Animal messengers are slow!

[Segev]

Flying animal messengers travel at 50 miles per 24 hours, or just over 2mph. Non-flying ones at half that speed.

A longship travels at 3 mph.

A flying animal messenger literally cannot keep up with a longship it is released from to take a message to the same destination!

[MoiMagnus]

One has to remember that an animal needs to rest, so it will probably only travel for 12h per day.
Additionally, this is a random animal you found, not a trained homing pigeon. On top of not being used to follow directions, and maybe lacking the endurance to make long travels, it will also need to search for food on the way to the destination, lowering its average speed due to the detours.

Obviously, magic being involved, one might expect that the animal messenger would be enhanced by the spell. But the numbers does not reflect that, if anything, it shows that the animal messenger is expected to struggle a lot to carry its message to its destination.

But yes, animal messenger is painfully slow, which is made worse by the fact that it doesn't even allow for a response from the target of the message so you have to double that time (and have your target recast the spell) if you want one...

[Segev]

Indeed. On the one hand, it's definitely not supposed to be as good as sending, being a level lower. But on the other, if it's supposed to travel at that speed in fits and bursts because it's stopping to rest, the spell really should explicitly say so, and give how far it can go in a single burst and how fast. For example, if you find a hawk and send it 500 feet to the garden on the other side of the wall to give your friend a message, does the hawk really slow down to 30 feet per round to fly over there, rather than dashing the 120 ft. per round that it normally could?

Is a half-mile so far that whatever creature you found has to stop and rest? A mile?

As written, it only gives a speed per day, which is really frustrating with no information on how the animal is traveling. Maybe they only travel for 8 hours, just like adventurers who aren't doing a forced march, and the animal is going 55 feet per round (nearly the normal speed of a hawk or owl) the whole 8 hours (or in fits and starts with lots of rest, but 8 hours of travel aggregated over 24). But if so, again, some indication of that would be good in the spell, just so we know how long it really takes to carry a message a shorter distance.

Regardless, its use cases are a lot more limited than they seem. The target must be within 50 miles (assuming ritual casting and not upcasting), must not have timing be too big of a priority, and you probably shouldn't bother if you expect to see them within the next 24 hours, because who knows if the creature will get to the target before you see them?

[RogueJK]

One has to remember that an animal needs to rest, so it will probably only travel for 12h per day.

Correct. Keep in mind that the party's traveling time in a day is assumed to be around 8 hours, and an adventuring party traveling at a Fast Pace only cover 30 miles per day... So a flying Animal Messenger is almost twice as fast as travelling there yourself, and a walking Animal Messenger is going about the same speed as the party itself, despite being a Tiny creature with tiny little legs.

So the Animal Messenger is pushing itself longer and harder than the party does when travelling. If they were to go any faster/longer, they'd be suffering Exhaustion from a Forced March.


does the hawk really slow down to 30 feet per round to fly over there, rather than dashing the 120 ft. per round that it normally could?

Few things to consider:

1) They had to approximate one speed for all possible animals. So while a hawk or eagle has a 60' fly speed, a bat or sparrow doesn't.

2) They had to approximate one speed that could be sustained for an extended period, up to all day long. A hawk could dash 120' in one round, but that speed isn't sustainable over a long period. If we apply the chase rules, which are the only rules that specify the effects of extended periods of dashing, then after 2 consecutive rounds of dashing (240') it would have to start making CON saves or suffer exhaustion levels. A creature can dash for consecutive rounds equal to 3+CONMOD without the threat of exhaustion, and the hawk has a -1 CONMOD.

[Mastikator]

Animal messenger is a fantastic world building tool, you may have networks of druid sects that can communicate with each other and relay messages through huge wild areas. The highest level druid only needs to level 3, so it's easily feasible.

[Unoriginal]

Indeed. On the one hand, it's definitely not supposed to be as good as sending, being a level lower. But on the other, if it's supposed to travel at that speed in fits and bursts because it's stopping to rest, the spell really should explicitly say so, and give how far it can go in a single burst and how fast. For example, if you find a hawk and send it 500 feet to the garden on the other side of the wall to give your friend a message, does the hawk really slow down to 30 feet per round to fly over there, rather than dashing the 120 ft. per round that it normally could?

Is a half-mile so far that whatever creature you found has to stop and rest? A mile?

As written, it only gives a speed per day, which is really frustrating with no information on how the animal is traveling. Maybe they only travel for 8 hours, just like adventurers who aren't doing a forced march, and the animal is going 55 feet per round (nearly the normal speed of a hawk or owl) the whole 8 hours (or in fits and starts with lots of rest, but 8 hours of travel aggregated over 24). But if so, again, some indication of that would be good in the spell, just so we know how long it really takes to carry a message a shorter distance.

