Multiple Modes of Movement

[Ruethgar]

If you have multiple modes of movement that you use in one round, how do you determine max speed?

Ex: land speed 40ft, swim and climb 20ft
You need to cross a 20ft wide stream 10ft away and scale a 20ft ledge on the other side. How far could you get up the ledge?

[NerdHut]

I believe it's proportional. If you move half your land speed, you can spend the rest of your move action to move half your swim or climb speed.

Using your example:
10 ft to the stream (1/4 of your total movement speed)
20 ft to cross the stream, assuming it's calm enough water to move normally (your entire move action, plus the 1/4 from before)
That leaves us with 3/4 your total movement speed, which for 20-ft climb would be 15 ft.

[Ruethgar]

So if I instead had the water subtype, I could move 10ft, swim 20ft, and climb 5ft with still a standard left. Or if I could just make the epic checks, move into across and up 10ft as a move.

Edit: What if the speeds are not easily divisible? With the above example, the creature gets +15 to their movement modes. 55/35/35. Do you just round either way to total up to 55?

[Elkad]

So if I instead had the water subtype, I could move 10ft, swim 20ft, and climb 5ft with still a standard left. Or if I could just make the epic checks, move into across and up 10ft as a move.

Edit: What if the speeds are not easily divisible? With the above example, the creature gets +15 to their movement modes. 55/35/35. Do you just round either way to total up to 55?

Heh, I'd probably break out the Star Fleet Battles Impulse chart and plot it as 3 speed changes. Convert to 5' squares first. Run the chart for each 5' square.
You'd make it in a move action, which is generous.

You could do the math instead. 10/55+20/35+20/35
18.x%+57.x%+57.x%=132.x % of a move action.

[NerdHut]

Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of the game, I believe there's a chart for movement speeds as they decrease. I'll post where if I can find it, but otherwise, I'd say do the calculation and round down to the nearest increment of 5.

[Venger]

This is a really interesting question. The phb, dmb, and even rules compendium are silent on the issue. Does anyone know anyplace where rules are written for this?

[Zombulian]

This is a really interesting question. The phb, dmb, and even rules compendium are silent on the issue. Does anyone know anyplace where rules are written for this?

I feel like there's a weird renaissance in progress on these boards as of late. A new exploit appeared in the E6 Iron Chef, new names around here are making meaningful contributions, and new questions that no one's ever considered are popping up all the time.

[Venger]

I feel like there's a weird renaissance in progress on these boards as of late. A new exploit appeared in the E6 Iron Chef, new names around here are making meaningful contributions, and new questions that no one's ever considered are popping up all the time.

There are certain advantages to a game being as badly written as 3.5.

[Zombulian]

There are certain advantages to a game being as badly written as 3.5.

I may need to sig this

[Venger]

I may need to sig this

please, feel free.

[Ruethgar]

...and new questions that no one's ever considered are popping up all the time.

This question has been considered, I’ve found several threads, but they all came to the same conclusion of homebrewing proportionally. However I didn’t see one from GitPG and I trust this community to find obscure tables and raw.

It should also be noted that you can use swim/climb as part of a move action according to their respective skills. However burrow, fly, and walking do not have that language readily available, if at all. So you could fly/swim/climb or burrow/s/c or walk/s/c, but without GM adjudication or a harder to find rule, you couldn’t fly/walk/burrow.

[PacMan2247]

It's there, but you have to piece it together from a lot of different places. I've been reading the PHB, DMG, and MMI and flipping through a lot of different sections, so I'm going to ask you to forgive me not giving page citations, but I'm going to do my best to not insert houserules I've experienced.

Movement is based on how many unobstructed 5-foot squares a character could get through. Difficult terrain costs 2 squares of movement for each square moved, and an obstruction costs 3 (2 for the obstruction, plus the one for the actual square moved).

To use the 40/swim 20/climb 20, starting 10 feet from a 20-foot river with a 20-foot cliff on the other side given in the original example:

1. 10 feet to the river. Great, 30 feet remaining.
2. What type of river is this? Muddy shores (difficult terrain out to wherever it's deep enough to actually swim) or rocky shores (probably one square of difficult terrain until you can swim)? Let's assume the difficult terrain is only 5 feet wide, using up another ten feet of movement. 20 feet remaining, and here's where it gets sticky.

You've used up half of a movement mode, and are trying to switch to another, and as others have noted, there doesn't seem to be anything in RAW to deal with it. Someone being really hardnosed about it could say that's it for your movement: you've walked/jogged/whatever across the ground, and now you're looking to swim (a different type of movement), so welcome to your next move action this round. Others would argue for proportional movement, and say "Give the character half his/her swim speed". Either way, you're probably still looking at a swim check- you can only move your swim speed without a check in the absence of a hazard; if we're worrying about tactical movement in this situation, there are probably hazards in addition to the current.

At this point, if it were my character, I'd prefer the hardnosed approach. This lets you take a double move to get to the other side of the river either way, and be holding onto the base of the cliff. The 'proportional movement' argument would get you halfway up the cliff on a double move, which is not a great place to end your movement in a combat situation (and again, if there's nothing threatening you, you're not in tactical movement anyway). You also don't want to take a single move and stop in the middle of the river, because then you're swept downstream, taking at least an extra round to get back. Next turn, make your climb check, and you're at the top of the cliff with your standard action remaining, which is an impressive feat if you think about the fact that it took you roughly nine seconds to cover 10 feet of land, 20 of river, and then scale a 20-foot cliff.

