Movement abilities are the abilities that allow a creature to walk, crawl, swim, fly or otherwise move from point A to point B in the game world. Every Movement ability grants three different, related movement speeds that are used in different situations:

• Combat speed is used to move around in combat, stealth, puzzle or other turn-based situations in a set area. It is measured in meters per action spent. For example, having a combat movement rate of 5 allows one to move 5 meters for every action they spend moving.
• Chase speed is used to determine overall movement effectiveness in chase challenges and has several important mechanical applications in such circumstances. Moving in a chase costs 1 action. See the Chases section for more details.
• Travel speed is used to determine how far and fast a creature can travel great distances, such as between towns or across oceans. It is measured in regions per day. A “region” is a hexagonal space five kilometers across.

Normally 1 space/meter in combat costs 1 movement rate to traverse. Certain game effects and conditions might impose an “impairment” on your ability to move, however, which increases movement cost per meter traveled. Multiple impairments stack and rapidly increase in effect, as per this chart:

Movement rate can be stored up from turn to turn until enough is accumulated to move 1 space, but upon doing so the creature must immediately move that 1 meter and if they wish to continue moving must start storing up movement again.

When movement is impaired while using chase speed, the listed number of successes are required to advance a single space. For example, with one impairment a given participant in a chase now requires two successes for every space they advance instead of the normal one success per space.

Travel speed impairments work exactly like combat speed impairments, but are applied to the region-size spaces traveled through in a day rather than the individual meter-size spaces traveled through in an action.

You can choose to move carefully and leave no traces of your passing behind. This means no footprints, scent, credible witnesses or anything else that could be used to track you. While moving in this way, you take an impairment to your movement rate. Anyone seeking to track you must solve an easy-difficulty operations challenge (two successes required) to pick up and follow your trail.

You can also choose to move more quickly than normal for short distances. Every time you make a move action, you can declare that you are “sprinting”. Sprinting increases your movement speed by one step (1→ 2→ 5→ 10→ 20→ 50→ etc) for that single movement action, but requires you to sacrifice one Endurance to do so. You cannot sprint if you have no Endurance remaining. Sprinting can increase tactical and chase movement rate, but not travel speed.

You may enter spaces or structures meant for creatures one scale lower than yourself, but all attackers gain an advantage against you while you are inside and your movement is impaired while you do so. For example, a size 6 creature can squeeze into a space easily traversable by a size 5 creature (1 meter wide) even though they normally occupy a space 3 meters wide. You cannot enter structures meant for creatures two scale categories lower than yourself at all. When squeezing down, you still occupy all spaces you normally would that are not blocked from occupancy- you do not actually shrink, and you may stick out of the sides of any gaps you are inside.

Rule 1 (Follow the Fiction) is especially important when selecting movement abilities. Even something as innocuous as increasing your movement rate can be perfectly logical a few times and then rapidly slide into complete ridiculousness. It is recommended that human adventurers (or at least humanoid ones) have a maximum speed of 5 meters per action when traveling overland barring extraordinary circumstances or equipment.

To create a movement set, you must first select a single seed ability from the below list. The seed ability chosen determines the type of movement that the set represents. Once you chose a seed ability for a set, you cannot ever add any other seed abilities to the same set. All movement seed abilities come with drawbacks and limitations which can be overcome by taking appropriate upgrades.

You can move over smooth surfaces such as roads, sidewalks, and so forth. You cannot move over anything more difficult than a curb- stairs and rough terrain are right out. Your combat speed is 1 meter per action, your chase speed is 1, and your travel speed is one region (5 km) per day.

You may move across the surface of liquids. Attackers gain an advantage on checks against you when you are in a liquid. You cannot move through rough liquids (with heavy waves, strong currents, or similar) nor can you travel through difficult liquids (thick, sticky, semifrozen, weed-choked or similar). You immediately sink when carrying enough weight to give you an impairment. Your combat speed is 1 meter per action, your chase speed is 1, and your travel speed is 1 region per day.

You may glide through the air. You cannot change direction more than 1 time per move action. You must always face the direction that you last moved at the end of your turn. Attackers gain an advantage on attacks against you while you are airbourne. You cannot gain elevation, and automatically lose 1 meter worth of elevation per action (whether the action was used to glide or anything else). You can choose to lose more elevation per round, but doing so safely requires you to spend movement speed for every meter dropped. You cannot glide when it is any windier than a light breeze.

