The Gaming Den

You can voice your dislike of something based on preference and that's totally fine. Even if it wasn't, it's not like you'd abide by the request (as you haven't in other threads). Aside from some minor nitpicks about the check DC setup and other stuff, you're just complaining about the way he's gone about meeting the goals of this tweak without offering rationales that matter to the rest of us or alternatives that could be much better. I'm not convinced that the growth he's got here is the only or best way to do it, but it does make the skill remain useful over all levels and ranks. If you really think you can hit the two design goals without also making mundane jumping irrelevant after level 5, then do it. Contribute an alternate solution that doesn't make your eyes bleed or strain your comprehension.

I don't abide by requests to please someone who is too much of an asshole to acknowledge that someone who disagrees with them might have something productive to say and who thusly insists that I stay out of their pet thread for fear that I might have something to say.

Requests that those who are not interested in a particular idea (such as asking those not interested in wizards to not comment on your archmage prestige class) actually make sense and are treated as such.

So, a proposed solution: Make level 1 characters make jumps that are based on what normal people can do (not Olympic atheletes) and drop the spells making the skill meaningless if it is so much better to use fly (despite that being limited in how many times and how long you can do it per day regardless of how tired or rested you are) over a moat than Jump.

But hey, apparently "a worthwhile way of getting around, and not a waste of skill points" means that we have to ignore the fact spells make skill points a waste after a while because magic does everything almost damn skill in the game does and does it better, though Diplomacy probably beats any charm spell.

If you want Jump to be a useful skill, it needs to compare to other skills, just as Weapon Focus: Longsword has to compare to Cleave, not to mage armor.

No, the system becomes too complicated and it will break either from too much book-keeping or just the burden of having all these micro-systems within the larger set.

You can't have skills alone, feats alone, spells alone.

They work together. You don't seem to understand that.

Also, if I want to play a regular individual, I"ll go play CoC.

We play heroes in D&D. That's the whole damned archetype from one when arneson and Gygax set up the idea.

The idea of heroes has changed though in the last two editions. IT isn't as cut-throat as 2nd ed but a lot more fantastic.

THat's the setting and genre. We play fantastical stories. yes, wanting to tell mundane stories is a legitimate concern but you can't have jump denigrated even more just to accomplish some hopes and dreams of yours.

You want to compare skills to skills? Take a jump and put it face to face with UMD or spot/search. It won't compare especially when you lower the threshold of power again.

"Playing heroes" goes anywhere from Richard Cour de Lion to Conan to Hercules. Why you have to have Hercules and beyond be the level the game must be at in order to be heroic is as much a mystery as why anyone watches horror movies or thinks movie theater butter is real.

As for skills vs. feats vs. whatever: The point is, you're not spending resources that you can spend on a spell learning a feat. If the Fighter that has Weapon Focus: Longsword is as good as the Wizard who has magic missile, the fact that magic missile and WF aren't precisely equal isn't a problem because the overall characters are as close to equal as we can make.

I'm not arguing in favor of Jump being made worse than it is in the rules as written, so don't put words in my mouth.

I am against making it so that something has to be a super power in order to even avoid "useless" status, because that eliminates the possibility that anything that isn't a superhero will matter.

As long as wizards/casters are superheroes, then the things non-casters do have to be superheroic. There can be role protection, which means the caster is paying for his superior mobility by not doing as much damage (or something), but that's a separate matter.

Is there any reason so far as representing the kind of game that is desired that wizards (and therefore anyone else) has to be superheroic?

Or more mobile? Or whatever?

Note, this is not the thread to discuss that...as stated in an earlier post I've said my piece in that regard.

But the point is, if the goal is "make Jump a useful skill", that can be done without making Jump superheroic.

Role protection is indeed an entirely seperate story, and one with no real relevance to this discussion at all.

So here is my question for those working on the skill.

Is there a reason why "Get past pits and chasms" can't just be granted at 5 (or 6 or some point around there) and we just declare it doesn't matter how, but "somehow or another you do it"? I'm trying to imagine a reason why big jumps would come up at high level that would be worth having a skill (or spell or feat or any other spend resources ability) to deal with.

