if you dont have "W" as a key thats passed to all windows, your slaves are not going to move. However, passing "QWEASD" to your slaves can lead to some very messed up positions.

I think short distances are fine if you want non-precise control of your toons. Just setup a second set of movement keys to pass to all the toons (I use QWEASD for main char movement, which isnt passed to slaves) and then I use my G15 keyboard bound with a seperate set of movement controls for when I want to pass movement keys to them. Works out ok for me, but only very short non-precise movement. I use the backward movement key a lot.