Regardless, its use cases are a lot more limited than they seem. The target must be within 50 miles (assuming ritual casting and not upcasting), must not have timing be too big of a priority, and you probably shouldn't bother if you expect to see them within the next 24 hours, because who knows if the creature will get to the target before you see them?

Keep in mind that all creatures slow down considerably during overworld travel time, compared to how fast they are during combat (or similar situation).

As others have said, 50 miles for 24h is actually pretty good for a tiny critter alone.

[False God]

No, whoever wrote this spell has ZERO idea how fast birds travel.

A "blue jay" as quotes in the spell travels 20-25MPH. Thats the ENTIRE distance of the spell in 2 hours, NOT 24, not to mention that NO creature is going to be continuously moving for 24 solid hours without any real driving necessity(like being hunted or needing to find new food sources).

A Hawk, also a tiny animal, travels about 120MPH. These birds can stay aloft for roughly 5hours as 20mph, for a total travel distance in 5 hours of 100mi.

This is a terrible spell and everyone who wrote it should feel bad.

[Grim Portent]

Pretty much everything relating to a real world creature in DnD kind of sucks when compared to it's real life counterpart.

A raven in DnD has a fly speed that works out to just over 5 mph. Goes up a bit if you assume they dash, but it's still substantially slower than their IRL speed of 25 mph. Generally holds true for birds in the range from sparrows to gulls to my knowledge, they can fly in the region of 20-29 mph at a casual speed for a good while several times a day.

A bird with animal messenger cast on it should really be able to cover 50 miles in about two or three hours. Messenger pigeons have managed 48 mile deliveries in roughly one hour before.

Being as fast as real birds still wouldn't make it an amazing spell by any means, but it would make a lot more sense to actually use if the birds flew at the speed a bird actually flies at. Hell, an ordinary messenger pigeon can do deliveries with a range of 100 miles with no magic involved at all in the space of a single day, so if you're operating out of a home town or a castle or whatever then just bringing mundane homing pigeons with you is a legitimate option whose results are better than Animal Messenger.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But mundane homing pigeons are specialized, with fixed destinations. Animal messenger isn't.

Does that justify things? Not entirely. But it's refreshing to have a spell actually be worse in some respects than the mundane counterpart.

[RogueJK]

Pretty much everything relating to a real world creature in DnD kind of sucks when compared to it's real life counterpart.


Yes. It's a game. It's structured around game balance and in-game usage, not uber-accurate real-world simulation.

[theNater]

Interesting note: through use of the forced march rules, any PC can travel 50 miles in 13 hours, albeit at the risk of up to five levels of exhaustion.

I think the only sensible conclusion is that creatures targeted by Animal Messenger struggle to resist the cruel and unnatural compulsion driving them from their homes, and that slows them down.

[Segev]

Yes. It's a game. It's structured around game balance and in-game usage, not uber-accurate real-world simulation.

I would argue that it might be undertuned for game balance, too.

[Unoriginal]

I would argue that it might be undertuned for game balance, too.

Fair point. How would you change it to make it tuned just right for game balance?

Faster messengers? Knowledge of when/if they reached destination?

[Damon_Tor]

I think 50 miles per 24 hours is expressing a maximum distance covered in a day, not necessarily the actual speed. For the speed of travel over distances shorter than 50 miles you would look at the creature's movement speed, doubled to account for dashing. Convert from feet per 6 seconds to miles per hour if needed. So hawk messenger would be traveling at around 13.6 miles per hour, stopping to rest after it reaches 50 miles in ~4 hours.

[Damon_Tor]

No, whoever wrote this spell has ZERO idea how fast birds travel.

A "blue jay" as quotes in the spell travels 20-25MPH. Thats the ENTIRE distance of the spell in 2 hours, NOT 24, not to mention that NO creature is going to be continuously moving for 24 solid hours without any real driving necessity(like being hunted or needing to find new food sources).

A Hawk, also a tiny animal, travels about 120MPH. These birds can stay aloft for roughly 5hours as 20mph, for a total travel distance in 5 hours of 100mi.

This is a terrible spell and everyone who wrote it should feel bad.

5e is terrible about speed in general.

But I'll note that a raptor's top speed of 120 miles per hour is only when it's diving.

[Grim Portent]

Fair point. How would you change it to make it tuned just right for game balance?

Faster messengers? Knowledge of when/if they reached destination?

