What's with Jumping?

[Johnny Angel]

Pardon if I must plea poverty of imagination, but I'm puzzled that in the upgrade from 3 to 3.5, magic that improves jumping has been severly nerfed: i.e., the spell Jump, the Ring of Jumping and the Boots of Striding and Leaping. Plus, they made the jump ring and the boots both competence bonuses so that they would not stack.

Magic jumping struck me as a poor man's Fly. In many situations, it's a lousy substitute for Spider-Climb. Were DM's finding a +30 jumping ring to be extremely unbalancing?

 

[silentspace]

Hehe, almost every skill-boosting items was nerfed, it seems, not just Jump.

 

[AeroDm]

Although IIRC Jump DCs were lowered. Now for a running long jump the DC equals the Distance where it used to be distance +5. Other DCs were changed accordingly. Not that this makes up for dropping some of the coolest items from +30 to +10, but still something to keep in mind.

 

[KarinsDad]

3.5 appears to have changed focus from:

"What did the spell / magic item in 1E / 2E do and how do we make it work in a similar manner to all other items in 3E, but with a similar level of power or effect to earlier versions?"

to:

"How do we make every similar effect equal in power or effect in 3.5?"

The focus totally changed.

For example, the 1E / 2E Elvencloak resulted in near invisibility (95+% or 50% in lit areas) to the 3E Cloak of Elvenkind (+10 to Hide skill). It was basically nerfed, but still useful to make someone nearly invisible in dark places. When it went to 3.5, it became +5 to Hide skill. This is so far removed from the original Elvencloak that as a player in 1E / 2E, an Elvencloak was a really desirable item. In 3E, it was a nice to have item. In 3.5, it is a not worth my time item.

It went from being invisibility type magic to a slight bonus to a skill.

Ditto for a Ring of Jumping / Jump spell. In 1E / 2E, it was the ability to jump considerable distances. This got nerfed in 3E to fair distances, but still useful. It got nerfed again in 3.5 to match their concept of +5 to skill items. Again, the original 1E / 2E intent of the item / spell was totally ignored in 3.5 for this sense of continuity across the board.

In their quest for continuity, they lost sight of their origins. IMO.

And because of things like this, I am really on the fence as to whether my group should convert from 3E to 3.5. They improved a lot of game elements, but at a sacrifice of some fairly basic common themes from the old days. The 3.5 game feels just a little too "politically correct" or "vanilla flavor", at least to me. If a 3E game element had a high utility, nerf it.

 

[Johnny Angel]

The funny thing about the Boots of Striding and Leaping is that it now adds +10 to Move. That's great. To have that as a constant effect is just swell by me. And +5 jump to boot, who couldn't love it? But:

+10 move already gives you +4 circumstance bonus to jump (3.5 PHB 77), but:

Boots of Striding and Leaping give you a +5 competence bonus to jump.

So, is it +9 altogether? Or is it +4 circumstance and + 1 competence?

I agree that these Competence bonuses seem suspect. What, are we playing Cyberpunk now, and chipping in skillsofts? In that case, my bard wants an assortment of Knowledge skills he can ring-in, thanks.

 

[Spatula]

Circumstance and competence are different types of bonuses, so they stack. You get a total +9 to Jump checks from the boots.

 

[reapersaurus]

My take:

God forbid they try to minimize the ridiculous impact that magic has on the game.
It's dangerously close to a "find the power up" game as it is.

It took me awhile to get used to the magic changes, and I had to look at it from a different stance, but I think it's wonderful that now it's more about the CHARACTER's abilities, and (slightly) less about the magic items/spells they have on/running.

Jump was absolutely absurd before where an epic monk who has trained his whole life, and dedicated max skills to it could not be as good as a unathletic 1st level mage.

 

[KarinsDad]

Jump was absolutely absurd before where an epic monk who has trained his whole life, and dedicated max skills to it could not be as good as a unathletic 1st level mage.

With respect to skills, magic should win out every time. Invisibility should be better than Hide. The Jump spell should be better than the Jump skill. A Silence spell should be better than Move Silently.

Every time.

As it is, they've already headed towards a situation where not only magic items are neutered, but spells are being neutered. Haste is totally rewritten. The buff spells went NOT from one hour per level to 10 minutes per level (which is a reasonable reduction), but from an hour per level down to 1 minute per level. What a total overreaction on the designers part. The Shield spell was +6/+7/+8 to AC (and +1 to saves) for 22 years, +7 to AC for 3 years (+3 to area affect Reflex saves for about 2 months of that 3 years) and then after 25 years, they suddenly determined that it was unbalanced and needed to be +4 to AC? Huh?

At the rate they are going, Invisibility may in 4.0 be a bonus to your Hide skill. Yikes!

 

[reapersaurus]

KD - you see no problem with a high level character's skills not being as high as a 1st level mage's?

 

[Cyraneth]

KD - you see no problem with a high level character's skills not being as high as a 1st level mage's?

I'd have to agree with KD here... I mean, to some degree, anyway.. Magic should be worth more than a mere bonus to some skill or another. Even utility magic like jump... I mean, look at spider climb and invisibility and compare them to the Climb and Hide skills, respectively. Does the jump spell still look overpowering?

- Cyraneth