| CaptainPony |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"When your character is not in immediate danger or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10."
"When you have plenty of time, you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20."
"Since taking 20 assumes that your character will fail many times before succeeding, your character would automatically incur any penalties for failure before he or she could complete the task (hence why it is generally not allowed with skills that carry such penalties)."
Ergo: the fact that the 5-foot step automatically invokes a skill-check that risks falling damage on a failure, it feels like the 'circumstances' are difficult even if the 'terrain' isn't.
I would allow a player to take a five-foot while flying as long as they stayed at the same altitude (with a single DC 15 'hover' check, no half-speed check: the half-speed check feels like it was meant to exclusively refer to move actions, and that a 5-foot step is not halved at all). Or allow the player to take a single five-foot step while descending at a 45 degree angle without invoking a check at all because of the step (although being in the air after the step would still require a hover check).
I don't believe it makes thematic sense to allow a player to ascend with a five-foot step, and (mechanics or not) this is inherently a roleplaying game.
What if I want to "jump" with my five foot step, straight up, without wings, while standing on the ground? Jumping doesn't even COUNT as a move action, it just assumes you are moving when you do it. (Acrobatics does not put a cap on jumping based on movement, or even require movement to attempt a jump - although a running start avoids double DC for jumping across a length).
But let's say it requires I use a five-foot step to jump, and I decide to try for a six-foot jump (DC 24), what then?
A character with Acrobatics trained as a class skill at level 1 and my latest Dex roll would actually have 1d20+9 to a check. (Rolled it: the character failed the six-foot jump on the first roll, but succeeded on the second, only three out of ten rolls were successes).
It doesn't really make sense at all that I'm trying to abuse my five-foot step to move five (or more) feet straight up when the RULES DON'T PROVIDE FOR THAT AT ALL.
So it is for flying.