Tumble and difficult terrain

[kengar]

I ran a combat last week where this came up. The party was in a fight on a snow-covered mountainside. Their Move was x1/3 (10' instead of 30'). The Rogue wanted to Tumble and move 20'. I ruled no. His argument was he would "flip through the air." I told him that was a Jump not a Tumble, though he could make a Tumble check during his Jump to avoid AoO's. Also, he wouldn't be able to make a running long jump because the snow would slow him down too much.

Since the description of Tumble doesn't seem to mention anything about reduced Move conditions, the above was pretty much me winging it. Has anybody else run into a situation like this or have any thoughts on it?

 

[Pagan priest]

In general, I would agree and say that he could not tumble in those circumstances. I can also see circumstances that would allow tumbling movement to travel farther in a round than the foot sloggers. All the rogue needs to do is tumble off the heads and shoulders of the rest of the party members (and possibly the enemy as well!) and the snow will not slow him down. This would also be true if there are numerous exposed boulders, tree stumps, or anything else that is visible above the snow and is solid enough to use. Another thing to consider is that the Epic Level Handbook gives DC's for balance checks to walk on water... walking on the surface of snow without breaking through is a cinch compaired to that!

You might also want to look at Song and Silence, it has penalties to the DC of tumbling checks for difficult terrain.

 

[SevenSir]

You ruled right.

I'm pretty sure all I'd need to say to end that adjudication would be "tumbling is not a Blanka roll."

 

[Magnetic Field]

Still talking about tumbling

You may tumble up to 20' "as part of normal movement."

ie. you can move 30' and 20' of it can be tumbling movement which doesn't provoke AoOs. If your max movement is 10' then you can tumble 10' (I guess you could argue that you could only tumble 6.66 feet).

Tumbling is "normal movement" except that it doesn't provoke AoOs, so I don't think you could use it to move faster in snow.