Missing Rules

Maxperson · Aug 21, 2018

5ekyu said:
if one is to want to focus on the rules in the rules discussions or seem to perhaps one should look at the rule:

"You try to jump an unusually long distance or pull off a stunt midjump."

the "unusual" applies to the distance not the frequency of the jumps.

Not exactly. It can only be unusually long, if there are lots of jumps where you don't go that far. If there aren't lots of jumps where you don't go that far, then it can't be unusually long.

iserith · Aug 21, 2018

pemerton said:
I don't accept that those are different goals. That's reading the mechanics back into the ficiton in what I regard as a highly artificial way. And in fact I don't accept that these are goals.

The goal is to get from A to B (in this thread's example, to get across the chasm). The approach is to jump. (As opposed to vaulting, or climbing down and back up, or springboarding across, or flying, or whatever other approach might be attempted within the magical and heroic world of D&D.)

The notions of distance that can be jumped with certainty and distance that is unusually long for a jump, and hence not able to be cleared with certainty pertain neither to goal nor approach. They are features of the situation which inform the GM's method of adjudication. (Analogous to whether a person is sleeping, and hence liable to have his/her throat slit with no check required; or what a creature's AC is.)

We're back to approach it seems. There is no ability check without a goal and an approach that the DM has determined to have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure. If you want to jump an unusually long distance, you have to say how. At least, according to the rules in which the Jump and Strength (Athletics) rules are nested. There's really no way around it short of running the game like D&D 4e where players just say what skills they want to use and the DM fills in the blanks. Which is fine if that's what you're into, but I can discern no support for that in the D&D 5e rules as a whole.

5ekyu · Aug 21, 2018

Maxperson said:
Not exactly. It can only be unusually long, if there are lots of jumps where you don't go that far. If there aren't lots of jumps where you don't go that far, then it can't be unusually long.

"So, if i get you right, if you chose to define "unusual" as 1 in 10 or 1 in 100, by your attempt to apply "unusually long" to frequency of jumps, then everytime i needed to jump 18 instead of 15 with my 15 strength, i just need to do 100 3' warm-up jumps to get ready so i keep the 18' try at "unusual"? Or does your "frequency of jumps taken" ruling only apply for you when it gets you the answer you want?

Does anyone actually run a game this way?

Xetheral · Aug 21, 2018

Charlaquin said:
I, as a DM, assume your character is trying the best they can at all times unless you say otherwise. Frankly, I think it would be pretty silly not to. Can you imagine failing a check because you didn't explicitly state that your character was giving it your all? Or having a character fail a roll, then ask to try it again with advantage because they're trying harder this time?

Why would a character ever give their best effort on a long jump if they know that best effort isn't needed? If the distance to be cleared is (e.g.) 5', why would a character instead try to jump 20'? A character is only ever going to try to maximize their jump distance if they think they have a need to jump that far. Saying that characters try to jump as far as possible whenever they jump just seems bizarre, not to mention also unnecessarily using up movement speed for the round.

Maxperson said:
If you give a DC every time they say "Hey, I just want to roll athletics to go farther," they will do so every single time they hit a jump that is longer than their base distance. That means that going farther isn't going to be unusual, it's going to be the norm. There's no reason not to try to jump further at every single distance that's longer than automatic.

Given the potential consequences of failure on jump checks (not infrequently including death for low-level characters), repeatedly trying to jump distances that require a successful check to clear is a self-limiting phenomenon. It can't become the norm because the character will roll too low at some point, and either won't be able to make future checks, or presumably will have a visceral reminder of why it's unwise.

Besides, why should it at all be surprising that characters who encounter a jump longer than they can clear with a auto-success may want to try it anyway? That's the entire point of ability checks: to model the resolution of tasks that have a chance of failure. To paraphrase: there's no reason (other than consequences of failure/opportunity cost) not to try to <insert ability check> at every single task that's too hard to permit an automatic success.

Maxperson said:
I think one of the things going on here is a fundamental misunderstanding of the jump rules. They are not how far you can jump easily. There may be no roll, but the very first thing that is said in the jump section is, "Your strength determines how far you can jump." Not how far you can easily jump. Not how far you can jump with no effort. Just how far you can jump, period. If you have an 18 strength, all of your effort will garner you 18 feet. If you want to go an unusually far distance, you need to use athletics to presumably, do something athletic like jump off of a rock, or jump and pull yourself further along by grabbing a stalactite.

I entirely disagree. Task resolution in 5e has three possibilities: auto-success, ability check, auto-failure. Usually the breakpoints are up to the DM, but in this case the jump rules specify that anything under a distance equal to your strength score is an automatic success. Anything beyond that is the realm of an ability check, both under the default rules and due to the inclusion of jumping longer distances as an explicit example of a Strength (Athletics) check.

Also, if your Strength score in feet was truly the maximum it was possible for your character to clear with a jump, the difficulty would be so high you'd need to roll a 20 to succeed, not so low that a DC doesn't even need to be set.

