TheRPGSite

A recent thread on another site about movement speeds in 5e D&D had a few comments where people kept harping that the speeds were "unrealistic".

So I sat down and parsed out the speeds and actually. Its not as wonky as people keep claiming.

The average walk speed in 5e is 30ft/r which comes to about 3.4mph. A little above the average walking speed of a human being.
Standard Dash bumps that up to 6.8mph.
A level 18 monk can double their walking speed which bumps up their dash speed to 13mph. Still well within limits.
Using the Mobile feat you can bump that up to 15.9mph.
Even dabbling in 2 levels of Rogue to get cunning action for another dash only increases the speed to 23.9 or so mph. Various sources cite the average human running speed at 28mph.

So without magic the speeds are actually within human norm. Could a person actually sustain that pace? Didn't check but 5e does have some rules in place for speed travel.

So far this is looking at just sustained speeds.

Next we get into short bursts and here things get a little odd. But what were you expecting? Magic is involved.
Using a haste spell on our speedy Monk/Thief we can double their 70 MOV to 140 then dash-dash that into a whopping 420 MOV which translates to 47.7mph.
But we arent done yet. Monk can dash again as a bonus action using 1 chi point. Bringing that all up to a 560 MOV and a velocity of 63.4 mph.

And if you really want to get funky. Go Tabaxi from Volo which gets an additional speed bump so you could crank out a 560 MOV for a nice burst of 63.6 mph. With a chi point it accellerates to 700 MOV and a sprint of around 79.5 mph

There are a few outliers I did not include like the speed boon for an added +30 MOV or an arifact with the +10 MOV bonus. Or Longstrider which adds a +10 MOV. Or an Wizards Transmutor Stone set to +10 MOV. With those you could blast off with a crazy 130 base MOV turned into 260 with Haste and then quad dashed into a 1300 MOV which brings our would-be Flash up to 147.7 mph. The wonders of magic indeed!

Pretty sure my math and the rules are right.  I did not factor in anything involving flight or polymorphing into something weird like a Quickling as it tends to over-write or prevent some skill uses depending. But I would lay good odds that with one or two you might be able to push the speed barrier to 150 mph or possibly 200 mph. Without accessing the Tabaxi the speeds drop down by one unit each where the extra dash would be lost.

Can anyone think of any possible additional perks I missed?

And for those interested my base assumption is each dash used just adds another bump of speed rather than doubling the prior dash and that Haste is factored in before Dash is.

Oh and on a side note a Broom and Carpet of Flying are rather slow. Base speeds of 5.7 and 9 mph respectively. Though assuming dash is allowed on both then you can accellerate to 11.4 and 18.2 mph respectively.

I love what you did here. Well thought out and explained. I had planned on doing some of this myself just out of curiosity, but you have saved me some legwork. Thanks!

Quote from: Omega;1065616Various sources cite the average human running speed at 28mph.

This was my big concern. All of my internet searches seem to indicate that Usain Bolt's top speed was 27.8 mph, so an average human running speed should be a lot lower.

Well Monks are at near top condition so it makes sense if a Monk was going for pure physical sustained running speed. The average PC will be moving at a pace of 6.8 mph. A thief can jog along at 10.2 mph. A Monk not dabbling in Rogue for the extra speed will top out at 13.6 mph.

Same non-Rogue person specced into mobility can bump that up to 9 and 13.6 mph respectively. And the non-Rogue Monk can hit 15.9 mph.

Greetings!

Well done, Omega! This is really cool what you have here! It is very nice to have some of these weird little details worked out. I'm always reminded of the situation where some player says, well, "How fast can I make it to the town where the evil ceremony is going to be performed?" :)

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Omega;1065616A recent thread on another site about movement speeds in 5e D&D had a few comments where people kept harping that the speeds were "unrealistic".

So I sat down and parsed out the speeds and actually. Its not as wonky as people keep claiming.

The average walk speed in 5e is 30ft/r which comes to about 3.4mph. A little above the average walking speed of a human being.
Standard Dash bumps that up to 6.8mph.
A level 18 monk can double their walking speed which bumps up their dash speed to 13mph. Still well within limits.
Using the Mobile feat you can bump that up to 15.9mph.
Even dabbling in 2 levels of Rogue to get cunning action for another dash only increases the speed to 23.9 or so mph. Various sources cite the average human running speed at 28mph.