Maybe its just me, but I can't recall or imagine for the life of me something that justifies a hundred foot wide chasm being a serious (worth rolling over) obstacle for the kind of characters that "characters are superheroes" produces.

Elennsar: in this thread, it's just you. Your alternate solution completely works, but is basically the same thing you said before when you were bitching about spells and was already rejected. Your point about spending different resources on different things is true, but largely irrelevant. Characters of the same level need to be useful in a large number of situations, and your primary method of power acquisition (skill points, feats) needs to compare favorably to someone else's (spell slots) or you're not playing the same game as they are anymore and one of you should go home. You have to compare spells to skills to feats, because they are the different ways that different characters contribute to the same damn group.

We are not ignoring that spells make skills useless, we're just taking that actual fact and using it as a justification to fix skills instead of nerf spells; it's already been done in large part with feats in the Tomes. It's only a better solution for the games that we want to play, games where "mundane" means you're level 5 or below. Your solution, dumping spells, does not fix our problem; your solution simply extends the "mundane" tag over higher levels. Aside from being a problem on its own in the games we're playing, it's debatable whether that's even appropriate to the challenges (encounters, traps, bar maids, etc.) in 3.x, but that's well beyond the scope of this thread.

You've thrown superheroics back at us like it's something we should be ashamed of. If you haven't noticed that we don't actually care and think that after a certain level that's just what should happen, I don't know what to tell you. I get what you want, it's just counter productive to what the rest of us want.

As I've already said, you could give "Get past pits and chasms" as a class feature at level X. You would need to still provide characters an additional mobility feature, because that has zero combat utility. Further, it still fails to make jump a useful skill, and its even minor utility still dies early even compared to the rest of the underpowered skills. It would be fine in a more mundane game, but that's not what we want.

As for the chasm: it has tentacles in it that will grab anyone who doesn't cross it in a single action; it has a dispelling screen 63' from the starting edge to catch unprepared flyers; you're being chased by a swarm of demon grubs with a limited gliding range (and so couldn't follow you over a particularly large chasm). The chasm could be a moat so you can't go around, you could not have sufficient time to find a nice way around, or you could have monsters at your heels. There's lots of ways to make it an obstacle, but if you're going to outgrow all or most of them then the skill needs to move on to other uses. It could die a clean death instead, as you suggest, but that fails to address other concerns for our games.

Another point to consider is how characters deal with encounters and obstacles by themselves.

So a lv10 fighter versus the chasm is something to consider. The point is unless you give them the ability to fly, they need to figure out how to get across.

We are not ignoring that spells make skills useless, we're just taking that actual fact and using it as a justification to fix skills instead of nerf spells...

Also known as "make it so that mundane becomes LOSER because EVERYONE is using magic for all intents and purposes".

Your solution, dumping spells, does not fix our problem; your solution simply extends the "mundane" tag over higher levels.

If your problem is that spells are making skills irrelevant, then yes it does. If your problem is that Jump doesn't keep up with the challenges characters face (whether or not other methods do keep up), that's another story.

You've thrown superheroics back at us like it's something we should be ashamed of.

I've thrown it back at you as something you take for granted as "if we're not superheroic we can't play heroic people and we might as well be doing CoC level of wretchedly insignificant." There's plenty of nonsuperheroic heroism characters can do and you could have 1-20 be that if you wanted it. (Saying "but we don't" does not mean "we can't".)

You would need to still provide characters an additional mobility feature, because that has zero combat utility.

Remind me why Jump should have combat utility? Being useful and relevant in adventuring on the whole, yes, but why in combat in particular? Do you have combat uses for Search? Do you try to find ways to use Decipher Script in combat?

There's lots of ways to make it an obstacle, but if you're going to outgrow all or most of them then the skill needs to move on to other uses.

And it is taken for granted that you will and should outgrow those things, which is the problem I have with the superheroics.

The point is, if you want a pit to be irrelevant, you should just declare that "Somehow or another you get over the pit". If you want characters to genuinely care about it, having flight be an option (whether or not other options are balanced out with it) sort of ruins that.

So a lv10 fighter versus the chasm is something to consider. The point is unless you give them the ability to fly, they need to figure out how to get across.

