Community

Stormonu wrote:

Yeah, chases, races and such tend to be dull in D&D because of the static movement rate of everyone. Although I think I'd rather see it called "Manuever" instead of "Run". You could make "Manuever" checks to get an extra burst of speed, to dodge obstacles, make sharp turns and whatnot - all things that sound like something that makes this into a viable skill, and something that would make races, chases and the like more interesting.

Works for me. Of course then we'd need a way to represent the insane skill at this certain animals and monsters would have that we can't get.

For example, in a straight out run, humans are faster than housecats or rabbits, what we lack is acceleration and manuverability. In both they have us beat. This could be represented much like a hybrid of climb/flight mechanics we currently have. Different creatures would have a different manuverability class, which would make different checks either easier or unnecessary.

I'm not sure, actually, any ideas?

Janitor wrote:

Wouldn't that make things overly complicated? I don't think there's many chases going on in any D&D session anywhere. It's just the occasional character that makes a run for it, I don't think it's common enough to justify something like a maneuverability class. Also, the only thing that can happen to you if you run through straight hallways is that you trip, and how often has that happened to anyone of us in real life?

Chases through packed city centers or on a marketplace can be tackled by having characters and monsters/NPCs make a DEX check, depending on the crowd and number of obstacles.

Taking a cue on how Jump modifies you check based on your movement rate, I can't see why that couldn't be figured into a Manuever check; It would be Dex based, but it's like why you have a Hide skill instead of everyone just making a Dex check - some folks will be better at manuevering or evading pursuit than others.

Manuever would be a mix of raw speed, ability to turn on a dime and how well a creature can accelerate/deaccelerate. We could use it to get rid of the cumbersome fly manueverability classes and would have a ready-use mechanic (like grapple) for conducting races and handling other movement-based contests.

It would be nice if the manuever mechanic could be used to determine how far you actually move in a combat round, but I think that would probably add too much complexity for too little gain. Though I wouldn't mind seeing a mechanic where you can make a manuever check to try and get an extra burst of speed (say DC 15 for +5 feet, DC 20 for +10 feet, etc.). Something that wouldn't encourage it to be used every round - say maybe a once-an-encounter mechanic.

We could also get some neat mechanics that you couldn't easily do before - things like someone moving out of the way at the last moment of a charging attacker, causing them to completely miss, or run into something like a wall (the attacker makes the manuever roll); racing an opponent to an object both intend to grab (right now, the person with initiative will hands-down beat the opponent, before their opponent even take a step, no last-second grabs possible), racing to beat a walkway that is crumbling behind the PCs (or beating a cave-in, or an onrushing avalanche or any other sort of moving disaster), etc.