I'm trying to understand how combat movement works under the new rules... and somehow I'm unable to answer these simple questions:

Let's say I'm a human with Agi 5 and an Ini score of 25 (so I will most likely get 3 passes this turn). I want to move this combat turn from one place to another. The difference is 20 m, so I will need my full run rate to cover that distance.

When will I arrive at my target destination? At the end of the turn or at the end of my first pass? Or sometime in between?
How much distance can I cover in one Initiative pass? My full movement rate?

It looks like combat movement is no longer divided by the number of Ini passes... which is understandable, given that you don't know how many passes you will get at the beginning of a combat turn.
But that leads to the effect, that I can use my full movement rate in just one pass, doesn't it? So in the example above I could cover the 20 m in just one pass out of my three, thereby moving with a speed of 20m/s?
And then I would be stuck at my target destination for the next two passes, because I allready used my allowed movement rate? Well, technically I could sprint to move some extra meters, but that's about it?

Am I getting this right or where is my mistake?

-CJ

The way I read is that you declare your movement at the start of a pass. The default is walking unless you dec,are otherwise. As soon as you exceed your walking movement distance you're running by default, going beyond that is sprinting.

I think the part about where you are at any given (N)PC-action is the interesting/puzzling bit here.

But it's a problem for which i don't have a good idea/solution yet. I guess you'd always have to interpolate, as logically the movement would be (more or less) evenly distributed over the course of a combat round.

Everyone declares where they are moving to, then divide up their movement based on the person with the most IPs. People with multiple passes can change their destination each pass while someone with only 1 pass has to move toward their original destination. So if you can move 20m in a combat turn and their are 3 passes, everyone gets X/3m (X=movement in meters) per pass. So your character would get 6/7/7 meters per turn to move.

So, what happens if your initiative gets boosted mid round so you get an extra pass?
(Ok, not verly likely to happen, but I just had to bring it up.)

See, and that's my issue with it. Right now it simply isn't distributed at all. It works for Combat turns with exactly one pass. But I can't figure out how it's suppoesed to work in combat turns with more than one pass.

Here's another thing (and that's even from tehexample on page 162). Apparently, you start every turn at walking speed, and only if you move farther than your walking rate, you're considered runing. You declare your movement at the beginning of each pass.
Let's compare two humans, both have Agi 5. One is unlucky (player A) on his initiative roll and only gets a score of 10, the other one (player B) gets 11.
Both start at the same position and want to run 20 meters to the soma spot in the next combat turn.

Combat Turn 1 pass 1:
Player A: Declares he wants to move 20 m. He is considered running and has the respective dicepool modifiers to his attack tests.
Player B: Declares he moves 10 m this pass. He ist still considered walking and has no dicepool modifiers.
Situation at end of pass 1:
Unclear (at least for me ). Possible scenarios:
Player A has moved 20 m. He covered the distance in just 1.5 seconds (half a turn), so in essence he was moving at double speed.
Player A has moved 10 m and is still moving in the next pass where he can't act at all. This is how SR4 has handled this kind of situation. Problem: You don't know exactly where player A is, because you don't know how many passes there will be this turn. That's nasty.
Player B has moved 10 m in 1.5 seconds (half a turn). Interestingly, this means he was moving with a speed of 20 m per combat turn (aka running movement) but he is considered just walking...

Combat Turn 1 pass 2:
Player A can't act. Either he is waiting at the target destination or he is still under way.
Player B declares he wants to move another 10 m to the target destination. He is now considered running.
Situation at the end of pass 2:
Both players are at their target destination.

The whole thing get's even more complicated when Player C enters the scene. Player C doesn't move at all, but he has an Ini score of 22. So now there are three passes this combat turn...

-CJ

Edit: Made some clarifications.

Your character is phase-shifted into hyperspace until the end of the Combat Turn.

It's far more likely that someone will loose a pass. Possibly due to full defense. What happens then?

-CJ

adjust speed values appropriately. Nobody has sped up, they simply haven't had their speed divided as much. So if, for example, someone lost their 3rd pass and everyone shot down to 2? That remaining third of their movement is finished before the next combat turn,

The same as with every other character having less than maximum passes: he moves the precalculated distance every pass.
(If this was indeed the one character with more passes than everyone else, make a last initiative pass where everyone (who needs to do so) moves but nobody acts .)

