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Movement Rate


Marc

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RE differing MOV's (which I agree is more realistic) ... If you want the added complexity, I'd go with STR for humanoids, with +1 the MOV at 13 (to MOV 9) and +1 it again (toMOV 10) at 17; but only /specifically for a sprint (up to 400m?)

For distances (over 1km) I'd offer the same +1's for larger SIZ (if specified as height; thick don't help!), and again for bigger CON (so a tall & high-CON character has a MOV up to 12 over long distances.

I'd penalize by -1's at 8 & 4.

But I don't think I /WILL/ do any of that fiddly HR'ing, because it's actually too fiddly for my tastes these days ...

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I like the 7th-edition Call of Cthulhu movement-rate rules; everyone starts with base MOV 8 (sound familiar?), and you get +1 if your SIZ is the lowest of STR/SIZ/DEX or –1 if it's the highest of the three. And you also lose 1 MOV for each full decade above 30 (so –1 at 40–49, –2 at 50–59, etc.).

It's not super-crunchy, but it does mean that different investigators have different movement rates… which is a big thing in a game where you often just need to outrun your fellow PCs. :-)

I'd probably use the same +1/–1 adjustments in RuneQuest, at least as a starting point.

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21 hours ago, seneschal said:

Now my head hurts!  😵

I prefer simple tactical movement systems.  "Your character moves X hexes per combat round, period.  You can move half of that and still attack."  

I prefer something fairly similar. A character can move X and attack, or 2X and not. Maybe 3X with a running roll.

But my displease with the new move rates isn't with the method, but with the rate. 24m per round for a running person is very slow, and give missile troops much more time to pepper opponents with arrows. 

 

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4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I prefer something fairly similar. A character can move X and attack, or 2X and not. Maybe 3X with a running roll.

But my displease with the new move rates isn't with the method, but with the rate. 24m per round for a running person is very slow, and give missile troops much more time to pepper opponents with arrows. 

 

That's why ancient warriors had their shield bearers march in front of them.  Persian bearers protected their comrades with giant mats of straw intended to soak up missile barrages.  Goliath of Gath had his shield bearer precede him when he went to fight David (and we know how that turned out).

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30 minutes ago, seneschal said:

That's why ancient warriors had their shield bearers march in front of them. 

No it wasn't. Ancient warriors moved faster than 24m/round (7.2kph/4.5mph). While they did use shields and shield bearers for protection, it wasn't because of their  move rate. 

Now we can all  talk about armor, hustling on the battlefield, etc. but the reality is, people and animals should move faster than they do in RQG. Speaking of animals, look at calvary.  Assuming a 12 Move (per the latest BRP) then horses would be moving at 36m/round (10.8kph/6.7mph). I can run faster than 7mph on two legs.


 

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42 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Now we can all  talk about armor, hustling on the battlefield, etc. but the reality is, people and animals should move faster than they do in RQG. Speaking of animals, look at calvary.  Assuming a 12 Move (per the latest BRP) then horses would be moving at 36m/round (10.8kph/6.7mph). I can run faster than 7mph on two legs.


 

Whee!  Can I ride on your shoulders?  We can charge, er, I mean, stroll casually into battle together.  It’ll be epic!  😃

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17 hours ago, Anunnaki said:

Let's look at the Loaded March (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_march).

Roman standard march rate is 29.62 km in 6 hours,  carrying 20.5 kg of gear. This equates to 16.46m per 12 second round.

Forced march rate is 35.54 km in 6 hours, carrying 20.5 kg of gear. This equates to 19.74m per 12 second round.

There is no mention in the article about terrain quality -- if marching, I would assume at least reasonably clear terrain, like a road or trail.

And that's LOADED.

All of the hand-waving about "well, it's moving cautiously around a combat area" (so what's my move if I'm just going shopping, then?) or "it's if they're heavily laden with pack and armor and gear" (characters don't necessarily LIVE in their full battle regalia; what if my toon is just taking a walk without all that crap?) smells suspiciously like extraordinary rationalization for what is ultimately just a mechanically wrong number.

It would seem a big mistake to me to build character movement rates making all sorts of contextual assumptions, anyway.

WHAT DOES A PERSON MOVE WALKING ACROSS LEVEL GROUND? should be the starting point.    Then if you want to apply modifiers for running/sprinting, encumbrance, slope, setting, congestion, footing, surface, magic, foliage, footwear, their previous meal, or whatever....then apply them appropriately.  That's how it should be done, as complicated or simply as one wants to do it. 

If the numbers in a game are mistaken, this is the opportunity to fix them and move on.  It's silly to wrack yourself into contortions rationalizing what's ultimately just an error because of a slavish need to be consistent with a 40 year old game that had the same error.