You must always use both your actions each round to move or you will lose control and fall. When using an action to move, you must move at least half of the maximum distance you are capable of moving or you will fall. You cannot carry more than a light load or you will fall. If you fall while flying, you cannot take any more actions to fly again until after you have crashed. Your combat speed is 1 meter per action, your chase speed is 1, and your travel speed is 1 region per day.

You may teleport to a location without actually having to pass through the space in between yourself and your destination. You must designate a single place that you can teleport to (generally a safehouse or other zone of comfort), and may change the target location once per session before gameplay begins. You cannot teleport to any location other than your designated point of recall. If the point of recall is out of range of your combat speed, you cannot teleport to it. If you are unable to clearly see/sense your point of recall, you cannot teleport to it. You cannot teleport to a location that you cannot naturally move into using another form of movement (for instance, if you do not possess any Fly movement modes then you cannot teleport to a location mid-air). If you attempt to teleport to a location that is disallowed (due to being out of range, in an invalid location, or for whatever other reason), the teleportation fails and you take one point of Vitality damage.

Everything you are holding when you teleport is teleported along with you. If you are carrying enough to give yourself an impairment, you cannot teleport at all. Teleporting does not allow you to move to alternate dimensions or through time, only between points in space. Immediately after teleporting, attackers have two advantages on checks against you until the beginning of your next turn due to the extreme disorientation of jumping through space. Teleporting creates a puff of smoke, flash of light, shimmering in the air, or other obvious “tell” that causes all observers within standard alertness range (10 meters or within the same room, whichever is less) of both your starting and destination points to immediately upgrade their status to Alert. Your combat speed is 1 meter per action, your chase speed is 1, and your travel speed is 1 region per day.

Moving in a zero-gravity environment has some unique considerations. There is no “up” or “down” (or rather, the only difference between these points of reference is entirely arbitrary) and if you have this ability you can propel yourself in any direction you please while in such environments. Attackers have an advantage against you when you are in zero gravity. This movement ability depends in some way on using atmosphere and you cannot use it to propel yourself when in vacuum. You have no special protection against vacuum and if you enter it you take one critical damage that ignores defense (critical damage bypasses Endurance and strikes directly at Vitality) at the end of every round of exposure in addition to gaining a Choke condition that cannot be recovered from but is removed automatically as soon as you leave vacuum. Your combat speed is 1 meter per action, your chase speed is 1, and your travel speed is 1 region per day.

When you use this ability by spending an action, you move 1 meter in the desired direction. You then continue to move one meter in the same direction immediately after every subsequent action you take until you run into something with no further effort required from you. If the thing you run into is the same size category as yourself or larger, you stop- otherwise, you keep moving and whatever you ran into moves right along with you. If you continue to use actions to move in the same direction, you may accelerate your speed (using it twice increases your speed to two meters per action instead of one). If you use further actions to go in a different direction than before, your new motion is added to your previous motion instead of negating it. For example, if you move forward once and then later use another action to move to the left, your subsequent movement would be one space forward and then another to the left. You can also take an action to go in the opposite direction of your current trajectory, which has the effect of canceling forward momentum.

Every time you use an attack, boon or support set when in space on any subject except yourself, you spin out of control. In game terms, this means that you are accelerated at a speed of 1 meter per action in the direction opposite that in which you used the ability and you take a cumulative disadvantage on all subsequent attack checks until you manage to spend an action stabilizing yourself against something solid.

The following upgrades can be applied to any sort of movement set regardless of its starting seed.

You can choose to damage your own Vitality instead of spending an action to make a move. There is no limit to how many times you may move each round in this manner. You are under no obligation to move this way; the upgrade merely gives you the option if you want it.

If you use a Bloody-enabled movement action to sprint, you lose the point of Vitality before you lose the point of Endurance.

You take no impairment to speed when attempting to leave no trail behind and are always assumed to be doing so unless you specifically state otherwise.

When you are using the movement set in a chase and roll to evade a crisis, you may act as if you were in a space whose number is 2 less than it actually is. For example, if you are in the #8 space, you only need to roll a 6 or higher to evade a crisis.

Instead of taking moves and other types of actions separately, you may move part of your designated distance, make another action, and then move the rest of your designated distance.

