Abolish the Acrobatics Skill

[Starfox]

This is a thread proposed by one of my playtesters, who's playing a rogue. He thinks the Acrobatics skill should go. It has no proactive uses, and the reactive uses could just as well be handled by Reflex saves. As it is, it is a skill tax for certain concepts. Athletics got all of the proactive uses that could have gone with Acrobatics.

To me, this seems to be a part of the "fighters should have all the good stuff" feel of PF2. The fighter tag feat, Athletics, stole all the utility that could have been in Acrobatics.

[ErichAD]

I can't believe I didn't notice this. It really is just a list of reflex checks with feats related to reflex checks tacked on.

[Kerx]

There still should be acrobatics as a skill but yeah the way it works right now is funky at best. I feel like characters should be allowed to use acrobatics to jump and climb at the very least. On that matter why the hell is jump under a str based skill anyways? How many times have you seen a Schwarzenegger-esque long jumper, high jumper, or climber?
Pretty sure this is what you meant by

Quote:

stole all the utility that could have been in Acrobatics.

but I had that epiphany while typing and now we're here.

[Fuzzypaws]

Rather than get rid of it, I'd prefer it to get some of its functionality back and for it to be able to be used in a proactive way.

I'd also prefer Athletics to be split into at least two skills, because I don't really associate "climbing and swimming" with "wrestling and shoving" as the same skillset. It would be nice to have at least two Str based skills instead of only one.

[WizardsBlade]

There are nice acrobatic feats that give you great options. Like kip up and cat fall.

[Crayon]

The split between Athletics and Acrobatics does strike me as being rather arbitrary so I'd definitely be OK with amalgamating the two...

[Gazzor]

Kerx wrote:

There still should be acrobatics as a skill but yeah the way it works right now is funky at best. I feel like characters should be allowed to use acrobatics to jump and climb at the very least. On that matter why the hell is jump under a str based skill anyways? How many times have you seen a Schwarzenegger-esque long jumper, high jumper, or climber?

Pretty sure this is what you meant by

Quote:

stole all the utility that could have been in Acrobatics.

but I had that epiphany while typing and now we're here.

In Commando Arnie's character jumped about 200' out of a plane into 5' of water with no injury. There's a darn good acrobatics check right there...

[WizardsBlade]

The difference between athletics (strength based skills) and acrobatics (dexterity based skills) seem pretty decent to me. The athletics skills are more strength based skills and the acrobatics skills are more finesse or dexterity based skills. Most everything people do requires some strength and some dexterity. Even walking, requires muscles to move and balance to stay up right.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Disarm should be under Acrobatics. An argument could be made for Trip.

[Chance Wyvernspur]

My preference would be to for tumbling to be a feat within the Athletics skill. Any mundane applications of the current Acrobatics skill would be better under Athletics.

[sherlock1701]

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Disarm should be under Acrobatics. An argument could be made for Trip.

100% agreed on both. It bugged me that all the combat maneuvers are locked into a strength skill.

[Cyrad]

I actually see the opposite.

What's the point of saving throws when skill checks are being used in lieu of saving throws and vice versa?

[shroudb]

my issue is:

athletics supposedly encompassed every and all athletic activity one can do, from swimming to climbing to wrestling, to jumping and etc.

and for some weird reason, acrobatics, which is a fairly standard athletic activity, is a completely separate skill.

it just doesn't make sense.

Plus, talking about modifiers, we have acrobats who can't jump and can't climb.

like... has anyone seen an acrobatic show without jumps, tumbles, and scaling? I sure haven't.

Imo:

Athletics/Acrobatics should be merged into one skill that uses either Str or Dex.

because they are indeed activities that always require both strength and dexterity to accomplish.

[Fuzzypaws]

You want to combine basically all physical talents of any kind into one skill, as if it's trivial to be good at everything, but I bet you wouldn't go for combining Diplomacy and Intimidate and Deception into one single social skill, or Arcana and Religion and Nature and Occult and Lore into one single knowledge skill. This is the kind of devaluing and dismissal of physical ability I commented about back in the pre-release forums.

It would make more sense to have an extra physical skill or two or three, and rejigger the abilities to make sense, than to over combine everything.

[Fuzzypaws]

Also, re professional acrobats also having athletic ability? Yeah, when something is your job you're probably going to be trained in multiple related skills. Just like a diplomat is probably going to be trained in multiple social skills and also Society. Whereas the lazy coworker might be good at just Deception or Diplomacy, but is probably not accomplished at the full spectrum of social talents.

It's more than okay and actually desirable for a given "job" (gymnast, thief, diplomat, scout, whatever) to require multiple different skills. They don't all have to be lumped into one.

