Opinions needed on Monk 'base' speed RAW/RAI

[Odessa333]

So this came up last night, and I wanted to get some feedback.


Monks have fast movement which is an enhancement bonus. If I have a level 13 human monk (base speed 30, 40 foot fast movement enhancement bonus for 70 total) and a spell gives a swim speed of half your base movement, would it be 15 feet (half of 30) or 35 (half of 70). Wording seems clear that by RAW it should be 15 feet. The player's argument is that the RAI, a monk can never really lose this bonus, so it should be his 'base' speed as that's how fast he always moves.

Thoughts?

[Cowardly Griffo]

You lose that bonus when you're armored or carrying a medium or heavy load; swimming would probably qualify as being so encumbered, if you wanted to make that argument.

That said? I'd probably side with the player. A spell granting a swim speed could just as easily be argued as removing whatever 'encumbrance' the water would normally give, so the speed enhancement would probably still apply. Besides, moving fast is one of the few things the monk is good at, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that swimming fast isn't going to break your game. I'd say let 'im keep it. That's probably the RAI anyway.

[aleucard]

The fact that it doesn't mention what type of movement that the enhancement boosts could be read to mean that she adds that number to any movement speed after calculation, meaning 15+40=55. Which reading you use really depends on how accommodating you want to be to the player. Personally, he's already taken quite possibly the weakest class in the PHB this far, throw him a bone. Granted, this really depends on your specific party and how his character fits in it, but still.

[grarrrg]

The fact that it doesn't mention what type of movement that the enhancement boosts could be read to mean

It does mention:
"a monk gains an enhancement bonus to his land speed"

[StreamOfTheSky]

If it were 3.5, the bonus would transfer entirely to whatever movement the monk got a listed speed for. PF nerfed it to land only because PF hates monks.

As for your question, from what I can tell "base speed" is the same as "land speed," the two seem to be used interchangeably in the rules. I'd say you would use half the monk's total land speed for that spell, not just half the speed before monk bonus. By RAW.

By RAI...monk freaking sucks, you could houserule a ton of things to its favor and it'd still not be remotely overpowered. So yeah, either way.