You may delay a movement action until your next turn. You may use an action to store movement (you do not actually move when taking an action to store movement). On your next turn, you may make a movement for free without spending an action to do so. If you do not use your stored movements on your next turn, they are wasted and cannot be used later. You may spend multiple actions storing movement in a turn if desired.

You may move through (but not stop in) spaces occupied by other creatures of comparable size that you would normally not be able to. When passing through occupied spaces, you take two impairments to your movement speed. You may take this upgrade up to three times total- taking it twice imposes only one impairment when moving through occupied spaces, and taking it three times allows you to move through occupied spaces with no impairment at all.

Your combat speed is increased to 2 meters per action, your chase speed becomes 2, and your travel speed increases to 2 regions per day. You may take this upgrade multiple times; each time increases combat speed by one step (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, etc), chase speed by +1, and travel speed to be a number of regions per day equal to meters per action in your combat speed.

You only need to spend a maximum of one Endurance per round on sprinting, no matter how many sprint actions you take in that round.

You can make a stealth check to hide the the fact that you are using the ability. Creatures that see its effects react to them naturally and logically regardless of whether you make the stealth check. When using Stealth with movement abilities, you take an impairment on your movement rate.

When attempting to leave no trace of your passing behind, the difficulty of the operations check to follow your trail is medium (three successes required) instead of easy. You may take this upgrade up to three ties total- taking it twice raises the difficulty of picking up your trail to hard (four successes needed) and taking it three times raises the difficulty of picking up your trail to impossible (five successes needed).

When you are traveling with other creatures whose travel speed is less than your own, you can scout out beneficial routes for them to take. Up to fifty creatures you are traveling with whose travel speed is less than yours (but not yourself) increase their effective travel speed by 50% (rounded down). For example, if you have a traveling speed of 20 and you are trailblazing for a group whose normal travel speed is 10, that group can travel up to 15 regions in a day instead.

The following upgrades may only be added to an Overland movement set.

You can cross rough terrain, stairs, and what have you. Difficult terrain such as shifting sands, sticky mud, deep snow or whatever may also be crossed with an impairment, though doing so grants enemies an advantage on attack checks against you while you are in such areas.

You may balance on beams, tightropes, slippery ice, and so forth with an impairment and granting an advantage to attackers. Without this ability such places force all who enter them prone (as if by an unrecoverable Knockdown attack effect) and impose an additional impairment/advantage granted to attackers on top of the normal effects of being prone.

You may dig tunnels through earth and soil. While moving in this way, you take two impairments. You cannot dig through Tier II or tougher materials, including stone. Any tunnels you create collapse immediately behind you as you dig, meaning other creatures cannot follow you.

You can move automatically in a way that requires little or no concentration. Every round at the beginning of your turn, you may make one movement action for free. This free movement from Cruise must happen at the beginning of your turn before you take any other actions and must be in a completely straight line in the direction you were facing when your turn began. Any additional movement actions you take during your turn do not have these limitations as normal.

You can jump through the air for a distance up to equal to your movement speed (or one-fifth your movement speed vertically). If you end your turn in mid-air for some reason, then attackers gain an advantage on checks to hit you until you end the jump on your next turn (which you must do immediately before taking any other actions).

When moving through a space occupied by another creature due to that creature being prone or two or more size categories smaller than yourself, that creature takes damage equal to the successes on two dice. Trample damage is not reduced by a creature's defenses. You cannot trample creatures whose spaces you pass through due to the Slippery upgrade. You may only trample a maximum of one creature per turn.

The following upgrades may only be added to a Swim movement set.

Attackers have no advantage on checks against you when you are in liquids.

You can jump through the air from the surface of a liquid for a distance up to equal to your movement speed (or one-fifth your movement speed vertically). If you end your turn in mid-air for some reason, then attackers gain an advantage on checks to hit you until you end the jump on your next turn (which you must do immediately before taking any other actions).

You can move automatically in a way that requires little or no concentration. Every round at the beginning of your turn, you may make one movement action for free. This free movement from Cruise must happen at the beginning of your turn before you take any other actions and must be in a completely straight line in the direction you were facing when your turn began. Any additional movement actions you take during your turn do not have these limitations as normal.

You do not sink when carrying enough weight to give you an impairment. You still have the impairment from the weight but may otherwise move normally.

You may treat sandy areas such as deserts as a liquid for purposes of moving through them.

