The Travel Pace Rules - How do they make sense?

[Giant2005]

The rules I am referring to are on pages 181 and 182 of the PHB - most notably, the table on page 182.
The rules state that the daily travel is assuming 8 hours worth of traveling, but the numbers don't seem to make sense.
The normal pace seems reasonable enough - 3 miles per hour for 8 hours is obviously 24 hours traveled. The minute to hour ratio is a little off but that can be attributed to simple rounding.
The other travel paces don't seem quite so reasonable. If you are traveling at a slow 2 miles per hour, how do you manage to travel 18 miles after 8 hours? A similar issue arises with the fast travel pace. For some reason, after 8 hours journeying at 4 miles per hour, you only manage to travel 30 miles.

I am trying to write a module that uses the travel pace rules and is very sensitive to the amount of time it takes the players to make their journey. I have no idea if I should be accounting for 8 hours of fast-paced travel to be 32 miles, or 30 miles. If I go with 30, I am sure someone out there will do the math and mess up the system by arriving at their destination earlier than I intend to be possible. If I go with 32, then the opposite will be true.

[Mongobear]

I agree that the math part of it doesnt make sense. My own group applied a little houserule fix that simply made it so slow pace is 50% of normal, and fast pace is 150% of normal, that way it maths out evenly. The first few sessions after we implemented this, there were a few hiccups of someone not remembering it, but it quickly became normal because of the correct math for distance/hours travelled.

[Belac93]

What I do, is I just set how far away something is by the time it takes to get there. I'm terrible with distance measurements, so its much easier. I just keep track of wherever they've gone in case they want to go back, and slower characters add a bit to travel time, while horses speed it up.

[Foxhound438]

the reason for the fast pace is that you don't constantly travel during that time. you stop every couple of hours for a rest.

How you magically get an extra 2 miles for a slow pace is perhaps from rounding? perhaps you're going 2.4 or so and again rest a bit here and there...

the same logic would be applied to the math for normal pace, except the increase in speed from 3 to ~3.4 balances exactly with the amount of distance you lose resting.

Why none of that would be said in the book is beyond me, but it's realistic to think of it like that. No really, you try walking for 8 hours without ever stopping, see how you fair.

WotC very well might have taken the distance traveled in a day at different paces according to some experienced group (ie infantry people) and divided the distance by 8 hours, and then just rounded to be free of having "2.25 miles per hour" and "3.75 miles per hour" messing up their never having decimal numbers in anything.

[Giant2005]

the reason for the fast pace is that you don't constantly travel during that time. you stop every couple of hours for a rest.

How you magically get an extra 2 miles for a slow pace is perhaps from rounding? perhaps you're going 2.4 or so and again rest a bit here and there...

the same logic would be applied to the math for normal pace, except the increase in speed from 3 to ~3.4 balances exactly with the amount of distance you lose resting.

Why none of that would be said in the book is beyond me, but it's realistic to think of it like that. No really, you try walking for 8 hours without ever stopping, see how you fair.

But those times already account for resting and such. The daily travel is what you would achieve for a total of 8 hours travel spread over an entire 24 hour period.

[bid]

The normal pace seems reasonable enough - 3 miles per hour for 8 hours is obviously 24 hours traveled. The minute to hour ratio is a little off but that can be attributed to simple rounding.
The other travel paces don't seem quite so reasonable. If you are traveling at a slow 2 miles per hour, how do you manage to travel 18 miles after 8 hours? A similar issue arises with the fast travel pace. For some reason, after 8 hours journeying at 4 miles per hour, you only manage to travel 30 miles.
Yeah, pit stop as Foxhound said.

Reverse it:
- 24 miles / 3 mph = 8 hours
- 18 miles / 2 mph = 9 hours (you skipped a short rest)
- 30 miles / 4 mph = 7.5 hours (you needed an extra break to catch your breath)

[Giant2005]

Yeah, pit stop as Foxhound said.