[shroudb]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

Also, re professional acrobats also having athletic ability? Yeah, when something is your job you're probably going to be trained in multiple related skills. Just like a diplomat is probably going to be trained in multiple social skills and also Society. Whereas the lazy coworker might be good at just Deception or Diplomacy, but is probably not accomplished at the full spectrum of social talents.

It's more than okay and actually desirable for a given "job" (gymnast, thief, diplomat, scout, whatever) to require multiple different skills. They don't all have to be lumped into one.

but that's my issue:

if "acrobatics" can't define an "acrobat" then, even if you keep a Dex based skill in the game, simply rename it.

when a skill is named: Diplomacy. I expect to be able to be be a diplomat with it.
when a skill is named: Acrobatics. I expect to be able to be an acrobat with it.

Fuzzypaws wrote:

You want to combine basically all physical talents of any kind into one skill, as if it's trivial to be good at everything, but I bet you wouldn't go for combining Diplomacy and Intimidate and Deception into one single social skill, or Arcana and Religion and Nature and Occult and Lore into one single knowledge skill. This is the kind of devaluing and dismissal of physical ability I commented about back in the pre-release forums.

It would make more sense to have an extra physical skill or two or three, and rejigger the abilities to make sense, than to over combine everything.

And it's not that i feel a need to condense skills any more, we already have quite a bit "extra" skills in the average party, if we condense the skills even further, the problem will escalate and eveyone will be trained at everything.

It's just that specifically tieing everything athletic related to one skll, and then leaving a single athletic activity out of the loop, and even stripping it of core things that it should excel at (jumping as a clear example) seems, to be blunt, terrible.

You want 2 physical skills, one dex and one str?

fine by me. Just name them approprietly and have them have clear distinctions on what one is and what the other is.

You mention intimidate and diplomacy.

Yes, both could be condensed to a single "social" skill, if there was ever a need for something like that to happen. But as they are right now, there is a clear distinction on what one does and what the other does. One can see "diplomacy" and instinctively know what he can do.

Seeing "acrobatics", the very first instinctively use that pops into my mind is "jumping around". Seeing "atheltics", it is "running". Neither of the two are correct though.

To put it simpler, i have no issue with either the amount of skills, or how many are dex or str.

i have an issue with what each does and does not, when taking into account their actual skill names.

[Fennris]

I see no issue with jumping being in Athletics, and frankly it makes more sense to be there. When watching sports would you consider the people competing in the long jump, high jump, or even the pole vault events acrobatics? Strength seems like a more logical choice for those skills

[Fennris]

Free climbing requires insane grip strength though to be fair I can see acrobatics for urban climbing such as parkour. Acrobatics are more about balance, and coordination not jumping and climbing. As someone had said earlier it makes sense to need both.

[Starfox]

I did some rock climbing. I can say with confidence that rock climbers don't look like bodybuilders. There is a lot of muscular strength behind a high Dexterity rating. You need to be strong in order to move fast. The difference between high Strength and Dexterity is power-to-mass rather than pure muscle strength.

A high Dexterity person is strong but light and can control body movements with great exactness. They have a high power-to-weight ratio.

A very strong person is massive, and all this muscle mass makes them heavier. Even tough such a person is stronger, their power-to-weight ratio is lower than that of a lithe person simply because they are bigger.

[Lockewood]

I, personally, believe that jumping should go with acrobatics.

As Mr. Fennris above me stated, free climbing does take raw strength to pull your own body weight upwards. Jumping also takes Strength...But is that really what makes the jump work?

Part of the problem is that, in this game, Dexterity is also Agility.

There are three types of 'Strength': Endurance, Strength, and Force.

Put simply,
Endurance is how 'long' you can do something.
Strength is how 'much' you can do.
Force is how 'quickly' you can move or change directions.

People who are 'Agile' are those who do force training. (Examples include Racquetball, Soccer players, Gymnasts, etc.)

People who are into jumping are lean and have a lot of 'Force' because they can't afford to have bulky muscles weigh them down too much.

If you look at Rock Climbers though, they could be either way. Those without much strength use their legs and arms in coordination to make it over the cliffs while those who have natural Strength or Endurance just sort of shove themselves upwards.

Thus, I think that while strength is important for most physical activities, Dexterity/Agility is the most useful for jumping.

Just a thought.

[Previloc]

Athletics is the general physical skill, Acrobatics a specialized one (Stealth more so). Similarly, Diplomacy is the general interaction skill, Deception/Intimidation are specialized. Most adventurers should be proficient in basic physical tasks (Athletics) and interaction (Diplomacy). Expecting the names to be perfect, and perfectly reflect balance or real jobs, is unrealistic. I think the division of labor on skills has purpose and potential - general skills that almost every character will have (ie., the majority of the party), and specialized skills that only a few, if any, will have. It's a good mechanic and model, in my opinion.

