Overland Movement Tables and Excel based Calculator

You may have seen the thread over in Game Rules, but here is the current version of the overland movement tables/calculator. I'm going to repost below my descriptions from the other thread. If you just want the calculator, you can download it here.

I started building tables and it got really cumbersome, so I decided instead to build a calculator. It functions as follows:

Inputs:

Movement Value
Movement Type (Walk, March, Run, Sprint)
Max Fatigue to be used
Use of Necessary Energy (yes/no)
Encumbrance level
Level of Athletics check for sustained sprint

Outputs:

Speed in mph
Fatigue expenditure rate (per hour)
Max Travel Time (in hours)
Max Distance coverable (in miles)

There is also a place after you've determined your maximum to input a specific amount of time in hours you wish to travel, and it will output fatigue used and distance covered. Note that I'm using an average fatigue per hour expenditure because overland travel should be averaged out rather than using fatigue at very distinct points, in my opinion. In the event that the party is stopped partway, you can use the bottom calculator and input the amount of time traveled to see what fatigue has been used. Now, to cover the assumptions and decisions behind the math in the sheet:

I think the main determination to discuss is the conversion from per round movement to extended overland movement. I decided to find a conversion factor that made a person with 10 movement able to run (mv-2, so 8 ) a marathon at the current world record of 2:03:36. That number ends up being roughly 4.82s per "round". I think that for purposes of determining your overland movement, the marathon is the way to go. Also, consider that the marathon would require an expenditure of 12 fatigue to run for that long, but I imagine the world record marathon holder either has a lot of fatigue from their training, or has developed decreased fatigue usage similar to use of necessary energy. All of that works for me, conceptually. Also, note that I have left the conversion cell changeable, so if anyone wants to set that to 3 seconds (or anything else), they can do so and the calculator will work with the adjusted values.

The other thing I had to consider were walking and marching speeds which aren't laid out in the book. After thinking on it a while, I decided that it doesn't make sense for those to scale with speed for normal folk. So, walking is 3 mph until you reach Zen movement at which point it is mv-11; marching is 4.5 mph until you reach inhumanity, at which point it is mv-7. That may seem backwards at first, but consider being able to walk faster than normal; that should be based more on stride than anything, so I consider Zen needed to move faster than you should be able to. Also, someone doing so should look extremely unnatural were they to be observed. Marching is more about pushing yourself a little, but stride still matters, and that's why it comes down to inhuman as a requirement. Running and sprinting are as described in the rules. YMMV on those, but that's how I decided to work it. Note that I did make full charts for 8h, 10h, 12h, 14h, and 16h of walking and marching without encumbrance, using varying amounts of fatigue, which can probably be pretty useful for most people who are looking for a quick reference. If you have Use of necessary energy, you can just use the bottom chart because you don't need to take any rests, and you obviously will use no fatigue. Encumbrance gets more complicated, so it's better to use the calculator for that.

Where the calculator really shines in my opinion is dealing with people able to do the extraordinary. Someone with UoNE and a great athletics check can actually sprint for a pretty good amount of time, especially if they have some fatigue to burn. It's interesting to note that making an impossible (or better) athletics check
actually allows someone to spend fatigue slower while sprinting than while running. In fact, with a zen level athletics check and UoNE, one can sprint for a little over 8 and a half hours before burning their first fatigue. I say this to show that while my calculator is calibrated to mimic the real world in the <11 movement range, having ki help and making amazing athletics checks still allows you to showcase your supernatural ability.

Finally, in this post, there's a great table that you can use to adjust the output based on unfavorable travel conditions. Consider my calculator to provide numbers for moving in good weather on paved roads. So, if your party is moving through snow, looking at the walking line it looks like snow makes you move at 15% speed. Multiply output by 0.15 and voila! I'm currently not planning to build that in since it's even more outside of the rules assumptions to throw in, and I'd rather leave that in the hands of the end-user to determine.

At the end of the day, it will be easier for you guys to get in there and play with it, so if you are interested, please poke around. I'd love to hear discussion/opinions on this. Also, if you find any bugs, let me know and I will clean them up. I tested a bit and didn't find anything not working. Thanks and enjoy!