Stealth and Movement

[Ughbash]

This should be a fairly simple straightforward answer but a friend and I disagree on how far one can move with no penalty to stealth.

Person 1 Looks at the rules and says up to half move at no penalty. So a standard human can move 15' in a round since his move is 30'.

Person 2 looks at the rules and says up to half move at no penalty. So a standard human can move 30' in a round (2 move actions of 15').

Both people are sure that theirs is OBVIOUSLY right so talk around each other. I thought I would get the general opinion of the boards.

[Jiggy]

The actual rules wrote:

You can move up to half your normal speed and use Stealth at no penalty.

It doesn't say you can only do this once per round.

[Haladir]

I agree with Jiggy. For your move action, you can move 15 ft, then for your standard action, you can move another 15 ft.

[Jiggy]

To add a bit more to the topic, I've gotten the impression at times (based on mistakes I've seen long-time gamers make) that perhaps older editions of D&D handled movement and speed differently, like maybe you can always only move your listed speed once per round, regardless of whether you do or don't attack/cast/whatever. If so, then it's easy to believe that they're carrying faulty assumptions into this rule, erroneously thinking of "speed" as being a per-round thing instead of a per-action thing.

I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that, if one of the players involved has been playing substantially longer than the other, that the "veteran" is the one thinking you can only move half your speed in the entire round. Am I right?

[Malach the Merciless]

Pre 3.0 versions of AD & D had 1 minute rounds, so there was a lot of potential movement in that.

[wraithstrike]

Quote:

If you use two move actions in a round (sometimes called a “double move” action), you can move up to double your speed. If you spend the entire round running, you can move up to quadruple your speed (or triple if you are in heavy armor).

Just move half the distance you would be allowed to avoid the penalty.

Stealth has no "per round" use limit.

[lemeres]

I think that I would rule that you cannot be as silent as the night if you are in a mad sprint though. I mean, running slowly seems like a regular walk to me (stealth running for the whole round would be the same as a nonstealth double action move), which would be your standard speed, and thus incur penalties.

This is not entirely RAW, but the GM should handle the rules with at least some regard to such issues.

[The Numerator]

Stealth said:
"It's impossible to use Stealth while attacking, running, or charging." So running is out.

Taking 2 move actions and stealthing for each is fine, since "Normally, you make a Stealth check as part of movement, so it doesn't take a separate action"

I would take this to mean you can take 2 move actions, but each movement of half speed would require its own check.

Lastly, I don't think RAW you can move your full speed while using Stealth. Here's the text: "You can move up to half your normal speed and use Stealth at no penalty. When moving at a speed greater than half but less than your normal speed, you take a –5 penalty."

Which seems odd to me that you can move 25' at -5 penalty, but there is no penalty listed for 30'. In our home game, we just simplified this to the full movement, but that's not strictly RAW.

[wraithstrike]

lemeres wrote:

I think that I would rule that you cannot be as silent as the night if you are in a mad sprint though. I mean, running slowly seems like a regular walk to me (stealth running for the whole round would be the same as a nonstealth double action move), which would be your standard speed, and thus incur penalties.

This is not entirely RAW, but the GM should handle the rules with at least some regard to such issues.

Moving at 15 for 3 second, and moving at 30 for 6 seconds is the same rate of speed.