It's probably the best aproximation. If you split the round into smaller pieces to get a more "smooth" movement (like divide a characters movement by his initiative and calculate movement for every single point of it) it just gets tedious.

€dit: Guess i took too much time thinking about a good solution there. X-Kalibur beat me to the answer.

Personally I think the best way to handle movement is to use a movement rate based on initiative score. Of course, disclaimer, I haven't tried this but it is similar to the system I used in 4e and that worked great at my table.

Take your movement limits for walking and running and divide them by your initiative score. This gives you your movement rates. Using the OP's example, his runner would have a walking rate of 1m per 2.5 initiative points and a running rate of 2m per 2.5 initiative points. Using these rates you can, during your pass, declare where you are moving, at what rate, and make sprinting tests to add to your rate. This system does mean that "quicker" characters have slower rates, but I discount that because everything is happening within the same time period. So everyone's speeds are the same.

Personally, I like to same you can't start your movement till your first action. If you prefer you could divide everyone's movement by the highest initiative score and then have people declare their movements at the start of the combat turn and be able to change directions and rates on their passes.

Example: A runner is in combat with a single Knight Errand guard. The runner's initiative score is 21; this gives the runner has a 4 agility making his rates walking: 0.4m/i.s. and running: 0.8m/i.s. The guards initiative score is 16 with a 4 agi, walking 0.5m/i.s. and running 1m/i.s.

21:The runner decides to make a break for it and starts running for the exit. He fires at the guard, but with the running penalty misses.

16: The guard decides to throw a HE grenade at where the runner is. But the grenade misses and scatters 2 meters.

11: The runner realizing he isn't going to make it out of the blast radius at his running rate. So he takes a sprinting action and gets 3 hits, as a human that is 6m. This creates a new movement rate he can take sprinting: 1m/i.s. He then sprints for the door.

6: The grenade goes off but the runner is out of the radius. The guard gives chase since the runner is getting away. He also takes a sprint action a gets 2 hits. Making his sprint rate 1.25m/i.s.

A little pictue showing positions:
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21------16------11--------5d
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From the combat preview, it look like the Agility 5 human can go 10 meters in one combat turn without running penalties. Moving from 11 to 20 meters in the first combat action (seems kind of crazy fast to me too) will for the rest of the combat turn force the character to:

• Use their free action on every combat action to Run
• Have a -2 dice pool modifier for every action attempted (except Sprint)

There is also an Intercept interrupt action that enemies could use on them, allowing an out of turn melee attack on them, and presumably stopping them en route.

This gives me a kind of "spring into action" feel, while the rest of the combat turn can be (penalized) non-movement stuff, or a "get the Hell out of Dodge" feel if a grenade lands nearby. I think the numbers are too generous, but I haven't playtested. Maybe Agility x 1 for walking, and Agility x 2 or 3 for running would be more realistic. Three meters is nearly 10 feet, and I could see a person needing to jog to go farther than that in three seconds. I think that the same person able to run 12 meters (almost 40 feet) in three seconds without sprinting a little too fast. These lower numbers would also make running seem less teleportation-like. The biggest problem I see is the massive variance between people, which in real life isn't so high. Look at how absurdly fast/slow character with extreme Agility ratings are. What do the rest of you think?

Walking: (Agility / 2) + 2
Running: Agility + 10
Sprinting: (Agility x 2) + (hits x 2) + 20

Anyone posting that you divide movement across initiative passes mathematically in any way is thinking in SR4 terms and not reading the letter of the SR5 rules. The SR5 rule is that movement is per combat turn, and that total movement across all initiative passes cannot be greater than that maximum. How you divide that movement is up to the player. If you move your full movement in your first pass but you still have two more passes, you do not get to move (although you are still considered to be running) UNLESS you take your complex action to sprint. The rules do not say anywhere that movement must be equally mathematically divided across IPs. Save yourselves the calculation and number crunching. It's simple, elegant, and it works.

Thank you. That's how I read it as well, but I wanted someone to confirm what I read. I'm really happy with this system. I didn't want to go back to 3rd edition's movement system. I think this will help a ton with the deadliness of grenades, too. Which is really important, as many were worried that grenades are going to be vicious in 5th edition. Running and Athletics just became very important skills.

