While traveling, a group of adventurers can move at a normal, fast, or slow pace, as shown on the Travel Pace table. The following rules determine how far a character or monster can move in a minute, an hour, or a day. This number assumes short bursts of energetic movement in the midst of a life-threatening situation. 181), covers 16-32 miles in a day.Įvery character and monster has a speed, which is the distance in feet that the character or monster can walk in 1 round. However, no matter how fast these characters get, they still travel at 2-4 Miles per hour (depending on which pace they choose), which unless the party chooses to suffer potential Exhaustion effects in order to move farther in a day ( Forced March, PHB, pg. There are rules for faster and slower travel overland, but they aren't affected by how much weight an individual character is carrying-because they aren't affected by a character's movement speed at all.įor example, it's not uncommon to have a party who, through various means, has lots of characters with higher-than-usual movement speeds, like Monks and Barbarians who gain progressively faster movement speeds, Druids with their swift beast forms, Rogues with their ability to Dash multiple times in a turn, Paladins and the Steed they can summon, and so on, and so forth. Generally speaking, Encumbrance rules do not apply in overland travel. reduced distance covered/marching time, increased risk of exhaustion, etc.). So, it appears, according to RAW, that even a heavily encumbered party's travel speed is not affected when exploring or traveling, nor do they suffer any other penalties associated with exploring and/or travel (e.g. Slower ones, and one traveler’s quickness is matched by another Travelers pause to catch their breath, the faster ones wait for the
The difference between walking speeds can be significant duringĬombat, but during an overland journey, the difference vanishes as It is stated in the PHB that being encumbered reduces a character's movement in combat, while being heavily encumbered drops movement further, and negatively affects attack rolls, ability checks, as well as certain saving rolls. This brought up questions about penalties when exploring and traveling while encumbered/heavily encumbered (especially from players of characters with lower strength scores).
The current 5e campaign I'm running uses the encumbrance variance rules and demands a lot of travel and resource management on the part of the players.