Sudden Leap Remaster Clarification

[Seath5252]

So I have a question that I keep seeing back and forth answers regarding the feat of Sudden Leap. Plain and simply, is it supposed to let you jump higher than the 8ft of a regular High Jump crit or not? Some answers I've heard are that its "too good to be true" or it ruins the whole point of the Cloud Jump feat, others say it is absolutely meant to let you jump higher (which I feel is the case due to the wording of "determine the jump distance using Long Jump's rules, and change your maximum distance to double your Speed."), and its a back and forth that just is confusing on which is right, which is wrong, and I just want to know with an absolute yes or no on which one it is.

[TheFinish]

The rules on this one are IMO very clear:

"When attempting a High Jump or Long Jump during a Sudden Leap, determine the jump distance using Long Jump's rules, and change your maximum distance to double your Speed."

So the Jump Distance is determined like Long Jump for both, meaning it's going to be the result of our Athletics Check (if we Succeed) or our Leap (if we Fail), but if we do Succeed we also have a limit of our Speed x2 instead of just our Speed.

This doesn't really invalidate Cloud Jump for a couple of reasons:

a) It's a Class Feat, not a Skill Feat. So not everyone is going to have access to it and it's designed to be more powerful.
b) It's always two actions no matter what, whereas Cloud Jump can be one Action.
c) It's limited to twice your Speed no matter what, while Cloud Jump can go up to triple if you really need to.

Plus, if we stop to think about it, Sudden Leap allowing you to use Felling Strike would be pretty terrible if we were using normal High Jump distances.

[NorrKnekten]

Pretty much what TheFinish is saying.

The ability says is that when you perform a high-jump you instead use the distance calculation from Long Jump and double the maximum distance you can reach. So if you want to jump 20ft into the air you need to beat a dc 20. Having Cloud jump ontop basically guarantees you jump twice your speed vertically.

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This does not make Cloud Jump obsolete in any way as standard jumps can benefit feats like Quick Jump as The finish mentioned, Standard for Subordinate actions, There are things which does not apply to activities that include that action. Likewise, as written you would not be able to go from Wall Jump into Sudden Leap but I feel like most GMs would allow this scenario. Either way, Once you have Cloud Jump you are incentivized to basically only use Sudden Leap when you plan to attack as part of the jump.

[Seath5252]

NorrKnekten wrote:

Pretty much what TheFinish is saying.

The ability says is that when you perform a high-jump you instead use the distance calculation from Long Jump and double the maximum distance you can reach. So if you want to jump 20ft into the air you need to beat a dc 20. Having Cloud jump ontop basically guarantees you jump twice your speed vertically.

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This does not make Cloud Jump obsolete in any way as standard jumps can benefit feats like Quick Jump as The finish mentioned, Standard for Subordinate actions, There are things which does not apply to activities that include that action. Likewise, as written you would not be able to go from Wall Jump into Sudden Leap but I feel like most GMs would allow this scenario. Either way, Once you have Cloud Jump you are incentivized to basically only use Sudden Leap when you plan to attack as part of the jump.

That was my thought process too, but the arguments I've seen (and also had with some, adding to my confusion) were along the lines of "specific overrides generic" and how High Jump gives a specific number (both vertically AND horizontally) you can or cant jump compared to Long Jump + with cloud jump it was a discussion about how as well as without being twice their level and having the legendary skill feat, no one else without a jump feat can come even close to attaining that, which is where they found it too good to be true (even tho I agree it does make Felling Strike pretty pointless if it didn't work that way)

[NorrKnekten]

Specific Vs General is one of the more missunderstood game conventions, Because its not about wether an ability is more specificly worded than the other. Its about wether how narrow the conflicting rule/rule elements are.

In this case, The specific limits given by long jump and high jump are still General jumping rules because thats how the actions work baseline, Any ability that changes these numbers or behavior take priority because they are specifically designed to replace these rules.

People absolutely gain similar or better jumping capabilities earlier than this too;
-Monks can clear 15ft ledges with a single action already at level 2 by moving into the Crane styles.
-Inventors can leap 30ft in any direction by using Explosive Leap at level 2.
-Flame or Air Kineticists has access to low level feats which grant 40ft in any distance that later lets them essentially fly.
-Arcane and Primal Spellcasters have access to the Jump Spell.
-Fighters have this exact same feat, and Rogue and Swashbuckler both have their own reflavorings of it.

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I was wrong about the vertical distance for cloud jump, it doesnt triple the distance on high jumps.But even then its not to good to be true, Cloud Jump works with any jump,so you can follow up to Wall Jump or benefit from Cloud Jump while using other activities/items that lets you jump. Cant do that with Sudden Leap.

And since Sudden leap requires you to calculate the actual distance same as you do for long jump, So your actual distance is the result of your athletics check. Since Sudden leap is 8th level, When you pick it you can expect 25-30ft by that level, 30-35 if you have powerful leap. You can probably expect 35-45 around level 15.

If you want to actually leap twice your speed vertically and like many pick up fleet, Then both of these needs a result of 60 if you are high jumping if no other feats are involved. You just arent getting that height without something additional. But at the same time other classes have enjoyed their 30-40 any direction leaps for a good while by then.

[Ravingdork]

What does a Sudden Leap used in conjunction with Cloud Jump look like?

[NorrKnekten]

Ravingdork wrote:

What does a Sudden Leap used in conjunction with Cloud Jump look like?

Mainly its action-compression and consistency.

A level 14 character can usually achieve 35ft jumps on raw athletics alone but struggle going above 40, but with cloud jump their average is now above 100ft so do they even need to roll if they dont want to jump further than 60ft?

For action compression, In order to do the same with cloud jump you still need to spend 2 actions on the jump and then also a third action for strike, which sudden leap allows you to do midair and to use felling strike instead of a normal strike.

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For a High-jump, it generally all stays the same in terms of height and you would be struggling to hit the limit, but still benefit from the action compression and could argue that Cloud Jump ability to spend extra actions could be used for Subordinate Jumps.

[shroudb]

Ravingdork wrote:

What does a Sudden Leap used in conjunction with Cloud Jump look like?

They do not combine very well:

Sudden leap is 2 actions for a Long/High Jump + Strike.

Long Jump already has a Stride in it, so realistically, you are looking at Stride + Jump + Strike all in 2 actions, with the added benefit that you can also go Vertical.

And with double the limits on the distance jumped without adding actions BUT with doubling the jump DC to silly levels.

So, you could (theoretically with a high enough roll) in 2 actions move up to 3 times your speed and strike, or move your speed horizontally and up to double your speed upwards and strike.

Cloud Jump enhances your jumps, vertical or horizontal, with adding more distance WITHOUT increasing the DC (but with extra actions) for long jumps, and making your verticals go really high.

Cloud Jump is also a modification on the base jump actions, so you can combine them with whatever jumps actions you want to do, or with other jump modifications like Quick Jump.

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So, overall, Sudden Leap is better action compression BUT only when you want to do all those things together. And to go over your speed in jump distance you start to get into ridicusly high DCs.

Cloud Jump on the other hand can be only 1 action for a very high jump, or more actions for a very long jump (up to 3 times your speed for 3 actions, while sudden leap is up to 2 times your speed for 2 actions).

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The only "combination" I see is that if you have both, you don't have to increase the DC on the double distance jump on the sudden leap, which is something great when it appears, but not something that i think will appear often.