Ok so I recently came across the spell plant growth, which says for every 1ft moved you require 4ft instead.
This prompted me to look in the rules, and I found out that you can use any amount of your movement you want each round, this really confused me since I always thought in squares or hexagons.
Ultimately my question is not about this spell at all but about how does this strange movement work? If you move 17ft do you only move 3 squares because you could not complete the last few feet or do you move 4 squares rounding up your movement?
If you only move 4ft each round do you just not move at all or do you just jump up one square?
Best Answer
In 5e grids are an optional rule, the rules don't assume you are playing on a grid leading to awkward situations. The movement rules are no help, they just say "you can move a distance up to your speed". The difficult terrain rules say "Every foot of movement in difficult terrain costs 1 extra foot. This rule is true even if multiple things in a space count as difficult terrain." but again don't mention what to do with grids.
In the DMG the section called "Tactical Maps" covers how to play with grids:
In the rules for Movement there's a section on the Playing on a Grid variant rule which offers a little more information:
Divide your movement into squares, then pay 3 extra squares of movement every time you move 1 square. If you don't have 4 squares total available to pay, you can't move.
If your character has 17 feet of speed, then divide that into 3.4, then round it down to 3 squares of movement. You need 4 squares to move, so in this example you can't.