My Dark Heresy mantra will always be "multiplication is evil". What serves as a better example of rampant multiplication than Movement? Collaborating with another GM, we reached the following conclusions:

NEW MECHANIC : Maximum Movement

Characters have a maximum distance they can cover per Round equal to three times their Agility Bonus in meters. Characters may not use Talents or make Evasions that would move them past this limit.

EXAMPLE 1:

Alice has an Agility Bonus of 3 and makes a Run action to move 7 meters. She still has 2 meters before she meets her Maximum Movement, so she can attempt to Dodge weapons with Blast (2) or Dive Into Cover up to 2 meters away. However, she will not be able to fully Dodge a Blast (3) weapon as she does not have 3 meters left to move.

EXAMPLE 2:

In another battle, poor Alice had to Dodge two frag grenades before her Turn even came up! Because she moved 6 meters total from her Evasions, she can only move up to 3 more meters on her actual Turn.

Maximum Movement is mainly to address a character sprinting 120m across a map yet still Dodging Blast weapons with ease. If a Round is comprised of only 5 or 6 seconds, I really don't think a character should be able to move like that and fly 10m away from an explosion in a fraction of a second. Twice. This change ensures that all Movement comes from somewhere, making tactics more important. Inspired by <Legend of the Five Rings>.

MOVEMENT ACTIONS/RATES :

• NEW: Adjustment (Free Action) = 1m
• Half Move = AgB
• Full Move = AgB x 2
• REVISED: Charge = AgB x 2
• REVISED: Run = AgB x 3

1. [Adjustment] allows characters to move when they otherwise would not be allowed to in game terms even though moving just a few steps would be plausible in logical terms. Examples include slowly advancing/retreating in a Full Defense stance or before/after a Full Action Psychic Power. Characters Engaged in Melee may only use Adjustment if they would end the movement still Engaged in Melee; this is to represent combatants circling each other should they choose to.
2. [Charge] movements were always a mess. A Full Action Full Move is AgB x 2 meters, but a Full Action Charge suddenly climbs to AgB x 3? No. This change makes Full Moves vs. Charges "Moving to a target location" vs. "Moving to attack a target" respectively. Charges keep their minimum 4m distance, WS bonus, etc.
3. [Run] actions. AgB x 6. Seriously? 1 AgB is all it takes to create an impossible gap between characters. At least AgB x 3 is more forgivable. Take a 9 vs. 12 and 18 vs. 24, say. And that's per Turn, with an AgB 3 Running after an AgB 4. It is also highly unrealistic for a character to [sprint] AgB x 12 meters in even 6 seconds. No, just no.
   

REVISED TALENT : Assassin Strike

Rather than moving at half rate as a Free Action, a character may move up to the rest of his Maximum Movement. Effectively, a character may always move up to his Maximum Movement if he makes a melee attack in the same Round.

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REVISED TALENT : Hard Target

In addition to Hard Target's listed effects, Hard Target increases the character's Maximum Movement by half his Agility Bonus in meters for Evasion attempts only. Effectively, the character's Maximum Movement has an additional .5 x AgB meters reserved for Dodging Blast weapons, Diving Into Cover, and the like. However, Hard Target is now a Tier 3 Talent.

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REVISED TALENT : Preternatural Speed

The character may use his Run movement in place of his Charge movement. Effectively, the character may move up to AgB x 3 rather than AgB x 2 during a Charge.

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REVISED TALENT : Sprint (X)

Characters can purchase this talent up to three times with X equal to the number of purchases. This character may add half his Agility Bonus to his Full Move distance or his full Agility Bonus to his Run distance. Effectively, the character may move AgB x 2.5 during a Full Move or AgB x 4 during a Run. The character may increase his Run distance a number of consecutive times equal to X before suffering 1 level of Fatigue. A character who uses Sprint to Run past his normal Maximum Movement is assumed to have met his Maximum Movement.

EXAMPLE 1:
Steve has Sprint (1) and an Agility bonus of 3. Steve can add up to 2 meters (3/2, rounded up) to his Full Move actions or add up to 3 meters to his Run actions thanks to Sprint. Steve decides to only Run 10 (his normal 9 + Sprint's 1) meters during his Turn. Steve's considered to have met his Maximum Movement since he exceeded his normal maximum of 9, with all the normal consequences for doing so. If he decides to use Sprint to boost his Run distance again next Turn, he will suffer 1 level of Fatigue. Waiting a turn between Sprint uses will let Steve avoid gaining Fatigue. However, buying Sprint a second time will let Steve use Sprint's Run bonus up to two turns in a row without having to take a break in-between!

EXAMPLE 2:

Steve decides to use Sprint again on this turn, but only to boost his Full Move. He moves 8 (3 x 2.5, rounded up) meters, just 1 meter under his Maximum Movement. Even though Steve used Sprint twice in a row, he would not gain Fatigue since he did not Run with Sprint's boost twice in a row.

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NOTE ON TRAIT S: Crawler, Quadruped, and Size

Acknowledged as having weird relationships with Movement, but largely left alone for the time-being until I come up with a clean fix.

