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A flightless fairy can jump further than a flightless old black dragon. Likewise, most giants are less likely to make it across a 10-foot gap than most halflings. Blasphemy! This calls for a house rule!
What I have in mind is an acrobatics modifier to jumping based on size. I'm looking for suggestions regarding the sensibility, the effect on gameplay, and consistency of the following chart for jumping alone. Base speed is the max jumping distance.
SIZE ___ DISTANCE ____ DC MODIFIER __ MAX DISTANCE
Fine_________/4___________-8________x0.5
Diminutive___/3___________-4________x0.5
Tiny_________/2___________-2________x1
Small________x0.5_________-1________x1
Medium_______x1___________+0________x1
Large________x1.5_________+1________x1.5
Huge_________x2___________+2________x1.5
Gargantuan___x3___________+4________x2
Colossal_____x4___________+8________x2
What does this mean for the tarrasque? Without this rule, this 50-foot tall beast made for jumping would have a hard time jumping over a single floor 50-foot wide house. With it, it could leap over a 3-story building 150-feet across. Or over a 300-foot wide chasm.
Likewise, a flightless fairy could jump 7 feet or 2 feet high. This is a tiny, 6 inch critter.
I just houseruled "jumping" out of Acrobatics, and into an "Athletics" skill including Climb and Jump. It still runs off of strength, so giants will clear a great deal more distance than they would in the core. It's an easier house rule, and it keeps things smoother with old 3.5 stuff. Plus, it gives Fighters back their Jump ability.
good stuff
I like your chart. The values are simple and make sense in my head.
I'm a little confused about the DC Modifier though. Would you mind elaborating and maybe providing some examples?
Some interesting facts from the real world of jumping:
An elephant cannot jump. It is physically incapable of propelling itself into the air for any distance. They are strong, the but the proportion of strength to their weight is lower than many other animals. In India, trenching is a common method for keeping elephants out of fields, a 2 meter deep pit, 2 meters across at the top and 1.5 meters at the bottom will deter elephants (though sometimes they fill them in, or rain erodes sections, etc).
Cougars on the other hand can jump 18 feet vertical and reportedly up to 40 feet horizontal, but most members of the species average a bit less than that.
Fleas can jump vertically 100 times their body height (a cougar can jump up to 5 times it's body height).
If you were to apply this realistically to gaming, a giant might be able to jump further than the halfling, but the proportion of it's body size that determines it's max jump distance would be smaller.
But neither could a beetle. Size does matter, what I'm aiming for here is, how much so?
High speed footage of one jumping from on it's back.
That second one, it looks to me like it's jumping at least 3-4 times it's length. Now, you as a human can jump a higher actual distance, but comparing body size, you can jump a shorter distance.
Every time you double the size of a living creature, you roughly increase it's weight 8 times (this is referenced in the Enlarge Person spell and is realistically a good rule of thumb). If there isn't an eight-fold increase in strength as well, than jumping capacity is going to diminish.
Looking at the Enlarge Person spell, you only get a +2 bonus for size. Table 7-4 shows us that heavy load capacity increases by about 16% at the higher levels (past 18 or so).
SIZE ________ MAX DISTANCE compared to height
Fine_________ x10
Diminutive___ x5
Tiny_________ x3
Small________ x2
Medium_______ x2
Large________ x1
Huge_________ x1
Gargantuan___ x0.5
Colossal_____ x0.5
Than, if you adjust the "size" of the creature one category smaller for every +4 racial bonus to jumping, increasing by x2 for every +4 beyond Fine, you get tarrasque's that can go pretty far, but elephants that are still somewhat bound by gravity.