Movement

***Movement and Position***

On your turn, you can move a distance up to your speed. You can use as much or as little of your speed as you like on your turn, following the rules here.

Your movement can include jumping, climbing, and swimming. These different modes of movement can be combined with walking, or they can constitute your entire movement. However you’re moving, you deduct the distance of each part of your movement from your speed until it is used up or until you are done moving.

***Breaking Up Your Move***

You can break up your movement on your turn, using some of your speed before and after your action. For example, if you have a speed of 6 meters, you can move 2 meters, take your action, and then move 4 meters. If you take an action that includes more than one weapon attack, you can break up your movement even further by moving between those attacks.

***Using Different Speeds***

If you have more than one speed, such as your walking speed and a flying speed, you can switch back and forth between your speeds during your movement. Whenever you switch, subtract the distance you’ve already moved from the new speed.

***Difficult Terrain***

Every meter in difficult terrain costs 1 extra meter. This rule is true even if multiple things in a space count as difficult terrain. Low furniture, rubble, undergrowth, steep stairs, snow, and shallow bogs are examples of difficult terrains. The space of another creature, whether hostile or not, also counts as difficult terrain.

***Being Prone***

Combatants often find themselves lying on the ground, either because they are knocked down or because they throw themselves down. You can drop prone without using any of your speed. Standing up takes more effort; doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed. You can’t stand up if you don’t have enough movement left or if you don’t have enough movement left or if your speed 0.

To move while prone, you must crawl or use magic such as teleportation. Every meter of movement while crawling costs 1 extra meter. Crawling 1 meter in difficult terrain, therefore, costs 3 m of movement.

***Moving Around Other Creatures***

You can move through a non-hostile creature’s space but you can only move through a hostile creature’s space only if the creature is at least two sizes larger or smaller than you. Remember that another creature’s space is difficult terrain for you.

Whether a creature is a friend or an enemy, you can’t willingly end your movement in its space. If you leave a hostile creature’s reach during your movement, you provoke an opportunity attack, as explained later in this chapter.

***Flying Movement***

Flying creatures enjoy many benefits of mobility, but they must also deal with the danger of falling. If a flying creature is knocked prone, has its speed reduced to 0, or is otherwise deprived of the ability to move, the creature falls, unless it can hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as the Fly spell.

***Creature Size***

Each creature takes up a different amount of space. The size categories table shows how much space a creature of a particular size controls in combat. Objects sometimes use the same size categories.

 Tiny
 Small
 Medium
 Large
 Huge
 Gargantuan

***Space***

A creature’s space is the area in meters that it effectively controls in combat, not an expression of its physical dimensions. A typical Medium creature isn’t 1 \* 1 square meter wide, for example, but it does control a space that wide. If a Medium creature stands in a 1-m-wide doorway, other creatures can’t get through unless the creature lets them. A creature’s space also reflects the area it needs to fight effectively. For that reason, there’s a limit to the number of creatures that can surround another creature in combat. Assuming Medium combatants, eight creatures that can fit in a 1-meter radius around another one.

Because larger creatures take up more space, fewer of them can surround a creature. If five Large creatures crowd around a Medium or smaller one, there’s little room for anyone else. In contrast, as many as twenty Medium creatures can surround a Gargantuan one.

***Squeezing into a Smaller Space***

A creature can squeeze through a space that is large enough for a creature one size smaller than it. Thus, a Large creature can squeeze through a passage that’s only 1 meter wide. While squeezing through a space, a creature must spend 1 m for every meter it moves there, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage while it’s in the smaller space.