Personally, I'd have it so the messengers move at something approximating a real animals speed and surpassing a normal messenger pigeons range. For birds that would be something like 20 mph, maximum of 100 miles a day,* with a range of, I dunno, let's say 75 or 100 miles per spell level. Make it a first level spell. Keep the word limit the same. It's now just a way of spending a spell slot on a buffed messenger pigeon, rather than spending a spell slot on a worse pigeon. Still gets surpassed by Sending, but now it's actually able to perform better than just spending a pittance on a caged bird, some paper, ink and some feed. A chance for it to be eaten by something on route of course.

I'd still probably prefer to try and get my hands on messengers pigeons or just go without, but it would be enough to make the spell interesting and not make me immediately be like 'damn, these animals are slow and/or weak' when playing.


Would need to think about small land animals. They can cover a surprisingly good amount of ground, but it's not really enough to make using them as messengers actually worthwhile unless the spell turns them into Sonic or something. Might be best to just cut them out entirely, or split them into a seperate spell based more around sending messages short distances stealthily, like having a mouse scurry between prison cells or a squirrel ferry a message up to a balcony. Hell, ground critters could be a cantrip version with a range of a few hundred feet, be a longer range but less flexible version of Message.


*I think a lot of birds beat that for flight distance per day, but it's good enough for a game.

[Mastikator]

It's worth mentioning that a sand martin/bank swallow, while migrating will usually travel between 200 to 300 miles (sometimes even less, sometimes even more, depending on situation) in a day. It's a small bird.
So 50 miles really is a short distance. IMO I'd change it to 200 for aquatic, land or flying.

Still, it's not a bad spell, considering you can deliver a message 50 miles while staying put, and it's a ritual spell. Which is a huge deal for this kind of spell.

[sambojin]

Animal messengers are slow, but it's also a non-concentration ritual. So it might be for balance. And it's not like you don't have plenty of options.

If it's up-to 8miles away, use a flying familiar or summoned beast and get it done in an hour.

If it's up-to 50miles away and you can wait a day, use an animal messenger.

If it's further, use sending or go yourself (or send a familiar).
It's kind of like a shipping costs for time and distance thing I guess.

(There's also the "polymorph the BBEG into a tiny beast and animal messenger him somewhere" trick, so having a bit of a speed limit on that hour of polymorph is probably a good thing. You'd just send him directly to the quest giver otherwise :) )

[Samayu]

There ought to be some magical boost besides it being able to speak the message, and apparently that it won't get eaten along the way. It does have its advantages, as someone mentioned - its probably best used when you're not going there yourself, whether you have to stay put or even go somewhere else.

But how likely is it to find the recipient? The spell says you must have been to the location, which implies you can magically transmit the location to the animal, but you have to give it a description of the person, which implies it's on its own to find them once it gets there. What if they're not in the location? What if they're in disguise? I assume most GM's will handwave that part.

All in all, its seems like a spell that was included just because we've seen it in movies. Like when the princess is locked in the tower and wants to send a message to her beloved. So, kinda specific uses. And more plot devices, aka NPC toolbox. Not a bad idea about a PC trapped in jail. "GM, are there any rats?"

[sambojin]

Sort of fun if you can mimic someone else's speech, with a racial or feat or just a performance check. Even a forgery or deception check might do it (they can just carry a scroll with a message/ orders on it, if that's a thing in your game world, ala messenger pigeons/ ravens/ whatever).

Ritual out messengers to the enemy forces to give false orders, etc :)

[Tanarii]

All in all, it's seems like a spell that was included just because we've seen it in movies.
I'd guess it was originally in AD&D because of Gandalf's use when trapped by Saruman, which I'm assuming is also in the LotR books.

[strangebloke]

I just think its legit hilarious how much worse this spell is than irl carrier pigeons (aside from the fact that carrier pigeons require more setup.) You almost never see that. A mundane thing beating out a spell?

And yet somehow I can't help but be insulted on behalf of the wee birdy you call up. This spell makes them way weaker!

[Segev]

To be fair, real pigeons only go to one place, while the spell does send them anywhere within 50 miles. That said, it's already superior, with a literate recipient, to tie a message to the leg of the animal and have the animal inform them the message is attached. You can probably fit more words onto it that way.

[Dork_Forge]

It's not super fast, though that distance is nothing to sneeze at in a medievalesque setting, everyone seems to be dunking on the speed. But, the spell lets you just automatically use any creature, just straight up hijack them, give them the ability to find a place they've never been, and the speak your message in your voice. The spell is doing a lot for a 2nd level ritual, I can't see a 3/4th level character really being unhappy with this, and it was used in one of my groups at a much higher level with no complaints about speed etc.

