Help me with my rules revisions - Part 1 - Jumping

[Celebrim]

One thing 4e did for me was inspire me to look at all the things that annoyed me about 3.X and ask, "How can this be done better?"

One area that always annoyed me about 3.X was that not all of the skill task resolution systems really seemed to make sense. One of the most annoying for me was Jump.

The problem with Jump is that the spread of the randomness overwhelms having ranks in the skill. Suppose there is a pit that is 15' wide and the players have unwisely removed a golden idol from a pedestal and set off a scenario trap, and now are running for their lives from a horde of angry skeletal warrios while the entire tomb complex caves in. The players must find a way to cross the pit in haste. One character has a 10 STR and no jump skill, and another has 14 STR and 10 ranks in jump. You might suppose that the one with jump is better off, and on the average that is true, but in practice Murphy's Law takes over and the player with no ranks in jump rolls a 16 (and clears the), and the player with much investment in the skill rolls a 2 and finds himself needing to make a strength check to grab the side of the pit to avoid plummeting to there doom.

Because of this randomness, players are strongly discouraged from using jump skills under pressure when it counts because the distance they can cover is so unpredictable. Simply put, the jump skill is being shackled to a D20 resolution mechanic that while good for many things, is not well suited to resolving jumps.

I'm looking for suggestions on what to do about it. I've tumbled around alot of ideas in my head, but none of them have really struck me as perfect.

One thing I would like to do is make the default jump depend on the characters height. The minimum long jump would be a 'step' equal to say 1/2 of the jumpers height or vertical reach (which ever looks like it would work best). Unless you are overburdened, you can always jump that distance. That's the only thing I've fully settled on.

My goals are:

1) Smaller amount of randomness than existing system. A player's minimum jump and maximum jump shouldn't be that far off his average jump.
2) No new subsystem. Use some existing fortune system within D20.
3) Whatever change is made, don't screw up the existing skill system. It has to integrate with having ranks in jumping.
4) Casually realistic, by which I mean that low level characters will jump distances that feel realistic (as opposed to randoming up 20' long jumps for unatheletic jumpers, followed by 1' jumps on the next occasion). I don't worry about what happens at high levels, as I'm perfectly fine with thinking Batman or Wolverine is a 15th level fighter.
5) Quickly calculated.

I'm not going to share my existing ideas just yet because I don't want to impede anyone's creativity. Throw some ideas out there. They won't be worse than the worst of mine.

 

[Gantros]

How about the following:

You can long jump any distance up to your own height without requiring a Jump check. Jumping longer distances requires a check with DC equal to the extra distance in feet x 2. All other rules and modifiers for Jump checks remain unchanged.

This reduces the distance between a good jump and a bad jump from 20' to 10', which feels more realistic for an average person. An unencumbered, Str 10, 6' tall human with no Jump skill would have a jumping range of 6' to 16' with a running start (or 6' to 11' without). With Str 14 and 10 ranks in Jump, the range becomes 12' to 22'. This change also gets rid of checks for anything that would be considered more of a "big step" than an actual jump.

Admittedly this does involve a little extra math, but it would be unlikely to come up too often. It would also curtail the jumping abilities of high level PCs quite a bit, though a 20th level monk could still easily cover superhuman distances of 35' or more.

One other thought - you may want to consider an exception for Jump checks to allow Taking 10 when in combat for some situations. While it could be argued that the ability to concentrate could allow you to jump a bit farther, I'd say the added motivation of running for your life would probably give you an even bigger boost

 

[genshou]

Just use 3.0's Jump rules?

 

[Celebrim]

Just use 3.0's Jump rules?

Yeah, 3.5 screwed up alot of things, didn't it.

I'm almost certainly using something like 3.0's Jump rules in preference to 3.5's. Heck, almost everywhere that 3.5 made changes other than to few spells, I'm happy to roll them back.

 

[Gantros]

The 3.0 Jump rules ignored the standard skill check DC mechanic for no good reason, and also left out any chance for the jumper to land prone or grab on to a ledge. While I'd agree that many of the 3.5 fixes created as many problems as they fixed, I wouldn't say just going back to 3.0 rules would be much of an improvement in most cases.

 

[slwoyach]

The guy who rolled the 2 obviously stumbled. What's the problem?

The problem for me is the ridiculous distances that can be covered with a 40 pound pack on their back.

 

[Celebrim]

The 3.0 Jump rules ignored the standard skill check DC mechanic for no good reason

I think they had a very good reason, I just don't think the implementation actually succeeds at the goal. It really only works (and then just a little) for no skill ranks. The more skill ranks you have the closer you get to a standard skill check, and the more you have the 3.5 jump rule problem.

and also left out any chance for the jumper to land prone or grab on to a ledge.

Those are really minor problems which can easily be fixed by appending a few additional notes to the 3.0 rules. The bigger problem is that the 3.0 rules don't really fix the 3.5 problem. We still have the random range of +1 to +20. A 19 foot variation is really huge. It would be like suggesting that at the olympics, when the long jumper does his three jumps, we anticipate that (if all three jumps avoid fouls) one jump will go about 29', another 19' and yet another only about 9' - from the same jumper. Without fouls, we expect a 29' jumper to be short only by a few feet most of the time.

The problem with this sort of variation is that it doesn't make jumping dependable enough to use or to design for.

So what's the answer? Do we let all jumpers take 10 regardless of circumstance? Do we let ranks count twice and the die roll only once? Do we make Jump the one skill that doesn't rely on the d20 for its fortune mechanic?

 

[TerraDave]

Something like....

DC....Feet
2......5
5......8
10....10
15....12
20....15

Actually, with this, they never get over the pit! But you get the idea.

 

[TerraDave]

Actually (again, mispelled), take 10 is not a bad analogy. In a controlled sporting event, that is basically what is happening, with the difference being inches...in a mad trap evasion situation, things will be swingier. Thats actually pretty realistic.

 

[Celebrim]

The guy who rolled the 2 obviously stumbled. What's the problem?

Sure, we can use fortune at the beginning and always find a way to explain what happened after we know what happened. But the problem is we don't expect Carl Lewis to 'stumble' 5 times in 20, and screw up big another 5 times in 20. If we watch long jumpers, it looks almost as if they are 'taking 20' every time they jump - a concept that is nonsense in d20 terms.

What this implies is that the fortune part of the jump reflects only about 2" per die result. That's not too bad. I can believe that I might jump one jump 5' and another jump 8', but if we accept that blindly it implies Carl Lewis has a jump bonus of about +120. This is number that is unwieldy for d20. If we cut it down to d20 size, it implies that we multiply our jump bonus by six, then add the die roll, then divide by 6, then add our base distance to get our distance in feet. That works, but its a rather heavy formula.

The problem for me is the ridiculous distances that can be covered with a 40 pound pack on their back.

This is an easy problem. We can just do for jump something like what was done for swimming.

But as far as the ridiculous distance goes, I'm happy with 15th level characters jumping over school buses and small buildings without the aid of magic. What I don't want is them jumping over a small house one roll, and then having problems hopping across a mud puddle the next.