Taloras said:
I threw a Xeph Soulknife 7 at my party last sunday. He has Speed of thought, Up the Walls, Armor of Quickness, and Burst of Speed(racial ability giving him a bonus to his speed for 3 rounds) Total speed with all this activated? 30+5+10+10=55.
Let's check!
SRD said:
SPEED OF THOUGHT [PSIONIC]
The energy of your mind energizes the alacrity of your body.
Prerequisite: Wis 13.
Benefit: As long as you are psionically focused and not wearing heavy armor, you gain an insight bonus to your speed of 10 feet.
SRD said:
Quickness: This kind of armor increases the wearer’s speed by 5 feet. Thus, a character whose normal speed in armor is 20 feet moves 25 feet in armor of quickness.
Faint psychoportation; ML 4th; Craft Psionic Arms and Armor, burst; Price +1 bonus.
Now, the
burst psionic power indicates that it provides an enhancement bonus to your speed. The armor doesn't specify in the SRD, and I can't find anything in the errata, so I'll assume that armor of quickness does, in fact, provide an untyped bonus to speed.
SRD said:
Burst (Su): Three times per day, a xeph can put on a burst of speed to increase her speed by 10 feet, plus 10 feet per four character levels beyond 1st, to a maximum increase of 30 feet at 9th character level and higher. These bursts of speed are considered a competence bonus to the xeph’s base speed. A burst of speed lasts 3 rounds.
Well, at 5th-level, your Xeph should have had a +20 competence bonus to its speed from its racial ability, so you should have had 10' more of movement.
Speed: 30 + 10 + 5 + 20 = 65 Your first error!
He was behind his pirate soldiers in their hideout. The party blocked the door so that only 2 pirates could come against them at the top of the stairs the doors ended.
So, basically speaking ...
X = Xeph, P = Pirate, S = Stairs, D = Door, C = Cleric, Y = Other PCs, | = Wall
|X |
|SS|
|SS|
|SS|
|PP|
|PP|
|DD|
|CYY|
| |
He's at the bottom of the stairs, there's some stairs, then there's his pirate allies at the door, and the PCs behind it. Right so far?
He uses Up the Walls to go on the wall over his soldiers,
Here's where the issues start, I think. First, he doesn't need to go up the walls to get past his own soldiers. You can freely pass through squares occupied by allies. That being said ...
then tumbles to behind the Cleric(tank).
First, how'd he get through the doors? How high are they, etc.? If they're only man-height, or so, then he'd need to run through the PCs blocking the doorway. The only way to accomplish this is a DC 25 Tumble check (DC 35 if you don't want to slow down). He'd have to do this whether or not he uses his UTW ability.
If he can only get high enough, using his UTW ability, to avoid entering the PCs' squares but must still pass within their reach, then he'd need to make a Tumble check against DC 15 (DC 25 if he didn't want to slow down). If the doors are higher, then he could possibly use his Up the Walls ability to go up above the reach of the PCs (remember that they threaten in three dimensions). If he can do that, he doesn't need to tumble.
If he Tumbles, then he's immune to movement-based AoOs from each of the PCs (on a successful check(s)), and can move back down the walls to behind the cleric.
If, instead, he went high enough to avoid the PCs' threatened areas, and doesn't have the walls to move down behind the cleric (as would happen if the door is flush with a wall in a larger chamber), then he'd need to Jump from the wall to the target square. With his movement, he's guaranteed to make just about any Jump check he needs to.
Depending on how much movement he has left, he can either jump to the square behind the cleric (provoking AoOs as he moves through the cleric's [and potentially others'] threatened area) or jump to a square further behind the cleric and move back to the target square (which would not provoke an AoO, because he'd only be entering a threatened square).
However, all of this is probably academic. You likely got it "right enough" on the spur of the moment, and I'd imagine all your players enjoyed the encounter - especially the critting cleric. That'll teach 'em to try and run past you!