Is it the best way to send a message a long distance? No of course not. Does it compete with Sending? Not really, nor should it. Whislt I don't think upping the distance to something like 70 miles would break anything, it's already useful and for games that take worldbuilding into consideration, the spell being too good would just invalidate actually training messenger birds or sending an NPC runner.

[Segev]

My biggest complaint about it is that, not konwing how the DM calculated speed, but guessing he just used basic division, when my PC tried to send a warning (from across the city) to his NPC friends that an attack was incoming, and then booked it there while running from enemies and having to hide, he beat the animal there by so much that the threat was dealt with and then the animal arrived to deliver the warning.

The other reason I've come up with to use it usually involves sending a message ahead, and...well, every travel method seems faster than the bird. >_<

[Dork_Forge]

My biggest complaint about it is that, not konwing how the DM calculated speed, but guessing he just used basic division, when my PC tried to send a warning (from across the city) to his NPC friends that an attack was incoming, and then booked it there while running from enemies and having to hide, he beat the animal there by so much that the threat was dealt with and then the animal arrived to deliver the warning.

The other reason I've come up with to use it usually involves sending a message ahead, and...well, every travel method seems faster than the bird. >_<

Using it to send a message ahead in short distances isn't really the point of the spell, but I think this is more on the DM's ruling than the spell. If you sent a bird, then at least it should have had an edge on you flying in a straight line, dividing overland time doesn't really seem appropriate for travel in a city.

I'm confused how every travel method is faster? The bird does 50 miles in a day, a fast pace is 30 miles per day with a penalty, and if you need to stealth you need a feature or to move at a slow pace for only 18 miles a day. The bird would also ignore difficult terrain, barring storm rulings, that PCs would have to deal with.

What methods are faster than a bird?

[sambojin]

Druid. Druids are faster. Because they have 80' speed as a Giant Eagle, and good Con saves.

1.3x the speed of a conjured Warhorse or Familiar Owl, and 2.6x that of the basic 30' speed N/PC.

Moon Druid's at lvl10 are 1.5x horses/3x foot as an Air Elemental, you'd hope.


(Hey, you asked the question)

[Dork_Forge]

Druid. Druids are faster. Because they have 80' speed as a Giant Eagle, and good Con saves.

But... they're not faster in overland travel? And they can't even turn into flying forms until 8th level, a whole 5 levels after Animal Messenger comes online. And I assume the Con thing is for forced marching, but since when is a +1 good?

[sambojin]

Nah, it's the Resilient(Con) that does that, that many Druids have by lvl8. +4 is nice as a Giant Eagle. +6 as an air Elly at lvl10 is good too (edit down below, they're immune to exhaustion).

It is later, but you didn't specify. Rituals are handy at any level.

(Since horses are stated as 2x compared to adventurers, a thing that moves 3x them and flies would probably be 3x in overland travel, you'd think. On the low end of it. So 12miles an hour, at least. You're also immune to exhaustion as an Air Elemental, so while you do need to take an hour's short rest every 5hrs at level 10 to keep the wildshape form up, you can keep up fast pace all day, and never take an exhaustion level, even without Res(Con) or ever taking a save for forced march. So there's that too. Druids are faster.

But seriously, if it's that important, just pay a Wizard or a Cleric to cast Sending for your message anywhere instantly by that point, unless it's super-duper-secret. Use the internet, not the snail-mail)

[Osuniev]

Nah, it's the Resilient(Con) that does that, that many Druids have by lvl8. +4 is nice as a Giant Eagle. +6 as an air Elly at lvl10 is good too (edit down below, they're immune to exhaustion).

It is later, but you didn't specify. Rituals are handy at any level.

(Since horses are stated as 2x compared to adventurers, a thing that moves 3x them and flies would probably be 3x in overland travel, you'd think. On the low end of it. So 12miles an hour, at least. You're also immune to exhaustion as an Air Elemental, so while you do need to take an hour's short rest every 5hrs at level 10 to keep the wildshape form up, you can keep up fast pace all day, and never take an exhaustion level, even without Res(Con) or ever taking a save for forced march. So there's that too. Druids are faster.

But seriously, if it's that important, just pay a Wizard or a Cleric to cast Sending for your message anywhere instantly by that point, unless it's super-duper-secret)

horses do not travel twice as fast as humans over long distances, though.

[Dork_Forge]

Nah, it's the Resilient(Con) that does that, that many Druids have by lvl8. +4 is nice as a Giant Eagle. +6 as an air Elly at lvl10 is good too (edit down below, they're immune to exhaustion).

It is later, but you didn't specify. Rituals are handy at any level.

