So I'm trying to understand exactly how these work. Superficially, it looks like they give you a one action long or high jump with a distance boost determined by the boot tier (which is awesome), but I don't see anything in the write-up that suggests they free you of the need to make the associated athletics check. If that's the case, they very quickly become rather useless for low-level characters who won't be able to roll the numbers necessary to take advantage of the distance increases.
Here's the relevant bit of the boot text: "When you Activate the blast boots, you can High Jump or Long Jump, without the need to Stride first."
Now if you go look at the High Jump and Long Jump actions they say this:
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."
Long Jump: "You Stride, then make a horizontal Leap and attempt an Athletics check to increase the length of your jump. The DC of the Athletics check is equal to the total distance in feet you’re attempting to move during your Leap"
I see nothing anywhere RAW that says the boots free you from the athletics check. Just that they remove the Stride requirement. Is this correct, or does using blast boots to Long or High jump also mean you automatically succeed at the check to make the jump in the first place?
Also, for boot-assisted Long Jumps, is the distance that determines the DC equal to the base distance or the distance + the boost from the boots? I assume it's the base distance and you get the boot boost for free - otherwise the DC gets so high it's not practical.
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I see nothing anywhere RAW that says the boots free you from the athletics check. Just that they remove the Stride requirement. Is this correct, or does using blast boots to Long or High jump also mean you automatically succeed at the check to make the jump in the first place?
It only reduces the action to one and removes the requirement to stride. The lower level versions are very similar to Leaper's Elixir, but as a permanent item instead of a 1 minute temporary effect.
Thank you both for your answers! Do you get the distance increase the boots provide if you fail - but don't critically fail - your check to High or Long Jump? If so then I can see how the vertical distance increase has a point for anyone who has an Athletics modifier below, like, 25.
Hmm... The failure and critical failure results of Long Jump are that you do a Leap instead.
So the lesser and moderate versions wouldn't affect that. But I don't think you are asking about level 8 and below.
The greater version of the boots have an effect that changes how Leap works. So even if you critically fail the Athletics check to Long Jump, you would still be able to Leap with the 30 foot increased distance.
The fly speed of the major boots would also still activate even with a failed jump check.
You can also choose to jump a shorter distance even with the higher level boots in order to have a jump DC that you can succeed at.
yes, the Leap is part of the High Jump or Long Jump so the boots would increase the distance still.
yes, the Leap is part of the High Jump or Long Jump so the boots would increase the distance still.
Yeah, that's how I would rule it but I wanted a second opinion :) You're burning a consumable to get the effect so it wouldn't be fair to the player to stack it on anything less than a crit fail. It's just one jump at the end of the day.
@Eoran I actually was asking about the lower-level versions. At high level PCs can make DC 30-40 checks quite easily so the whole discussion is kind of moot. Good point about them modifying Leap tho.