I’m a little confused by the acrobatics/jump rules and how they interact with various forms of movement modifiers.
The rule reads “Creatures with a base land speed above 30 feet receive a +4 racial bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump for every 10 feet of their speed above 30 feet. Creatures with a base land speed below 30 feet receive a –4 racial bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump for every 10 feet of their speed below 30 feet. No jump can allow you to exceed your maximum movement for the round” and the DC for long jump is 1 per foot jump, and for a high jump it’s 1 per 4 feet jump.
So, we have three characters (all taking a running start):
Halfling with a base move of 20 feet and thus a -4 racial “bonus” – taking 10, she could jump 6 feet.
A human with a base move of 30 feet and no bonus – taking 10, she could jump 10 feet.
A human barbarian with a base move of 30 feet and thus a +4 bonus – taking 10, she could jump 14 feet.
So far, so good – what I don’t fully understand is what happens with double moves, run actions, charges, and spells as cheetah’s spring (assume a running start for all the examples below).
1) Double move – I don’t think this changes anything as a double move doesn’t increase your speed, it only increases the amount of time spent moving. Correct?
2) Charge – The rules says that “you move up to twice your speed,” so I think it changes possible jump distance as follows:
Halfing could move 40 feet and thus gets a +4 bonus and can long jump 14 feet (assuming a die roll of 10)
Regular human could move 60 feet and thus gets a +12 bonus and could long jump 22 feet (assuming a die roll of 10)
Human barbarian could move 70 feet and thus gets a +16 bonus and could long jump 26 feet (assuming a die roll of 10)
Is all this correct?
3) Run – This is a full round action, and you move four times your speed; effectively it’s two move actions where you move twice your speed in each. So, I think the final effect on jumps is like charge. Is this correct?
4) A spell like cheetah’s spring – This says “you can move a total distance up to 10 times your base land speed” for a charge or run action. So, a regular human could charge 300 feet and then attack or run 600 feet as a full round action (68 miles per hour which is slightly better than the 61 mph of a cheetah according to National Geographic). Here, I get really confused. For the purposes of calculating a jump bonus, which of the following is correct?
a) The character’s speed is 300 feet and so her jump bonus is +108 (270 feet greater than 30 feet is 27 times +4 for the jump bonus), and she could jump 118 feet (assuming a die roll of 10). This seems odd because it’s now more than three times as powerful as the +30 maximum of the also 1st level spell jump. (According to our friends at National Geographic, the longest observed long jump by an animal is 49 feet by a snow leopard.)
or
b) While the character can now MOVE 300 feet, her “base land speed” remains unchanged, so there is no bonus to jump. This would seem to be a literal reading of the spell description. However, this also seems odds as the spell description later states “As with other effects that increase your speed, this spell affects your jumping distance.”
or
c) Is there some in-between effect where cheetah’s speed effectively multiplies base land speed, but not all the way to 10x? For example, a regular charge is twice one's speed, so "base speed" for a 300 foot charge is 150 feet, and the resulting jump bonus is +48 (still better than a jump spell).
1) Correct.
2) No, this is the same as (1). No change to your actual speed, no extra jumping. Otherwise people would charge-jump all the time.
3) Same as (1); you're supposed to have a running start to get the results you quoted, a standing long jump only gets you half the distance.
4) Since it highlights that it affects your jumping distance, it does. As for how much... hmm. I would ignore charge and focus on run. You can run 600 feet; running is four times a move, so your speed is 150, so your bonus is +48. Yes, this is higher than the jump spell, but it only lasts one round and only affects the caster, whereas jump lasts 1 min/level and affects anyone.
Thanks, so I need to remember the following:
For jumping, it is always base speed, unmodified by any charging or running modifiers.
For something like cheetah's sprint, effective base speed is 1/4 of the distance you could run or 1/2 of the distance you could charge.
Thanks, so I need to remember the following:
For jumping, it is always base speed, unmodified by any charging or running modifiers.
For something like cheetah's sprint, effective base speed is 1/4 of the distance you could run or 1/2 of the distance you could charge.
Looks right to me. Happy jumping!