speed is 30 ft walking and 60 ft dashing it is fairly obvious that the humanoid would not will be able to keep up.
However, there was a claim that because the horse was in "fast" pace that the humanoid should also be in "fast" pace and be able to keep up. The chart for pacing was then referenced:
Obviously it doesn't list if someone or something goes their dash speed. Could one assume the fast pace penalty would also apply to the creature as long as they are going faster than their walking speed?
Then the final question, assuming question 1 was correct or accurate. Can creatures go as fast as they can without hitting their dash to go faster than fast pace? I.E. No one or thing's walking speed is below or 30 ft so they go 50 ft to avoid overexertion/exhaustion?
Dashing isn't really as relevant when you look at traveling as opposed to movement. I mean, yeah, traveling is movement, but it's kind of a zoomed-out version of movement as opposed to counting distances in feet. When going long distances, just stick with fast, normal, slow travel.
The rules you're looking for are in the DMG under Running the Chase.
Dashing
During the chase, a participant can freely use the Dash action a number of times equal to 3 + its Constitution modifier. Each additional Dash action it takes during the chase requires the creature to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution check at the end of its turn or gain one level of exhaustion.
A participant drops out of the chase if its exhaustion reaches level 5, since its speed becomes 0. A creature can remove the levels of exhaustion it gained during the chase by finishing a short or long rest.
A character with MAX Constitution (+5) could dash for 8 rounds with a 20% chance of becoming exhausted each additional round.
After 2 levels of exhaustion, that player will be moving at half speed, so after approximately 15 rounds of dashing (900ft), it just not worth pushing it.
Dashing isn't really as relevant when you look at traveling as opposed to movement. I mean, yeah, traveling is movement, but it's kind of a zoomed-out version of movement as opposed to counting distances in feet. When going long distances, just stick with fast, normal, slow travel.
I get what you mean for the simplicity of long travel.
The situation propped up when an area or place was just a little above an hour or two away in a time sensitive event.
So again the ruling themselves seem implicit and maybe I am going off on too many assumption, however simple math dictates that it makes sense that a humanoid's walking speed of 30ft maximum fast pace would be 5 mph vs a walking speed of 25ft of a halfling/gnome/dwarf would be capped out at 4 mph just before going dashing speeds. Am I reading too much into the chart? Or is it appropriate to give the party a higher fast pace if the slowest is 30ft?
I think under Travel Pace under the PHB and Basic Rules there's a little section for Mount and Vehicles
Mounts and Vehicles. For short spans of time (up to an hour), many animals move much faster than humanoids. A mounted character can ride at a gallop for about an hour, covering twice the usual distance for a fast pace. If fresh mounts are available every 8 to 10 miles, characters can cover larger distances at this pace, but this is very rare except in densely populated areas.
So the first sentence makes me believe that most things can run for an hour before getting tired/exhausted. Unless this is explicit to horses?
I think it is limited to only certain animals ("many animals" in the quote) including horses. Humans can't run at a sprint pace for an hour. Probably most animals bred specifically as mounts can. But some animals like Wargs maybe can be used as mounts, but aren't bred as long-distance mounts. Like humans, they would probably would tire after a few rounds according to the chase rules Memnosyne pasted above.
Second problem was a humanoid pulling a wagon vs a horse pulling a wagon and trying to achieve the horse's dash speed. From my understanding of the reference above the "gallop" is equivalent to a dash at 80 ft per six seconds, which is close to ~9.1mph.
Yes, but this is strange, as the Riding Horse and Warhorse both have a 60 foot base speed, which would get you 60 x 2 (dash) x 10 (rounds per minute) x 60 (minutes per hour) = 72,000 feet = 14 miles. But maybe they can't keep up their full sprint pace the whole time.
Assuming both the wagons were light enough for the creatures' pulling capacity and that the humanoid's speed is 30 ft walking and 60 ft dashing it is fairly obvious that the humanoid would not will be able to keep up.
I think it's reasonable to say that a human can't dash while pulling a load, even one within their pulling capacity. I'm not sure RAW says anything about that, but common sense does. However, it might be reasonable to say that an animal bred specifically for that purpose, like a Draft Horse, can dash while pulling a load, so 80 feet per round. That's still not as fast as a Riding Horse. And I think it would be reasonable for the Draft Horse to follow the 8 miles per hour rule for riding above, if pulling a light load such as a passenger carriage, but it would be slower if pulling a heavy cargo cart.
