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Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:29 pm
by Lobo316
Does anyone happen to have access to thier books to be able to post overland travel times for me? I'm looking at, how many miles per day can an unmounted party travel?
If you have mounted times, those would be appreciated as well.
Thanks!!!
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:53 pm
by kreider204
According to the CKG, a normal adult human can walk overland carrying about 30 pounds at about 2 miles an hour (this assumes moving at a rate that saves energy for a full day's walk). A horse does go much faster - about 2.5 miles per hour - but can carry more, have short bursts of greater speed when necessary (e.g., running away from wargs ... ), and so forth. This is all modified by the type of terrain, and common sense, of course.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 3:39 pm
by Lobo316
kreider204 wrote:According to the CKG, a normal adult human can walk overland carrying about 30 pounds at about 2 miles an hour (this assumes moving at a rate that saves energy for a full day's walk). A horse does go much faster - about 2.5 miles per hour - but can carry more, have short bursts of greater speed when necessary (e.g., running away from wargs ... ), and so forth. This is all modified by the type of terrain, and common sense, of course.
Thanks for the info, that's helps a bit I think.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 3:44 pm
by serleran
For simplicity, and because I am a fool, I treat the overland movement (across unbroken terrain) to be a number of miles equal to the character's movement. So, if you could move 30 feet (the default), that becomes 30 miles. Terrain modifies by percentage, such as rough forest might be -25% or "downhill" might be +25%.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 4:21 pm
by Dracyian
Me personally carrying a full pack I can do 20 miles in a full days walk but thats hauling it and not stopping for much, with light on the road meals and quick camp set up and break down without pulling a full suit of armor off
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 4:24 pm
by Sir Ironside
kreider204 wrote:According to the CKG, a normal adult human can walk overland carrying about 30 pounds at about 2 miles an hour (this assumes moving at a rate that saves energy for a full day's walk).
A person, unencumbered can walk,
2.5 to 3 miles an hour.
A horse does go much faster - about 2.5 miles per hour - but can carry more, have short bursts of greater speed when necessary (e.g., running away from wargs ... ), and so forth. This is all modified by the type of terrain, and common sense, of course.
An unencumbered horse can walk
3 to 4 miles an hour.
I'd add penalties due to weather, terrain and weight carried from these figures. Or, just go, "meh" close enough.
My guess for horses and weight carried, before penalties, would be with a rider and 40 pounds of weight the horse could comfortably walk. Full armoured characters should also be factored in with consideration of what armour they are wearing. (Want to maintain your walk, deduct from the 40 pounds of gear carried.) These figures have no factual basis, just me giving an educated guess.
Edit: Didn't;
Wilderness Survival have something about this?
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 5:41 pm
by Lobo316
What does everyone here consider to be a "full days walk"? Is that an 8 hour day? A 10 hours day? Or is that an abstraction like "during the day" or "through the night" without worrying about hard facts?
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 6:19 pm
by kreider204
8 to 10 hours in the minimum range.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 1:52 pm
by Dracyian
I'd say a full days walk is at least 10 hours, you figure (running a 24 hour system here, your campaign settings of course can be what ever you damn well please

) anyways you figure 8 hours of sleep a night leaves you 16 hours to go about your day, you figure an hour to break camp and snack on something before starting out hiking, an hour to two for breaks and a lunch during the day, then two more hours at night to set up camp, make food, decide watch, clean and do any necessary upkeep on equipment then turn in for the night and repeat the whole adventure the next day. that is giving you 4-5 hours of not walking, with 8 hours of sleep leaves you 11-12 hours of walking per day
Edit: This is also suggesting there are no random encounters

Re: Travel Time
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:15 pm
by serleran
Minimum of 8 hours. Beyond 10 and it is a march, which changes the distance travelled.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:20 pm
by Omote
To break things down nicely, for my games I assume an 8-hour traveling period, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of sleep to equal a 24 hour day. If the PCs push themselves beyond 8 hours of traveling, they may be come fatigued. Military backgrounds, and fighter types can push this to 10 hours without worry of becoming fatigued.
~O
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:48 pm
by DeadReborn
serleran wrote:For simplicity, and because I am a fool, I treat the overland movement (across unbroken terrain) to be a number of miles equal to the character's movement. So, if you could move 30 feet (the default), that becomes 30 miles. Terrain modifies by percentage, such as rough forest might be -25% or "downhill" might be +25%.
I really dig this. Very easy to remember.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:40 pm
by dudeness of air
Dracyian wrote:Me personally carrying a full pack I can do 20 miles in a full days walk but thats hauling it and not stopping for much, with light on the road meals and quick camp set up and break down without pulling a full suit of armor off
As far as I know (I could be a bit off), most armies (back in the day before motor vehicles) would march about 20 miles in a full day's march. Anything less was considered slow marching. Anything more was considered fast marching.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 6:56 pm
by SaveVsFail
A bit of thread necro here, sorry for that...
Saw this and thought I'd chime in.
I was trying to sort travel times, miles per day etc, for a sandbox game awhile back and finally just threw it all out and built my map purely based on "It takes X days to reach Y location." For me each of my hexes was 1 day of travel, the actual scale of the map is really irrelevant. That's all really just unnecessary book keeping when it comes down to it. Unless you absolutely NEED to track miles per day, I'd say don't bother.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 7:34 pm
by Dracyian
I actually like that for those maps that have hexes, our CK for our Grey hawk kind of just looks at the map and figures the terrian thinks for a few seconds and declares it will take us three days
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 9:04 pm
by SaveVsFail
Yeah, it's worked out well for me. I don't really scale the travel time for terrain though as it's important for them to know things like... The Cave of Unspeakable Badness is 3 days east of the Tower of Fluffy Bunnies... or whatever. I do apply other checks and modifiers though usually through attribute or skill checks depending on the terrain or how they are approaching the travel.
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 9:26 pm
by Dracyian
That is what I have experienced Johm do, if it is truly rough like crap weather conditions while scaling a one man abreast path up super high mountain with rocs waiting to kill you we did do a few saves there
Re: Travel Time
Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:00 am
by Treebore
I just use the travel times estimated in one of those US Army field guide manuals. Since the 70 LBS maximum Army packs are usually 120 pounds they work great for Full Plate armor wearing characters.