Balance

[brendan candries]

BALANCE (DEX; ARMOR CHECK PENALTY)
Check: You can walk on a precarious surface. A successful check lets you move at half your speed along the surface for 1 round. A failure by 4 or less means you can’t move for 1 round. A failure by 5 or more means you fall.

Only moving on a precariois surface requires balance checks and subsequently you are considered "balancing" only during your movement?

Standing still on a precarious surface, even while performing move actions (not actual movement), don't require balance checks nor are you considered "balancing"?

 

[Thanee]

The balancing condition is undefined. You can see it either way... actually moving on a precarious surface, or being on a precarious surface.

Bye
Thanee

 

[brendan candries]

Being Attacked while Balancing: You are considered flat-footed while balancing, since you can’t move to avoid a blow, and thus you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any). If you have 5 or more ranks in Balance, you aren’t considered flat-footed while balancing. If you take damage while balancing, you must make another Balance check against the same DC to remain standing.

Considering the heavy implications of being "balancing", I'm rather surprised about the popularity of this thread, no offense.

Let's say this was an introduction to another issue: the grease spell. I'm rather reluctant to link the grease spell, being a good level 1 spell as is, to the "balancing" rules.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Personally, I rule that a character is "balancing" when on any surface that required a balance check to be made.

 

[brendan candries]

Is a Balance check required to stand up while prone in the area of a grease spell? What about to perform other move actions? No and No.

Thus when moving through an area affected by a grease spell? The FAQ kinda proves that performing actions besides actual movement on the battlemap don't require balance checks.

Grease 3.5 already being better than grease 3.0 (now a balance check is needed to move and you might even fall prone, standing up while prone causes an aoo in 3.5) we also use the "Being Attacked while Balancing" rule? Considering there's no save/SR to counter the balance checks, aren't we upgrading an already good spell?

 

[irdeggman]

It is made as part of another action. Standing still isn't normally considered an action.

Action: None. A Balance check doesn’t require an action; it is made as part of another action or as a reaction to a situation.

Now you can invoke a reactive check based on the actions of the surface or environment. Say the wind is blowing, or the plank is shifting, etc. But normally if the environment isn't changing and the character isn't moving (or performing an action that would invoke a check) he wouldn't make one.

The restrictions on movment and actions allowed depend on the description (and handling) of the surface and are generally described in the DMG.