Acrobatics and Athletics for fighters


Alpha Release 1 General Discussion


I figured it warranted its own thread.

One think I loathed about v3.5 rules was that despite being proficient with light armor, fighters sucked at tumbling. WTF?! If a fighter decided to wear light armor, why shouldn't he be able to tumble well, especially if that was a fighting style he preferred?

Also, do not roll climb and swim into athletics as suggested by some others. Climbing is a completely different skill from swimming. A character might be an excellent mountain climber having lived in mountainous terrain, but could suck at swimming. Conversely, a creature that has a high swim skill doesn't necessarily make a good climber.

Dark Archive

Amaril wrote:

One think I loathed about v3.5 rules was that despite being proficient with light armor, fighters sucked at tumbling. WTF?! If a fighter decided to wear light armor, why shouldn't he be able to tumble well, especially if that was a fighting style he preferred?

Also, do not roll climb and swim into athletics as suggested by some others. Climbing is a completely different skill from swimming. A character might be an excellent mountain climber having lived in mountainous terrain, but could suck at swimming. Conversely, a creature that has a high swim skill doesn't necessarily make a good climber.

I agree with both of these.

While I already have combined Balance + Tumble into a single Acrobatics skill, and made it a class skill for Fighters (along with Profession, which I made a class skill for *everyone*), I chose to keep Climb, Jump and Swim as individual skills. Some consolidation 'works' for me, such as Open Locks + Disable Device or Spot + Listen. But combining Climb, Jump and / or Swim doesn't really work that well for me, or another idea I hear every now and again about combining Handle Animal and Ride. Those things feel 'too different' for me.

I also gave the 2+Int skill point classes (Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, etc.) 4+Int skill points. The guys who got 6 and 8 I left alone, since the skill consolidation thing really worked to their advantage anyway (since they were the classes that would have had to buy Hide and Move Silently and Spot and Listen seperately).


Amaril wrote:
Also, do not roll climb and swim into athletics as suggested by some others. Climbing is a completely different skill from swimming. A character might be an excellent mountain climber having lived in mountainous terrain, but could suck at swimming. Conversely, a creature that has a high swim skill doesn't necessarily make a good climber.

Realistically, you're 100% correct, but to balance the skill mechanically (rules-wise) with something like Perception, you've got to make it multi-useful. Otherwise we're back to the 100-odd skills from 3.5e.


Yeah, I like combining them, personally. Sure, someone *can* be better at one and worse at the other, but is that really a common enough case to worry about compared to the other skills?

Now, an optional skill specialization rule - or skill feats that apply to one subspecialty (+4 to Athletics when climbing) would help out your problem without the default complexity.


I can see the rationale behind a LOT of the skill groupings in the Alpha release.

I have already combined Listen and Spot, and Hide and Move Silently in all my home campaigns, and my players love it.

I firmly believe that there are far too many skills in 3.5, especially when you consider all the specialized skills such as Craft, Knowledge, Perform and Profession.

So I say the less skills the better.

Although I do agree that Climb and Swim should remain as separate skills. This is easy enough to imagine since Balancing, Jumping, and Tumbling are all obviously related. But if you look at rock climbing and swimming, these are very specialized sports and require years of training to become proficient at.


Pop'N'Fresh wrote:
Although I do agree that Climb and Swim should remain as separate skills. This is easy enough to imagine since Balancing, Jumping, and Tumbling are all obviously related. But if you look at rock climbing and swimming, these are very specialized sports and require years of training to become proficient at.

Exactly. There is very distinct physical conditioning involved with each of these, and they are very much different enough to not be rolled together.

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Roleplaying Game / Alpha Playtest Feedback / Alpha Release 1 / General Discussion / Acrobatics and Athletics for fighters All Messageboards
Recent threads in General Discussion
Please Change Half-Orcs