1. Somewhat of a buff, the written iteration of [Assassin Strike] can tack a Half Move onto a Charge Move. Combined with all the changes above, a Half Move + a Charge Move equals a character's Maximum Movement anyway. Functionally, Assassin Strike still does everything it used to. There may need to be a clause concerning assassins who only Half Move or don't move at all when they attack their target, but a hit-and-Run seems appropriate enough to me.
2. I figured this was the best way to keep the flavour of [Hard Target] while adding an extra feature. The cost of the Talent goes up to reflect its new utility.
3. [Preternatural Speed] already turns Charges into Runs as written. The intent is preserved with these changes. Debating how I want Preternatural Speed to interact with [sprint].
4. A personal gripe, a character who decided to pick up [sprint] would "waste" experience buying a Talent that would be granted for free by Cybernetics. The new scaling allows the Bionic Heart and Bionic Legs to stack properly instead of "wasting" the Craftsmanship bonus. Non-cybernetic characters can still enjoy the increased benefits by purchasing the Talent normally.
5. These are a bloody mess. Going by the book, an knife-sized, sufficiently [Quadruped]'d creature can outrun most anything. I can understand horses and dogs, but getting outrun by a spider or something? I feel I would need to outline how smaller s interact with other Traits like Quadruped, since smaller sizes are the ones I'm most concerned with. Also, defining when Quadruped should turn into [Crawler] would help this issue a good bit. And if Crawler can be turned into a flat penalty without breaking NPCs. Division is slightly less of a concern than multiplication, but is overly punishing at times.

All of these "fixes" are thus far untested, just wishful thinking. Personally, I will employ all of these changes for games I run and share the results here. The Maximum Movement rule is what I would like the most feedback on. It should fit easily into the written Movement system if the maximum is calculated by AgB x 6 rather than 3. My ultimate goal is to close the rift between slow and fast characters while preventing characters from flipping all over the place with Sprints and Evasions. Let me know what you think. Cheers.

[Reserved for future use]

Sent this to Myrion a while back. This is basically our take on it:

Yeah, most of the mechanics sound pretty good, but what I've noticed, in OW admittedly, was that the movement rates were rather ridiculously low and you're lowering it even more... Don't think I'm really happy about that.

On the other hand, tying the max movement to your Dodge makes sense, to me anyway. Gives frags a bit of a higher chance to do something.

We also made half a fixed value, where Ag bonus doesn't apply. A half move is a few steps into cover, where physical fitness doesn't necessarily apply. Any way it would come to play is already handled in terms of initiative order, which is basically reflexes.

Assumption: Round takes six seconds.

Half move: Always the same. 0-3 meters.

Full move: Shuffled, ducked running usually, slower and trying to stay in cover= 6m per ag bonus

Sprint: 60m with ag bonus five = 12 m per ag bonus

Charge: 2/3rds of sprint distance, due to attack at end = 8m per ag bonus

I can get behind Half Moves being flat as well, since differences in physique are much less prominent in shorter distances. However, the rest of your Moves still have the multiplication problem I wanted to "solve". Now, is your "Sprint" just another name for the "Run" action, or is that using the [sprint {Talent}]? And, from my understanding, your Charge is longer than the written Charge? It seems kind of odd to increase move rates instead of decreasing them, but that's just my view.

Yeah, most of the mechanics sound pretty good, but what I've noticed, in OW admittedly, was that the movement rates were rather ridiculously low and you're lowering it even more... Don't think I'm really happy about that.

On the other hand, tying the max movement to your Dodge makes sense, to me anyway. Gives frags a bit of a higher chance to do something.

I present these house rules as isolated incidents; people can take as many or as few as they want. I definitely think Maximum Movement is a universal quality-of-life change that most can appreciate. For players who are used to the "flighty" movement system, I probably went a bit overboard with my Movement Rate changes. However, I didn't notice OW decreasing Movement Rates, though OW is one of the games I am least familiar with. Could I ask you to point these out to me? They seem like the x1/x2/x3/x6 that I've been familiar with for the last year.

Yeah. Which means that for most humans, 6m is the maximum distance for a 5-6s movement. That's a 3.6km/h speed. Normal walking speed for older people is 4.5-4.75, while for younger people it is closer to 5.5-5.75. Quick walking is 6.25km/h.

That is considerably slower, for a type of movement which is depicted in visual media as being obviously faster than walking normally.

Makes combat much more static (in OW at least, where open fields are more likely), because it's so **** hard to reach the next bit of cover and ending up out of cover is dangerous and kinda out of character.

Ah, I gotcha. You're concerned about those open areas with these slower speeds? I had not considered that case. My gut reaction is "Runs apply a -20 to enemy BS tests, Hard Target brings that up to -40, characters are fine Running from Cover to Cover", but that's probably not what you want to hear. Hmm. I'll think some more on the Movement Rate changes.

Exactly. I can see that your movement rates are no problem in a dense hive or onboard a star ship, but in more open areas...

Glad to point out an edge case you hadn't yet considered