[3.5e] Movement shift.

[Yael]

I was DM'ing my players the Forge of Fury adventure, and I got into the last part.
In the last battle against a black dragon, I swapped some feats from Nightscale, granting him Fly-by-attack so he could attack-move during his round, but the battle takes place under a small lake, so I made him to shift tactics to attack from the air, and enter the water as part of his action. With his maneuverability and space available, even a dragon could do so (considering angles and stuff). But after the battle (which the PCs won, btw), I was unsure if I actually used movement correctly.

How is movement speed counted, considering different movement speeds? A Black dragon has 150 ft. (fly), 60 ft. swim, so if he starts the round swimming, flies in an arc out of the water, and enters the water again, how is speed counted then (during the same move action)?

[Uncle Pine]

I've always thought if you, say, had an 40 ft. speed and a 20 ft. climbing speed you could walk 10 ft. (25% land movement), climb 10 ft. (50% climbing movement) and then walk 10 ft. more (25% land movement) during the same movement action. In other words, mix-and-matching movement modes so long as you don't move more than 100% your speed in a single action. On the other hand, I can't seem to find a RAW source to back up such claim.

[Segev]

The most restrictive reading would be that you have movement no greater than your current mode. So if you fly 50 ft. then enter water, if you don't have more than 50 ft. of swim, you stop immediately. On the other hand, this reading would also mean that if you have Swim 20 ft., and you swim for 20 ft. and end out of the water and have Fly 50 ft., you could fly an additional 30 ft. (so your movement was a max of 50 ft.). Makes the order of medium you enter matter, but is probably easier to track than doing conversions of X squares on land = Y squares in the water.

[Mr Adventurer]

Nah, the MOST restrictive reading is that you can't effectively change in an action: you have to end the move action used to swim and start a new move action to fly.

[Zaq]

The RAW for 3.5 doesn’t really say. I like the RAW for 4e: your total movement on a given action can’t exceed your highest speed used during said action, and while you can pretty freely shift between movement modes as appropriate, you can’t exceed your speed with a given movement mode during one action.

So if you have 40’ land, 30’ climb, 20’ swim, you can move a total of 40’ on one typical move action, no more than 30’ of which can be climbing and no more than 20’ of which can be swimming. Extended instances of the same example below:


10 land, 10 climb, 20 swim: cool.
20 swim, 20 climb: not cool. Your highest speed USED here is climb at 30, so you can’t move 40.
30 land, 20 climb: not cool. Can’t exceed 40.
20 swim, 10 land, 10 swim: not cool. You already used your 20 of swim.


Again, this isn’t RAW for 3.5, but RAW for 3.5 is pretty lacking.

[Segev]

The RAW for 3.5 doesn’t really say. I like the RAW for 4e: your total movement on a given action can’t exceed your highest speed used during said action, and while you can pretty freely shift between movement modes as appropriate, you can’t exceed your speed with a given movement mode during one action.

So if you have 40’ land, 30’ climb, 20’ swim, you can move a total of 40’ on one typical move action, no more than 30’ of which can be climbing and no more than 20’ of which can be swimming. Extended instances of the same example below:


10 land, 10 climb, 20 swim: cool.
20 swim, 20 climb: not cool. Your highest speed USED here is climb at 30, so you can’t move 40.
30 land, 20 climb: not cool. Can’t exceed 40.
20 swim, 10 land, 10 swim: not cool. You already used your 20 of swim.


Again, this isn’t RAW for 3.5, but RAW for 3.5 is pretty lacking.
This is probably the most sensible way to handle it, with the least confusing bookkeeping.