Presumably, if one went for "Ignore pits and chasms" at level 5, it would be automatic...because the chasm is not a challenge anymore than an ordinary ogre is.

So here is my question. How does it fail to meet the premises of the original post for us to use Jump as is, pretending magic doesn't exist? Do characters fail to meet the level appropriate challenges they should be able to meet using Jump as written by the designers?

After all, if Jump is able to perform sufficiently well to do all the things the OP stated, but fly does those so well that Jump is unable to compare to that, it is pretty unreasonable to work on the skill instead of the spell.

I'm not convinced by any means that it does do well enough, but it appears that the reason "Jump stops being useful at 5+" is primarily that fly is a third level spell.

If I am mistaken, please tell me. The less we argue on the rest, the better. Save that for "why we want to become superheroes by level _____" threads.

The times when you should be able to jump aren't defined, because the entire Jump skill was an afterthought. There is literally no challenge in the game that is best solved by jumping at any level. Even a section of dungeon hallway without a floor can be solved with Climb or even Balance at 1st level; in fact, for longer pits, you literally must do this instead of jumping regardless of your level.

Jump is not only made irrelevant by Fly as a 3rd level spell; the second level spell Alter Self does much the same, as does Spider Climb (indoors), or dumping some money on a Hippogriff or Glidewing mount (outdoors). Or the druid can Wild Shape into a bird to move himself around. Then there's the number of flight magic items.

Jump had no use at all. This adjustment makes it useful.

I've thrown it back at you as something you take for granted as "if we're not superheroic we can't play heroic people and we might as well be doing CoC level of wretchedly insignificant." There's plenty of nonsuperheroic heroism characters can do and you could have 1-20 be that if you wanted it. (Saying "but we don't" does not mean "we can't".)

D&D is a game of superheroism and always has been. The only difference is that usually the fighters were left with the crappy superpower of "get big numbers with your sword," when the casters had "use the big list of superpowers, and, if you need more, you can make them up in your downtime."

At 1st level you are supposed to be above-normal (worth two common guards). At 2nd level you are supposed to be twice as powerful as you were at 1st (roughly). At 4th level you are supposed to be twice as powerful as you were at 2nd. At 6th level you are supposed to be twice that. A 10th level character is supposed to have 32 times the combat power of a 1st level character, who is, himself, worth two soldiers who are each worth two angry peasants.

Once your strength (general ability, not the ability score) is seriously measured in "men," you belong in the ranks of superheroes/legends, and this happens quickly in D&D. A 5th level PC is supposed to be worth 12 soldiers (tangent: the relative differences mean that they're actually worth more than that in a straight-up fight; the PC is worth two guys who are each worth three guys who are each worth two soldiers, but if he fought the twelve soldiers, they'd die in one round).

We're not changing D&D so that it's normal heroism 1-20 because it doesn't do normal heroism beyond somewhere about 5th level. Changing that would require redesigning the whole system (maybe making a 4th edition). Minor tweaks are not going to change what the game does, but they can make it do what it does better.

And it is taken for granted that you will and should outgrow those things, which is the problem I have with the superheroics.

No. If you spend long-term character resources to buy an ability, you should never outgrow that ability without at least a chance of upgrading it to remain practical. Jump does not have that in core. Here it does.

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If you don't want to use this change, then don't. Nobody's forcing it on you. However, as the plethora of abilities to double your jumping distance demonstrates, this change is necessary. No amount of insisting that it's not is going to change that, nor will posting like you're personally offended by the idea of jump being made useful without needing a feat and a prestige class change anyone's mind.

If Jump is such an after thought, why not drop the skill entirely ? Why is it so vital to have a skill to sink points into to represent being able to jump if the game has six hundred brazilion methods of doing everything one would have any reason to jump for?

It'd make more sense not to have a skill at that point. Either that or not having the other six hundred brazillion methods able to get across pits and so on.

One would think that if (part of) the problem is that Climb and Balance render Jump irrelevant that the natural solution would be to make it so that they don't usurp Jump's role.

Note: Edited to remove unneccesary text.

It seems that the problem is "whether or not Jump is any good, everything else is better", and "we want Jump to exist anyway".

Doesn't really resolve whether or not using Jump is able to meet the things you would use the skill for, unfortunately.