You can cross rough liquids with heavy waves, strong currents, or similar. You take an impairment when doing so.

You may move underneath the surface of a liquid as well as on top of it. No attack, boon or support sets may be used when under the surface of a liquid (unless you have the Sealed upgrade on them). If you are normally a land-dweller, then being under the surface of a liquid inflicts a Choke condition on you that cannot be recovered from, but is automatically removed as soon as you come up for air. If you are a water-dweller, then you have the opposite problem- you have an unrecoverable Choke condition for as long as you are not under the surface of a liquid. If you dive more than 50 meters deep underneath the surface of a liquid, you take one damage at the end of every round you spend at that depth.

The following upgrades may only be added to a Fly movement set.

You may change direction up to 3 times per move action.

You can fly through moderate wind. You take an impairment when doing so.

You do not fall when carrying enough weight to give you an impairment. You still have the impairment from the weight but may otherwise move normally.

You only need to spend 1 action per turn moving in order to stay aloft, freeing up your other action for whatever you want. You still lose 1 meter of elevation per action taken unless you also have the Powered upgrade, and you still need to make your one movement per round be of a distance equal to at least half your movement rate to avoid falling unless you also have the Slow Fly upgrade.

You can move automatically in a way that requires little or no concentration. Every round at the beginning of your turn, you may make one movement action for free. This free movement from Cruise must happen at the beginning of your turn before you take any other actions and must be in a completely straight line in the direction you were facing when your turn began. Any additional movement actions you take during your turn do not have these limitations as normal.

You do not need to spend movement to lose elevation.

You don't automatically lose elevation and can choose to gain 1 meter worth of elevation per 10 moved laterally. Gaining elevation costs movement as normal.

Attackers have no advantage on checks against you when you are flying.

You are not obligated to move at least half your movement speed when making a move.

The following upgrades may only be added to a Teleport movement set.

You may freely teleport when carrying enough weight to give you an impairment. You still have the impairment from the weight. You must take the weight with you when you teleport even when you'd rather not (such as when you are being grabbed by something).

If your teleport fails due to attempting to teleport to an invalid location, you take one Endurance damage instead of Vitality damage. The Failsafe upgrade does not give this protection when your teleporting fails for reasons other than attempting to teleport to an invalid location.

You can choose to teleport up to ten times further than your speed would normally allow. When you do so, you must roll a die- if the result is a 2 or less, then the teleport fails (you go nowhere and take 1 Vitality damage as normal). The Failsafe upgrade cannot protect you from teleportation that failed due to use of the Risky upgrade. Teleporting a normal distance allowed by your movement speed has no fail chance and is unaffected by this upgrade.

You can teleport to any location within range that you are directly and clearly observing, not just a single point of recall. “Sensing” a location can be through sight or an alternate sense such as sonar. If the desired location is partially obscured or otherwise difficult to observe properly (such as being in dim light or on the other side of a creature partially blocking your view of it), you cannot teleport to it.

Immediately after teleporting, attackers have one advantage instead of two against you until the beginning of your next turn.

The “tell” from your teleporting is reduced- all guards who would normally immediately and automatically become Alert automatically become Suspicious instead. If they were already Suspicious, then they become Alert.

You can teleport a single creature or object other than yourself. You must spend an action to teleport another creature exactly as if you were teleporting yourself. You may only teleport willing creatures that are within a distance from you equal to or less than your teleporting combat speed. You must be able to see the subject you are teleporting as clearly as you are required to see the target destination. You may take this upgrade multiple times; each time allows you to teleport one additional creature simultaneously (this can include yourself if desired.) All teleported creatures end up adjacent to each other at the desired valid destination.

You can freely teleport into locations that you could not normally move to using another movement mode, such as into midair if you cannot fly or onto land if you are strictly aquatic. If teleportation is your only mode of movement, then you will need this upgrade in order to teleport anywhere at all. Note that you gain no special protections from your new destination and will likely need to teleport again in order to leave it safely. If you teleport to a point in midair, you will immediately start to fall.

The following upgrades may only be added to a Space movement set.

You are not accelerated backwards when you use attacks, boons, or enviros in zero-gravity (unless you want to be).

Attackers have no advantage against you when you are in zero-gravity.

You do not spin out of control when using attack, boon, or support sets in space and do not take disadvantages when using them.

You may use this movement ability freely in vacuum.