(Since horses are stated as 2x compared to adventurers, a thing that moves 3x them and flies would probably be 3x in overland travel, you'd think. On the low end of it. So 12miles an hour, at least. You're also immune to exhaustion as an Air Elemental, so while you do need to take an hour's short rest every 5hrs at level 10 to keep the wildshape form up, you can keep up fast pace all day, and never take an exhaustion level, even without Res(Con) or ever taking a save for forced march. So there's that too. Druids are faster)

Okay, I get the general answer, I'm glad we can probably agree that an 8th level Druid with a feat is comparable to a 2nd level ritual spell.

Your extrapolation is also faulty, you're basing it on horses = 2x faster than adventurers and Eagle is faster still. But, that's not how the rules work. The rules state that the feet speed is just for short energetic movement in life or death situations.

The part about horses being faster is about moving faster for one hour, not for the whole travel and it isn't actually about horses, it's mounts in general. So the rule should still apply to a giant eagle, just 2x and just for one hour, not that 1 hour is just a hard limit and isn't tied to any Con saves.

So a Giant Eagle moving a fast pace should cover 34 miles over an 8 hour period, and given that each forced march fast pace is only adding 4 more miles, it's a lot of Con saves before it even matches the Animal Messenger's 50 miles.

An Air Elemental, besides being even higher level and more expensive, would be good at long distance travel. However, you're limited to 5 hours at time instead of being able to travel 8 straight hours. So that's 20 miles at a fast pace. It's also not really clear the Air Elemental would be able to go 2x fast pace for an hour, since the rules are specifically talking about animals in a section about mounts. I could see that still applying to them, but that's still just worse than being a Giant Eagle.

But since the comparison is higher level Druids, may as well just use Transport via Plants at 11th level, right?


I'm a little confused what the point of this suggestion was, if you're dealing in much higher level characters burning resources, then just cast Sending. The question was more meant to be 'what common, party-wide overland transport is faster than a 50 mile a day bird?'

[sambojin]

Oh, in that case, none. You didn't specify previously, just asked "what's faster?". Rituals are good, at any level, as stated.
I mean, a Griffin or Pegasus mount is faster than horses, but Giant Eagles or Air Elementals aren't anything like them (IE: faster and fly heaps). Lol

Animal Messengers are way slower than they probably should be, especially flying ones (so are flying familiars in overland travel times for that matter), but you can always try and use them where available.

They're good, but they're slow. But you can ritual induct any poor bird within 10mins when you want. There's reasons they're not quick. And, I did suggest Sending. Lol


(I don't agree with your overland travel rules, but hey, I don't play at your table, so I don't have to. Yay!)

((I hate playing with arguments on what's meant to be a fun game, even discussing it on the internet. I just won't be drawn into someone removing my enjoyment from it, whether I'm right or wrong (I don't mind being corrected on rules, but personal interpretations of them, not so much. *Especially if they're wrong, but want to argue it*. So, yay, I win! But, whatever, so do you! Yay! It's that sort of game :) )))

(((Also kinda funny that if anyone's going to send an animal messenger, it'll be a druid. Lol)))

[strangebloke]

horses do not travel twice as fast as humans over long distances, though.

In game or IRL? In both cases horses are much faster, yes, even over long distances.

People take the pursuit predation thing too far

[Dork_Forge]

Oh, in that case, none. You didn't specify previously, just asked "what's faster?". Rituals are good, at any level, as stated.
I mean, a Griffin or Pegasus mount is faster than horses, but Giant Eagles or Air Elementals aren't anything like them (IE: faster and fly heaps). Lol

Animal Messengers are way slower than they probably should be, especially flying ones (so are flying familiars in overland travel times for that matter), but you can always try and use them where available.

They're good, but they're slow. But you can ritual induct any poor bird within 10mins when you want. There's reasons they're not quick. And, I did suggest Sending. Lol

(I don't agree with your overland travel rules, but hey, I don't play at your table, so I don't have to. Yay!)

((I hate playing with arguments on what's meant to be a fun game, even discussing it on the internet. I just won't be drawn into someone removing my enjoyment from it, whether I'm right or wrong (I don't mind being corrected on rules, but personal interpretations of them, not so much. So, yay, I win! But, whatever, so do you! Yay! It's that sort of game :) )))

(((Also kinda funny that if anyone's going to send an animal messenger, it'll be a druid. Lol)))

Wh..what? They're not my rules, all I did was read the PHB, and draw you in to what? You replied to me.

And you suggested Sending in an edit after I started replying to you, hence why it isn't in the quote of the reply.

