D&D travel time calculator
Put in a distance and a pace and get the journey time in days and hours, adjusted for difficult terrain and for however long the party is willing to walk each day. If they push past eight hours it works out the forced march save too.
Free, no account, runs in your browser.
More than 8 is a forced march.
No penalty
Journey takes
5 days
40 hours of travel in total
Covered per day
24 mi
3 miles per hour
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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The rates
Travel pace in 5e
| Pace | Per minute | Per hour | Per day | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast | 400 feet | 4 miles | 30 miles | −5 to passive Perception |
| Normal | 300 feet | 3 miles | 24 miles | — |
| Slow | 200 feet | 2 miles | 18 miles | Able to use stealth |
Pace
What you give up by hurrying
Fast pace costs you a −5 penalty to passive Perception, which is not a small thing: it is roughly the difference between spotting an ambush and walking into it. A party that always travels fast is a party that gets surprised.
Slow pace is the only one that lets the group move stealthily. That matters far less on an open road than it does in the last mile before a bandit camp, and the usual answer is to change pace for that last mile rather than to crawl the whole way.
Normal pace exists because it costs nothing. If nobody at the table has a reason to be hurrying or sneaking, this is the default and it does not need discussing.
Terrain
Difficult terrain and the eight-hour day
Difficult terrain — deep snow, thick undergrowth, rubble, steep slopes — halves your progress. The rules express it as each foot of movement costing an extra foot, which over a full day works out to exactly half the distance, so the calculator applies it as a halving.
A travel day is eight hours. That is not a limit on how long a character can physically walk; it is the point past which the rules start charging you. Every hour beyond the eighth means a Constitution saving throw at the end of the day, DC 10 plus one per extra hour, or a level of exhaustion.
Exhaustion is the thing that makes forced marches a real decision rather than a free speed boost. It accumulates, only one level comes off per long rest, and the party arrives at whatever they were hurrying towards already at a disadvantage.
Mounts and vehicles
When the party is not on foot
A mount moving at a gallop covers ground at twice the usual speed, but only for about an hour before it needs rest — so mounts buy you a fast dash, not a faster day. Over a long journey a mounted party makes roughly the same daily progress as one on foot unless they have spare mounts to swap between.
Waterborne travel is the real shortcut. A rowed boat manages around 3 miles per hour and a sailing ship around 2 to 4, but crucially a ship can travel through the night with a crew in shifts — which is why 24 hours of sailing beats 8 hours of walking so decisively.
This calculator models the party on foot. For a mounted dash, use the per-hour figure and double it for the first hour only.
Common questions
- How far can a party travel in a day in D&D 5e?
- 24 miles at a normal pace over the standard eight-hour travel day, 30 at a fast pace and 18 at a slow one. Difficult terrain halves all three. Going beyond eight hours is a forced march and risks exhaustion.
- What is the forced march rule?
- For each hour of travel beyond eight in a day, every character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the day. The DC is 10 plus 1 for each hour past the eighth. Failure means one level of exhaustion.
- Does difficult terrain halve travel speed?
- Yes. The rules state that each foot of movement costs an extra foot in difficult terrain, which over a journey works out to covering half the distance in the same time.
- Are mounts faster over a long journey?
- Not really. A mount can gallop at double speed for about an hour before needing rest, so it helps with a chase or a short dash but makes little difference to a multi-day journey unless the party has remounts.
- How much slower is travelling stealthily?
- Stealth requires a slow pace — 2 miles per hour, or 18 miles per day, against 24 at a normal pace. Most parties switch to slow only for the stretch where being seen actually matters.
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