Maxperson said:
Unless failure = death/serious injury like when jumping, then you try as hard as you freaking can. Only a fool with a death wish is going to use only what they need and no more. It's easy to misread exactly how much you need and fall to your death.

If it's less than your Strength in feet there is zero danger of misreading how far you need--it's an auto-success! By definition, you only run into the problem of potentially failing because you misread the distance if the jump is far enough that the outcome is uncertain.

Charlaquin · Aug 21, 2018

pemerton said:
What if the DC set is Medium (as I suggested uphread for making an 18' jump with a STR 15), and the character is not trained in Athletics and so has a +2 bonus on the check. The chance of success there is not reasonable - it's 40%. (And there is an obvious consequence for failure, namely, falling down the chasm!)

You misunderstand what I mean by "reasonable chance of success/failure." I set the DC based on my assessment of the likelihood of the stated approach achieving the stated goal only after determining if there is a reasonable chance of success, reasonable chance of failure, and consequence for failure, so whatever the odds of rolling equal to or above the target number, they are within the bounds of what is meant by "reasonable" in this context. I say "reasonable chance of success/failure" instead of just "chance of success/failure" is to avoid absurd results that one could argue are technically possible. Yes, you could fail to tie your shoes correctly, but no, it's not worth rolling for because it is neither likely nor interesting.

pemerton said:
I don't understand why you think that people can never do better, in physical endeavours, than what they are capable of achieving with certainty in those endeavours.

I don't. I give the PC the benefit of the doubt and assume that they perform at the best of their ability when it matters. I like players to succeed and fail by their choices, not by factors outside their control like whether or not they focused on their breathing properly, or got distracted, or thought about their hips and thighs enough.

Maxperson · Aug 21, 2018

Xetheral said:
If it's less than your Strength in feet there is zero danger of misreading how far you need--it's an auto-success! By definition, you only run into the problem of potentially failing because you misread the distance if the jump is far enough that the outcome is uncertain.

My point is that going your strength in feet involves your full effort, not because you gave it the minimum effort you thought it needed. That's why the jump rules say that, "Your Strength determines how far you can jump." and not "Your Strength determines how far you can easily jump." People don't use minimum effort to jump over dangerous pits and chasms. They want to be sure they go beyond the lip on the other side so as not to be hurt or killed.

Charlaquin · Aug 21, 2018

Xetheral said:
Why would a character ever give their best effort on a long jump if they know that best effort isn't needed?

If their best effort isn't needed anyway, it doesn't really matter if they give it their best effort or not/

Xetheral said:
If the distance to be cleared is (e.g.) 5', why would a character instead try to jump 20'?

This isn't something I've ever said would happen...?

Xetheral said:
A character is only ever going to try to maximize their jump distance if they think they have a need to jump that far. Saying that characters try to jump as far as possible whenever they jump just seems bizarre, not to mention unnecessarily using up movement speed for the round.

I didn't say characters try to jump as far as possible whenever they jump. I said characters put in their best effort at all times. Your best effort to jump 5 feet looks pretty different than your best effort to jump 50.

Xetheral · Aug 21, 2018

Maxperson said:
My point is that going your strength in feet involves your full effort, not because you gave it the minimum effort you thought it needed. That's why the jump rules say that, "Your Strength determines how far you can jump." and not "Your Strength determines how far you can easily jump." People don't use minimum effort to jump over dangerous pits and chasms. They want to be sure they go beyond the lip on the other side so as not to be hurt or killed.

If the distance is so short that you don't need to roll, I don't think it can possibly qualify as dangerous: you literally can't fail.

If the distance is great enough that failure is a possibility, I absolutely agree that they'll use maximum effort.

Maxperson · Aug 21, 2018

Xetheral said:
I entirely disagree. Task resolution in 5e has three possibilities: auto-success, ability check, auto-failure. Usually the breakpoints are up to the DM, but in this case the jump rules specify that anything under a distance equal to your strength score is an automatic success. Anything beyond that is the realm of an ability check, both under the default rules and due to the inclusion of jumping longer distances as an explicit example of a Strength (Athletics) check.

Also, if your Strength score in feet was truly the maximum it was possible for your character to clear with a jump, the difficulty would be so high you'd need to roll a 20 to succeed, not so low that a DC doesn't even need to be set.

A few things. First, "anything beyond that is the realm of an ability check" is false. Only the DM determines if an ability check is called for, so some attempts to go further can be auto success or auto fail. The player doesn't get to decide. At least not if playing by RAW. Second, my feeling on the jump distance = strength rule is that they made it that way to speed up play, and so that you didn't have PCs falling into pits because they rolled badly. Nothing was worse than needing a 3 or better and rolling a 2. Just make it a flat rate and if you can, you can. If you can't, you can't. Then add in an athletics check if you do something really cool with the environment to enable you to go farther.

Maxperson · Aug 21, 2018

Xetheral said:
If the distance is so short that you don't need to roll, I don't think it can possibly qualify as dangerous: you literally can't fail.

Because of maximum effort. Again, the rule says that your strength determines how far you can go, and then proceeds to tell you how far you can go in the jump rules.