As a d20 monster designer, a question I often have is “how D&D is this distance?” D&D has certain speeds, distances, and ranges that it likes more than others. Will I look like a country bumpkin if I give someone a speed of 75 feet? (Answer: Obviously not. I must follow the monster’s story. The monster’s story may well suggest — nay, demand — a speed of exactly 75, not 70, not 80.)
I decided to get a sampling of D&D speeds and plug them into a spreadsheet. I don’t think I need to completely do the whole Monster Manual here to get a sense, so I just took the first 100 stat blocks, which is about 25% of the stat blocks in the book and takes me up through the Death Dog entry. A respectable sample, I think.
Here’s the count, if it’s of any use to you. This is a niche post, and I can’t think of much use for it if you’re not designing monsters for publication, but hopefully someone will get some use from it.
Takeaways:
thirty something
D&D likes, but is not married to, increments of 30. This is something that you’ve probably intuited just from reading stat blocks: you’re used to seeing Darkvision 90 or Darvision 120 but not Darkvision 100, for instance. This tradition goes back to Chainmail and the other 25mm-scale wargames that inspired D&D, where 1 inch on the game table was typically equal to 30 feet. The earliest editions even measured spell ranges with the inches symbol, trusting you to translate them to feet. For instance, the range of the fireball spell was Range: 10″ + 1″/level, which you had to translate to 300 feet + 30 feet/level (or 1/3 that distance indoors, and I think areas of effect were handled differently than ranges; 1e rules are always a bit clunky).
Anyway, that’s something that’s somehow survived to this day, which will be great if 6e decides to go back to a 1 inch = 30 feet miniatures game!
low speeds
Don’t let those speeds below 20 fool you; with a few exceptions, like the animated rug of smothering, those are mostly fake walking speeds given to creatures that always fly around. For instance, the animated broom has a speed of 5 feet and fly speed of 50; it’s probably not going to use its little broom feet to walk up to you and hit you! (By the way, did you know that a D&D sea horse has a walking speed of 5 feet and a swim speed of 20? Not a fast walker, but faster than I would expect!)
i can’t drive 35
While there are some non-divisible-by-ten speeds — 15 gets a little bit of love — 25 and 35 are very uncool speeds for monsters. For 2024 character as well, actually. It’s odd because it was pretty easy to have a 25 or 35 speed in 2014, but it’s a real optimization challenge in 2024. Is being a goliath (walk speed of 35) the only way to do it? Wood elves don’t get a 35 speed any more; dwarves, halflings and gnomes don’t have a 25 speed; and barbarian, monk, and Speedy feat all get speed boosts in increments of 10. So I challenge you: in 2024 D&D, besides being a goliath, how many ways are there to make a character with a (non-temporary) walking speed ending with a 5?
