Movement Rates Across the Editions of D&D (Part III: WotC-era D&D)

In previous posts I examined the evolution of character movement rates across the TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Now we turn to the 21st century, and the editions which brought many changes, for better or worse, to D&D.

D&D 3e (2000)

In some ways Third Edition D&D was a story of standardization and simplification, but it other ways the game became far more complex than ever. 

As in 2e, humans, elves, half-elves, and half-orcs move faster than dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, but the shorter races are now a little faster relative to their larger comrades than before, with base speeds of 30' and 20' rather than 12 and 6. Certain classes (e.g., barbarians and monks) have a bonus to their speed. These speeds represent feet per round in combat, but rounds are now defined as six seconds. ("Turn" has been abandoned as a defined amount of time, although many spells still have durations in the form of "10 minutes per caster level", so the notion lingers on from previous editions.) In a combat round, a PC can move their speed and take an action. By using that action to take a double move, they can move twice their speed in a round, or by running they can move quadruple their speed (but only triple if wearing heavy armor). Charging allows movement of up to double speed along with an attack at +2, but penalizes the PCs AC by 2 for a round.

These combat movement rates are fairly brisk, with an unarmored human moving at a base speed of about 6.8 mph if doing nothing other than moving. 

Wearing medium or heavy armor slows humans, elves, half-elves, and half-orcs to 20', and dwarves, gnomes, and halflings to 15'. This represents a simplified encumbrance system, and a more detailed encumbrance system is also offered, with the PC using which of the two penalties are worse. Encumbrance is divided into three categories (light, medium, and heavy loads) and these bands are determined by the PC's Strength score. Either a medium or heavy load reduces the PC's speed in the same way as medium or heavy armor does. Coins continue to weigh 50 to the pound, as in AD&D 2e.

Outside of combat, the same movement rates apply (i.e., an unarmored human walks 300' in a minute). There's no slow exploration speed as in previous editions, and no distinction is made in the rulebook between exploring a dungeon and walking overland or in a city, so it would seem that PCs are exploring the dungeon faster than ever.

D&D 3.5e (2003)

The "half edition" revision three years later didn't change any of the movement rules significantly, although the emphasis was increasingly placed on playing with miniatures on a battle map with a 5' grid. This reaches its peak in...

D&D 4e (2008)

Fourth Edition committed itself fully to the use of miniatures on a 5' grid. (Indeed, many would contend that 4e is nothing but a tactical miniatures game with D&D theming.) Movement rates are now given in squares, rather than feet. Most races have a base speed of 6 squares (i.e., 30'), while dwarves move 5 squares (25') and elves move 7 (35'). Perhaps oddly, even halflings move 6 squares!

Heavy armor (chainmail, scale armor, and plate armor) reduce speed by 1. Encumbrance has been radically simplified in some ways, while still being fiddly in others. All mundane equipment (but not magic items) has a weight specified in pounds. A PC can carry 10 times their Strength score in pounds without penalty. They can carry up to twice that at half speed. Coins continue to weigh 50 to the pound. (Although I personally don't have a ton of experience hiking or the like, these capacities seem unrealistic to me. I don't think the average human could carry 100 pounds all day long without being slowed down or fatigued.)

Exploration continues from 3e to use the combat speed extrapolated to feet per minute (e.g., a PC with speed 6 travels 300' per minute). The book notes that "if you're in a hurry" you can move at twice this rate with no penalty (similar to the ~7 mph "hustle" from 3e).

Combat rounds continue to be 6 seconds long. The term "turn" has now been entirely repurposed to mean an individual PC's actions within each combat round. In combat, PCs can move their speed and take an action. Another movement can be substituted for the action, so the double move notion from 3e is preserved, however these is no longer any concept of running at quadruple speed in combat. It has been replaced with a Run action that simply allows a PC to move their speed plus 2 squares (10') in exchange for significant penalties.

D&D 5e (2014)

Fifth Edition retained many of the simplifications and standardizing of 4e, but reframed them in a style of gameplay that felt much more familiar to players of 3e and earlier. Movement has returned to feet rather than squares (although 5e does retain an implicit focus on the battlegrid that is evident in the detailed way that many spells and class abilities work). Most races move 30', although dwarves move 25', wood elves move 35' (these two are holdovers from 4e, it seems), and halflings and gnomes move 25'. (Over the next decade, there was a general trend to standardize all races, even small ones, at a speed of 30'.) Many class abilities (especially for monks) modify speed.

Fifty coins continue to weight a pound. Encumbrance is now an entirely optional rule. The standard rule is that a PC can carry 15 times their Strength score in pounds without penalty, but no more. (Carrying 150 pounds all day without any negative effect seems wildly unrealistic.) The variant encumbrance rule allows 5 times the Strength score without penalty, up to 10 times at -10' to speed, and between 10 and 15 times at -20' to speed.