Reverse it:
- 24 miles / 3 mph = 8 hours
- 18 miles / 2 mph = 9 hours (you skipped a short rest)
- 30 miles / 4 mph = 7.5 hours (you needed an extra break to catch your breath)

That makes a lot of sense to me!

[some guy]

It also might be they rounded the distances up and down to match with the distances of an hex-grid. On most maps with hex-grids, the distance to travel through an hex is 3 or 6 miles*.
Fast- 30 miles= 5 or 10 hexes
Normal - 24 miles = 4 or 8 hexes
Slow - 18 miles = 3 or 6 hexes
So, per day it easy to see how many hexes the group can travel.

*3 miles is also more or less, the distance the horizon can be seen at, at an flat plane. So, standing in the centre of a flat hex of 3 miles, a pc could see the centre of the neighbouring hexes. For a hex of 6 miles, a pc could see the whole hex while standing in the centre.

[Christian]

These rules are set up for different scales of movement--they're not meant to be translated directly into each other. Notice that you also have a 'per minute' move on that table, and there's the standard 'per round' movement, and those numbers don't correlate either. What is the fast movement of 400 feet per minute supposed to represent? A character with a 30' movement using the Dash action for 4 of the 10 rounds during that minute, but not using all of the available movement? If he keeps that up for an hour, he should have moved 24,000 feet, or just over 4.5 miles. But the chart says that fast movement only gets you 4 miles per hour. ??

These are different levels of abstraction. Looking at someone's pace over six seconds, versus their entire waking hours, or even over an hour versus their day of travel, isn't something that can be directly compared. Pace will vary up and down based on how long you've been walking, whether you're currently on level ground or if there's a slight up or down slope. You'll take breaks, not necessarily full hour-long "short rests", but a minute or five to catch your breath. The "eight hours of travel" in a day of travel isn't eight consecutive hours of constant-pace walking, and shouldn't be treated that way. A 'fast pace' over a minute is probably walking a bit faster continuously over the minute; but over a full day, it may just be walking at a normal pace but taking fewer and shorter stops.

So, for example, if you imagine that the party breaks camp at 7 AM and starts traveling at 8 AM, and you want to know what time they arrive at their destination 16 miles away, there may not be a set answer for that by the rules. If they travel at a slow pace, that's their entire 8 hours of travel for the day, but that doesn't necessarily mean they got there at 4 PM. Maybe they did, and someone says, "Well, there's hours of daylight left--let's keep traveling at a slow pace, and cover some more miles before sundown." Then you bring out the forced march rules. Or, they could say they weren't forced marching and taking normal rest breaks instead, and you rule they arrive at the end of the day. The important thing is, if they cover more than 16 miles in the day, they either weren't traveling at a slow pace for the day, or they were forced marching, and that decision has to be made at the daily level if the daily movement rates are being used.

So, you handle it by the needs of the adventure, and set the timescale accordingly. Do they need to get to Castle Darkdungeon without being noticed by patrols? Cool--handle this at the daily scale, they travel 16 miles that day, get to make Stealth checks to try to avoid encounters, and the twisting spires of Castle Darkdungeon cast long shadows in the setting sun as they finally approach. Are they racing to beat a rival there, or to perform a ritual that needs to start at noon? Fast pace for four hours will get them that 16 miles by then. (That's probably the outside time frame I'd use hourly travel times for.) No pressure either way, but encounters get a lot more likely near the Castle? Split the difference--they cover 12 miles at a normal pace (half a day's travel, probably the shortest time frame I'd use the daily movement rates for) before an hour lunch break, and at 1 PM start using hourly travel 4 miles from the destination. Maybe this is a good time to switch to slow movement and take 2 hours to cover that last 4 miles stealthily--I thought I saw something moving over there, and it looked big ...

Basic sequence: players make their general intentions known, DM sets a timescale, players make their specific decisions, DM makes a ruling on time and distance. Often interrupted by one or more unexpected (by the players) events or encounters, for which the times and locations are also set by DM ruling. The timescale doesn't change until the situation does, though--if the travel pace is currently being run at the daily timescale, none of the other speeds matter at that point.

