Acrobatics

You can keep your balance while traversing narrow or treacherous surfaces. You can also dive, flip, and roll, avoiding attacks and confusing your opponents.

The following modifiers apply to all Acrobatics skill checks. The modifiers stack with one another, but only the most severe modifier for any given condition applies.

Common Uses
The Acrobatics skill has three distinct uses:


 * 1) Cross Narrow Surfaces/Uneven Ground
 * 2) Move Through Threatened Squares
 * 3) Flying and Falling

Cross Narrow Surfaces/Uneven Ground
First, you can use Acrobatics to move on narrow surfaces and uneven ground without falling. A successful check allows you to move at half speed across such surfaces—only one check is needed per round. Use the following table to determine the base DC, which is then modified by the Acrobatics skill modifiers noted below. While you are using Acrobatics in this way, you are considered flat-footed and lose your Dexterity bonus to your AC (if any). If you take damage while using Acrobatics, you must immediately make another Acrobatics check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone. 1 No Acrobatics check is needed to move across these surfaces unless the modifiers increase the DC to 10 or higher.

Cross Narrow Surface DC Modifiers


 * Balancing Pole: Using a balancing pole while traversing a narrow surface grants a +1 circumstance bonus to the Acrobatics check.

Move Through Threatened Squares
In addition, you can move through a threatened square without provoking an attack of opportunity from an enemy by using Acrobatics. When moving in this way, you move at half speed. You can move at full speed by increasing the DC of the check by 10. You cannot use Acrobatics to move past foes if your speed is reduced due to carrying a medium or heavy load or wearing medium or heavy armor. If an ability allows you to move at full speed under such conditions, you can use Acrobatics to move past foes. You can use Acrobatics in this way while prone, but doing so requires a full-round action to move 5 feet, and the DC is increased by 5. If you attempt to move through an enemy’s space and fail the check, you lose the move action and provoke an attack of opportunity. 1 This DC is used to avoid an attack of opportunity due to movement. This penalty increases by +2 for each additional opponent avoided in one round.

Falling


 * Falling: When you deliberately fall any distance, even as a result of a missed jump, a DC 15 Acrobatics skill check allows you to ignore the first 10 feet fallen, although you still end up prone if you take damage from a fall. See Falling Damage for more details.)

Action: None. An Acrobatics check is made as part of another action or as a reaction to a situation.

Modifiers

 * Skills If you have 3 or more ranks in Acrobatics, you gain a +3 dodge bonus to AC when fighting defensively instead of the usual +2, and a +6 dodge bonus to AC when taking the total defense action instead of the usual +4.
 * Feats If you have the Acrobatic feat, you get a +2 bonus on all Acrobatics checks. If you have 10 or more ranks in Acrobatics, the bonus increases to +4.

A high jump is a vertical leap made to reach a ledge high above or to grasp something overhead.

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 Acrobatics check to jump, 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.

Obviously, the difficulty of reaching a given height varies according to the size of the character or creature. The maximum vertical reach (height the creature can reach without jumping) for an average creature of a given size is shown on the table below. (As a Medium creature, a typical human can reach 8 feet without jumping.)

Quadrupedal creatures don’t have the same vertical reach as a bipedal creature; treat them as being one size category smaller.

Hop Up
You can jump up onto an object as tall as your waist, such as a table or small boulder, with a DC 10 Acrobatics (jump) check. Doing so counts as 10 feet of movement, so if your speed is 30 feet, you could move 20 feet, then hop up onto a counter. You do not need to get a running start to hop up, so the DC is not doubled if you do not get a running start.