So, okay. Let's say we use your fix. Fine. Are you able to keep up with level approrpiate tasks at all now? Whether or not you can Climb/Balance/Fly/whatever, can you make a Jump check and beat the DCs you need to beat?

Elennsar: It's taken for granted that players will outgrow challenges, because that's what they do by virtue of gaining levels. If I didn't want that I'd play a level frozen game or I'd cap things at 5 or 6 where they're not crazy yet. If I just wanted a lower magic game over larger challenge levels, I'd go play The Burning Wheel. When I recommended it before (which may not have looked like a recommendation in retrospect) it was because it's a good fucking game, and if my groups wanted a less fantastic game we'd be playing it. I haven't bitched at you about CoC (I haven't played it) or about mundanes being lame or any of that because I don't think they are. You can play a d20 game as a mundane, but it's not 3.x DnD at mid or high levels. Not when you need magic items to keep your saves up from near auto fail. Not when you need to somehow get at that strafing dragon before he burninates all the peasants. Not in a hundred other standard challenges or die rolls. Mundanes are just not supported in 3.x DnD outside of low levels or serious GM hand-holding and the weird premise you keep tossing out that they are is laughable (whether they should be is a different question).

As to why not drop it entirely? Well, sometimes it matters who can jump farther. Sometimes you don't have time to go the long way around and there is a penalty for failure. Sometimes the wall is covered in razor wire to a height of 8 feet and you just need to get past that before you start climbing. If you want to magic tea party that all away go right ahead, but you're not playing a d20 game anymore. Characters don't have a bajillion ways to get around those unless they are 1) a caster or 2) have a bajillion magic items. I think that item dependence for things like that is lame.

Can you use this new jump skill to meet those challenges, or have basic utility at any level? Yes. It scales with challenges and distances nicely, and it's hardly an auto win ability. I'd consider boosting it actually if I didn't think that most people who cared about it would have bigger Jump bonuses than I'm expecting.

Outgrowing "a ten foot pit" is one thing. Outgrowing "pits" is another.

And my point is that solutions like this are forcing mundanes further and further into "utterly useless to the point that they should not exist in the game" by making everything balanced based on "what the most powerful characters in the RAW can do".

I kind of liked the idea that DC 40 was supposedly, for instnace, something that took a 20th level ranger specialist to have a reliable chance of success at. I don't like that it is something you beat by 10th level in order to avoid underperforming.

Where does the skill-as-written fail here?

Not "where are other things doing better". Where is Jump as written in the RAW failing to scale? The issue seems to be that no one uses Jump to meet those challenges, rather than that Jump can't.

And this is sort of funny, in a "I'm not entirely sure what you mean here" sort of way:

Not when you need magic items to keep your saves up from near auto fail.

Which, apparently, is okay(?). Having a bajillion magic items even for your "good" save and all. But then...

. Characters don't have a bajillion ways to get around those unless they are 1) a caster or 2) have a bajillion magic items. I think that item dependence for things like that is lame.

But it is apparently not okay for characters to need a bajillion magic items to get around those.

Just sort of curious if I'm missing something here.

The idea for "ignore pits and chasms" is that if you really don't want people still treating those as challenges, having to roll anything for a 30 foot deep pit is a waste of time.

As for CoC: CoC is a very bad example of humans as competent enough to matter, so even if you didn't intend to use it as a bad thing its not a good example of "mundanes who can do stuff" any more than D&D.

Personally, my biggest gripe is making it a combat thing, because it adds to the game's desire to punish people who think heavy armor and shields are a good option.

If those types weren't something that should be competing in D&D, it would be okay, but the game does not need more ways to make super mobile guy (with a ranged attack ideally) the only way to compete.

It really doesn't. It needs ways for Jump to handle obstacles in a level appropriate way, and to let guys who don't Wuxia jump all over the place have a role in combat too.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=37683

Allows heavily-armored "jumpers", BTW.

Bigode: It's another example of Jump as a combat action, but Frank's original link is dead :-/.

Elennsar: I give up. I'm not interested in talking at or past you in this thread anymore. If you want to continue this conversation you can PM me, but I won't be derailing this thread any further in an attempt to justify the change to someone opposed to it on principles that aren't relevant to the games I'm playing.

