D&D 5E Reasonable Movement and Athletic Feats?

[Tonguez]

Ok, I feel very qualified to chime in on this since I competed in track and field for nearly 10 years.

My personal bests:

22' 6" long jump (but this is with a 56' "approach")
5' 8" high jump (not great, but I am only 5' 7" myself, so I was always proud of it)
11.5 100-m sprint (again, not great, but pretty decent)
4 min. 23 sec. mile (again, not great but good IMO)

A "triple jump" is three "jumps" in a row, so not really useful in D&D unless you are literally hopping, skipping, and jumping over a creek or something.
.

John Carter of Mars making leaps across a Battlefield to reach the enemy ship, or the Hulk leaping away from incoming helicopters would be modeled by a Triple Jump in my mind - so quite applicable in cinematic play scenarios.

 

[DND_Reborn]

John Carter of Mars making leaps across a Battlefield to reach the enemy ship, or the Hulk leaping away from incoming helicopters would be modeled by a Triple Jump in my mind - so quite applicable in cinematic play scenarios.

Or, just three separate jumps? While some groups enjoy super-hero-like play, my preference for such things is due to magic. But, at any rate...

Jumping is just part of movement, it isn't its own action or anything. How far you can jump during your turn is simply limited by your speed.

Example:
A character with normal speed and STR 15 needs to leap across a series of platforms. Using the dash action, his total speed to "spend" is 60 feet. Each platform is 10 feet wide. He starts up 10 feet from the edge, required for the long jump. His movement is broken up as:

Move 10 feet,
Jump 15 feet,
Move 10 feet,
Jump 15 feet.
Move 10 feet.

That is his total of 60 feet. Now, if he needs to continue jumping on the next turn, it gets handled differently depending on the DM/table and RAW as interpreted by that group. Personally, if another jump was required, as a DM I would allow the last move of 10 feet to satisfy the condition for the long jump as I like to think of play as constant and not stop-and-start.

If the same character was a rogue or even better, a monk, using the bonus action allows them to dash for more movement during the current turn. Such a character could make another jump and move. The monk, with faster base speed, could do even more!

Even at just 2nd level Monk, using a ki point for Step of the Wind, could get 120 feet of movement, with the same STR 15 could jump 30-foot spans at a time!

Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet,
Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet,
Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet.

In 6 seconds? THAT is cinematic play in my book.

 

[Garthanos]

Even at just 2nd level Monk, using a ki point for Step of the Wind, could get 120 feet of movement, with the same STR 15 could jump 30-foot spans at a time!

Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet,
Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet,
Move 10 feet,
Jump 30 feet.

In 6 seconds? THAT is cinematic play in my book.

Woh woh woh its magic you know oh oh. My fighter could be a EK and cast jump too? Not sure that makes it very cinematic. /js

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, one house-rule we use for jumping I forgot to mention earlier is about jumping in armor. You reduce the distance you can jump by the base AC for armor worn - 10. So, if you wear plate armor, your long jump distance is 8 less (base AC 18 - 10 = 8). It is a simple rule that reflects the difficulty of jumping when you are even a bit restricted by armor. For magical armor, you could say it doesn't affect it if you wish (we don't, but you could of course).

I've updated our DM screen with those new rules in place. I'm meeting with our DM tomorrow, but I think he'll approve as well.

Think your idea for extending the approach distance by a bit is ok, I can just tell you if you "run" only 10 feet, it is basically just 3-4 strides, and you really aren't getting up to speed. I've known jumpers with really long approaches, like over 100 feet. Now, they are accelerating and hitting their stride before going into their run, so it isn't like a full-out sprint before a jump.

Depending on how you handle encumbrance, I would lower the jump distance as much as speed is lowered. So, someone who is heavily encumbered (-20 speed) would have -20 feet on their jump (maybe to a minimum of 5 feet or something).

Personally, I love coming up with systems like this that can "model" real life, but still be fantastic as well.

I like the encumbrance idea. I also allow greater jumps, and throws, for races with powerful build.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When you say “based on real numbers,” are you talking about using the distances real-life athletes can jump as your minimum distance, or about using the numbers on the character sheet to calculate how far they can jump?

Both, actually. And in both cases, if it complicates things in a way that isn’t fun, I ignore it. So, if adding prof (# from the sheet) gets me into the range of what competitive athletes can do, I’m happy with that. Trying to account for gear and footwear and how one has to land to get that distance, etc, would just be the worst kind of complication, IMO. At most I’d say that if someone is laden with extensive kit, they have disadvantage in checks in increase their jump distance.

 

[Charlaquin]

Both, actually. And in both cases, if it complicates things in a way that isn’t fun, I ignore it. So, if adding prof (# from the sheet) gets me into the range of what competitive athletes can do, I’m happy with that. Trying to account for gear and footwear and how one has to land to get that distance, etc, would just be the worst kind of complication, IMO. At most I’d say that if someone is laden with extensive kit, they have disadvantage in checks in increase their jump distance.

Ok, I get where you’re coming from now. Yeah, honestly just adding Athletics prof bonus to baseline jump distances seems like a pretty solid change based on your goals.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ok, I get where you’re coming from now. Yeah, honestly just adding Athletics prof bonus to baseline jump distances seems like a pretty solid change based on your goals.

Agreed. I wish there was as easy a change for other stuff, some nuance that could be added to lifting and dragging for instance, but it’s a start!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Agreed. I wish there was as easy a change for other stuff, some nuance that could be added to lifting and dragging for instance, but it’s a start!

It isn't really that hard. If you want to show how someone with proficiency in Athletics would be able to lift more than someone without, allow them to add their proficiency bonus to the STR score before determining the amount of weight.

Example. A STR 10 character can lift 300 lbs. With proficiency his STR would be 12-16 (depending on the bonus), boosting his lift by 60 to 180 lbs.

Personally, I think this is way too much, and might use half proficiency or something instead, or some other method entirely. I suppose it depends on how much impact/increase you want it to have.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It isn't really that hard. If you want to show how someone with proficiency in Athletics would be able to lift more than someone without, allow them to add their proficiency bonus to the STR score before determining the amount of weight.

Example. A STR 10 character can lift 300 lbs. With proficiency his STR would be 12-16 (depending on the bonus), boosting his lift by 60 to 180 lbs.

Personally, I think this is way too much, and might use half proficiency or something instead, or some other method entirely. I suppose it depends on how much impact/increase you want it to have.

Well, what if we reduce the base calculation first? Or reduce the multiplication. I don’t have much idea what it should be, tbh.

Also, what about sprinting? You can’t really all out sprint in 5e during combat or anything other than a chase, and most other DMs IME dont allow increasing speed or bypassing difficult terrain with skill Checks. Maybe it would be less intimidating for them if there was a simple system to reference for these fairly common feats of athleticism?

 

[Esker]

Here's what you do: take the rules about jumping, and solve for the gravity of the planet to make those rules reasonable. Done!