Feather Step and Ice / Grease / Tables

[Endis]

Hello there,

I recently bought Slippers of Feather Step for my eidolon. Nevertheless, I have difficulties understanding how it works because so far the GMs I have played with have always ruled it to be near useless.
I am finding it very frustrating to be playing a level 5 mounted summoner in PFS and to have been able to do a mounted charge only ONCE ...

Here are some questions I'm asking myself :

1) If the ground is greased/iced or webbed, am I still able to charge? Would I need to make the acrobatics checks required in the two first cases, and in the third case would I need to roll a reflex not to get entangled? Would I get a negative modifier for moving at full speed? Could I choose to charge at half speed (that seems silly but thought I'd ask just in case) if it does?

2) If there are obstacles in my way, such as tables, chairs or even say 5 or 10' tall shelves, could I charge through them? In each case, would I need to make an acrobatics or climb check (could I choose between the 2)?
If my eidolon takes the climb evolution, does that change anything? Would it allow him to charge through shelves for example or charge an ennemy that is on higher ground?

3) In the case that all of the above solutions don't work :
If I take the Charge Through feat with my eidolon, would he be able to try during the charge to overrun say a shelf, and if yes what would be the cmd of such an object?

4) My eidolon is usually large, so would it allow her to charge through, say, a 5 or 8' opening?

Thanks in advance for your answers,

Endis and his quite unlucky eidolon Mazer

[The Beard]

Feather step slippers only work on rough terrain. If the aforementioned conditions are listed as rough terrain then yes, they should indeed work. Tables, small shelves, damaged ground, rocks, and shallow water are just some examples of rough terrain that those slippers completely crap all over. I've got them on my hellknight in Society play and lemme tell you, those things were probably a better investment than the belt of physical perfection.

Grease does not, to my knowledge, result in rough terrain. It simply demands that you make a save to remain standing when you pass through it. The ground being frozen will generally produce this same effect unless you opt to move at half-speed, though some frozen terrain does only count as rough terrain; this is up to your GM. Web is much the same in that you would need to make the requisite checks simply to move. Note that web does specify generating rough terrain, thus your slippers would be in full effect so long as you could pass the requisite CMB or escape artist check to avoid gaining the grappled condition while moving through those spaces.

Book shelves of waist height or a little below generally only qualify as rough terrain per game standards, but larger ones may simply be a literal obstruction not much removed from being an actual wall. These instances will just require that you either A.) make an acrobatics check to jump over or B.) go around. Regarding charging through limited space on a large creature: I do not believe you would be able to. Such a small space gets into squeezing rules, at which time the creature's movement will be severely impaired even if escape artist is used to mitigate some of it.

Finally, you do not normally have to make acrobatics checks to pass over tables, chairs, bookshelves, or other small obstacles due to wearing feather step slippers; they do very well at overcoming such annoying little details. As stated earlier you will find, very likely, that book shelves the size of a person or larger go from being rough terrain to being outright obstructions. The climb evolution will not help here, as charge must always go in a straight line (barring possession of a feat like wheeling charge, though even then it probably still wouldn't work due to wheeling charge allowing only one turn) and end in the first square at which point an attack may be made.

Uh oh, I almost forgot something! You can't charge at half speed unless something is happening that denies you a full round action, in which case you can do a `half-charge.` Regrettably this will still count as moving at full speed and therefore accrue the penalties thereof where applicable. All that being said, you still don't need to make checks to charge through rough terrain of any sort (assuming it doesn't require any sort of save to keep moving) while using the slippers.

[Faskill]

Thank you for your answers, how about using the Charge Through feat to overrun shelves?

[Endis]

I will bump up this topic, a GM just argued that a table wouldn't count as difficult terrain, is there any ruling to support that / against that?