Good grief. So you're using a multiclassed level 18 monk to try and say the movement speeds are anywhere close to reality?

Let's talk actual numbers. When people complain about movement-per-round, they aren't discussing miles per hour. They're talking about short-term, round-by-round movement in combat. A really good parallel if you want to look is the game of football. Now, I'm a big guy. I'm built for plowing over people, and the first time I ever got my 40 timed (7th grade) I came in at 6 seconds even--1 round in D&D. That's 120 feet. You literally cannot do that in D&D without pulling off a bunch of shenanigans, and I was hardly an adult, well-conditioned adventurer when I did it years ago. And again, keep in mind I'm slow; sub-5-second 40 times are extremely common among college and professional football players. These people cover 160+ feet per round without any magic or ki to help them.

The point is, most people don't have an issue with 30 ft/round. Adventurers are moving cautiously in combat, defending, etc., so 30 feet is perfectly reasonable. It's the part where you can't run from Point A to Point B at anywhere close to normal human speed unless you have magical help or some specific combination of Feats/classes that's a problem. Honestly, most of the problem goes away entirely if you just let people run/Dash at Speed x4 instead of x2, which is something I've done for a long time.

Quote from: Brand55;1065786Good grief. So you're using a multiclassed level 18 monk to try and say the movement speeds are anywhere close to reality?

Let's talk actual numbers. When people complain about movement-per-round, they aren't discussing miles per hour. They're talking about short-term, round-by-round movement in combat. A really good parallel if you want to look is the game of football. Now, I'm a big guy. I'm built for plowing over people, and the first time I ever got my 40 timed (7th grade) I came in at 6 seconds even--1 round in D&D. That's 120 feet. You literally cannot do that in D&D without pulling off a bunch of shenanigans, and I was hardly an adult, well-conditioned adventurer when I did it years ago. And again, keep in mind I'm slow; sub-5-second 40 times are extremely common among college and professional football players. These people cover 160+ feet per round without any magic or ki to help them.

The point is, most people don't have an issue with 30 ft/round. Adventurers are moving cautiously in combat, defending, etc., so 30 feet is perfectly reasonable. It's the part where you can't run from Point A to Point B at anywhere close to normal human speed unless you have magical help or some specific combination of Feats/classes that's a problem. Honestly, most of the problem goes away entirely if you just let people run/Dash at Speed x4 instead of x2, which is something I've done for a long time.

I always treated it as the PC moving cautiously and trying to keep their head down, etc., even when Dashing.

Outside of combat, like if you were just making a wild run across a collapsing cliffside or something, you'd use an Athletic check, and then the amount of time can be flexible to fit the situation.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1065787I always treated it as the PC moving cautiously and trying to keep their head down, etc., even when Dashing.

That works fine, but not for every situation. Sometimes you don't need to worry about caution and you just need to get somewhere fast. Maybe a wizard is working on a spell and your fighter has to get to him ASAP. Maybe you need to get to the lever that'll open the gates while your friends hold off the orcs. Or a bunch of archers just popped out of the trees on the other side of a broad clearing and missed with their opening volley. And so on. In those cases, having an artificially short running speed is silly and potentially fatal.

I think the numbers were a bit off (I seem to recall I switched to 6-second rounds instead of 10 because of it), but this is why I liked how WFRP used three rates of movement: cautious, standard, and running. Something similar in D&D could be a good option. Keep Dash as-is, and add a Sprint option that's basically a double Dash with an AC penalty.

Quote from: Brand55;1065786Good grief. So you're using a multiclassed level 18 monk to try and say the movement speeds are anywhere close to reality?

Let's talk actual numbers. When people complain about movement-per-round, they aren't discussing miles per hour. They're talking about short-term, round-by-round movement in combat. A really good parallel if you want to look is the game of football. Now, I'm a big guy. I'm built for plowing over people, and the first time I ever got my 40 timed (7th grade) I came in at 6 seconds even--1 round in D&D. That's 120 feet. You literally cannot do that in D&D without pulling off a bunch of shenanigans, and I was hardly an adult, well-conditioned adventurer when I did it years ago. And again, keep in mind I'm slow; sub-5-second 40 times are extremely common among college and professional football players. These people cover 160+ feet per round without any magic or ki to help them.