However, there was a claim that because the horse was in "fast" pace that the humanoid should also be in "fast" pace and be able to keep up. The chart for pacing was then referenced:
Obviously it doesn't list if someone or something goes their dash speed. Could one assume the fast pace penalty would also apply to the creature as long as they are going faster than their walking speed?
Then the final question, assuming question 1 was correct or accurate. Can creatures go as fast as they can without hitting their dash to go faster than fast pace? I.E. No one or thing's walking speed is below or 30 ft so they go 50 ft to avoid overexertion/exhaustion?
No. The fast pace is the fastest you can go, and takes into account that you can't dash at sprint speed every round for one hour (or even a minute). It's somewhere between the pace you would have at your base speed (30 x 10 (rounds per minute) = 300 feet) and dash speed (600 feet). It accounts for the idea of being able to dash for a few rounds, then return to a normal pace, or maintain a steady speed that's faster than walking but not a full dash.
The rules you're looking for are in the DMG under Running the Chase.
Dashing
During the chase, a participant can freely use the Dash action a number of times equal to 3 + its Constitution modifier. Each additional Dash action it takes during the chase requires the creature to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution check at the end of its turn or gain one level of exhaustion.
A participant drops out of the chase if its exhaustion reaches level 5, since its speed becomes 0. A creature can remove the levels of exhaustion it gained during the chase by finishing a short or long rest.
A character with MAX Constitution (+5) could dash for 8 rounds with a 20% chance of becoming exhausted each additional round.
After 2 levels of exhaustion, that player will be moving at half speed, so after approximately 15 rounds of dashing (900ft), it just not worth pushing it.
A Constitution check! Those are incredibly rare.
Starting at the end of round 9 (assuming you can't Dash as a bonus action, like a Rogue or Monk or Expert), our +5 (not a Bard or Champion, evidently) hero has a 20% chance to reach E1. At E1, you have disadvantage on the check, spiking you to 36%. Then at E2 you're at half speed, and at E5 you're speed 0.
That means the total number of checks you expect to pass initially is .8 + .8^2 + ..., or 1/(1-0.8)-1, which is 4.
At the end of round 13 we start rolling with disadvantage. Now the number we expect to pass is 1/0.36-1, or 1 and 7/9. So on average, we probably hit half speed at the end of round 15, as you said. Spot on, well done.
This also means any bard with Guidance can Dash indefinitely (due to having +9 to Constitution checks). Double-dashing indefinitely is rather difficult... Halfling Rogue/Bard is a 0.25% failure rate on the check. I suspect you'll need a magic item to get that down to 0%.
Dashing isn't really as relevant when you look at traveling as opposed to movement. I mean, yeah, traveling is movement, but it's kind of a zoomed-out version of movement as opposed to counting distances in feet. When going long distances, just stick with fast, normal, slow travel.
I get what you mean for the simplicity of long travel.
The situation propped up when an area or place was just a little above an hour or two away in a time sensitive event.
So again the ruling themselves seem implicit and maybe I am going off on too many assumption, however simple math dictates that it makes sense that a humanoid's walking speed of 30ft maximum fast pace would be 5 mph vs a walking speed of 25ft of a halfling/gnome/dwarf would be capped out at 4 mph just before going dashing speeds. Am I reading too much into the chart? Or is it appropriate to give the party a higher fast pace if the slowest is 30ft?
Well, dwarves often have higher constitution, so maybe they can maintain their dash speed a little longer, compensating for their shorter legs. (According to the Two Towers, this is definitely true.) Not sure how you would account for halflings and gnomes. But at the point of calculating travel times, it's an approximate abstraction. The point is that fast paced travel is slightly faster than walking speed but not quite dash speed. That remains true for any base speed between 25 and 35 feet. If you have a party that includes members whose base speed is below 25 feet (could happen if you have members with exhaustion), or you have a party where all members have a base speed faster than 35 feet (a bunch of aarakocra monks, say), then you might want to adjust. But there's no need to proportionally adjust for every deviation of your party's minimum base speed from 30'. It's just not going to make enough difference to matter.
@pavilionaire I didn't realize the fault in my assumption of the first sentence in Mounts and Vehicles. Thanks!
My assumption was a humanoid who frequently travels probably wouldn't have difficulty running for long periods of time but it seems as it was alluded to in the comments that the weight of items could slow someone down too much. Not to mention they typically don't wear convenient running clothes.
I also agree with your last comment. Frequently changing speeds would most likely be inconvenient, but definitely not difficult. I don't believe the players will mind as long as they are not doing the math. Then of course what constitutes a fast pace vs normal vs slow for the inbetweens speeds? I guess then it's drawing a line somewhere that people may not agree with.