[Tanarii]

In game or IRL? In both cases horses are much faster, yes, even over long distances.

People take the pursuit predation thing too far
Quick only search tells me that horses are considered to a range of about 25-35 miles in days travel, or can travel much faster than a human if they go at a trot, but they aren't going 25 miles in that case.

So the overland travel rules of mounts going the same as people or going fast for an hour are close enough.



Animal Messengers are way slower than they probably should be, especially flying ones (so are flying familiars in overland travel times for that matter), but you can always try and use them where available.

They're good, but they're slow. But you can ritual induct any poor bird within 10mins when you want. There's reasons they're not quick. And, I did suggest Sending. LolSlow by what measure? They can go further than characters can in a day. If a DM divides the distance by 24 hours for some reason (instead of 8 or 16) to get an hourly rate, they're the same as the party traveling at a slow overland rate (e.g. they're stealthing), ~2 miles per hour. If a DM extended that same speed down to the round level for some reason, then yeah they'd be slow compared to most round by round speeds.


My biggest complaint about it is that, not konwing how the DM calculated speed, but guessing he just used basic division, when my PC tried to send a warning (from across the city) to his NPC friends that an attack was incoming, and then booked it there while running from enemies and having to hide, he beat the animal there by so much that the threat was dealt with and then the animal arrived to deliver the warning.
By "booked it there" do you mean you used Fast travel speed of 400ft/minute, and took a -5 to perception checks, and couldn't use stealth?
Or your DM ran it by Chase or Encounter rules (and speeds when moving), using actions to Hide?

Animal Messenger apparently isn't intended to be used on those scales. Although IMO it'd be totally reasonable for them to have provided the capability for at least overland rates on shorter distances when they wrote the spell.

If I was forced to rule on it, it reads to me like it's traveling at a normal rate with a break for 2 after 1 of traveling, for 8 hours of traveling over 24 hours. And double normal rate for a bird.

[sambojin]

I actually don't mind the idea of "big cat / spider/ whatever stealth mail service" by younger druids, "Warhorse Longstridering mail service" by more experienced ones, "Priority Giant Eagle, Longstrider class" by the high level ones, and "Swift Like the Wind, Longstridered Air Elly class" by Moons for a message delivery function for the druid class. Just as a "where do druids fit into a mid-high magic world?" Thing.

For everything else, there's Animal Messengers. Or sending or teleport or familiars or something else arcane. (druids do familiars too, Fey ones! Totes neutral, they reckon). But the druids will/won't f'up anyone trying to take your message away from getting there, and people have got to learn to respect your messages. Lol 😋


(Oh, and @dork, you are wrong. The PHB lists two creatures "that travel faster". Griffins and Pegasus. That have the exact same flying speeds and sizes to the ones I mentioned (G.Eagle and Air.Elly). Assumedly, when someone is not riding on their back, and they have access to stuff like Goodberries and a waterskin regardless of water sources of the terrain, and fairly good wisdom/perception and constitution saves, Druids can fly overland a damn sight quicker than is mentioned in the books for adventurers walking to a place, per day. Even trying to go fast'ly. I think the implication is "it's literally actual creature movement speed/30 * your standard daily travel (4 miles for basic fast)" or more if you use resources/spells/feats/skills or world-built-by-DM for sustainance, or you can fly heaps. It's not explicit, but it is implied in the rules as RAW and RAI)

((A world like the DnD ones we know would be f'ing terrifying for the average tiny animal that just got magically subjugated, without a choice, and used as a cheap voice-call/ fax/ twitter machine. I mean, seriously, I'd take it pretty slow and careful too. Just to f* with them))

[Chronos]

If the intention is that the animal is only traveling for 8 hours per day, then they should have just kept the range the same, but called the duration 8 hours.

Another bird example, by the way, is geese. They can keep up a pace of 60 MPH, all day every day, long enough to cover truly global distances.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

Flying animal messengers travel at 50 miles per 24 hours, or just over 2mph. Non-flying ones at half that speed.

A longship travels at 3 mph.

A flying animal messenger literally cannot keep up with a longship it is released from to take a message to the same destination!

Yeah, but an airship can’t nuke a city with flying snakes as easily.


You win some, you lose some.

[Segev]

Yeah, but an airship can’t nuke a city with flying snakes as easily.


You win some, you lose some.

I confess that I don't follow you, here.

[Unoriginal]

I confess that I don't follow you, here.

I think Mindflayer_Inc is talking about the Olga of Kiev's conflict resolution method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev#:~:text=Olga%20then%20instructed%20he r%20army,subsequently%20set%20the%20city%20ablaze. ).