3e did it better. It not only had the double-move (60 feet per six-second round for a human), but also the run action (120 feet per six-second round). All it'd take is the Run feat to pop you up to 150 feet per six second round. If you were a level 1 barbarian or monk you'd be able to cover 160 feet per six-second round (or 200 feet with the Run feat).

In my own system I went with a speed of 6 paces (the Roman 5' variety) as the base speed for a human, then added a Hustle action (minor action; varies with base speed, but +2 paces/10' for a human; can be maintained for few hours depending on Endurance score), a Run action (main action; doubles your speed, stacks with Hustle; can be maintained for a few minutes depending on Endurance score) and a Sprint action (free action; also doubles your speed, but you take penalties to defenses and alertness; stacks with Hustle and Run; can be maintained for a few rounds depending on Endurance).

Base speed is a walk of about 3 mph (30' per round).

If you Hustle, you're going to cover about 4 mph (40' per round) for a few hours until you'll need to stop and rest and can still pull of your main action (like an attack).

If you use Run you're up to 6 mph (60' per round) and can still perform an action that takes a simple gesture or a few words to pull off with your minor action. You can do this for a couple of minutes.

If you use both Hustle and Run you're now at 8 mph (80' per round), can't do anything else, but still have your full defenses and can keep it up for a couple of minutes.

If you use Hustle, Run and Sprint all together you're moving at 16 mph (160' per round), can't do anything else and have reduced defenses and penalties to notice details (you're focused on what's directly in front of you), but can only keep up that pace for less than a minute.

Certain classes and backgrounds have options to improve that speed. The fastest non-magical combo would be a skirmisher and a background that offered swift movement. Both options ramp up with level, but at level 13+ (in a 15 level game) that would put their base speed at 12 paces (60') and a top sprinting speed of 32 mph (320' feet per round).

27.8 mph was Usain Bolt's peak sprinting speed for comparison and I don't mind an epic hero being able to sprint slightly faster than him.

Quote from: Brand55;1065786Good grief. So you're using a multiclassed level 18 monk to try and say the movement speeds are anywhere close to reality?

Noooo. I am saying that the speeds the PCs can attain without magic are not the absurdly fast rates some others have stated they are. As I show, the running speeds are within tolerable levels. The base walk speed is a little over the norm and without class boosts the sprint speed is well within the norm and even with various class boosts it is still within the norm even if you factor in a monk.

I use the monk as the example of the top end of speed.

Quote from: Omega;1065800Noooo. I am saying that the speeds the PCs can attain without magic are not the absurdly fast rates some others have stated they are. As I show, the running speeds are within tolerable levels. The base walk speed is a little over the norm and without class boosts the sprint speed is well within the norm and even with various class boosts it is still within the norm even if you factor in a monk.

I use the monk as the example of the top end of speed.

Gotcha. I've usually heard people complain the speeds are too slow so it was a bit confusing. It's not just a D&D thing, either, since balancing what works best with miniatures on a tabletop doesn't always map well to realistic numbers if you're playing theater of the mind.

Quote from: Brand55;1065813Gotcha. I've usually heard people complain the speeds are too slow so it was a bit confusing. It's not just a D&D thing, either, since balancing what works best with miniatures on a tabletop doesn't always map well to realistic numbers if you're playing theater of the mind.

Yeah, too slow is generally the complaint I've heard too... primarily in relation to creatures that can fly. 60' (12 squares) sounds quite speedy; particularly in 3e when a 'run' could pump that up 240' (48 squares), but that's still just 24 mph using an action that can be maintained for minutes at best while actual birds can maintain speeds of 40+ mph (on the slow end) for hours at a time.

I ended up having to adapt HERO's Non-Combat Movement multipliers (putting flight at x10; so combat flight of 60' would be non-combat flight of 600' or 60 mph) just to make flight feel remotely realistic.

an addendum.

I had a look at 5e's overland movement and it overall still maps to reasonable rates. Normal speed is 3mph. (actually should be 3.4 but I assume they rounded down to account for terrain).
Fast march is 4.5mph. And a slow/cautious march is 2.27 mph.

AD&D's movement rates were a lil different as a round was a full minute. A base unencumbered movement was 12' which translates to a 12 MOV in 5e. This was because AD&D and BX factored in exploration and being cautious. The PCs were checking everything very carefully as they went and it was exhausting work too. But speed bumped up to 60 if was moving along known routes. Fleeing was 120.

