High Jump with Powerful Leap


Rules Discussion


The Powerful Leap feat changes your Leap so that you can jump 5 feet up. (p. 264)

When using High Jump, and not Powerful Leap, a success lets you jump 5 feet up. (p. 242)

So, since High Jump uses the Leap action (p. 242) and a DC 30 to increase the height of my jump, how much more does it add to the height on a normal success with Powerful Leap? How about a Critical?

It wouldn't just stay at 5 ft because then it wouldn't be an increase, as stated.

Grand Archive

High Jump: You Stride, then make a vertical Leap and attempt a DC 30 Athletics check to increase the height of your jump. If you didn’t Stride at least 10 feet, you automatically fail your check. This DC might be increased or decreased due to the situation, as determined by the GM.

Critical Success Increase the maximum vertical distance to 8 feet, or increase the maximum vertical distance to 5 feet and maximum horizontal distance to 10 feet.
Success Increase the maximum vertical distance to 5 feet.
Failure You Leap normally.
Critical Failure You don’t Leap at all, and instead you fall prone in your space.

The text specifies it is an increase to 8ft for the critical, but on a normal success there is no change. Its a bit strange there's a large range where you will get the same result but there's nothing I know if in the rules that prevents this. How I would handle this would be with that last line "This DC might be increased or decreased due to the situation as determined by the DM" I would probably set a lower DC if a player wanted to take that feat. May take some fine tuning though to figure out what felt fair. Reward their powerful leaping with a higher likelihood for a critical success.


Thing is, with Powerful Leap, you don't need to make a DC check to get that 5ft height. It's a basic action that you can do without any special effort.

So, I decide that I want to exert some effort to jump higher than that now base 5 ft height. I should be able to do that as naturally as someone who doesn't have Powerful Leap so same DC 30 for the exertion.

I was thinking make it 7ft for success, 10ft for critical. That's equivalent to the boosts given to those without Powerful Leap. I just can't find any documentation on it.

Grand Archive

That seems like a good home rule to implement to make things feel more incremental.

I would say though it's pretty clear what results are actually supported in the book. The benefit for attempting the high jump is the possible reach of 8ft. Since that's the only possible benefit lowering the DC is an incentive you can use supported by the wording in the actions description.

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