Movement: 5+Agility "yards" per round, quadruple that if you drop to all fours and run. Let's see, scale-wise... a mouse is commonly about 2-4" long. A human about 4-6' tall. Call it 3" and 5'. 5' is a little less than 2 yards. So a "yard" should probably be about 5" in mouse terms. I may go with 3 inches just to keep things simple.
House mouse: run up to 8 miles per hour, runs out of energy around 900 feet.
Jumping mouse: can leap up to 3 feet.
So, with a "yard" being 3 inches, how many inches do you travel at 8 miles per hour? Hm. 8 miles / hour = 0.1333 miles / minute = 0.01333 miles / 6 seconds.
A mile is 5280 feet. That's 70.4 feet per 6 seconds. That's 845 inches per 6 seconds. Divided by 3... 282 "yards" per 6 seconds. That's way too big of a number to be tossing around, even after dividing by 4.
Let's assume 5x movement for running with 6 second intervals. That's 169 inches per round for regular walking. Still way too fast. What's human walking speed? 4.5 feet per second, roughly. Call it 27 feet per round. I can see why D&D went with 30 feet per round. With 5 feet per second times 3600 (seconds per hour), we get about 3.4 mph. Typical human can run at 15mph, about a 4.4x increase.
So, let's got with 4x speed for running and see what we get... it might be unrealistic, but it makes them more humanlike. With a max speed about 1/2 of that of a running human, we can set their movement rate at about 15 feet per round. That's a huge distance for critters that are only 3" long... about 60x their body length. Humans can only go, say, 10x body length because they're so much bigger.
Perhaps we should set movement as being unrealistically slow. Bipedal movement should be slower, really... more like human level. Say 10x body length... 3" x 10 = 30" = 2.5 feet. That's about 10 "yards" per round. So, go with speed 10+Agility, with running speed being about ten times that. Hm. Realistic, but I dunno... I may need to solicit input.
Rats are faster. I should probably use a D&D-ish movement rate split. Rats move at the equivalent of 30, mice at 20. Say 7 yards and 10. Mice move 7+agility yards, Rats move 10+agility. Movement x10 if on all fours (and much less exhausting).
Hm. How about a size comparison? The typical mouse is about 4" tall when standing up. Typical human about 5 1/2 feet. Let's assume that the mouse is 5" and the human 5'. So, the human is 12x taller. For a movement rate of 30 feet per round, scaled down to the mouse's size, we'd get 30 inches per round, about 2.5 feet.
So, 2.5 feet normally. 10 feet when running (x4 speed). 15 feet when scurrying on all fours (x6 speed). Rats are double this.
Hm. Running shouldn't be as efficient for mice. Go with x2 speed. 2.5' walk, 5' run, 15' scurry.
Rats move at 4' walk, 8' run, 16' scurry.
Posted by Kiz at May 23, 2005 10:26 AMCommentsPost a comment