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I was kickin around a revised Jump spell, since the bonuses are right out in this mod. Straight squares might be a good call, as well as removing the running start requirement.

Revised Jump spell effect:
[*]Consider adjusting duration to rounds instead of minutes, not really sure.
[*]As a move action, you automatically jump 15' gaps for the duration (moving 4 squares) with or without a running start. At level 5 this increases to 20' gaps (moving 5 squares), and at level 9 this increases to 25' gaps (moving 6 squares).

It's easier to keep the level 1 spell power consistent that way, and it's a bit more distinct from the jump skill. Wizard wants to jump? Wizard casts spell and gets to jump in a consistant way that is around as good as the skill he's not investing in, but doesn't keep up with higher spell level effects or with people who invest in the skill.

Thoughts? Not enough?

Yes, because having people who aren't using supernatural powers is irrelevant to Wizards and Whipping Boys.

Instead of dealing with the fact wizards own the game is bad for everyone else, we just make everyone wizardly. Fun.

As for the skill:
Does a running start actually require the character to be running?

Because the default wording (don't recall seeing if this fix changed that) is just "twenty feet in a straight line before jumping".

I'm positive that it isn't meant to work out so that "speed above 30 feet (again, SRD) is +4 to the check for every ten feet" meaning that if you actually run you get +36, but it would be pretty funny if it did.

Here is why we tell you to read the fvcking tomes and you bitch at us saying no, I won't do this because I want to talk about it.


Here's the deal. talk about the mechanics of the skill created in this thread rather than saying that it should be dropped. That's not discussing an alternate rule rule. So either get with the program or get the fvck out.

If the tomes covered general game design, I'd be more interested. When they're "setting your game so everyone is at the 'can do ridiculous shit' level", what are people who would like to see less of that supposed to do? Pretend that we don't get to have opinions on how the game should be constructed and what level of power is the baseline for overpowered/underpowered?

I don't recall this having a sign that says "agree with us that everyone needs to be a superhero on pain of being level inappropriate or get the fuck out of here".

You may or may not want to do that, but it is not a requirement that the game be designed around hyperpowers.

If being able to Jump "only" 30 feet with a DC 30 check is unable to keep up with the challenges characters face at the level that they can make said checks, that's a problem. If Jump is made irrelevant by a couple dozen other things, then maybe those other things shouldn't be doing that.

But its apparently easier to pretend that there is only one solution and that is to make wuixia jumps, not only for mobility, but for combat, because Jump has to have a combat application.

Since, you know, actually dealing with people who disagree is so much like work.

So. Presumably, the distances are at least tenuously based on the actual distances one would need to jump. Is a 55 foot (11 square) jump good enough at level 12 (Strength 20, 15 ranks, so modifier of +20 from that)?

No need for being able to jump almost twice as far as standard (11 squares vs 30 feet) if the things requiring jumping aren't that big.

Elennsar wrote:As for the skill:
Does a running start actually require the character to be running?

Because the default wording (don't recall seeing if this fix changed that) is just "twenty feet in a straight line before jumping".

I'm positive that it isn't meant to work out so that "speed above 30 feet (again, SRD) is +4 to the check for every ten feet" meaning that if you actually run you get +36, but it would be pretty funny if it did.

Running start definition hasn't changed, it's still moving 20' in a straight line before beginning a jump that continues along that line. I thought it was in the revised skill description, but I don't feel like going back and hunting it down.

Your interpretation of the speed bonus is a bit off. It used to be a bonus for having a base speed that was greater than 30', so faster characters were naturally better at tossing themselves through the air. It had nothing to do with how far you moved before jumping though. The speed bonus has been removed in this revision, because the non-linear skill causes static bonuses to scale differently and a linear speed bonus should provide a linear jump boost. Hence the suggestion earlier that fast characters gain bonus squares to distance jumped.

Elennsar wrote:If the tomes covered general game design, I'd be more interested. When they're "setting your game so everyone is at the 'can do ridiculous shit' level", what are people who would like to see less of that supposed to do? Pretend that we don't get to have opinions on how the game should be constructed and what level of power is the baseline for overpowered/underpowered?

