Snow, Mud, Water etc., And being knee deep in it. Options

[IceKatze]

hi hi

I can't seem to find any rules for movement speed penalties and before I start making house rules I wanted to check and see if people know of any/have suggestions.

The motivation for this is that I am intending to subject my players to a scenario involving a foot or more of ash and snow. If you've ever tried to run in snow that is even remotely deep, you'll know it isn't easy, but the same goes for mud, waist deep water, toxic sludge and so on.

Do you think smaller characters (read dwarves) should be proportionately effected by such a barrier?

[the_real_elwood]

It depends on how concerned you are with game speed and how concerned you are with accuracy. But if I'm moving through knee-deep snow that happens to be waist-deep snow for another person, it's easy to tell that the person who it's waist-deep on is going to be moving a lot slower. So maybe the giant troll character should be moving at 3/4 of base speed, humans/ork/elves moving at 1/2 speed, and the dwarf moving at 1/4 speed.

And while I'm sure that moving through waist-deep toxic sludge would hamper your movement, I'd think that the movement penalties would be the least of your worries.

[Sir_Psycho]

It depends on how concerned you are with game speed and how concerned you are with accuracy. But if I'm moving through knee-deep snow that happens to be waist-deep snow for another person, it's easy to tell that the person who it's waist-deep on is going to be moving a lot slower. So maybe the giant troll character should be moving at 3/4 of base speed, humans/ork/elves moving at 1/2 speed, and the dwarf moving at 1/4 speed.

Also, the movement rate table states walking/running speeds of:
Humans, elves, orks .............10/25
Dwarfs .................................8/20
Trolls ....................................15/35

A 50 percent reduction across the board. For example, in knee deep snow the modified rates would be:
Humans, elves, orks .............5/13 (rounded up)
Dwarfs .................................4/10
Trolls ....................................8/15 (rounded up)

However, under your 1/4 Dwarf restriction, movement speed would be 2/5, while Trolls would be hardly effected at all. fairness is up to interpretation. Trolls are by description (not illustration) huge, and anything a human got knee deep in, a dwarf would be up to his waist.

And while I'm sure that moving through waist-deep toxic sludge would hamper your movement, I'd think that the movement penalties would be the least of your worries.

If you were a shadowrunner going some-where you were likely to have to wade through toxic sludge, you'd probably bring yourself an armoured hazmat suit..

[IceKatze]

hi hi

That sounds about right. I certainly don't want to make my runners roll crash tests just for sprinting, wouldn't really do much good anyway since they wouldn't be going fast enough to take damage.