I am a little tired of RPGs making Dexterity the super do-anything skill, just because highly skilled non-musclebound real people seem to be able to do amazing things - expertise (muscle memory) is what they are leveraging, not superior agility/reflexes!

[gwynfrid]

I think this problem is mostly one of game balance between attributes, not classes. I expect most fighters and rogues will put skill increases in both athletics and acrobatics. So, the difference will be more between Str based and Dex based characters.

In that sense, there is a strong reason to keep a lot of checks under athletics rather than acrobatics: That's because Dex is already the favored ability, by far. So, this helps rebalance things in favor of Str.

Beyond that, we can always have the debate about realism, but all it usually does is go in circles while everybody cites anecdotal evidence from real life, sports, personal experience or what have you. This isn't very productive usually. I think the game would make a big mistake trying to achieve optimal realism. A more reasonable goal is to have just enough realism to maintain good suspension of disbelief, and no more.

[Normal Pathetic Caster]

I agree. Acrobatics should be removed as a skill. Just look at this thread, we already have people saying how it should apply to more things. Dexterity is already pretty much a god stat and yet people want it to do even more than it already does. By removing acrobatics it puts a bit more emphasis on Strength which is the second worst stat in the game and perhaps may lead to more actual build diversity rather than the standard, pump the shit out of DEX that we have now.

[gwynfrid]

To be more clear: I disagree with the idea of removing Acrobatics from the list. To begin with, folks who propose merging it with Athletics also say that one should have the choice of using Str or Dex with it. This would make Dex even more powerful than it is today.

Also, the OP said that Acrobatics has no proactive uses. This is inaccurate. Balance (to move across a narrow surface or uneven ground), Escape (from a grapple), Squeeze, Tumble Through and Maneuver in Flight are all proactive uses. Placing them under a Str modifier would make little sense.

If the feeling is that Acrobatics doesn't have enough meat on it, the solution isn't to remove it. It's to add more uses and more skill feats for it.

[RazarTuk]

Starfox wrote:

I did some rock climbing. I can say with confidence that rock climbers don't look like bodybuilders. There is a lot of muscular strength behind a high Dexterity rating. You need to be strong in order to move fast. The difference between high Strength and Dexterity is power-to-mass rather than pure muscle strength.

This is the other issue. Strength-Dexterity-Constitution is a very artificial distinction at this point. Originally, as in back in AD&D, Strength was how good of a fighter you are, Dexterity was how good of a rogue you are, and Constitution was general endurance for everyone. (And similarly, Intelligence was wizard-ness, Wisdom was cleric-ness, and Charisma was leadership and personal magnetism for everyone)

A more natural split would be something like Body (Constitution, bonus damage, carrying capacity), Agility (gross motor parts of Dexterity, AC, attack rolls), and Deftness (fine motor parts of Dexterity, mostly rogue skills)

[Kerx]

Dex isn't the super/god/omega stat it used to be IMO, I'm gonna need some convincing I guess. My thoughts: athletics is way more blanket usable than acrobatics. Initiative is now probably perception (I'm aware stealth exists, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be usable 100% of the time). AC seems equivalent between dex based characters. Also the part where only some rogues get dex to damage and only while in melee. If y'all got any of them graphs (for AC/to hit/ by class or dex v str) and the like hit me with those please, I live for that type of knowledge.
If I'm wrong and missing the part where Dex still blows Str out of the water: make it so dex builds have to take a skill feat or general feat to still be capable of doing, on average as they should, things like climbing, jumping, trip, and disarm (the ideas I side with thus far). If is as overpowered as people say this seems optimal.
To be clear I don't think dex is busted anymore and think this is just the least build killing tax to Dex builds (esp rogues if skill feat).

[Lockewood]

Previloc wrote:

I am a little tired of RPGs making Dexterity the super do-anything skill, just because highly skilled non-musclebound real people seem to be able to do amazing things - expertise (muscle memory) is what they are leveraging, not superior agility/reflexes!

I would like to note, that muscle memory is considered a part of agility.... Also, most higher intensity agility training involves jumping in some way....Just a thought.

[shroudb]

looking closely at what "skill: acrobatics" does, the problem is that it actually has nothing to do with "acrobatics".

it really is just "mobility"

it allows you to walk faster when crouching, it allows you to walk better on tight ledges, it allows you to walk better through weaving swords.

it has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of acrobatic activity.

At this point, just rename it to something like "mobility" and maybe add a skill feat that allows faster sprints and the like.

that would alleviate all the issues: athletics would encompass all athelit activities and will be based on str, mobility would encompass all "alternate" movement forms and will be based on dex.