Overland movement was based on your speed translated to miles traveled in a day. So 12 speed becomes 12 miles per day. With again the slowness due to caution and mapping.

One reason they stated for rounding down on the mph for overland travel was periodic stops to rest. 3 mph works out to about a 5-10 minute stop every hour.

Likewise, 12 miles a day is actually slightly on the fast side for anyone traveling in a group and needing to set up and tear down a camp (and AD&D presumed henchmen and hirelings accompanying the PCs). 10 miles a day was considered the norm for armies on the march (4-5 hours of marching; the rest was pitching/tearing down camp, meals, etc.) and pioneer wagon trains in the Western United States averaged only about 15 miles a day (they saved time on set-up/tear-down with the covered wagons and a bit from not having to account for people walking on foot).

Of particular note is that horses really didn't speed up the travel (in fact a man alone on foot could probably cover more distance in a day than a man on horseback); it just made it much easier on the rider.

What's completely unrealistic are 3e's overland numbers... 30 miles in a day on foot MIGHT be possible for a lone individual along good roads who isn't carrying much and can get food and drink and shelter along the route (as opposed to carrying it with them)... but for a typical ladened adventurer it's completely unrealistic.

Even more unrealistic is that they presumed the combat speed scores all scaled linearly to long distance travel. Ex. Presuming that a man on horseback can travel 60 miles in a day (based on the horse's 60' speed) for days on end... without killing their horse. Half of that or less would be more realistic with the amount of gear a typical adventurer carries. For reference a well-conditioned riding horse was presumed to be able to manage 40 miles in a day if rider didn't have too much gear with them (ex. someone going on a day ride to inspect their property or traveling along routes where inns/taverns would be available for food and lodging).

Quote from: Chris24601;1065840One reason they stated for rounding down on the mph for overland travel was periodic stops to rest. 3 mph works out to about a 5-10 minute stop every hour.

Likewise, 12 miles a day is actually slightly on the fast side for anyone traveling in a group and needing to set up and tear down a camp (and AD&D presumed henchmen and hirelings accompanying the PCs).

Of particular note is that horses really didn't speed up the travel (in fact a man alone on foot could probably cover more distance in a day than a man on horseback); it just made it much easier on the rider.

What's completely unrealistic are 3e's overland numbers... 30 miles in a day on foot MIGHT be possible for a lone individual along good roads who isn't carrying much and can get food and drink and shelter along the route (as opposed to carrying it with them)... but for a typical ladened adventurer it's completely unrealistic.

Even more unrealistic is that they presumed the combat speed scores all scaled linearly to long distance travel. Ex. Presuming that a man on horseback can travel 60 miles in a day (based on the horse's 60' speed) for days on end... without killing their horse.

1: um... I used to walk 7 miles round trip to the grocery store without a break. And longer to get out to my great grandparents place, and that was uphill getting there. Probably about 3 hours, including shopping, on my lil dwarf legs. :o

Now to be sure that was not in full adventuring gear. Which I think may be the crux of some of the newer long distance movement rate issues. They just look at the average walking speed of a person and multiply by 10. Whereas AD&D factored in all the hassles of movement and hence you get a base daily travel of 12 unencumbered.

2: The more encumbered the group was the slower they moved and in AD&D they tended to get encumbered pretty darn fast so movement overland was slower. Assuming you use the encumbrance rules in 5e then the overland speed starts to drop off. I just assume the 5e standard pace of  24 miles a day is through known lands or roads. And so I halve that through unknown or rough wilderness. Pretty simple to convert 5e movement to AD&D movement for overland if you wanted to which would slow travel times down.

3: Semi agree on horses. Where I used to live hose and carriage were a common sight due to local Amish community and I can tell you that they move faster than a person can walk. And over fair distances as they lived nowhere near town. But that is a bit different from long distance travel and the rates 5e gives I think.

From a little research a horses standard gait would translate into a 35 MOV. 4mph. The trot factors out to about a MOV of 70. 8mph. And a canter to something like a MOV of 110. 12mph. And a gallop getting up to a 350 mov. 40mph.

