Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Can we please get a warning if our jump will knock us prone?

Too many times I've had characters jump from what I thought was a safe height only to fall prone in the middle of combat.

Just like our path turns red if we are going to walk through a hazard it would be much appreciated if our path turned red once we've exceeded land on your feet distance for jump.

+1

+1

Especially since the rules seem to be inconsistent.

I agree whole heartily. Would make jump more visually intuitive, and make it far more clear to us what is going on with it.

Yes PLEASE. just make the jump-path red.

Yup, yup, yup.

+1 with a small tweak. Athletics is supposed to be rolled when a jump is made that could cause you to fall prone. So any time it turns red you know there's a chance of falling prone if you fail the roll.

I'd love that, but this isn't in the game yet, right? I've never seen an athletics roll when I jump down and fall prone

I genuinely want Athletics and Acrobatics (whichever is higher for the character in question) to affect jumping, and for it to be clear to people that they are rolling some kind of check when doing so to avoid damage or falling prone and that the skill affects the distance (instead of the flat STR that I think is how jump is calculated).

Exactly. I also thought it would be cool if Acrobatics was used that a different animation would also be used, like flipping as opposed to a straight jump.

I'll throw a +1 for all of the above as well.

Some kind of prone warning would be really helpful.

+1 to this as well, it makes sense and would be consistent with walking through hazards.


I might be confused. I know Athletics is for jump distance, but I thought Acrobatics was for avoiding landing prone.

RAW, Acrobatics has nothing to do with jumping, or rather with landing after jump. This is purely in the domain of Athletics.

+1 to the whole idea. Personally, I would like to see it this way:

• White - safe landing is guaranteed
• Yellow - success in Athletics is neccessary to stay on foot
• Red - guaranteed prone on landing

There is certainly no need to stick to RAW, but let's at least be clear on what RAW is: Jumping section from 5e basic rules
-Athletics has nothing to do with sticking a landing and rarely has anything to do with how far you can jump.
-How far/high you can jump is determined by your STR score/modifier and whether you got a running start.
-Your Athletics skill comes into play when you are trying to jump over a low obstacle, like a hurdle or a hedge.
-Your Acrobatics skill comes into play when you are landing a jump in difficult terrain.
-Your DM might ask you to make an Athletics check if you are trying to pull off a jump longer/higher than you would normally be able to make.

Acrobatics has to do with coordination, flexibility, and balance, which makes sense when trying to stick a difficult landing.
Athletics is a little bit nebulous, but I think it lives somewhere in the space between raw strength and endurance, which is why it is used for climbing, swimming, and grappling (i.e. tasks where you need to employ your strength over a significant period of time). It's not totally out of line to use it for jumping stuff, but raw STR feels a little more appropriate to me.

All of that said, yes, the game definitely needs to communicate to you how difficult a particular jump is (or at least how difficult it seems) before you attempt it.

I, respectfully, disagree.

Jumping in this game is a joke.

Yeah, if they're going to have us jump jump all backwards and awkward like Kris Kross, it would be nice to have some colored arrows to let us know when we're about to biff it face first into the ground lol.

Honestly jumping is one of my least favorite things about this game. It overshadows everything else in the tactical combat scheme and doesn't add whole ton to the exploration appeal to me. It just feels sort of tacked on.

Like I can understand why other RPGs add a relatively pointless and purely cosmetic spacebar jump, or maybe a weapon's flourish too, just to have some level of spontaneity in an otherwise endless walk-a-thon. I guess to make it feel slightly more like an action game? but the BG3 jump feels somehow less entertaining and more awkward than even that. Jumps in other games are mainly for shortcutting from higher elevations to lower ones, but that's more of an expedient for movement around the game environments, rather than like a thrilling combat or exploration experience. Creating environments that allowed for scaling over hazardous terrain, up an incline or tree or whatever, would have been a much more interesting thing for them to spend their time on. Also, having otherwise "normal" looking terrain (like not molten lava) serving as invisible barriers feels pretty annoying in 2021. If there are vista views and window dressing, at least have some sort of visual cues to tell us we're not meant to go that way. Instead of just having us break every bone in ill fated attempts to get places we're not meant to go. Having seen what an interactive 3D environment could be in a game like Breath of the Wild or any FPS worth its salt, really makes all the set piece conceits of RPG games with these tiers and platforms feel pretty dated already. Like Donkey Kong or Lode Runner or something, all ladders and falling into pits hehe.

ps. The roof top battles feel particularly irksome. You know where the enemies start out already occupying elevations that PCs can't really reach, or even see with their cam. It feels like they are designed with misty footing as the default, or as if already knowing where hidden ladders are located and then doing a gauntlet rush to reach them before catching a hail of bolts and arrows is supposed to be all rad. It's hard to imagine anything in these environments that a PC with better than a 12 in dex/str wouldn't be able to scale or otherwise get to the top off. Like aren't we supposed to be fantasy ninjas by now? Or like freestyle walk up the side of a wall doing that classic side to side bounce. If Mario could do it on the N64 in the late 90s, you'd think they could come up with something cool by now. Something colorfully animated, that captures an "Athletic" essence, or an "Acrobatic" one, or whatever it's meant to play off of in the abilities/skills. I'd rather roll for a check and watch the PCs attempt something wild. Issue the command and sit back and watch the results, not mucking about with jump controls. Like rather than trying to target a jump with all the accuracy of carnival skee-ball, I'd prefer the PCs just be able to get places normally (using normal animations), or maybe get there crazily (using crazy animations). But based on their stats, and done in a way that presents the player with enough information to make a judgment, whether it's worth the attempt or not.

Ah! I'll amend what I said to match what I've said in other mechanics threads. There is certainly no need to stick to RAW...so long as you are replacing the RAW with a system that is well thought out, intuitive, easy to use, consistent with other rules in the game, and balanced (and probably several other things that I'm not thinking of right at this moment). There is nothing magical about 5e RAW, but it should probably be the default unless it is being replaced by something strictly better.

My preference would be for them to remove jumping as an action you can take and just fold it into movement and have it happen automatically when it needs to.

+1