[Draco18s]

gwynfrid wrote:

Escape (from a grapple)

That's reactive. You can't escape from a grapple if you haven't first been grappled.

[Starfox]

RazarTuk wrote:

Originally, as in back in AD&D, Strength was how good of a fighter you are, Dexterity was how good of a rogue you are, and Constitution was general endurance for everyone.

This is actually quite a strong argument for moving things from Atheltics to Acrobatics. Acrobatics is the rogue ability score. Athletics is the warrior ability score. Strength is actually the one and only dump stat for a rogue.

Things a rogue should shine on should be Acrobatics, things a warrior should shine on should be Athletics. Things both should be good at should be both.

Combat maneuvers - warrior - Athletics
Climbing - rogue - Acrobatics
Jumping - both - either skill

And so on.

There actually Athletics checks you can use Dexterity on - namely combat maneuvers with a finesse weapon. Maybe the best solution would be to abolish Acrobatics, move what it does to either Athletics or Reflex saves, and make Athletics a Str/Dex skill, where you can use the best of those two ability scores

---
Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Table 10-2 should be destroyed

[Claxon]

A quick read through mostly makes it sound like the main complaint of the OP is that jumping isn't including as part of acrobatics.

If that's really the case...I got nothing.

Jumping is more a strength based task not related to balance.

If you're idea of being an acrobatic means that you should solely be able to invest in the acrobatics skill and expect to do all the sorts of Cirque du Soleil performances...all I can is I don't agree.

I think it's fine you have to invest in acrobatics for balance and athletics to jump.

The most I might be willing to go is to accept that you can use acrobatics to jump as well as athletics.

[Gloom]

I can put my support behind this. Athletics and Acrobatics could easily be rolled into a single skill that uses the higher of a characters strength or dexterity modifier. This would also work to help reduce the MAD nature of some characters, such as a Maneuver Master Monk that is highly invested into their Dexterity as opposed to Strength.

[LordVanya]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

I'd also prefer Athletics to be split into at least two skills, because I don't really associate "climbing and swimming" with "wrestling and shoving" as the same skillset. It would be nice to have at least two Str based skills instead of only one.

I actually had the same thought. Basically all the things that were combat maneuvers should be in their own skill.

[Jason S]

sherlock1701 wrote:

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Disarm should be under Acrobatics. An argument could be made for Trip.

100% agreed on both. It bugged me that all the combat maneuvers are locked into a strength skill.

Hi. As someone who does MMA, judo, wrestling, and kickboxing, there are weight classes for a reason. STRENGTH MATTERS. Tripping (which is judo) uses technique, but strength makes a huge difference. Same thing with shoving, same thing with grappling (wrestling, jui-jitsu).

You could make the argument that disarming has more to do with dexterity. You could also argue that Feint has to do with dexterity as well (it has NOTHING to do with Deception, the best liars in the world aren't the best boxers).

There should be two skills because the strongest guy isn't necessary the best at all aspects of sport.

Dexterity is about being a gymnast and being able to control your own body weight.

Jumping, climbing, and swimming have a lot more to do with dexterity than strength, so I don't agree with Paizo on how they've categorized them. Michael Phelps might not be the strongest guy, but I bet he can beat the strongest man in the world at all of those things. I also don't think he can do the lifting the strongest man in the world can do either.

And no, just because you're strong doesn't make you the best climber. In my experience (because I've done rock climbing), it's actually the opposite. But yeah, rock climbers have good grip and back strength, but again, it has to do with controlling your own body weight, like a gymnast.

I obviously think there should be 2 skills, I just think many things are not in the correct category.

[Starfox]

Jason S wrote:

I obviously think there should be 2 skills, I just think many things are not in the correct category.

I support all the views expressed here very strongly.

[Vidmaster7]

What?!?!? No! Keep Acrobatic! Now if you want it refined better that is all good.

[masda_gib]

I'm for renaming Acrobatics to Mobility.
It already has all the balance, tumble and flying related stuff and could then also have Skill Feats for faster Movement.

Also jumping and climbing is in Athletics, skills that also are used for acrobatics.

[Starfox]

Jason S wrote:

Hi. As someone who does MMA, judo, wrestling, and kickboxing, there are weight classes for a reason. STRENGTH MATTERS. Tripping (which is judo) uses technique, but strength makes a huge difference. Same thing with shoving, same thing with grappling (wrestling, jui-jitsu).

Funny thing is, this is the aspect of Athletics you can actually use Dexterity on if you are using a finesse weapon under the current rules - and fist is a finesse weapon. One of the developers answered this question on Facebook.