converting movement rates and fly rates to travel miles per day? (or KM)

[bookkeeping guy]

So as the title suggests...trying to figure out miles per day travel from movement rates with monsters and humanoids.

With people this isn't too hard I can go off real world physics.

But it gets harder with flying creatures, specially if you have mounts like griffons or , what if there's a dragon in the campaign (could be evil or allied) etc...flying rates are usually much higher than humanoid rates and this means it can skew things a bit too if someone is off on calculation.

[Elkad]

10' of speed is 1mph

Or 5' of speed is 4 miles in 8 hours of regular overland travel. Same thing.

That's highway travel. I don't know if it actually says how to treat flying anywhere, but I treat nearly all of it as highway.

And compared to actual Earth birds, flying creatures are woefully slow. Soaring along at 20-30mph expending almost no energy is the norm for migratory birds, and triple that is possible in a sprint, even without diving.
So a medium sized duck should have a speed of at least 200', and be capable of a run action at 800'
Big things like dragons should be far faster.

[Mechalich]

Just using the straight movement conversions is probably acceptable. The conversion to one day's overland movement is Movement Speed * 0.8 miles. So a Griffon, with a movement speed of 80' has an overland movement speed of 64 miles.

Keep in mind that said movement is effectively in a straight line though, which makes it massively more efficiently than overland travel. Consider a trip from New York to Los Angeles. A car making that trip goes 2792 miles. A plane makes the trip in 2451 miles. That's air travel compared with modern interstate highways. Medieval wagon paths that follow rivers, lack bridges, and have to take circuitous routes to maintain minimal grade have it way worse. You could easily cut the distance necessary by air to reach a given destination to be as low as half of the land-based distance.

[bookkeeping guy]

Ok, so here's a proposed change;

real world physics sites say a hiker in unbroken terrain is around 2 mph. They quote over 3 in road and paved areas but I would say its less than 2 in terrain thats wild or a medieval setting. Now I guess I have to use that real world factor to adapt to what a flying mount or creature like a griffon would be? Can you confirm what it would be for those two so I have an idea?

I don't want to rewrite game physics but what if there are campaigns that use it?

Like its hard to like look at a fantasy ad&d type map and figure out how far they went in the day. There could be things like adversarial pursuit against them or against evil critters. That's why I sort of thought to bring this up. They might have a tracker (narrator guide) leading them too.

Or what if the enemy has technology?

I seem to recall one of the reallllly old d&d or ad&d campaigns was the concept of Blacklore or Blackmoore technology had been the downfall of a cataclysm that caused evolution of our world...or an alternate world to become corrupted into current fantasy type creatures. (It's been a few years so having trouble remembering the exact name of it but it was around the time they had the whole Hollow World idea too (which was also a fun concept).)

So a campaign could be what if the characters encountered someone trying to revivify this blacklore or Blackmoore technology which might have similarities to todays vehicles... etc.

Just an option to throw out there, since I thought it might help to show why I brought this up.

[Fizban]

Overland movement is here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm#). Third table on the right is Terrain and Overland Movement, which gives you the speed multipliers for each terrain and road type.

Also note that DnD miles are not the same as real-world statute miles: they're simplified to 6,000 feet, which is also the same as a nautical mile. Also be aware that character are not double-moving when hiking: a double-move is a hustle, not a walk, and if you hustle for more than an hour you start taking exponential damage.

As for how far they went in a day, no, it was not very far at all compared to motor vehicles, but most likely you should be passing multiple hamlets per day.

[Zanos]

Yep, you can just extrapolate the table in the overland movement section for higher movement speeds. 8 miles per day per 8 hours of travel per 10 feet of movement rate.

Flying creatures simply wouldn't be subject to terrain modifiers. Which makes them quite a bit faster, yes.

[bookkeeping guy]

You know I couldn't understand why the movement rates in ad&d were so much slower than reality...

And then it hit me. It's the difference of wearing armor.

in real life hiking across open terrain is around 2 1/2 mph. But heck that's with light pack of maybe less then 30 pounds of gear.

And in a medieval fantasy rpg setting you would in addition to that 30 lbs of gear also have like another 50 lbs of armor...weaponry, and all kinds of stuff.

Now I don't think the rates in ad&d are so wrong after all.

I'd be hella slow if I was carrying like 80 lbs of stuff...damn that would suck.

[Zanos]

A character with normal movespeed can maintain a rate of 3mph over 8 hours. The table we linked reflects that. One day of overland travel is 8 hours of moving at 3mph. Armor and other encumbrance reduces that.

[Elkad]

The table actually fits pretty well with my experience as Airborne Infantry.

Light armor, Medium Load (maybe Heavy for a few guys with more gear or less strength, who get exhausted sooner than the rest of us because they have to hustle at times), moving through a Forest, and making a crappy effort at moving silently (-5 for full speed). That's 20', or 2mph, times ½ for "trackless", or 1mph. That's a bit faster than my experience, but not a lot.

We actually averaged about 1km per hour by the time you figure in crossing roads, streams, thickets, darkness, keeping 100 guys spaced out in a string of chevrons, etc.

On a road and without worrying about things like tactical formations we did 4+mph with the same 100-140lbs of gear. Hustling, but the first (level) hours don't count, because you heal the damage as fast as you take it.

[Venger]

here (http://www.convert-me.com/en/) is a site for all your conversion needs.