[Mastikator]

In game or IRL? In both cases horses are much faster, yes, even over long distances.

People take the pursuit predation thing too far

Horses only travel much faster over long distance if you get a new one every 10 miles. Otherwise it's only a little faster. A little too little if you ask me.

[Grim Portent]

I think Mindflayer_Inc is talking about the Olga of Kiev's conflict resolution method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev#:~:text=Olga%20then%20instructed%20he r%20army,subsequently%20set%20the%20city%20ablaze. ).

I think they mean more something like catching and using Animal Messenger on a few thousand flying snakes to make them all go to the same city. 6 snakes an hour isn't exactly what I'd call 'nuking a city' though.

Which is a potential niche for the spell, catch something small and highly venomous and send it to someone you don't like and hope that once the spell ends the creature bites them. D&D doesn't have much by way of Beasts that are tiny and actually dangerous though, so the target could probably be killed by a stiff breeze or a thrown brick.


Rereading the spell, I do note that it requires a 'general description' for the recipient, with the examples being "a man or woman dressed in the uniform of the town guard" or "a red-haired dwarf wearing a pointed hat." So unless the intended recipient has a very particular taste in fashion or some simple but defining characteristics it's quite plausible that the message goes to some random person who fits the criteria and has no idea what to do when a squirrel runs up and tells them something in a person's voice. Get's worse the larger the population around the intended recipient is. Want to send an animal messenger to the Archmage in the capital? Better hope no one else in the city has a beard and wears robes that happens to be seen by the critter before the Archmage.

[Willie the Duck]

No, whoever wrote this spell has ZERO idea how fast birds travel.
Or, as others had suggested, probably don't care how fast birds travel.

The D&D devs love the game and were undoubtedly actively involved in the game and gaming community before they were hired by WotC, so I tend to assume they know anything people on boards like this tend to discuss. If they aren't checking out this or similar boards (honestly hope they don't), they are still hanging out with people dissimilar to us in no ways that matter. When they do things we don't like, I generally assume it is because of differences in priority, rather than knowledge. How far a bird can fly in a day is simply not arcane enough knowledge for them not to have known or known how to learn it readily. They just didn't care.


5e is terrible about speed in general.
D&D in general really. IIRC in 3e we were laughing about animals whose max speed was below their IRL stall speed. Same with Gygax and his incredibly slow movement rates* bitd -- he had a fun little dungeon-crawling game that worked best if you got this many squares explored per wandering monster check/torch-used-up and what that turned out to be in miles per hour was immaterial. Also if we widen the discussion to distance, it's pretty clear that weapon ranges (in most TTRPGs) have been set up for what is convenient** and creates interesting consequences for weapon choice***.
*per round and per turn in that case, his overland travel approached reasonable.
**the longest range in the book often conveniently equaling the standard battle mat
***does a javelin really have exactly twice the range of a thrown spear? Unlikely, but useful for deciding which you want to carry in-game.


All in all, its seems like a spell that was included just because we've seen it in movies. Like when the princess is locked in the tower and wants to send a message to her beloved. So, kinda specific uses. And more plot devices, aka NPC toolbox. Not a bad idea about a PC trapped in jail. "GM, are there any rats?"

It existed in previous editions of the game. When magic was scarcer and PC powers generally tamer and the dangers of overland travel harsher (such that having something else do it was a bigger perk) it was a better spell. Still niche, mind you, but then being able to swap out your spells every morning for these rarely-used niche spells was a part of clerics & druid's overall usefullness.

[Segev]

It existed in previous editions of the game. When magic was scarcer and PC powers generally tamer and the dangers of overland travel harsher (such that having something else do it was a bigger perk) it was a better spell. Still niche, mind you, but then being able to swap out your spells every morning for these rarely-used niche spells was a part of clerics & druid's overall usefullness.

In which case it probably needs a longer range, since the ritual version of the spell at most lets you communicate up to 5 days' travel away, if you're traveling overland. Fewer, by sea. (Okay, up to 10 away in harsh terrain.)

[LudicSavant]

Flying animal messengers travel at 50 miles per 24 hours, or just over 2mph. Non-flying ones at half that speed.

A longship travels at 3 mph.

A flying animal messenger literally cannot keep up with a longship it is released from to take a message to the same destination!

I would add that most things in 5e are weirdly slow.

[Tanarii]

I can't believe no one has asked if it's an African or European swallow yet.

[Leon]

Snail Mail

[Samayu]

I can't believe no one has asked if it's an African or European swallow yet.
Fortunately, we don't have worry about how the messenger's speed is affected by the load it carries, by, say, gripping it by the husk.