@Memnosyne @quindraco Didn't ponder about having a Con Check that couldn't even fail. A hidden runner's feat, ha!
Everyone is correct in removing the concept of dashing from the concepts of long distance travel.
If this situation came up in my game (the party needs to get somewhere that is 2 hours travel away, but they need to do it in just 1 hour) I would ask "What are you going to do to increase your travel speed?". Some answers would succeed automatically or with an easy ability check (We will ride these horses to within an inch of their lives. We will use these spells to teleport half the distance in almost no time), other answers would need significant ability checks, and others would have negative consequences even if they succeed. If the answer came back "We will just try to run really fast the whole way", then that would be some tough Con(Athletics) checks to make it in time, and some exhaustion would be applied even if all checks passed.
This also means any bard with Guidance can Dash indefinitely (due to having +9 to Constitution checks). Double-dashing indefinitely is rather difficult... Halfling Rogue/Bard is a 0.25% failure rate on the check. I suspect you'll need a magic item to get that down to 0%.
I'm assuming you mean Max Con (+5), Jack of All Trades (+3), Guidance (Min +1). I have absolutely no issue with a 17 level character being able to run 144 miles in a 24 hour period.
For all other applications, I recommend the Ritual spell Phantom Steed. It can apparently gallop at a speed of 26 miles per hour, and since the spell only lasts for an hour, exhaustion is irrelevant. (~520 miles per 24 hours, accounting for recasting.)
This also means any bard with Guidance can Dash indefinitely (due to having +9 to Constitution checks). Double-dashing indefinitely is rather difficult... Halfling Rogue/Bard is a 0.25% failure rate on the check. I suspect you'll need a magic item to get that down to 0%.
I'm assuming you mean Max Con (+5), Jack of All Trades (+3), Guidance (Min +1). I have absolutely no issue with a 17 level character being able to run 144 miles in a 24 hour period.
For all other applications, I recommend the Ritual spell Phantom Steed. It can apparently gallop at a speed of 26 miles per hour, and since the spell only lasts for an hour, exhaustion is irrelevant. (~520 miles per 24 hours, accounting for recasting.)
17? You can do it by level 4. If you ban Ravnica content (so you can't get Guidance from Orzhov Representative), I think that delays you til level 5 so you can take a level in Divine Soul Sorcerer.
This also means any bard with Guidance can Dash indefinitely (due to having +9 to Constitution checks). Double-dashing indefinitely is rather difficult... Halfling Rogue/Bard is a 0.25% failure rate on the check. I suspect you'll need a magic item to get that down to 0%.
I'm assuming you mean Max Con (+5), Jack of All Trades (+3), Guidance (Min +1). I have absolutely no issue with a 17 level character being able to run 144 miles in a 24 hour period.
For all other applications, I recommend the Ritual spell Phantom Steed. It can apparently gallop at a speed of 26 miles per hour, and since the spell only lasts for an hour, exhaustion is irrelevant. (~520 miles per 24 hours, accounting for recasting.)
17? You can do it by level 4. If you ban Ravnica content (so you can't get Guidance from Orzhov Representative), I think that delays you til level 5 so you can take a level in Divine Soul Sorcerer.
This is really only true if you're running a chase or combat round after round, for 24 hours. I don't think people tend to do that.
The overland travel rules break down moving long distances based on how zoomed out you're looking. Days? Hours? Minutes? A chase is a special sort of encounter from that entirely, using instead rounds. So chases are all the way zoomed in, just like combats are. Long distance travel works differently.
Speed covers the rules for traveling at these more zoomed-out scales. Dashing or not isn't a factor in these zoomed-out scales of movement. Neither is movement speed for that matter. Your movement speeds are really only applicable in per-round scale encounters, such as combat or chases and etc. Your movement speed "assumes short bursts of energetic movement in the midst of a life-threatening situation" not your long distance or stable movement speeds.
You simply choose what pace to go, fast, slow, or just normal. Your chosen pace gives you advantages or disadvantages, such as being able to detect threats, or to stealth + etc, as well as how far you get every minute/hour/day.
So, you generally speaking can't dash for 24 hours no matter what your con saves get to, because dashing is only an option in combat or chases, and if you're travelling 24 hours you're likely using either the per hour scale or more likely the per day scale. In this case you could choose the Fast pace and travel either 4 miles every hour or 30 miles every day.
Anything other than that would require some sort of special mount or vehicle, or your DM to start homebrewing some long distance options for you.
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I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
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Good evening!
A recent discussion propped up about the ability of a person or creature running for long periods of time, and the variances in speed in a party.