[RickAllison]

My two coppers: when the party has an odd movement speed, I just take that and apply it as a ratio to get the appropriate thing. So if they are mounted on riding horses, they cover twice as much ground.

We actually have the humorous experience in a campaign I am in of having 50 ft be the base speed of our group (level 10, a monk with his +20, a Druid using Giant Eagle, a 13 year old sorceress human, a halfling rogue (both of those last two are carried by the eagle, variant encumbrance brings him down to 60 ft), and my wizard Minotaur to whom the DM gave custom-fit Horseshoes of Speed. Makes for quite the comical sight...

[MBControl]

I often have trouble understanding the unwavering attitude towards the written rules, and need for constant math. I'm not saying this to insult, I actually don't understand. Clearly many people follow the book exactly as written, and I was wondering how this is improving your games, as far as game management and story advancement.

We don't play on a grid map, so the DM will simply state, it will take take you x days to travel from a to b. If I actually measured and should have been x+1 days, it doesn't really effect my story. The party does have the choice to force march or move stealthy which will effect the time needed, but overall we don't really measure the distance by feet.

I understand many things need to be played as is, but when it comes to travel times, and other "procedural" aspects what are the biggest benefits you gain?

[RickAllison]

I often have trouble understanding the unwavering attitude towards the written rules, and need for constant math. I'm not saying this to insult, I actually don't understand. Clearly many people follow the book exactly as written, and I was wondering how this is improving your games, as far as game management and story advancement.

We don't play on a grid map, so the DM will simply state, it will take take you x days to travel from a to b. If I actually measured and should have been x+1 days, it doesn't really effect my story. The party does have the choice to force march or move stealthy which will effect the time needed, but overall we don't really measure the distance by feet.

I understand many things need to be played as is, but when it comes to travel times, and other "procedural" aspects what are the biggest benefits you gain?

Often, it has to do with a time-sensitive travel. If we are trying to warn a castle of an invading army of goblins, I sure as heck want to take advantage of my party's speed being over twice theirs.

It can also have an effect when a party member is split off for some reason. In one adventure, the rest of my party was battered after a bad fight while my Aarakocra rogue was just fine. The rest of the party decided to long rest, but my birdie went to a local town to sell off some equipment and arm them against bandits in the region. He was only able to do so because he had both a higher speed and could fly over obstacles.

More recently, we had our DM tell us a homestead was X hours away, the only shelter in sight from the air. He had figured the time so that we would arrive just before nightfall, when some werewolves would attack (which we didn't know at the time). Due to our heightened party speed, we reached there with several hours to spare. We helped plant crops, improved this old farmer's life, and we're able to set up a trap for the werewolves to track them. Because of our adjusted travel time compared to what he had planned, we went from being ambushed to being the ambushers (they did not appreciate being wrecked by AoEs and an upcast Hold Person before they could even respond).

[Giant2005]

I often have trouble understanding the unwavering attitude towards the written rules, and need for constant math. I'm not saying this to insult, I actually don't understand. Clearly many people follow the book exactly as written, and I was wondering how this is improving your games, as far as game management and story advancement.

We don't play on a grid map, so the DM will simply state, it will take take you x days to travel from a to b. If I actually measured and should have been x+1 days, it doesn't really effect my story. The party does have the choice to force march or move stealthy which will effect the time needed, but overall we don't really measure the distance by feet.

I understand many things need to be played as is, but when it comes to travel times, and other "procedural" aspects what are the biggest benefits you gain?

I am writing a module and one area within it is a frozen wasteland that causes cold damage for every hour they remain. I could just say that the journey takes 20 hours, so take 20d6 damage, but that would just be damage for the sake of damage.
Instead they will be making survival rolls to make sure they stay on track (otherwise it might take more than 20 hours) and they can use spells like phantom steed to get there faster. The players can take measures to mitigate the damage, which converts the "damage for the sake of damage" into an actual encounter.

[MBControl]

Great thanks.

That makes perfect sense.