This section of the rules is meant to give players a sense of how far their Heroes can move.
A character’s Movement Score describes how far that character can move during an action scene with a single Move Action. A Move Action always takes 5 Time Units (5TU) to perform.
The Hero Instant uses a distance measurement called a ‘Space’. A normal human has a Movement score of 2, which means he or she can move 2 spaces. A space is roughly 2 yards (6 feet) or roughly 2 meters. Hold your hands out to your sides: the distance from fingertips to fingertips is roughly 1 space.
Speed / Distance Chart
This chart here shows the relationship between distance and movement speed in real-world approximations:
| Distance in Spaces | As an Equivalent real-world Distance | As a Movement Speed
(A Move Action is always 5 TUs) |
| 1 ( 2-3 mph) | Somewhere between 5 feet and 2 meters. | Distance a normal human can move with a Dodge Action, or while crawling. |
| 2 | Across a small room.
|
Distance a normal human can move with a single move action – about 4 or 5 miles per hour. |
| 5 | Width of a small house, | The distance an Olympic-level athlete could move as a single action, about 13-18 miles per hour. |
| 10 | Large Room, Banquet Hall, for example. | The speed of city traffic down a major boulevard, about 20-30 miles per hour. |
| 20 | A gymnasium. | The speed of traffic on a busy highway: about 1 mile per minute. |
| 50 | A short city block | Top speed for a sports car. |
| 100 | Across a football stadium | Top speed for a race car. |
| 200 | About a quarter mile | The airspeed of a jet airline. |
| 300 | Long-distance rifle shooting range. | The speed of sound. Jet fighters can achieve these speeds. |
| 500 | About a kilometer | Iceland to Egypt in one hour. |
| 800 | About a mile | LA to NY in one hour. |
| 1,000 | A downtown business district | LA to Tokyo in one hour. |
| 1,500 | Just over 2 miles. | About how fast the Space Shuttle is moving when it drops its thrusters. |
| 6,000 | The distance across Manhattan island. | The speed that satellites orbit the Earth. You can get anywhere in the world in about an hour. |
| 12,000 | The radius of a medium city. | Circumnavigate the globe in about 1 hour. |
| 25,000 | The radius of a large city, from the start of the suburbs to the center of the city. | You can get anywhere in the world in about 15 minutes. |
| 5,000,000 | About 1000 miles | Approximately 0.5 light speed. The top speed that a space-ship can travel (in this game, without some kind of ftl.) |
| 10,000,000 | About 2000 miles | Speed of Light |
| 200,000,000 | Approximately the distance from Earth to the Moon | “Warp 20” |
Heroes all start with a Movement score of 3, so can move 3 Spaces as a Movement Action. Different Power-Sets and Powers can be selected when you create your character to increase his or her Movcment.
There is a different between ‘tactical speed’ or ‘action speed’ – the relativistic speed at which you can move and still be effective as a combatant – and your travel speed, which can be much, much higher. It is very difficult to fight someone who is moving much more slowly or much more quickly than you, so combat is simply not allowed if the relative speeds are too dissimilar. An extremely fast superhero will need to slow down to enter combat with someone who is not moving at about the same rate of speed. The maximum (relative) Movement rate that still allows you to interact with targets is 20.
Your character might have a power that grants a higher travel speed: for example, while in a vehicle, running, or flying. You would use this non-combat travel speed while arriving to the scene, or to move from one scene to another. A speed in excess of 20 Movement is called your ‘Non-Tactical’ or ‘Travel Distance’ Movement.
A Note about Movement Speed and Initiative
Because there are so many ways to get to the scene, even if your character has a screamingly fast movement speed, he or she is not guaranteed to be the first to arrive: someone else might have just been closer, or more prepared. For this reason, Movement Speed is different than Initiative. Initiative is the Ability you roll to determine the order in which you arrive, and how much time you have to act before other things start to happen. Speedsters have a good chance of being the first to arrive, but a teleporter might beat them there, and a guy on a flying surfboard might beat everyone else.
What if I want to go faster? Dash!