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I agree, its too slow. If this is an error from the older version, why was it not corrected? There seems to have been a lot of this carrying things over from the old days without bothering to check and see if they were broken to begin with or would cause problems with new rules. It does not look like the designers did any of that properly.

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I wouldn't say it's an error from an older edition.  My copy of RQ2 indicates that movement in melee was 3m/MOV unit( 24 meters for humans ), and running( actual term used was Flight/Chase/Unhampered movement ) was double that.  It may be that they considered the melee rate to be running, but I never did.  I can say that, back when I was young and foolish, I was a fighter in the SCA, and fought in a few tournaments wearing armor, with sword and shield.   I never ran during those fights!  

In any case, I'm going with the 24 meters in melee, 48 for running, and leave it at that.

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I ditched conventional Movement AND the basic Strike Rank system for one where each SR equals one second of time.  My movement rates were based on METERS PER SECOND (SR) and consisted of (for a human):

Sprint:  8m/SR

Run:  6m/SR

Trot:  4m/SR

Walk:  2m/SR

Crawl:  1m/SR

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On 2/5/2019 at 6:57 PM, seneschal said:

Now my head hurts!  😵

I prefer simple tactical movement systems.  "Your character moves X hexes per combat round, period.  You can move half of that and still attack."  

So do I. Anything else is just too much hassle for me.

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I haven't seen any reference in this thread to the fact that each 'MOV unit' requires one strike rank.

That seems to resolve a lot of the questions about how much you can mix movement with other activities.

However, it leaves at least two oddities unresolved;

1: Creatures with vastly different speeds effectively move at the same rate up to their limit. That is, a creature with a MOV of 4 (e.g. Human with Slow) and a creature with a MOV of 16 (e.g. Human with Mobility) both require 4 strike ranks to travel 4 MOV units (i.e. 12 meters if hurrying). If both were rushing to be the first to get to the magical mcguffin then a MOV 4 character 9 meters away would get there before a MOV 16 (or MOV 600) character 10 meters away.

2: Creatures with MOV higher than 12 have some amount 'left over'. That is, a MOV 16 character should be able to go 48 meters in a round, but they are limited to 3 per strike rank and there are 12 strike ranks... so it caps out at 36 meters. Are the remainder 'lost'? All happen at the end of SR 12?

 

One possible resolution to both the issues above would be to change the rules to allow characters to go 'MOV / 12' (round up) move units per SR rather than having all creatures fixed at one move unit per SR. In that case our MOV 16 character could get to the mcguffin in 2 SR (beating the closer MOV 4 character by 1 SR) and would hit their 48 meter cap at 8 SRs of movement.

 

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15 hours ago, CBDunkerson said:

I haven't seen any reference in this thread to the fact that each 'MOV unit' requires one strike rank.

That seems to resolve a lot of the questions about how much you can mix movement with other activities.

......

2: Creatures with MOV higher than 12 have some amount 'left over'. That is, a MOV 16 character should be able to go 48 meters in a round, but they are limited to 3 per strike rank and there are 12 strike ranks... so it caps out at 36 meters. Are the remainder 'lost'? All happen at the end of SR 12

Movement happens before Strike Ranks begin; If you use less than half of  your MOV, you may do something else (Shoot, cast spells, etc...), but your SR is delayed by 1 for each 3m you actually moved, as long as you can get it done by SR 12. (p. 192 - movement of non-engaged characters). Characters which begin the round engaged, may not move that round.

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15 hours ago, CBDunkerson said:

I haven't seen any reference in this thread to the fact that each 'MOV unit' requires one strike rank. (snip)

1: Creatures with vastly different speeds effectively move at the same rate up to their limit. (snip)

2: Creatures with MOV higher than 12 have some amount 'left over'. (snip)

Good observations.  Our system (laid out previously in this thread) includes both of those appropriately, based around the concept that RQ3's "Humans Move 3" = 1 hex (1m) move per SR.

So anything that has a move of "3" moves 1hex/sr.  If the MR for a creature is shown as 6 it moves 2 hexes per SR.  It might seem complicated to address MR of, say, 11 or 2 (ie they aren't multiples of 3) but it really isn't...the trick is just to look at it in pulses of 3 sr.  A duck with an MR of 2 would move 1hex in their first available SR, 1 in the next, and 0 in the 3rd, repeating as long as they have SR to move.  (So in 3SR she's moved 2 hexes.)  Something with an MR of 11 would move 4, 4, 3 and repeat that pattern.  A duck running (MR doubles to 4) would move 2, 1, 1.

