Jumping Wonkness

[Caliber]

So last Wednesday my group had a rough fight with a group of gargoyles and a harpy around a fairly deep 20' pit. Or so we thought; upon falling in one of the party's toughs realized he could just take a running leap and jump out with an Athletics check of 20, almost impossible to fail considering his Athletics. This is high end Heroic, sure, but jumping 20 feet up seems ... impressive.

Looking at the recommended pits for party levels in the DMG, are they always easy to jump out of for the Athletically inclined, or do they eventually out scale even our Fighter friends? Were we going the Jump rules correctly?

 

[Unferth]

I think you're confusing the long jump rules with the high jump rules. With a running start, an athletics check of 20 will get you four squares or 20 feet - as a long jump. As a high jump, you divide your check result by 5 (with a running start) to get the number of _feet_ you jump rather than the number of squares. You'd need an athletics check of 100 to high jump 20 feet.

 

[Caliber]

Ah hah! Thanks for the response (and have some XP for the help). Not confusing, just misreading. Everyone at the table looked and saw squares instead of feet. Whoops!

Thanks again.

 

[The Human Target]

And remember to add in the PCs height to see how high he can jump to grip the edge of the pit.

So he might only need to hit an Athletics DC of 60 something if he's a really tall Goliath.