D&D 3E/3.5 The 3.5 Jump mechanic, and monks

[molonel]

I have a player in an online campaign who wants to make a jumping monk. It's forcing me to look very carefully at the jump mechanic. I haven't used the rules for jumping in 3.5. I'm more familiar with the jumping rules in 3.0, where movement had a HUGE modifier on how far and how high you can jump.

There are a few things I've noticed. To my passing eye, it seems like anything which removes height as a limit to distance or height covered has been removed. I don't see it in the SRD for the Ring of Jumping (either), or the Jump spell. It was also removed from the monk. Is this correct?

Are there any items or abilities that can expand the ability of a character to jump great heights and distances?

It seems in the 3.5 jumping mechanics that the height someone can jump is now limited to eight feet. Period. End of sentence. Is there any way in the Core rules to fairly bypass or modify this? Or will it require a house rule?

Basically, this character wants to create a 10th level monk that can leap and jump, and has the visuals in mind from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I've already told him, and he understands, that he is NOT going to be Li Mu Bai at 10th level. But I'd like to know if there is a fair, balanced way to increase the way a monk can jump, perhaps by removing some abilities from the core monk, and replacing them.

Any ideas?

 

[Knight Otu]

To my passing eye, it seems like anything which removes height as a limit to distance or height covered has been removed. I don't see it in the SRD for the Ring of Jumping (either), or the Jump spell. It was also removed from the monk. Is this correct?

That's correct, because that limitation no longer exists in 3.5.

It seems in the 3.5 jumping mechanics that the height someone can jump is now limited to eight feet. Period. End of sentence. Is there any way in the Core rules to fairly bypass or modify this? Or will it require a house rule?

You have either read the table for high jumps, which ends at 8 feet, but can be expanded:

High Jump: A high jump is a vertical leap made to reach a ledge high above or to grasp something overhead. The DC is equal to 4 times the distance to be cleared.

If you jumped up to grab something, a successful check indicates that you reached the desired height. If you wish to pull yourself up, you can do so with a move action and a DC 15 Climb check. If you fail the Jump check, you do not reach the height, and you land on your feet in the same spot from which you jumped. As with a long jump, the DC is doubled if you do not get a running start of at least 20 feet.

Or you have read the maximum vertical reach table, which lists the maximum a character can reach without jumping.

But I'd like to know if there is a fair, balanced way to increase the way a monk can jump, perhaps by removing some abilities from the core monk, and replacing them.

Any ideas?

One thing that comes to mind would be a few Oriental Adventures prestige classes, which give an ability named Acrobatics, which, over the course of 10 levels, grants a +10/+20/+30 bonus to Balance, Jump andTumble checks. I'm not sure if you want to go this path...

 

[Andy_Collins]

Note also that the monk already gets a pretty significant boost in Jump distance due to her speed increase, since every additional 10 ft. of speed adds +4 to Jump checks (see the second paragraph under "Check" in the Jump skill description).

That translates to a +4 bonus on Jump checks at 3rd level, with an additional +4 bonus every three levels thereafter. A 12th level monk can easily have a Jump check modifier well over +30, not even counting various magic items or feats (such as Run, Skill Focus [Jump], or Acrobatic).

That monk can thus make 40-foot running long jumps with ease (shattering the world record by over 10 feet), and can land on a 10-foot high ledge with a running start (the equivalent of starting at the three-point line and jumping onto the top of the rim).

 

[allenw]

I don't see that a high jump is limited to 8 feet in the 3.5 SRD, any more than a long jump is limited to 30 feet. That's just where the chart happens to end Every additional foot of altitude adds 4 to the DC of a high-jump, just like every additional foot of distance adds 1 to the DC of a long-jump.

A Ring of Improved Jumping gives +10 to Jump for 10,000 gp. The general price guidelines for an item that gives a compentance bonus to a skill is (bonus squared) x 100 gp. The Ring of Jumping and Ring of Improved Jumping follow this formula, so if you want to make a Ring of Ludicrous Jumping that gives +20, it would have a base price of 40,000 gp.

In any case, CTHD monks struck me as more "Air Walk" users. Or maybe they just had Winged Boots and were conserving their flight time...

 

[Greatwyrm]

That monk can thus make 40-foot running long jumps with ease (shattering the world record by over 10 feet), and can land on a 10-foot high ledge with a running start (the equivalent of starting at the three-point line and jumping onto the top of the rim).

Wow, that's a lot when you think about it in real world terms. I guess Michael Jordan was about a 6th level monk when he did his free-throw line dunk.

 

[Legildur]

Oriental Adventures also had a martial arts style (name eludes me at the moment) which I believe gave significant bonuses (+10 I think) to Balance, Jump and Tumble checks once the correct feats and skill ranks were accumulated. That would certainly be something for a Monk to look at.

The Run feat would also help here. From the 3.5E SRD:

...If you make a jump after a running start (see the Jump skill description), you gain a +4 bonus on your Jump check...

 

[Saeviomagy]

Wow, that's a lot when you think about it in real world terms. I guess Michael Jordan was about a 6th level monk when he did his free-throw line dunk.

He only needed a 17 or so on the jump check. A starting character with a good strength could easily take 10 and get that.

And if your player really, really wants insane jumping powers, then he should go for some levels in sorceror, wizard or druid - for the jump spell. At 1st level it gives +10 to jump checks. At 5th it gives +20 and at 9th it gives +30.

Or he could get it in an item akin to 'boots of springing and striding' as an X minutes per day thing.

 

[Greatwyrm]

He only needed a 17 or so on the jump check. A starting character with a good strength could easily take 10 and get that.

But the important thing is, not only could MJ have jumped it with a 17, he also would have had Improved Unarmed Strike, Fast Movement, an AC bonus, and Flurry of Blows. When you hear Bulls fans talk about how much arse Jordan kicked, they didn't know the half of it.

 

[milotha]

Well, we've got an 8th level Thri-kreen monk in our campaign with a ring of jumping and the jump skill maxed out = some absurd number. He was designed up before Savage Species came out, so he's a homebrew race with a +20 or so to jump and an ECL adjustment. We refer to him as the monk missile.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Have any of you seen the Beyond Monks d20 book? It's an awesome book by the Chainmail Bikini company, and it's all about Monks- Monk Prestige Classes, Monk Feats, and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, one of the feats was called "Leap of the Clouds"- taking the name of the now-obsolete 3e Monk ability. However, this feat is far from obsolete- I can't remember the prerequisites at the moment, but it was something along the lines of 10 ranks in Jump, Unarmored Speed Bonus +20 ft, and Wisdom 15. Once you take the feat, you treat jump checks differently- a standing high jump now has a DC of the vertical feet you'd like to jump, and a standing long jump has a DC of 1/4 the horizontal feet you'd like to jump. If you get a running start for either of these, cut the DC by 1/2.

In other words, once you take this feat, if you have a +20 to Jump and roll a 10, you could make a standing high jump and get 30 feet in the air. If you got a running start, you could get 60 feet in the air. If it were a running long jump, you'd jump 240 feet horizontally.

This feat isn't unbalanced because by the time it's available, Jumping is almost never necessary. The party will already have bountiful access to Fly spells, and the only situation where a Jump would be more useful would be in an Antimagic Field (but the feat may be Supernatural, so it wouldn't really matter). So I figured it was cool, but nowhere near unbalanced.