Depending on armor and Strength, I might even prefer to Jump it, especially if I had ranks in it for some reason. The DC for a 20-foot long jump is 20 (assuming you use part of your move to go along the bank to get the 20-foot running start), and you've already got a +4 bonus for your speed. Needing a 16 or better isn't great, but failing by 5 or less still leaves you hanging on the other side, while success means you can use a second move action in that turn to scale the cliff; no matter how your table rules on changing movement modes, it's the only (non-flight) option that gets you across and up the cliff in one turn.

[Elkad]

You didn't get a 20' running start, so the DC to jump the river is doubled (though there are a lot of exceptions to that).
Even if you did make the check, jumping counts against your total movement. So you've moved 30' on the "ground". Proportionally, that would only leave 5' of climbing for the 40g/20s/20c character.

If you can make the DC:40 to jump the river, DC48 to grab the top of the ledge may be in range as well. (assuming an 8' reach size M jumper). Oops, doubling for no run. DC96, so discard that. You still need another move action to pull yourself up though.

And I just realized there is nothing in the rules about the top of the wall. Logically, you are going to finish your climb prone in an edge square, and still have to use a move to stand.

[Zaq]

Hmm. So pulling in 4e stuff is in no way RAW for 3.5, and it's unlikely to even necessarily be RAI. But we might call it "Rules As Playable" if we like it.

In 4e, if you have multiple movement modes, your highest movement mode determines the maximum amount of total movement you can handle in one turn (or at least in one move action), but during that one move action, you can't move farther using a given movement mode than that movement mode allows.

So if you've got a land speed of 50', a swim speed of 20', and a climb speed of 20', under the 4e rules (which would use squares rather than feet, but whatevs), you can move no more than a total of 50' in a given move action. Up to 20' of it can be swimming and up to 20' of it can be climbing, but no more than that. You can have an action that consists of walking 50', or of walking 30' and climbing 20', or of climbing 20' and swimming 20' and walking 10', but not of climbing 30'.

While there are some edge cases that get weird (ain't that always the way), I have to admit that this set of rules makes intuitive sense to me, and in the absence of actual rules text from the edition in question, I'd be in favor of backporting them.

[PacMan2247]

You didn't get a 20' running start, so the DC to jump the river is doubled (though there are a lot of exceptions to that).
Even if you did make the check, jumping counts against your total movement. So you've moved 30' on the "ground". Proportionally, that would only leave 5' of climbing for the 40g/20s/20c character.

If you can make the DC:40 to jump the river, DC48 to grab the top of the ledge may be in range as well. (assuming an 8' reach size M jumper). Oops, doubling for no run. DC96, so discard that. You still need another move action to pull yourself up though.

And I just realized there is nothing in the rules about the top of the wall. Logically, you are going to finish your climb prone in an edge square, and still have to use a move to stand.

Running 20 feet in a straight line doesn't necessarily require running that line perpendicular to the river, and contrary to what you might expect, the Jump skill doesn't require that the running start and the jump itself be on the same vectors. A 90-degree change of direction would sap a great deal of momentum, but a vector change under 45 degrees is more than possible without loss of momentum (though it does put a lot of torque on the ankles in particular). A Jump check failed by 5 or less allows a DC 15 Reflex save to cling to the opposite edge of whatever you were jumping, which is a fine place to start a climb.

Starting from 10 feet away from the bank, a 20-foot run would put you approximately 17 feet either upstream or downstream from your starting position. That difference may or may not be relevant tactically- if you're fleeing, getting across the stream and on top of the cliff in one turn may be enough to save your life. If you're attacking...well, a frontal assault on high ground from across a river was a bad decision in the first place.

[Elkad]

Running 20 feet in a straight line doesn't necessarily require running that line perpendicular to the river, and contrary to what you might expect, the Jump skill doesn't require that the running start and the jump itself be on the same vectors.
...

Sure, but now you've added another 10' to your movement needed to get to the top of the cliff.

If you don't have a swim speed, it will be well worth it. If your swim speed is close to your land speed, it's probably not.

[PacMan2247]

Sure, but now you've added another 10' to your movement needed to get to the top of the cliff.

If you don't have a swim speed, it will be well worth it. If your swim speed is close to your land speed, it's probably not.

How do you add to the 10' to the top of the cliff? 20 feet of movement along the bank + 20 feet of jump uses up one move. You're then across the river on the cliff, one move action (assuming you pass the Climb check) from the top. You're just not directly across from where you started.

[Elkad]

I should have wrote "added 10' to your total movement from the start point to the top of the cliff" I guess.

20 on shore, 20 over water, 20 up. 60'
If you go straight, it's 10,20,20. Closer. Just not necessarily faster, depending on your relative move rates.

[Ruethgar]

I'm inclined to use the 4e rules mentioned they are simple, less math involved. I personally would be fine with more math, but my brother is always on about how we should simplify the game(he hasn't had time to look into 5e). In general the 4e rules seems to cover it quite well.

If we are going into specifics, the character has woodland stride and a +10 jump from dragon wings, max ranks in jump, but -2 Str mod for a +16 total. So in an actual game with the proposed scenario, jumping would be much more efficient as I could take a free action at full jump height to glide halfway across the stream. Assuming average roll of 10 jump I lose 2.5 from gliding and reached a height of about 6.4 ft a practical GM would allow me to round up and just call it landing 5ft up the cliff. 20ft running start, 10ft movement from jump(15 if you count height), 5ft or 10ft climb and I'm halfway or more up the cliff in a single move using the 4e standard of 40ft total or with proportionality I move only 5ft climbing if vertical movement isn't counted against a long jump and lack a whole 5ft movement speed for climb if it is counted against.