How valuable is Speed

This is in regards to designing the Centaur race

This is a tough one to answer. I think that if I had an elf and a dwarf in the same party at some point I might have a better take on this, but I haven't, so here's what I've found.

When the terrain is pretty much open (no difficult terrain or blocking squares), then the speed of the characters typically doesn't make a big impact on encounters. Everyone has a speed of 5 or 6 and there isn't a major issue.

Provide some blocking terrain that the the characters must move around and the difference between a speed of 5 and 6 shows up slightly, but not too much. And even difficult terrain isn't usually that big of a deal.

The only time I see it make a noticeable difference is along the boundaries of the difficult terrain. If two characters (speed 5 and 6) start 4 squares away from the terrain, the character with speed 5 gets up to the edge, but can't proceed as they don't have 2 squares of movement left to enter. The character with speed 6 gets 1 square into the difficult terrain. But, once they are in, the extra cost to move through reduces the speed 6 character to an effective speed of 3 and the speed 5 character to 2. So there is still only a 1 square difference.

But, as I said, I haven't seen any encounters where I have a speed 5 and a speed 7 character at the same time. So, I haven't had much "real-world" experience in analyzing this situation. In my current campaign, I have one character playing a Slayer and they have a stance that gives them +2 to their speed while charging (speed 7). But, it is only while charging, so it isn't an "always on" thing.

Overall, I'd say that the difference between speed 5 and 6 is noticeable, but not major. The difference between speed 5 and 7 is probably a lot more noticeable, but I don't know for sure.

I cannot imagine a player character feeling like a centaur if his fellow adventures ride off on horses and he cannot keep up..

So, I've been thinking about this awhile and came to an epiphany about this. Why not have a Centaur Race have a trait that says something along the lines of "Centaurs have a bonus to speed for Overland Travel" and an Encounter power where they "gallop" and move a bunch extra as a Move Action. As for in battle movement Speed, maybe explain as a Big Creature they are more careful about not trampleing smaller allies or/and they need a bit of effort and time to get up to "Top Speed" without overexerting themselves. Just a few thoughts on this.

GF

Generic Fighter wrote:

So, I've been thinking about this awhile and came to an epiphany about this. Why not have a Centaur Race have a trait that says something along the lines of "Centaurs have a bonus to speed for Overland Travel" and an Encounter power where they "gallop" and move a bunch extra as a Move Action. As for in battle movement Speed, maybe explain as a Big Creature they are more careful about not trampleing smaller allies or/and they need a bit of effort and time to get up to "Top Speed" without overexerting themselves. Just a few thoughts on this.

GF

This is pretty good and I definitely like the idea. I haven't looked at the stats for the speed of a horse mount in combat (I started a new job recently and it demands more of my attention during the day and I have less access to online resources). But unless a horse has a speed of 8 or more in combat, I think that there's not much concern with a group of mounted character galloping away and leaving the centaur behind.

I would consider speed pretty valuable. On one hand I can see a lot of builds that don't care about it, but I also know from experience that a speed-8 druid/monk going wherever they damn please feels like a walking silver bullet against ranged enemies, or on big battlefields.

The elf gets base speed 7, right? That's probably a good benchmark for how powerful the developers thought it was. And since I've never seen the charop crowd complaining that speed is either godly or useless, I'm comfortable assuming that the original devs valued it more or less right.

Generic Fighter wrote:

So, I've been thinking about this awhile and came to an epiphany about this. Why not have a Centaur Race have a trait that says something along the lines of "Centaurs have a bonus to speed for Overland Travel" and an Encounter power where they "gallop" and move a bunch extra as a Move Action. As for in battle movement Speed, maybe explain as a Big Creature they are more careful about not trampleing smaller allies or/and they need a bit of effort and time to get up to "Top Speed" without overexerting themselves. Just a few thoughts on this.

GF

Surprised i hadn't already responded to this You hit really close to ummm realistic .... horses have a slower acceleration even than humans (not superior dex) but horses can achieve higher peak speeds and we humans hunt both by wearing the enemy out with better long term stamina and by that accelerated high dex pouncing (Our athletes aren't anything near physically inferior to animals in-spite of our myths).

4e handles long distance running in a martial practice that while a little distorted by heroic exaggeration makes humans and the pc races have a potential effective overland travel rates greater than their mounts at the cost of a healing surge, ( and even with my translation of the practice it is still a difficult check to avoid loss of the surge)