Don't play D&D3.x past level, say, 6, and don't have opposition past CR, say, 10. Remove monsters that can cast wish, or remove that ability from them. Regular Jump is still useful then, because only the most powerful people in the world can even cast fly, and magic items and scrolls that let other people fly are pretty epic.
The way the opposition is set up, you almost have to be able to do superheroic stunts past a certain point just to survive, and only by either radically changing the game or not having it go past that point can you fully avoid it (playing NPCs as incompetent with unimaginative players might work as a spit-and-duct-tape fix). I'm fairly sure the Tomes don't have people doing things drastically more ridiculous than typical fantasy does until the point where existing classes are already doing crazy things.

You can also do a heavy rewrite of the game, but that changes the context of the Jump skill enough that it's meaningless to speculate without actually having the modified system.

Tarxis: Right, the quotes are from the SRD. I was looking over exactly how the skill as written works because I wanted to be sure I knew how much different this was in terms of distance and all goes. So some funny technically-possible-maybe things came out.

I would hope that you do have to be running to have a "running start", though. The mental image of strolling twenty feet and then jumping is not merely absurd, its deranged.

Quantumboost: Thank you for pointing out exactly why I think D&D needs to be rebuilt from the foundations. The "roll 1d20+modifiers" part.

Because it fails to do justice to what humans (in our world) can do, and it fails to represent larger than life without getting into six swings in the time it takes to blink supers.

But that's a rant having no place in this particualr thread except as it specifically relates to Jumping and Climbing and such. (climbing being mentioned because it interacts with part of what Jump can do, so it ought to interact well, not clumsily).

So let's focus on the real question I'm still pondering. What is a level appropriate thing to do with Jump? I mean, when is the last time an official book listed DCs for Jump checks to do something in an adventure?

Assuming that's "Never" or close enough, what's the experience of those who have (wanted to) use it in play?

No point doubling jump distances if the pits and such are still the same size.[/i]

Elennsar wrote:I would hope that you do have to be running to have a "running start", though. The mental image of strolling twenty feet and then jumping is not merely absurd, its deranged.

It's not deranged, it's just a standing jump.

Seriously though, it's not a big deal. In any action limited time, like combat, you could work it out so that you could only take a running jump as part of a run action, but since the move action + decent jump incurs the same action cost as run anyway I don't see it as a mechanical problem worth worrying about. And anyone who wants to describe their fraction of a second combat move as a "stroll" or "merry-skip" or whatever is providing me with a mental image funny enough to just let slide. The rest of the time it's all descriptive anyway and you can have a good laugh with the player when they try it, and then tell them what the words running start mean. With a dictionary. Upside the head if they want to continue to press the issue.

Right, the only reason mechanically it matters is conditions denying you the ability to run (fatigued and exhausted are the only ones coming to mind).

So it would matter whether or not a character suffering one of those would be able to jump normally (the "with a running start" numbers) or not.

Otherwise, you summed it up. I'm just irked at mechanics that don't make sense when there's no need for them to be absurd (almost anything in the Lolcat rpg should be absurd, for instance).

I don't think that the mechanics are absurd or unclearly worded, they're just not so strongly worded as to disallow people from describing their setup action in ways that don't make as much sense. That's not a mechanic failing, that's just not wanting to waste space talking down to people.

You've got a fair point about conditions though. IGTN has it written up that any jump tires you out as if you took a run action. You could infer from that that it should also suffer run's limitations with respect to fatigue (exhaustion pretty much hoses jump on it's own though, so that's fine), but as written you wouldn't be able to jump at all if you were fatigued since any round you use jump counts as a round of running. Additional thought and clarification seems in order.

Well, you could say that you must be capable of running to do so, at the very least, no talking down required.

So, for this at least (since I have no desire to pester Morons of the Beach without it providing fun or profit), the wording needs to clarifiy how to deal with this.

Here's hoping that anyone who does describe their pre-jump movement in a silly way has a GM who would appreciate it. Because silliness deserves that, and serious GMs don't need it.

I've refined version 2, and added it to the opening post. I don't think there will be many more changes forthcoming to it; this is probably the closest to a final version it'll get unless it has some glaring flaws.

Thanks, everyone who helped.