Whenever I hear about these issues, I keep thinking about the initiative system used by Champions/Hero System. Everyone's actions are spread evenly through the round by their number of passes. the system divides the turn into 12 segments, and people go on different segments.
segment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12
1pass 7
2pass 6 12
3pass 4 8 12
4pass 3 6 9 12

How complicated you make movement and initiative depends on how long you want a turn to take. On one end, you have teleporting. On the other, Star Fleet Battles.

Ah, part of the reason I wasn't fully sure movement worked that way is that I hadn't read under Action Phase yet, which talks a bit more about movement.

From Pg. 163 under Action Phase:

Except it allows people to sprint at 80+ mph. With just cyberwear. Ork/Elf/Human with Agi 7, if you get 3 IPs. Use the first two to attack or whatever. Then in the third you use a sprint action and get 4 hits on your test. That is 36m (7*4= 28, 2*4=8, 28+8=36). Since a combat turn is 3 seconds, and you spent the first 2/3s standing still, that means you moved 36m in one second. 80mph. Ridiculous.

You could do something even crazier things if you had a decent run skill. Since you sprint tests add to your maximum movement but don't require you to move, you could just stand in place doing sprint actions until your last IP then sprint some ridiculous distance in a single IP.

Simple, yes. Elegant, I don't think so.

it's the teleporting that annoys folks. but for simplicity's sake i think its ok. not sure. need to give it a spin. it has to bebetter than breaking it down by IP, i suppose?

It's actually pretty hard to make 80mph moves in SR5 even if you try and create a running monster. It's also a lot more abstract about how you travel between the start and end of a Combat Turn. Shadowrun characters are crazy fast, but not 80 mph fast.

Let's consider a typical example that more accurately assesses the actual speed of the combatants:

The Covert Ops Specialist (p. 113) has a Physical Limit of 7, Running 3, Strength 5, Agility 6. She also has 5 Edge.

Her Run Rate is 24 meters per Combat Turn. She can make two sprints, but in this example only does a single Running + Strength (Physical) test to sprint. She rolls 8 dice with a limit of 7 hits. Each hit increases the distance she moves by +2 meters per Combat Turn. She will average 2-3 hits. With Edge she will average 3-5 successes.

Her Run Rate is ~17 mph. We'll handwave encumbrance since Shadowrun doesn't usually track that. Each hit adds about 4.5 mph. To put this in perspective, Usain Bolt (the fastest human alive) sprints at 27.79 mph. It's unlikely (but possible) that the Covert Ops could beat Usain Bolt in a footrace. If she can sprint a second time she will still, on average, be slower than Usain.


I suppose you could view it that way, but SR5 seems to have gone out of its way to abstract a bit what happens in that 3 seconds.

reflecting on some examples i think the 5e movement rules are better than 4e. i think it takes a shift in perspective to square with it. first off, rem that initiative itself is abstract. in 2e if a guy got 33 init, he went on 33, 23, 13 and 3 before the poor sod on 2 finally got an action. in 5e however, it goes 33, then guy on 2, then the quick guy gets his left over actions.

so... moving all yr running rate in one phase is not particularly inconsistent with initiative, which is already skewed for balance reasons. movement is now skewed for simplicity and keeping the game from bogging down in incremental half/third/qtr moves. going through a few examples, i am happy enough with the combat turn movemnt cap being the limiting factor, rather than init phase. if a guy is moving on 32, why shouldnt he be able to close 20m to melee a guy acting on 2 on his 32 phase, rather than have to spend 3 phases running up to him first? movemnt is based on the 3 sec combat turn and actions rely on IPs, which are not necessarily spread evenly across the 3 second turn, despite initiative being conveniently measured in chunks of 10. so in the above example, perhaps the guy on 32 runs the 20m over 2.5 secs, and the last 0.5 sec are all the attacks in rapid succession.

i think the game runs quicker with 5e movement, and gives an advantage to melee and taking cover (being able to close gaps quicker) but again i think that is fine and is perhaps even desirable from a balance perspective.

so yeah, i think the 5e movement rules are good: slightly more abstract... but better for overall gameplay (similar to the initiative rules).