To be fair 5e doesnt actually give any base overland speed for a horse. They just note that for a span of an hour a horse can be ridden at a gallop for twice the fast travel rate. Which is 4mph so bumping that up to 8mph. But by the rules it seems that otherwise everything moves at the same rate as a walking PC. Still a bit fast for sustained distances so again I just convert to AD&D speeds and halve the distance per day rates. See 4&5 below though.

4&5: see my notes above on that matter. Far as I can tell just from reading the PHB it seems to assume all travel rates that are not a horse at gallop are standard human paces over easy terrain.

And actually the rules do say to... Halve the speeds for anything not clear plains or roads. So there you go..

Still a bit much but I think a daily wilderness overland of 12 miles per day standard and 15 fast seems ok-ish. And that would slow horses down as well. But as a DM Id never allow PCs to go at a gallop over non-clear terrain. That is just begging for disaster for the horse and the rider.

X: I'll glance at AD&D's handling of horses and overland later. But I suspect it will end up being actually fairly reasonable too since AD&D allready has a slower pace.

Ok, had a glance at the AD&D DMG notes on travel and they are a little odd to say the least. But they seem to be based on different assumptions. Alot of this contradicts the info in the PHB.

An unburdened person can travel 30 miles in a day over normal terrain, 20 in rugged and 10 in very rugged.
Average burden drops the speed to 20/10/5. While Heavy Burden is 10/5/2
This assumes 12 hours of travel with breaks.

Things get a bit wonky with horses though.
A Light horse can cover 60/25/5, a medium 40/20/5 and heavy is 30/15/5. Again assuming 12 hours with breaks.

But even so. That seems way too far as a horse can not maintain such rates for long periods. There are though rules for complications and/or death of a mount if pushed too far.

Aaaaaand. Speaking of horses...

This gave me an idea and after a little researching hit on this. Might as well call it the Rapidash... ahem.
Tabaxi: Monk 14, Thief 2, Druid 4. + every freaking speed boosting item can lay hands on for +100 MOV.
Wildshape into a Riding Horse with all gear ready. Speed is now 195. Haste and boots of speed jack that up to a MOV of 780.
Dash like a maniac to accelerate yourself to a MOV of 3900 which gives us a velocity of 443.18 mph in short bursts.

Now... If you could stack a Potion of speed with Haste, and far as can tell, you can not, then you could blast off with a MOV of 5850 going 664.73 mph.

So looks like 443 mph may be the speed barrier. Least for land movement.

The giant Eagle has a flight MOV of 80. Do-able with a Moon druid. Otherwise need a level 8 Druid. Crank base movement up to 215 then air-dash up to a MOV of 4300 which gets our meteor birdy up to 488 mph. (MOV 6450 and 733.95 mph if you could add that potion into the mix.) That may be a but less though if one of the speed bumping items is not allowed. Which might even out the speeds of bird and horse.

And it goes without saying that all of the far end stuff is pretty much impossible without a VERY VERY generous DM. But there you go. With tons of finagling you can get up to just short of the sound barrier. And even without the allowance for the speed potion you can still get up to well over half the speed of sound. You could cover over a mile in just one round at full tilt or just under a mile without that potion allowance.

30ft per round is pretty standard movement rate throughout D&D.  However, it's not necessarily meant to be "walking speed". It's a standard move in a COMBAT round when you aren't charging (which would be a sprint), but it's still conceivable that a person moving at 30' in a combat round is moving more than at a slow steady stroll.

Somewhat. In AD&D movement was at the rates given because the assumption was the PCs are moving slow for various reasons such as in combat you are moving around in a space trying to dodge getting mortally hit which is part of what HP are, dodging. And then presenting rules to move faster.

Whereas 5e movement is apparently the assumption the PCs are not moving cautiously and then presenting rules to move slower.

BX explained it better while presenting its own system simmilar to AD&Ds.
There your base move was 120ft in 10 minutes and your movement per 10 second round was 40ft. Running speed per round was 120ft. That translates to a per round movement of 0.45mph and a running speed of 1.3 mph. Armoured and encumbered characters moved slower. It feels as if someone forgot that the base movement was really slow when adjusting for running. But then monsters are under the same movement restrictions.

