| FanaticRat |
So I'm making a gulch gunner and I had planned to do a lot of being in melee, so I was planning to pump my Acrobatics and Escape Artist skills so I can tumble easily (I'd want to provoke when I shoot them, not trying to get in range of shooting them) and get out of grapples, since being a small character with 10 STR constantly in melee means that grab attacks could really screw me over.
However, when a friend linked me a spreadsheet containing the average and most common enemy stats by CR, I was dismayed to find how CMD scaled. From the looks of it, even if I pumped the skills every level (with a high DEX and class skills on both to boot), I'd only be able to succeed on the checks about 50% or less of the time, which seems way too unreliable and would just get me killed more often than not. Are these skills even worth investing in, or do they just require more things to be effective, such as feats, items, etc? Has anyone here built a tumbling or escape artist oriented character? How has it worked?
| Elosandi |
At lower levels the ranks alone should be enough.
At higher levels, magic items such as slick armour, and boots of elvenkind are relatively easy to afford and get grant a quite significant +5 bonus.
In escape artist, provided your spellcasters are willing (at higher levels when they can afford to spend their 1st level slot) you're potentially able to get by with a relatively minor investment in the skill thanks to liberating command.
It costs two people their immediate actions, but it also gives the person attempting to escape a very sizable bonus to the attempt.