Rereading the spell, I do note that it requires a 'general description' for the recipient, with the examples being "a man or woman dressed in the uniform of the town guard" or "a red-haired dwarf wearing a pointed hat." So unless the intended recipient has a very particular taste in fashion or some simple but defining characteristics it's quite plausible that the message goes to some random person who fits the criteria and has no idea what to do when a squirrel runs up and tells them something in a person's voice. Get's worse the larger the population around the intended recipient is. Want to send an animal messenger to the Archmage in the capital? Better hope no one else in the city has a beard and wears robes that happens to be seen by the critter before the Archmage.
Yes, but at least you can be very specific with the location. Of course, you'd better hope they're there at the time.

All that discussion about how much more effective a carrier pigeon would be... Why doesn't this spell summon a carrier pigeon? Or a magically tireless bird?

[Chronos]

Quoth LudicSavant:

I would add that most things in 5e are weirdly slow.
In fact, most things in 5e are weirdly underpowered across the board. Like, a real-world gorilla can lift more weight than a D&D creature with 30 Str.

[Snails]

In game or IRL? In both cases horses are much faster, yes, even over long distances.

We have a real world example where cavalry and infantry were being pushed hard over the course of a few weeks: the German right wing in August 1914. On average, they were roughly the same, according to Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August.

[strangebloke]

We have a real world example where cavalry and infantry were being pushed hard over the course of a few weeks: the German right wing in August 1914. On average, they were roughly the same, according to Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August.

horses are not cavalry, and dnd parties are not armies :smalltongue:

Horses are *far* faster than humans. When you put a human on the horse's back, it gets tired considerably faster which wipes out that extra speed. You can have multiple horses than people and thus split the human's deadweight, and this means that the horses and rider can go collectively a good deal faster than a human. Its self-evident that ideally you'd have no humans involved at all and thus achieve maximum speed, but even better would be to have fresh horses at waystations that you can swap out every few miles - the pony express famously averaged 10 miles per hour over the course of its length.

In other words, the limitation on travelling is completely a matter of endurance and the burden of the rider, which DND doesn't much care about. There are entire worlds of complexity wrt overland travel that DND simply doesn't engage with at all. Personally, I am sympathetic to this. A system that tries to simulate everything usually ends up doing nothing in particular very well.

But I do think they could have done better.

This is still a less severe problem than the ridiculousness of the DND economy though.

[Dork_Forge]

horses are not cavalry, and dnd parties are not armies :smalltongue:

Horses are *far* faster than humans. When you put a human on the horse's back, it gets tired considerably faster which wipes out that extra speed. You can have multiple horses than people and thus split the human's deadweight, and this means that the horses and rider can go collectively a good deal faster than a human. Its self-evident that ideally you'd have no humans involved at all and thus achieve maximum speed, but even better would be to have fresh horses at waystations that you can swap out every few miles - the pony express famously averaged 10 miles per hour over the course of its length.

In other words, the limitation on travelling is completely a matter of endurance and the burden of the rider, which DND doesn't much care about. There are entire worlds of complexity wrt overland travel that DND simply doesn't engage with at all. Personally, I am sympathetic to this. A system that tries to simulate everything usually ends up doing nothing in particular very well.

But I do think they could have done better.

This is still a less severe problem than the ridiculousness of the DND economy though.

5E does consider this, though whether or not its satisfactory will obviously vary. In the section that says an animal can double speed for one hour, it talks about using multiple mounts in the fashion you're describing here to achieve a faster overland time with prep stations.

[strangebloke]

5E does consider this, though whether or not its satisfactory will obviously vary. In the section that says an animal can double speed for one hour, it talks about using multiple mounts in the fashion you're describing here to achieve a faster overland time with prep stations.

Sure, I was more talking about the "multiple horses per rider" or "very light riders" as the case may be.

[Chronos]

Actually, over super-long distances (a day's worth of running, or even multiple days), a human is faster than even an unburdened horse. The horse is faster while it's running, of course, but it needs to rest more than a human does, at which point the human can eventually catch up.

The only animal that can beat us in long-distance land races is the pronghorn, though horses and dogs can at least make it an interesting competition.

[Snails]

Bipedalism is an efficient style of locomotion for very long distances. I wonder how the ostrich and kangaroo rate.

[Dork_Forge]

Bipedalism is an efficient style of locomotion for very long distances. I wonder how the ostrich and kangaroo rate.

A quick search shows that they are both in the rare category of animals to beat humans in a long distance. Apparently one kangaroo in the wild travelled 200 miles in about 10 hours, likely not in a straight line, and an Ostrich is capable of running a marathon in 45 minutes.