Exploration movement continues to be the same as it's been since 3e: 300' per minute, and this seems apply for all races and classes, regardless of their actual base speed. The rules now also offer a fast pace at 400'/minute at the cost of a -5 penalty to Perception checks, and a slow pace at 200'/minute that allows the use of Stealth.

Combat rounds continue to be 6 seconds, and "turns" retains the 4e sense of a player's turn in a round. In combat, the same basic system from 3e and 4e applies: PCs get a move and an action, and another move can be substituted for the action via the Dash action. Some classes (such as Rogues) get abilities allowing another Dash action as a bonus action on top of their normal movement and Dash action.

D&D 5.5e (2024)

The 2024 revision of the 5e rules did not substantially change the movement rates of PCs for either exploration or combat. Following the 5e trend, speeds are a minimum 30' for all PC races (now called species), with wood elves and goliaths having a speed of 35'.

Carrying capacity is now so reduced in emphasis as to be tucked away into a Rules Glossary at the back of the Player's Handbook. And the variant encumbrance rules are nowhere to be found! We have come a long way from the treasure-hunting version of D&D where players had to consider whether a bag of 500 gold pieces was worth the additional wandering monster checks it would incur them (if they even had enough torches left to exit the dungeon!). Now, a typical 1st-level fighter can carry up to 255 pounds without breaking a sweat.

To Be Continued...

I'm planning to finish up this series by looking at a few retroclones and "D&D-like" systems with which I'm familiar, to see if they've made any divergent choices regarding PC movement. 

Movement Rates Across the Editions of D&D (Part II: B/X, BECMI, AD&D 2e)

In my last post, I looked at the history of movement rates in early D&D, covering the products produced in the 1970s. Moving into the 1980s, let's look at the "Basic D&D" line and, at the end of the decade, AD&D Second Edition.

B/X D&D (1981) 

The 1981 Basic D&D rules edited by Tom Moldvay and its matching Expert rules edited by David Cook and Steve Marsh maintain the basic hierarchy of movement rates established by AD&D. However, the tracking of time within encounters returns to the 10-second rounds introduced in Holmes Basic D&D (exploration turns continue to be 10 minutes).

All PCs have a base movement rate of 120' per turn, matching AD&D. No distinction is made between any of the PC races. Encumbrance slows PCs as follows:

• Unarmored OR up to 400 coins: 120'
• Leather armor OR 401-600 coins: 90'
• Metal armor OR 601-800 coins: 60'
• Metal armor and carrying treasure OR 801-1600 coins: 30'
• Carrying treasure in addition to wearing armor: Use the movement speed one line lower than normal 

This represents a simplified version of AD&D encumbrance system, effectively making detailed weight tracking optional in favor of setting speed by the armor type and a vaguely defined "carrying treasure". For those who wish to track detailed weights, coins continue to be rather enormous at 10 to the pound, as they have been from the very start. The weight thresholds of the different movement speeds differ somewhat from the ones in AD&D, but the same progression of movement rates continues here.

Wandering monsters now occur on a 1 in 6, checked every two turns in the dungeon. This has never been consistent from edition to edition, even though it has a significant impact on the average distance the party can explore between encounters. The fatigue rule (the party must rest 1 turn after 5 turns of exploration) appears yet again.

This exploration movement rate is extraordinarily slow (0.14 mph for an unarmored PC, and as slow as a mere 180' in an hour for a heavily burdened PC!). The Basic rulebook does offer "The DM may wish to allow characters to move faster when travelling through areas they are familiar with." (In AD&D, Gary Gygax explicitly states that a party can move 5 times faster than normal when following a known route.)

Movement in combat per round is the base movement speed divided by three (i.e., 40'/round for an unarmored PC). This turns out to be exactly twice as fast as the combat speed in Holmes Basic or in AD&D. When fleeing a combat, PCs may move at their base movement rate per round (i.e., 60 times faster than the normal dungeon exploration speed!).

This series is mostly concerned with exploration and combat speeds at the dungeon scale, but it's worth pointing out that the Expert rulebook established that in the wilderness, all movement rates are defined in yards rather than feet (i.e., tripled). Somewhat oddly, missile weapon and spell ranges are also tripled (though spell area of effect is not). I believe this rule was also present in AD&D, also not particularly explicitly.

BECMI D&D (1983)

Frank Mentzer's revision and expansion of the B/X rules makes no significant changes to the B/X movement rates, although it adds at speed of 15' for encumbrance of 1601-2400 coins (and therefore expands the maximum carrying capacity from 1600 to 2400 coins). Instead of setting movement rates by armor time, Mentzer suggests that unarmored or leather armored PCs have a base encumbrance of 300 coins, and those wearing metal armor have a base encumbrance of 700 coins. This improves the movement speed for those in leather armor who are otherwise unencumbered by treasure.

