Running a Marathon in Various Systems

[No brains]

How easy or hard is it for a character to run a marathon in various RPG systems? There's so many differences in speed, constitution, and checking for fatigue that I suspect the answers are all probably pretty different.

Of course there are things a character could fly or teleport with, but this is about people running on foot. How fast can they go and for how long? It would probably be best to assume average stats for a baseline and then stack on ability scores or other effects to go from standard/ real life to absurd records.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Umm... well, in Mutants and Masterminds, I can have my guy hit the speed of light for... I think only 27 points spent on Speed, and that's before applying any flaws. Throw in something like Distracting and Limited to Straight Lines and I can do it with the starting power points of a PL 1 character. Immunity (need for sleep) is only 1 pp; I can't imagine "natural fatigue" would clock in any higher, so... yeah. Light speed, all day erry day.

Do I win?

[No brains]

Umm... well, in Mutants and Masterminds, I can have my guy hit the speed of light for... I think only 27 points spent on Speed, and that's before applying any flaws. Throw in something like Distracting and Limited to Straight Lines and I can do it with the starting power points of a PL 1 character. Immunity (need for sleep) is only 1 pp; I can't imagine "natural fatigue" would clock in any higher, so... yeah. Light speed, all day erry day.

Do I win?

No, and Willy Wonka will yell at you about it, but that's probably because I'm usually bad at describing what I'm looking for in my OPs.

What I'm curious about is how different systems would model an average human running a marathon. Whether it uses movement measured in turns, rounds, hours, or days, I want to know what various game systems think of a normie running 26.2 miles or 42.195 kilometers. How fast can they do it? Do they risk their health doing so? That kind of thing.

I believe in 5e D&D, travelling at a fast pace for a whole day covers 30 miles in 8 hours with no checks whatsoever. In 5e, a 3 constitution halfling can run a marathon without collapsing, but they must take ~8 hours to do it. They will do it at the same pace as a normal human or a max stats wood elf because 5e doesn't factor in personal speed when doing overland movement. If you can somehow convince your DM to make an encounter that spans all the way from the shores of Marathon to the gates of Athens, your results may vary, especially if you add more powers than any normal person could get.

I think in 3rd edition D&D, movement speed mattered and a constitution check was made for every hour of 'hustling', or double-moving on your turn. This meant that average humans could probably run a marathon faster, but with a significantly higher risk of fatigue. My book is buried right now and I thought I heard something bad about one of the SRD sites, I can't remember which, so I can't check right now.

Now in Mutants and Masterminds, what are the basic rules for going places on foot and how do those rules interact with that system's idea of an 'average' person? Can an unenhanced human run a marathon quickly, comfortably, or in any way different than I may expect? I don't think every person can blow 27 points on running faster than they can see. You stole the fizzy lifting drinks, but you can still turn in the gobstopper.

[LibraryOgre]

In 2nd edition AD&D, the "Running" proficiency will allow you to move at twice your normal movement rate for a day.... 24 for a human.

A normal human, in 10 hours, will walk 24 miles (adjusted for terrain). Someone with Running will run 48 miles in those same 10 hours. To run a second day, they must either have the Endurance proficiency or make a Constitution -6 check on a d20; if they succeed, they can run a second day (Endurance allows you to do things twice as long, so it only requires a check every other day, as I read it).

Running is a Warrior-group proficiency, so any Warrior (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin; Bards also have access to warrior proficiencies) can take it for 1 NWP slot. Endurance is a two-slot Warrior proficiency. Non-warriors who want these proficiencies must spend an extra slot.

[Geddy2112]

Walking 26.2 miles in 8 hours is not all that hard. A marathon does that in 4x the speed, the equal of most characters running in a 3.X system. In pathfinder, 8 hours of travel is 24 miles, 3 miles per hour which is pretty leisurely pace. This can be decreased by up to half for harsh terrain.

In pathfinder, the Skald gets the ability called song of marching, allowing characters to count as hustling instead of walking for overland travel. 1 round of performance= 1 hour. This allows players to go 48 miles in 8 hours(6mph) with no more effort than walking, hitting the marathon point about 4.5hours in, which is close to your average marathon time.

In pathfinder, hustling for 1 hour has no penalty, but for each hour after you take 1 times the # of hours hustled after one nonlethal damage. So 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. This also causes fatigue, which does not prevent hustling, just prevents running or charging. That said, this damage can be healed magically so you can simply spam healing and hustle without penalty. For tough enough characters or characters immune to nonlethal damage, they can simply do this without healing and be fine. For us average joes, we would be fatigued, then eventually knocked out from nonlethal damage. Characters can also go more than 8 hours a day by making a forced march, which does nonlethal damage and fatigue. If players wanted, they could reasonably increase their overland speed by increasing the # of checks or times nonlethal damage is counted. So at double speed (12mph) you are running a marathon very fast, in ~2.25 hours.

So with any magical healing or decent character levels in pathfinder, most characters can run a marathon in 4.5 hours, and do 48 hours a day. With a skald, it can be even longer. If they are really tough, characters can rival speeds of fast marathon runners.

[Slipperychicken]

[In shadowrun 5e, assuming a totally unexceptional human whose relevant stats are: 3 body, 3 willpower, and 3 agility. He is simply jogging rather than sprinting]

138,435 feet to go. He can jog that at a rate of 12 meters (about 40 feet) per 3 seconds. That will take 3,156.25 combat turns, which is about 175.8 minutes worth of nonstop jogging. Of course, Joe Wageslave doesn't have that kind of endurance..


Every 3 minutes of continuous running, the character must soak N points of stun damage, where N is the number of 3-minute intervals he's been running for. So at minute three he takes 1S, the at minute six he takes 2S, at minute nine is 3S, and so on.

His resistance to fatigue is willpower+body, which is 6. That means he negates two points of stun damage on average. Only 9 points of stun damage can get through before poor Joe collapses from exhaustion. After about 18 minutes of nonstop jogging, Joe would get 4,320 meters (14,173 feet) before he succumbs to fatigue.

Our friend joe would just have to walk it, really. He's in no shape to run a whole marathon.