The first problem that came up was how long can someone run/dash before getting exhausted or making con checks for exhaustion.
I think under Travel Pace under the PHB and Basic Rules there's a little section for Mount and Vehicles
So the first sentence makes me believe that most things can run for an hour before getting tired/exhausted. Unless this is explicit to horses?
Second problem was a humanoid pulling a wagon vs a horse pulling a wagon and trying to achieve the horse's dash speed. From my understanding of the reference above the "gallop" is equivalent to a dash at 80 ft per six seconds, which is close to ~9.1mph. Assuming both the wagons were light enough for the creatures' pulling capacity and that the humanoid's speed is 30 ft walking and 60 ft dashing it is fairly obvious that the humanoid would not will be able to keep up.
However, there was a claim that because the horse was in "fast" pace that the humanoid should also be in "fast" pace and be able to keep up. The chart for pacing was then referenced:
Obviously it doesn't list if someone or something goes their dash speed. Could one assume the fast pace penalty would also apply to the creature as long as they are going faster than their walking speed?
Then the final question, assuming question 1 was correct or accurate. Can creatures go as fast as they can without hitting their dash to go faster than fast pace? I.E. No one or thing's walking speed is below or 30 ft so they go 50 ft to avoid overexertion/exhaustion?
Dashing isn't really as relevant when you look at traveling as opposed to movement. I mean, yeah, traveling is movement, but it's kind of a zoomed-out version of movement as opposed to counting distances in feet. When going long distances, just stick with fast, normal, slow travel.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
The rules you're looking for are in the DMG under Running the Chase.
A character with MAX Constitution (+5) could dash for 8 rounds with a 20% chance of becoming exhausted each additional round.
After 2 levels of exhaustion, that player will be moving at half speed, so after approximately 15 rounds of dashing (900ft), it just not worth pushing it.
I get what you mean for the simplicity of long travel.
The situation propped up when an area or place was just a little above an hour or two away in a time sensitive event.
So again the ruling themselves seem implicit and maybe I am going off on too many assumption, however simple math dictates that it makes sense that a humanoid's walking speed of 30ft maximum fast pace would be 5 mph vs a walking speed of 25ft of a halfling/gnome/dwarf would be capped out at 4 mph just before going dashing speeds. Am I reading too much into the chart? Or is it appropriate to give the party a higher fast pace if the slowest is 30ft?
Moving long distance and moving short distance are just different rules. You can't dash while travelling, so problem solved.
I think it is limited to only certain animals ("many animals" in the quote) including horses. Humans can't run at a sprint pace for an hour. Probably most animals bred specifically as mounts can. But some animals like Wargs maybe can be used as mounts, but aren't bred as long-distance mounts. Like humans, they would probably would tire after a few rounds according to the chase rules Memnosyne pasted above.
Yes, but this is strange, as the Riding Horse and Warhorse both have a 60 foot base speed, which would get you 60 x 2 (dash) x 10 (rounds per minute) x 60 (minutes per hour) = 72,000 feet = 14 miles. But maybe they can't keep up their full sprint pace the whole time.
I think it's reasonable to say that a human can't dash while pulling a load, even one within their pulling capacity. I'm not sure RAW says anything about that, but common sense does. However, it might be reasonable to say that an animal bred specifically for that purpose, like a Draft Horse, can dash while pulling a load, so 80 feet per round. That's still not as fast as a Riding Horse. And I think it would be reasonable for the Draft Horse to follow the 8 miles per hour rule for riding above, if pulling a light load such as a passenger carriage, but it would be slower if pulling a heavy cargo cart.
No. The fast pace is the fastest you can go, and takes into account that you can't dash at sprint speed every round for one hour (or even a minute). It's somewhere between the pace you would have at your base speed (30 x 10 (rounds per minute) = 300 feet) and dash speed (600 feet). It accounts for the idea of being able to dash for a few rounds, then return to a normal pace, or maintain a steady speed that's faster than walking but not a full dash.
A Constitution check! Those are incredibly rare.
Starting at the end of round 9 (assuming you can't Dash as a bonus action, like a Rogue or Monk or Expert), our +5 (not a Bard or Champion, evidently) hero has a 20% chance to reach E1. At E1, you have disadvantage on the check, spiking you to 36%. Then at E2 you're at half speed, and at E5 you're speed 0.
That means the total number of checks you expect to pass initially is .8 + .8^2 + ..., or 1/(1-0.8)-1, which is 4.
