When using the 6th-level monk feat, Water Step, do you still need to take the Balance action when you are in a square that contains a narrow surface, uneven ground, or another similar feature?
Are you still flat-footed during the movement?
Nothing about Water Step seems to interact with the rules on Balancing at all.
So if you're walking across... very narrow water, you'd need to balance normally, yeah.
Nothing about Water Step seems to interact with the rules on Balancing at all.
So if you're walking across... very narrow water, you'd need to balance normally, yeah.
Water Step let's you move across surfaces that don’t support your weight.
If you're effectively weightless during the move, then why would you need to balance the weight?
If you're effectively weightless during the move, then why would you need to balance the weight?
Walking across narrow or extremely uneven surfaces can be difficult no matter how sturdy the surface is?
I agree with Squiggit. Balance isn't strictly about weight; it can also be about foot placement. Also while you are weightless relative to the surface you happen to be striding across I wouldn't say you are "effectively weightless". You still have to move around your weight and bulk from your perspective so balance would still be an issue.
Man. That really mucks up my speed ninja build!
Every time he tries to run across the rope handrails of a bridge, across high narrow branches, or something, he has to stop, test it with his toe, and then cross.
Distinctly un-ninja-like!
/tongue-in-cheek
EDIT: In all seriousness though, Water Step begins with "You can Stride..." Balancing is not Striding however, making the two fundamentally incompatible with your interpretation. That doesn't strike me as being the intent. Isn't the whole point of Water Walk to allow your monk to move across a watery surfaces, along narrow tree branches, or the like, very much like anime ninja?
If nothing else, the Balace action should have its result lines say "Stride" instead of "move."
I wouldn't say that "Water" Step is there to allow you to walk across tree branches. It is there to allow exactly what it allows: Stepping across water.
I wouldn't say that "Water" Step is there to allow you to walk across tree branches. It is there to allow exactly what it allows: Stepping across water.
}You can Stride across liquid and surfaces that don’t support your weight. This benefit lasts only during your movement. If you end your movement on a surface that can’t support you, you fall in or it collapses as normal.
Bolding mine seems its more than just liquids covered.
That is fair. I suppose glass and thin ice are also covered. Perhaps a ships sails when stretched over a crevasse?
Either way if you want to naruto run across a rope, you are going to Balance as Water Step does not interact with Balance.
Other things that Water Step does not allow you to do imho:
1. Avoid triggering pressure plates. Note that water step simply states that you can stride over surfaces that don't support your weight. It doesn't make you effectively weightless. There is a difference.
2. Avoid environmental hazards of those surfaces. An electrified water surface would still shock you. Lava would still burn you.
3. Become Hokage.
4. Run up a waterfall. You need Wall Run and Water Step for that.
There are likely others.
Balancing is not Striding however, making the two fundamentally incompatible with your interpretation.
You're right, but if that's the argument you want to take I think the only rules consistent conclusion is that you can't use Water Step if the surface is too narrow for you to Stride across.
So you'd balance across a thin wooden beam, water step across a pool of water and couldn't move at all over a thin beam made out of water.
TBH I'm not a huge fan of how Balance is written. It would make a lot more sense if it was a free action you could perform while Striding instead of its own action.
1. Avoid triggering pressure plates. Note that water step simply states that you can stride over surfaces that don't support your weight. It doesn't make you effectively weightless. There is a difference.
The others make sense, but not this one. If a thin sheet of ice would not crack under the weight of your movement, how could you possibly argue that a weighted pressure plate would be depressed?
That all depends on how much weight is required. Remember, allowing you to stride across surfaces that don't support your weight is not the same as being weightless.
From a Balance Perspective, this makes Water Step much stronger. It strays heavily into "too good to be true" territory.
From a realism perspective the monk is more than likely just "stepping" so rapidly that material that he walks on doesn't have time for him to drop through. Also note: The feat doesn't say that those surfaces don't break as you stride across them.
"If you end your movement on a surface that can’t support you, you fall in or it collapses as normal."
That does not mean you are not breaking the surface behind you.
You are not weightless while you use Water Step, you are more likely out running the effect of your weight on that material.
That all depends on how much weight is required. Remember, allowing you to stride across surfaces that don't support your weight is not the same as being weightless.
That's a fair point.
You are not weightless while you use Water Step, you are more likely out running the effect of your weight on that material.
I don't think this is the case. A monk twice as fast as you that doesn't have this feat can't do it. If your logic held true, the faster monk wouldn't fall in either.
2e seems to run under the assumption that if a feat doesn't specifically say you can do a thing, then you should assume it doesn't let you do that thing.
There are plenty of ways that you can justify being able to run on water in a high fantasy world without it having anything to do with your weight or changing how you would effect pressure plates.
For example, you might be flowing trace amounts of Ki into the water in such a way that it creates a tiny moment of a stable surface. It could be that you've learned how to step on just the right way that the water pushes back on you at the moment of impact and allows you to run. It could be that through training you've widened your feet as well and thus are pushing down on a wider area.
All this could be amplified by just being able to run fast enough to take advantage of these moments of stability.
Or, yes, you could interpret the water step as being a way that the Monk makes himself momentarily weight 1/10 of his normal weight and then combined with moving quickly he manages to skid across the water.
But even then, he wouldn't necessarily be able to not trigger pressure plates. Sure you could argue that you're functionally 18 pounds, and then all the DM has to say is that the plates have a 9 pound pressure sensor.
Besides, now we just have room for a feat that is actually intended to allow you to run over pressure plates!
Monks have a few issues where their mobility options don't combine as well I'd like by RAW, but it is pretty easy to house rule them as working together. One such interaction is Wall Run, Wall Jump, and Flying Kick. Because Wall Run and Flying Kick both have action icons, they are distinct moves which can't be combined. But a monk doing a flying kick off a wall is metal af, and I'd always allow it.
For this example, I'd require my player to make a Balance action on a tree branch or whatever, but I'd still let them use Water Step if they succeed on the check.
That all depends on how much weight is required. Remember, allowing you to stride across surfaces that don't support your weight is not the same as being weightless.That's a fair point.
You are not weightless while you use Water Step, you are more likely out running the effect of your weight on that material.I don't think this is the case. A monk twice as fast as you that doesn't have this feat can't do it. If your logic held true, the faster monk wouldn't fall in either.
I mean if it was just raw speed feats like Wall Run and Wall Step wouldn't exist. It is some sort of trained technique, but the faster monk with water step can get further before falling in than the slower monk with water step.