Thus faster things intrinsically move faster EACH SR, instead of the same speed and then getting more SR of movement (which I agree doesn't make sense).

Of course, nothing is 'left over' as this is treated as a movement RATE, not a count.

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18 hours ago, CBDunkerson said:

I haven't seen any reference in this thread to the fact that each 'MOV unit' requires one strike rank.

That seems to resolve a lot of the questions about how much you can mix movement with other activities.

However, it leaves at least two oddities unresolved;

1: Creatures with vastly different speeds effectively move at the same rate up to their limit. That is, a creature with a MOV of 4 (e.g. Human with Slow) and a creature with a MOV of 16 (e.g. Human with Mobility) both require 4 strike ranks to travel 4 MOV units (i.e. 12 meters if hurrying). If both were rushing to be the first to get to the magical mcguffin then a MOV 4 character 9 meters away would get there before a MOV 16 (or MOV 600) character 10 meters away.

2: Creatures with MOV higher than 12 have some amount 'left over'. That is, a MOV 16 character should be able to go 48 meters in a round, but they are limited to 3 per strike rank and there are 12 strike ranks... so it caps out at 36 meters. Are the remainder 'lost'? All happen at the end of SR 12?

 

3 hours ago, Thyrwyn said:

Movement happens before Strike Ranks begin; If you use less than half of  your MOV, you may do something else (Shoot, cast spells, etc...), but your SR is delayed by 1 for each 3m you actually moved, as long as you can get it done by SR 12. (p. 192 - movement of non-engaged characters). Characters which begin the round engaged, may not move that round.

Aye, the movement system, RAW, is thoroughly borked. It bears little relationship to reality (either in terms of ground covered or how movement affects what else is going on in a round) and drags the combat system further from simulation and towards abstraction than I'm comfortable with. It requires overmuch interpretation by the GM of how it's supposed to work outside the very narrow confines in which it could be considered to be 'believable'.

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10 hours ago, Thyrwyn said:

Movement happens before Strike Ranks begin; If you use less than half of  your MOV, you may do something else (Shoot, cast spells, etc...), but your SR is delayed by 1 for each 3m you actually moved, as long as you can get it done by SR 12. (p. 192 - movement of non-engaged characters). Characters which begin the round engaged, may not move that round.

That's not really how it works.

See the example on page 195. Vasana spends SRs 1-5 casting Demoralize, SRs 6-8 moving 9 meters, and SRs 6-10 (the GM allowed simultaneous action) readying her bow.

Thus, you can take movement in the 'middle' of the round after other actions... rather than it just always delaying the SR of your first action as you seemed to be saying. Essentially, each 3 meters of movement is an action that takes one SR to complete. Thus, a character with sufficient MOV and melee attack skill (i.e. to split attacks) could potentially start a round disengaged, move up to an enemy, attack and disable that enemy, move to another enemy, and attack again. It is really a very open and flexible movement system... other than the two oddities I pointed out.

Also, you absolutely CAN move on a round you began engaged... a mounted character becomes disengaged from an unmounted opponent after SR 6 and can then move away (see pg 195 Retreating, another example of mid round movement). Cast Teleportation on SR 1 and you can be disengaged and free to move on SR 2. Or cast Invisibility and then successfully sneak away unheard. If your only engaging enemy is killed then you aren't engaged any more and are free to move that same round. Heck, just turn and run on SR 1 (leaving yourself open to attack) and you are disengaged on SR 2 and free to continue moving.

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On 2/6/2019 at 6:19 PM, Anunnaki said:

Let's look at the Loaded March (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_march).

Roman standard march rate is 29.62 km in 6 hours,  carrying 20.5 kg of gear. This equates to 16.46m per 12 second round.

Forced march rate is 35.54 km in 6 hours, carrying 20.5 kg of gear. This equates to 19.74m per 12 second round.

There is no mention in the article about terrain quality -- if marching, I would assume at least reasonably clear terrain, like a road or trail.

In the 10th Mountain, we had them beat.  Every 3 months we did a 30-mile road march in 6-7 hours (you'd better NOT take 😎 with an 80lb ruck.  You could only get it done if you "Airborne Shuffled" (kind of a slow jog) on the flats.  I really mind didn't the weekly 10-mile humps after doing a couple of 30's.

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The overland movement rates chart on page 102 lists 40 km per day on a royal road in good weather. So it is in the same ballpark. At that, barbarian peasants may not be trained to the same standards as specialized military units.

None of which has anything to do with 'movement in combat' which RQ:G deliberately treats separately. They seem to be taking the view that properly positioning yourself in a chaotic melee situation reduces the rate you can move at.

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