And I note a mistake I made in calculating the AD&D movement. I forgot a round in AD&D is 60 seconds, not 6. I'll fix that.
Lets see. With a MOV of 120 per turn that is the same as BX. Which is really slow and for good reason. Along known or mapped routes speed increased 600'. Which is still pretty slow. And fleeing speed was 1200' which is still slow at a little over 1mph.
Movement per round was base 120ft so that is 1.36mph. Around a 5e MOV of 12. Again with alot of ducking dodging and maneuvering abstracted into that. And same alterations for movement along known routes and running which brings movement up to 6.81mph and running to 13.6mph. Which would be in 5e MOVs of 60 and 120.

Had a glance at 3e and seems that they have things fairly detailed. Standard walk is 3mph, hustle x2 is 6mph, run x3 is 9mph and run x4 is 12mph. Normal sized races have a speed of 30, short ones have a speed of 20. Weight carried adjusts that down. These translate to 5e movement rates. with a mov of 20 being 2.27 mph. Encumbrance dropping movement to 20 and 15 respectively and a 15 MOV is 1.7 mph. With notes for terrain slowing speed down.

A 3e PC can for short bursts then without magic get up to a MOV of 120.

Barbarians can gain a +10 speed.
Monks could gain an extra 60 speed, (40 if you were a short race) instead of 5e's +30. So a human monk using run x4 would hit 360. The Run feat would allow 450.
Interestingly Haste here does not add to speed. Nor does the potion of Haste or Boots of Speed. Boots of Striding though did double speed which would allow a monk with Run to go at 900.
Broom of Flying had a speed of 90 and a small carpet of flying had a speed of 210.

3e hammerd the details of things down alot more than 5e does!

Quote from: Omega;1066032And it goes without saying that all of the far end stuff is pretty much impossible without a VERY VERY generous DM. But there you go. With tons of finagling you can get up to just short of the sound barrier. And even without the allowance for the speed potion you can still get up to well over half the speed of sound. You could cover over a mile in just one round at full tilt or just under a mile without that potion allowance.

I'm less bothered by the magical boosts to speed; magic should give some crazy results or it wouldn't seem very magical. And who knows how fast wood elves or tabaxi should sprint? I am a little disturbed that rogues at second level, and apparently not for magical reasons, can go 50% faster than anyone else (of the same race) at a run (so world record sprinters are presumably all variant humans with the Mobility feat and 2 levels of rogue). I am disappointed by my flying carpet that moves only 30 feet; even if you can dash with it (not at all clear), it still feels more flying golf cart than Thief of Bagdad.

But ultimately the speed per round is chosen not so much for realism (treat a combat round as 8 seconds or 4 seconds or whatever to make it seem right to you) but to balance out the combat mechanics: if movement is too slow per round, then ranged attacks rule as combatants sluggishly move together, and if it's too fast then "you can't reach there without dashing" never happens.

I get the feeling that it just did not occur to them when they added the cunning action ability to hustle, later renamed dash. I'd guess they thought a player would use it to dash and their regular action to attack. Or that any dash-dash actions would be few and far between.

And oooh yeah heh. I went "wha?" when calculated out the speeds of the broom and carpet. and the bigger carpets are slower! In my own campaign I introduced upgrade modules to both that improved speed.

But otherwise I think overall non-magic boosted movement seems ok-ish within the various abstractions.

It has also given me some ideas for NPCs, PCs and villains based around speed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;106636630ft per round is pretty standard movement rate throughout D&D.  However, it's not necessarily meant to be "walking speed". It's a standard move in a COMBAT round when you aren't charging (which would be a sprint), but it's still conceivable that a person moving at 30' in a combat round is moving more than at a slow steady stroll.

Just the fact that rounds in general are always six seconds, regardless of circumstances, highlights to me that they are using a convenient shorthand for consistency's sake, rather than focusing too clearly on realism. Whatever a round now means (and one's opinion on how abstract D&D combat is), it is clearly also defined as 'a meaningful exchange,' and that realistically is going to be different if you are doing skirmish fighting in boundary-less difficult terrain, formation fighting near a strategically important location, or dagger fighting in a narrow tunnel.

Very true. I think D&D has a good middle ground between abstraction an everything nailed down in that a round while technically 6 seconds long in reality can be shorter just as AD&D rounds could simply by all the action getting done sooner than later. Depending on your initiatives everyone might finish a round within the first few seconds. Or it could span the whole. So in a way you get your variable length time without the need for additional mechanics to bog things down.