I have seen a couple of threads asking this question, but not a lot of answer. I would love it if we could try to have a discussion and come to a consensus and maybe even get some official feedback on this!
When you change a creature's size, what happens to its speed? By extension, when you create a new base creature, what are the speed guidelines?
The only bit about this in the bestiary that I could find appears on page 292.
When determining a creature’s speed, first decide if it has any alternative modes of movement, such as burrow, climb, fly, or swim. Most Medium creatures have a base speed of 30 feet. Quadrupeds and Large creatures increase this by 10 feet each. Smaller creatures decrease this base speed by 10 feet. If a creature is particularly fast or slow, modify the base speed by 10 feet. Burrow and climb speeds are usually half a creature’s base speed, while flying speeds are roughly double. Remember to give a creature the appropriate skills for any unusual movement methods.
Okay, so the guideline for a medium creature is 30 ft. Large would increase this to 40, small would decrease it to 20.
Quadrupeds tend to get an extra 10 feet on top of this guideline.
What about other sizes? I've seen tiny movements around 15 ft, which seems reasonable. Should huge be 50 ft? At that size, you're taking some massive steps... By that logic though, colossal would be 70 ft or more!
On a side note, how does this scale for dragons? All the sample dragons given in the book have the same movement speeds... so is this all a fallacy and movement speeds don't change with size? Or are dragons special? Or are those entries just erroneous?
Any input is appreciated! Thank you.
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I think those rules are for advancing creatures, so for a (medium-sized) wolf being advanced through HD to Large. Coming up with the original move score for an original monster is different, and more of an art: "*Most* medium creatures have a base speed of 30..."
I'd use the +10' increase for each size category when advancing a creature.
Changing a creature's size... what happens to speed?
You need a lot more to get your kick, because of the increased mass.
Huge creatures with a speed of 50 is not unreasonable, considering that their length of stride is probably close to 10 feet (compared to a typical human of 30", or 2 1/2 feet). Creature design is as much art as science, and given the lack of hard and fast rules, just use the speeds of a similar creature that already exists in the books.
I agree that larger creatures should have faster movement speeds. However, this does not bear out in most stat block in the bestiary (look at some of the big creatures - most dragons have a speed of 40 to 60 independent of size, tarrasque (colossal) has a speed of 40, purple worm (gargantuan) a speed of 20, etc etc). This leaves too much ambiguity to do some basic things!
Take the task of statting out a colossal animated object. Medium objects move at 30... do colossal objects move at 70? Or do they move at 30 as nothing about the size conversions say anything about adjusting speed? On the other side, does that mean that animated crumbs (fine) also move at 30 ft?
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yeah, tiny and diminutive things move way faster than i'd think they would.
i noticed that a ringed octopus familiar has a land speed of 20 ft. idk about you, but... i really have a hard time picture an octopus on dry land the size of a softball , moving 20 feet in 6 seconds.
some things like cats RUN faster than 30 ft per round, but walking? 30 ft in 6 seconds? hrm.
poor tarrasque. he's so slow. i pity him =/
Michio Kaku may provide some meaningful input.
Is it possible to scale up, to scale up a monkey, or scale up a lizard to the size of King Kong or Godzilla using perhaps radiation or some kind of mutation? Well, you may be disappointed, the answer is no. And why is that? I hate to be the party pooper but well, here's where science comes in. It turns out that if you have King Kong or Godzilla and they took one step their legs would break, because if you increase the size of a lizard or a chimpanzee to these enormous distances, the weight increases dramatically. In fact, if you double the size of a chimpanzee, the weight goes up by a factor of eight. Because the weight goes as the volume and the volume goes as the cube, so if you are twice as big as you are normally, you weigh eight times more, but your strength depends on the cross-sectional area of your limbs and your muscles, your muscles only go up by a factor of four, because that is the area, your cross-sectional area of your arms and your legs so King Kong if he's twice as big is eight times heavier but only four times stronger, so in other words, relatively speaking, he is twice as weak, which means that if you scale up King Kong or Godzilla to these enormous distances the weight is so massive that the bones would break. Now this also goes in the opposite direction, the smaller you are proportionally the stronger you are. That's why for example, bugs,if you think about it are quite strong for their weight. If you take a look at an ant, an ant can pick up a leaf many times bigger than itself, so some people say ants would be able to pick up a house if they were the size of a house - wrong. If an ant were scaled up to the size of a house its legs would break, it would not be able to pick up a house. So why is it that an ant can pick up a leaf? Because of the opposite effect, because it's a hundred times smaller than us, it is actually proportionally a hundred times stronger than us, because it has very little body weight but lots of muscle. That's why figure skaters and gymnasts are small people. Have you ever been to the Olympics, or seen interviews with these gymnasts or figure skaters? They look normal, but they're not. They're actually small people. The television focus of course isn't on them, so you think they have normal proportions, but they are smaller than normal. And that helps, because they have less mass to throw around with the same amount of muscle. And so that's why King Kong is not possible, but however figure skaters and gymnasts they are tiny people.
Given this, I see no reason why speed is directly related to size and I am unaware of any rules-based reason why it would change.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/
"Your speed depends mostly on your size and your armor." - Except it doesn't. Race maybe... Size doesn't seem to matter.
Spells that change size usually don't also change speed unless stated. The quote you gave is a general guideline that is used when you are designing creatures for use in the game. For me, enlarging a creature generally just gives it a little more muscle for more "pow" and for it to move like normal.
Note something like the Enlarge Person spell already has this in mind:
This spell does not change the target’s speed.
The way I've always interpreted it is that, just as smaller creatures are proportionally stronger than larger ones, they're also proportionally faster. Acceleration is an equal part of force (strength) as mass. I remember reading that the fastest living thing known on our planet was some of of plankton or krill and could travel...I want to say over 280 body lengths per second.
So you get bigger, but you also get slower. I usually think of that in terms of reaction time (that's why a giant is so often depicted as so cumbersome compared to a human, and why a human has such a hard time swatting a fly), but there's surely some relation to land speed as well.
There's also got to be something in regards to metabolism, there. A hummingbird is super tiny, runs on pure sugar and is crazy fast. An elephant is massive, eats high-fiber, low-calorie fare and prefers to amble whenever possible. The more bulk you have, the more energy you need, the more you have to be careful about how you use it.
Generally, I'll keep a monster's speed the same. A dire wolf with a speed of 50ft still feels fast and wolf-y. A giant takes longer strides, but is slower to take them.
Now, if you've got a common garden toad grown to the size of a small keep, or an Atlas-style Titan that holds up creation, their speed is probably going to differ from their more normal counterparts. Still, that could go either way. The toad might react slower, but it covers 200 yards at a bound. The Titan might be able to walk to the horizon in three strides, but each one takes him over a minute.