AD&D 2e

AD&D Second Edition retains the one minute combat round and ten minute exploration turn from AD&D 1e. However, some significant changes have been made to movement rates.

For the first time since Chainmail, different PC races have different base speeds. Humans, elves, and half-elves have a base speed of 12, while the smaller races of dwarves, halflings, and gnomes have a base speed of 6. These speeds are defined as tens of yards per round outdoors, or tens of feet per round in a dungeon. This essentially replaces the "per turn" exploration rate of previous editions, amounting to a tenfold increase in exploration speed! (An unarmored human walks at 1.36 mph in the dungeon, or 4 mph in clear terrain; these speeds seem much more reasonable than previous exploration rates.)

Encumbrance is explicitly declared an optional rule, which is probably for the best because it is more complicated than ever, with a table mapping Strength scores and weight carried (now in pounds, rather than coins) to an encumbrance level, which reduces movement as it increases. Alternately, another table maps Strength into a very granular scale of carrying capacities, giving a smooth movement rate from 1 to the racial base speed. Incidentally, coins have now shrunk to a much more realistic 50 coins to the pound!

Combat movement is the familiar tens of feet per round. However, the rules state that a PC may only move half their speed and still make a melee attack. This replaces a complex 1e rule in which PCs may not attack on the same round in which they close to melee range except by using a charge, which allows double their movement and an attack but can only be done once per turn, and encumbered PCs may not charge at all.

As far as I can tell, the feet/yards scaling of dungeon/wilderness movement and ranges has been entirely dropped for combat movement.

Wandering monsters (now called random encounters) have been severely reduced in emphasis. The Dungeon Master's Guide provides substantial advice on creating encounter tables and suggests frequencies and chances in different terrain types, and suggests that in a typical dungeon, random encounters happen on a 1 in 10, checked every hour. This is significantly less frequent than the 1 in 6 every 20 minutes of the Basic D&D line!

To Be Continued...

So, at the end of the '80s, where do we stand? AD&D 2e characters are now zipping around the dungeon at 10 times the speed of BECMI characters, but an unarmored and unencumbered human can only move 60' in a 1-minute combat round and still attack, while the equivalent BECMI PC can move twice as fast, covering 20' in 10 seconds. Did any of this minutia factor into the written adventures of the era, when many people freely interchanged AD&D and D&D modules? Very doubtful!

Next time, I will look at the 21st century evolution that occurred in PC movement rates after Wizards of the Coasts acquired D&D from TSR. And finally, we'll wrap up this series by looking at some of the retroclones and "D&D-likes" that have popped up over the years and see whether they diverge from their parent games in this regard.

Movement Rates Across the Editions of D&D (Part I: OD&D, Holmes, and AD&D)

One of my hopes for 2026 is to get an ongoing in-person home campaign running again, using the DCC RPG rules. For public games, which are often one-shots, I tend to handwave many aspects of the game that I would be much more rigorous about in an ongoing home campaign. Mechanics for exploration (encumbrance, movement, etc.) are a bit of a blank spot in DCC, on the assumption that the judge will be familiar with earlier editions of D&D and will adapt their favorite version of such rules into their game. So I've been researching how past editions handled these mechanics, in order to decide how I will handle them in my game. I thought I would compile a brief history of how each edition of D&D (and offshoot games like DCC) have handled player character movement over the years, partly for my own reference, but hopefully this might prove interesting to others.

Chainmail (1971) 

Even though it was a tabletop wargame rather than a role-playing game, Chainmail was essentially the primordial soup from which D&D formed, so it's worth reviewing how it handled movement speeds.

In each turn (defined as one minute of time in battle), each player gets one move (potentially split in half). Relevant to D&D PCs are the following unit types and their movement: Armored Foot (6"), Heavy Foot (9"), and Light Foot (9"). The scale is 1" to 10 yards, giving movement rates of 180', 270', and 270' in a minute, respectively. There are also several unit types which get a 12" move: Landsknechte/Swiss, Arquibusiers/Crossbowmen, and Longbowmen.

There is a fatigue rule in which moving for 5 consecutive turns incurs penalties, which are removed by one turn of non-movement.

Finally, the "fantasy supplement" at the end of the booklet specifies speeds of 6" for dwarves and 12" for elves and (oddly) halflings.

Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

Men & Magic (Volume 1 of the three little brown books) mentions movement rates only in terms of encumbrance. A PC carrying up to 750 gold pieces of weight moves at the speed equal to Light Foot Movement (12"). (But note that this doesn't actually map to the speed of Light Foot in Chainmail.) Between 750 and 1,000 gold pieces, a PC moves as Heavy Foot Movement (9"), and between 1,000 and 1,500 gold pieces as Armored Foot Movement (6"). Above 1,500 gold pieces a PC incurs a half-speed penalty (i.e., 3"). These speeds are described as being per turn. Men & Magic does not define "turn", so we might initially presume it remains 1 minute as in Chainmail.

However, Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, does define turns and explains how to scale inches to feet: "In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given in inches convert them to tens of feet. Movement (distances given in Vol. 1) is in segments of approximately ten minutes. Thus it takes ten minutes to move about two moves - 120 feet for a fully-armored character. Two moves constitute a turn, except in flight/pursuit situations where the moves/turn will be doubled (and no mapping allowed)." This actually contradicts what Volume 1 said (e.g., 6"/turn for an armored footman), but at least we have clarity on how far a PC can move. In a 10 minute turn a PC receives two moves at their movement speed at a 1":10' scale, giving us the following movement rates (at least in the underworld):

• 0 - 750 gp weight: 240' 
• 750 - 1,000 gp weight: 180'
• 1,000 - 1,500 gp weight: 120'

OD&D does not differentiate the four PC races; all travel at the same speeds as determined by their encumbrance.

I'll note that 240' in 10 minutes is barely a quarter of a mile per hour, much slower than the 360' in 1 minute (~4 mph) that the equivalent character in Chainmail travels. It is logical that one would travel much slower in a dangerous dark dungeon than on an open plain, but this does seem ludicrously slow.

OD&D requires that one turn every hour must be spent motionless, which is a direct translation of Chainmail's fatigue rule. There are ten rounds of combat per turn, making a round 1 minute (so the duration of each combat "action" remains the same as in Chainmail; it's just the terminology that has changed). It isn't clear to me, though, how the speed in inches translates to each combat round. (But to be blunt, the entire combat system is extremely vaguely described in OD&D!)

Wandering monsters appear on a 1 in 6, rolled at the end of every turn.

Basic D&D / Holmes (1977)

The Holmes Basic D&D set was being developed concurrently with Advanced D&D, and it is interesting to see how they diverge. Speeds are translated from inches into feet, but the overall movement rates from OD&D are retained (all speeds are per 10 minute turn):

• Unarmored and unencumbered: 240'
• Fully armored, or heavily loaded: 120'
• Fully armored and heavily loaded: 60'

These speeds are explicitly stated as "exploring/mapping" speeds, and the rules allow for PCs to move at double speed when "moving normally", or triple speed when running.

Oddly, all monster speeds are given as feet/turn, but they all in the range of 60'/turn, 90'/turn, 120'/turn, etc. It appears that only PCs receive two moves per turn, and monsters simply take their base speed once!

Combat rounds are now stated to be 10 seconds long. An unarmored PC moves 20' per round, and an armored PC moves only 10'.

Wandering monsters still occur on 1 in 6, but now the die is only rolled every three rounds. So although exploration speeds are the same as in OD&D, the relative "speed" of distance between wandering monster encounters has tripled!

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977-1979)

For as much mockery as the AD&D books receive for being unclear and difficult to understand, they do in fact finally establish some unambiguous movement rules, although PCs are moving slower than ever.

In the dungeon, turns continue to be 10 minutes long. AD&D continues OD&D's combat rounds of 1 minute, but now they are divided into 10 6-second segments.

The Players Handbook reiterates the usual movement rates at 1":10', but now they are per turn, rather than two moves per turn:

• Normal gear (up to 350 coins): 12"
• Heavy gear (up to 700 coins): 9"
• Very heavy gear (up to 1050 coins): 6"
• Encumbered (over 1050 coins): 3" to 4"

Perhaps to make up for the halving of speed, the rules now allow movement at 5 times the normal speed when following a known route or map.

Combat speed (or when fleeing) is 10 times faster, or in other words, the same numeric values apply per round rather than per turn. Even though the duration of a combat round is different, this ends up being the same combat movement speed as in Holmes D&D (20' in 10 seconds for an unarmored PC).

When moving in an inhabited area like a city, movement occurs at combat speed, but no mapping is allowed. (If PCs are mapping in a city they move at the dungeon exploration rate.) This casual speed is still quite slow at only about 1.4 mph for an unarmored PC.

The Dungeon Master's Guide reiterates the "rest after every 5 turns of movement" rule, and the sample dungeon example implies a wandering monster check every three turns (although no explicit general rule is given).

To Be Continued...

In the next post I will look at the various Classic D&D editions of the '80s, as well as the significant changes made in AD&D 2e.