Second-Guessing Myself: Allow Teleporting While Falling?

[mudlock]

How about a nice, simple fix:

"If your jump ends in mid-air, you fall unless you immediately take some other action to prevent it. If your next action includes movement, you can continue your jump, provided your Athletics check result is high enough to do so."

That's... actually pretty reasonable. (Although I might word it "you fall at the end of your next action." Immediate/unless just seems kinda murky and open to interpretation.) Would you then be allowed to use any power while jumping, or do you intend to only allow ones that involve movement? Including powers that allow movement after the attack?

Aside: if you roll high enough to jump 6 squares, but are slowed, can you (RAW) use an action point to TRIPLE move and complete the jump? Should you be able to?

 

[eamon]

Then why can't we just end our turn in mid-air? It's not like at the end of my turn, my character stops moving. Time doesn't stop. He's actually still running, or jumping, or whatever it is he does. You're picking an arbitrary boundary as to when you want to follow rules and when not to, which is fine. It's what you're supposed to do as a rules arbiter. But you can hardly blame the rules for what they are, or blame someone else for following the rules with different arbitrary boundaries.

This post suggest that since we can't have perfect verisimilitude, it doesn't matter how we break it - well, that's a perfect example of the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good".

We will never make a perfect simulation, and as many point out, don't want to make a perfect simulation. But there are shades of grey. Just because we don't want a realistic simulation doesn't mean that consistency to some in-game world is entirely irrelevant either. Some things are trivially easy to "simulate". Other bits are very intrusive yet hardly improve the verisimilitude. So: we should aim to keep things reasonably believable and do the easy stuff but skip the hard stuff.

It's easy to let someone continue a jump across actions as you would for a double move. It's hard to define what situation a creature is in if it ends its turn mid flight. So yes, we need to pick some rules system - but the choice isn't arbitrary.

 

[delericho]

That's... actually pretty reasonable. (Although I might word it "you fall at the end of your next action." Immediate/unless just seems kinda murky and open to interpretation.) Would you then be allowed to use any power while jumping, or do you intend to only allow ones that involve movement? Including powers that allow movement after the attack?

I'd be inclined to allow any power, and have the character fall then (unless he has since reached solid ground).

Aside: if you roll high enough to jump 6 squares, but are slowed, can you (RAW) use an action point to TRIPLE move and complete the jump? Should you be able to?

I don't see why a "triple move" shouldn't be allowed. Indeed, for an Epic level character with optimised Athletics, this may be the only way he can use his full jump result!

That said...

I'm starting to think that maybe the Athletics result shouldn't directly control the distance the character can jump at all - as someone mentioned up-thread, that's actually a bit too swingy.

It might be better to have the jump DC set by environmental conditions (per Page 42), with a success allowing the character to jump half his speed on a success. (Probably include a clause that "for every 10 points you beat the DC, you can add 1 square to your movement" - I'm in favour of adding that clause to every Athletics-based movement, including running.)

(Note that this more or less matches climb and swim, where the DC is environmental, and success doesn't change the rate of climbing/swimming. I do like consistency. )

Note that this would mean that a running jump does not change the DC - running increases the characters speed for the purpose of the movement.

This would also seem to fix my issues with "too easy" Olympic jumps at 1st level - if we assume the World Record holder has a Str-equivalent of 18ish (making PCs with a 20 somewhat fantastical by their very nature), trained in Athletics, and with the appropriate Skill Focus, he has a +12 modifier. If the DC for an Olympic Jump is something really easy (say 5 - reflecting the fact that they are totally unencumbered, are wearing lightweight footwear, and aren't busy fighting for their lives), then they can hit between 25 and 35 on the check with some regularity. Because they're running, their speed is effectively 8, so the standard jump is 4 squares +2 for hitting 25 - which is almost exactly the 30 ft of the World Record.

It does mean that a standing jump of 3 squares is probably too easy, but hey - can't have everything, right? (Hell, add a clause that any jump where the character doesn't move 2 squares first has a -5 penalty, and that fixes that, too.)

(Oh, yeah - sorry for going on way too long about jumping. I think I've finally managed to say everything I have to say on this topic now. )

 

[pemerton]

Okay, consider this example.

<snip>

If the chasm were moved three squares in either direction, he could do it.

It's not the distance that disallows it. That's fine.

It's not the jump that disallows it. That's trivial. In fact, Bob's player doesn't even have to roll - the DC is 15, so he succeeds even on a '1'.

The only reason it doesn't work is that Bob's Run action must end in mid-air, and he, strictly-speaking, cannot then avoid falling unless he's declared a "double move"/Run.

But the thing is that the grid, 'squares', discrete 'actions', and even the characters turn as a whole are pure game artifacts.

<snip>

How about a nice, simple fix:

"If your jump ends in mid-air, you fall unless you immediately take some other action to prevent it. If your next action includes movement, you can continue your jump, provided your Athletics check result is high enough to do so."

I have a feeling that I've allowed this - anyway, even if I haven't, it's how I would handle it. I don't think that the jump rules are written as they are deliberately to purge charge attempts, as if charge would otherwise be unbalanced, and jumping too strong.

Then why can't we just end our turn in mid-air?

<snip>

You're picking an arbitrary boundary as to when you want to follow rules and when not to

I agree fully with delericho - the boundary is not arbitrary, but very sensible, namely, the boundary between "within a PC's turn" and "outside a PC's turn".

I did previously address one way to improve it - by allowing an Athletics check to exceed the fixed movement rate when running.

I've definitely allowed this in my game. It's the first thing I though of in application of page 42 to Athletics skill.

There is no support for performing actions in mid-air (such as in basketball, the run-then-charge jump example, or the "I'll jump out and grab the dragon" example).

I haven't had this come up yet, but have nothing against the way that the OP handled it. The way I would probably do it (which is influenced by my experience GMing Rolemaster) is to make it an Acrobatics check to perform the in-air action, which seems consistent with the Acrobatics examples of improvisation in the Rules Compendium (somersaulting, and swinging on chandeliers).

 

[keterys]

I don't think I've ever seen any DM deny a "I want to do a jumping charge to attack this guy" where you run and jump and charge, putting some or all of the jump distance in the charge if needed.

Hell, I think most DMs _love_ that kinda stuff. Especially if it means that you end up in midair afterwards

And that's a _far cry_ from "I jump. Bleah, that's not enough. Okay, now I charge since that will get me the last bit of distance I need."