D&D (2024) Jumping

[fluffybunbunkittens]

The length of a jump should count to your movement after you land. But not the jump itself. Much like how your fall doesn't count to your movement. A 100 ft jump allows you to jump 100ft. You just have no more movement when you land.

They didn't do that, because then it would allow people to move 25 feet and then jump another 25 feet on their turn.

So instead, we now get to argue whether our jumper is frozen in the air until their next turn comes around, or if the momentum just ends on an invisible wall and they fall down.

 

[Yaarel]

One thing I'd love to see addressed/tweaked is jumping rules. It drives me crazy that the distance you can jump is a fixed number, and you always make it that distance, and you never make it one foot more. Could we get some slightly richer rules?

Two features I'd like to see:
1) A formula for setting DCs, based on distance jumped.
2) An option for sometimes landing prone. Could be as simple as a 2nd ability test with the same DC. Could also be something like "If you fail by 3 or less, you can choose to succeed by land prone."

Or....you can use your bonus action to roll with Advantage (or just roll with Advantage out of combat) but you have to succeed with both dice to land on your feet.

I treat the jump distance that a character can do routinely, trivially without a skill check. A player can jump further with a tight landing with increasing difficulty.

I would appreciate more clarification.

And EVERYTHING and ANYTHING relating to skills, whether athletics jumping or persuasion social friendly or hostile, or perception visibility, needs to be all in one place in the Players Handbook. As a DM, it is frustrating to hunt and peck across the pages of two separate books, when wanting to doublecheck to adjudicate a skill check.

Also jump and so on are some of the nonintuitive mechanics that I need to repeatedly look up.

 

[Maxperson]

Also jump and so on are some of the nonintuitive mechanics that I need to repeatedly look up.

What are you looking up? That jumping allows you to go your strength score in feet without a roll, or that athletics allows you to jump unusually far?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Though you are I think jesting here, you're on to something with the backpack: another variable would be how encumbered the jumper is at the time.

If it's just one number then the formula is far too simplistic.

I do; in that if something like this is to be done, let's get it right.

Problem is, this is a case where getting it right quickly becomes a complicated mess; so they went the other route and just made it a hard number.

All that means is that you-as-DM need to introduce some real uncertainty via rulings. Make it that the listed distance is the farthest they can jump under perfect, ideal conditions (which almost never exist) and that their actual distance achieved is going to vary from jump to jump but will very likely never exceed that limit.

So if a PC's limit is 18' and a 15' jump awaits, said PC should in theory still be uncertain whether the jump is do-able.

Sometimes I wonder why you play 5e. There doesn’t seem to be a single thing about it that suits your preferences. But maybe that’s because in a web forum people tend to talk about the things they would change.

Anyway, I don’t care about realism; I care about simple rules that force decisions with meaningful trade offs. So 5e suits me well.

 

[Yaarel]

What are you looking up? That jumping allows you to go your strength score in feet without a roll, or that athletics allows you to jump unusually far?

How high, running or standing. Uggh.

 

[Horwath]

I think it's necessary to assume that is what the designers intended for the spell, but it sure isn't clear (as usual). I would absolutely rule it that way. (In fact, I agree that there is no reason to cap any jump by speed, other than how much movement you have left when you land).

jump should not be limited by your speed. you are just mid air until your next turn when you continue your jump.

 

[R_J_K75]

In every edition I've played, jumping rules are always needlessly complicated. In fact I pretty much never needed to use them.

All I need to know is a DC.

I know, I never even bother using the jump rules, Make the DC, you make the jump, fail the DC and you fall to your doom. Reading the rules and math in this post makes my head hurt.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

jump should not be limited by your speed. you are just mid air until your next turn when you continue your jump.

That's another way of doing it. I have to admit, I don't like the "feel" of everything stopping at round's end, and then starting up again. Your method would add some dynamism to it. (It's not that you're limited by ability, it's that you're limited by time!)

 

[Yaarel]

That's another way of doing it. I have to admit, I don't like the "feel" of everything stopping at round's end, and then starting up again. Your method would add some dynamism to it. (It's not that you're limited by ability, it's that you're limited by time!)

Compare the hadozee glide ability.

 

[Maxperson]

How high, running or standing. Uggh.

Okay. I forgot about that part. That's legit.