At the end of round 13 we start rolling with disadvantage. Now the number we expect to pass is 1/0.36-1, or 1 and 7/9. So on average, we probably hit half speed at the end of round 15, as you said. Spot on, well done.
This also means any bard with Guidance can Dash indefinitely (due to having +9 to Constitution checks). Double-dashing indefinitely is rather difficult... Halfling Rogue/Bard is a 0.25% failure rate on the check. I suspect you'll need a magic item to get that down to 0%.
Well, dwarves often have higher constitution, so maybe they can maintain their dash speed a little longer, compensating for their shorter legs. (According to the Two Towers, this is definitely true.) Not sure how you would account for halflings and gnomes. But at the point of calculating travel times, it's an approximate abstraction. The point is that fast paced travel is slightly faster than walking speed but not quite dash speed. That remains true for any base speed between 25 and 35 feet. If you have a party that includes members whose base speed is below 25 feet (could happen if you have members with exhaustion), or you have a party where all members have a base speed faster than 35 feet (a bunch of aarakocra monks, say), then you might want to adjust. But there's no need to proportionally adjust for every deviation of your party's minimum base speed from 30'. It's just not going to make enough difference to matter.
Thank you all!
All of your inputs are pretty valuable.
@pavilionaire
I didn't realize the fault in my assumption of the first sentence in Mounts and Vehicles. Thanks!
My assumption was a humanoid who frequently travels probably wouldn't have difficulty running for long periods of time but it seems as it was alluded to in the comments that the weight of items could slow someone down too much. Not to mention they typically don't wear convenient running clothes.
I also agree with your last comment. Frequently changing speeds would most likely be inconvenient, but definitely not difficult. I don't believe the players will mind as long as they are not doing the math. Then of course what constitutes a fast pace vs normal vs slow for the inbetweens speeds? I guess then it's drawing a line somewhere that people may not agree with.
@Memnosyne
@quindraco
Didn't ponder about having a Con Check that couldn't even fail. A hidden runner's feat, ha!
Everyone is correct in removing the concept of dashing from the concepts of long distance travel.
If this situation came up in my game (the party needs to get somewhere that is 2 hours travel away, but they need to do it in just 1 hour) I would ask "What are you going to do to increase your travel speed?". Some answers would succeed automatically or with an easy ability check (We will ride these horses to within an inch of their lives. We will use these spells to teleport half the distance in almost no time), other answers would need significant ability checks, and others would have negative consequences even if they succeed. If the answer came back "We will just try to run really fast the whole way", then that would be some tough Con(Athletics) checks to make it in time, and some exhaustion would be applied even if all checks passed.
I'm assuming you mean Max Con (+5), Jack of All Trades (+3), Guidance (Min +1). I have absolutely no issue with a 17 level character being able to run 144 miles in a 24 hour period.
For all other applications, I recommend the Ritual spell Phantom Steed. It can apparently gallop at a speed of 26 miles per hour, and since the spell only lasts for an hour, exhaustion is irrelevant. (~520 miles per 24 hours, accounting for recasting.)
17? You can do it by level 4. If you ban Ravnica content (so you can't get Guidance from Orzhov Representative), I think that delays you til level 5 so you can take a level in Divine Soul Sorcerer.
Toss up some referenced numbers. I'm not understanding what math you're doing. Access to guidance wasn't an issue.
This is really only true if you're running a chase or combat round after round, for 24 hours. I don't think people tend to do that.
The overland travel rules break down moving long distances based on how zoomed out you're looking. Days? Hours? Minutes? A chase is a special sort of encounter from that entirely, using instead rounds. So chases are all the way zoomed in, just like combats are. Long distance travel works differently.
Speed covers the rules for traveling at these more zoomed-out scales. Dashing or not isn't a factor in these zoomed-out scales of movement. Neither is movement speed for that matter. Your movement speeds are really only applicable in per-round scale encounters, such as combat or chases and etc. Your movement speed "assumes short bursts of energetic movement in the midst of a life-threatening situation" not your long distance or stable movement speeds.
You simply choose what pace to go, fast, slow, or just normal. Your chosen pace gives you advantages or disadvantages, such as being able to detect threats, or to stealth + etc, as well as how far you get every minute/hour/day.
So, you generally speaking can't dash for 24 hours no matter what your con saves get to, because dashing is only an option in combat or chases, and if you're travelling 24 hours you're likely using either the per hour scale or more likely the per day scale. In this case you could choose the Fast pace and travel either 4 miles every hour or 30 miles every day.
Anything other than that would require some sort of special mount or vehicle, or your DM to start homebrewing some long distance options for you.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.