At The Table: Agile Fighting

Flashy combat tactics are cool. Many action movies feature swift, agile heroes executing physics-defying acrobatics to get into striking range of their enemies. At the table you may find rogues or monks wishing to do the same thing. The Pathfinder acrobatics skill describes how you can use it to walk over uneven terrain, jump on to or off of obstacles, and cross gaps, but it leaves out important actions like hopping over short walls or jumping from one stepping-stone to another. These are the kinds of obstacles commonly found in a combat encounter that an agile character with flashy style may wish to traverse to close with their target

Presented here are some guidelines for skill DCs to traverse small-to-medium obstacles at speed. Each obstacle the character intends to traverse will require one acrobatics check and subtract a number of feet from their move distance proportional to how much effort is required to traverse it. DMs concerned about combat balance might want to require a feat (I suggest calling it simply "Parkour", requiring a Dex modifier of +3 or more) to use these maneuvers, or tune the DCs to personal taste.

Applied Acrobatics

Scramble up over a waist-high obstacle: DC 17, costs 5' of movement.

Hop across similarly-sized objects: DC15, Requires getting onto the first obstacle by scrabling up or dropping down but no movement penalty for obstacles of similar height.

Example: Annale the Monk wants to quickly get across a room scattered with boxes. Climbing the first box reduces her available movement by 5', leaving her with 25' of movement in a single move action. Three boxes are between her and her destination, requiring her to hop across them. Each check she succeeds gets her another box closer to her destination. A near-fail will stop her movement but allow her to stay atop the boxes. A bad fail will cause her to fall off.

Wall kick: DC 20, costs 10' of movement plus a 10' minimum run-up for a total of 20' to execute.
This difficult maneuver involves running, jumping, and kicking off a nearby wall to gain additional height. Checks: With a running start of at least 10' such that at the end of the run-up you are next to a wall (or pillar, large tree, etc), make the DC 20 Acrobatics check, and an Acrobatics check for the high jump you aim to make. Add however much you beat the DC 20 check by to the result of your high jump check, then determine if the new result beats the DC for the high jump. Failing the jump leaves you standing at the base of the wall where you started the jump.

Example: Thorai the Ranger wants to jump to a good ambush position seven feet off the ground in a tree. She's a skilled acrobat with a +10 acrobatics skill. The jump DC is 28, putting it out of reach except for a very-good roll but attainable with a well-executed wall-kick. She starts 10' back from the base of the tree, runs straight for it and kicks off. First the wall-kick roll results in a 26, then the high jump roll results in a 25. Thorai beat the wall-kick DC by 6, so she adds 6 to her outcome for a result of 31 and successfully pulls off a seven-foot-high jump that would have otherwise been near-impossible.

Pounce From Above: DC 5 + Opponent's CMD, ends movement.
You jump onto an enemy from above. If the enemy is smaller than you by 2 size categories or more, you stomp on it and land in an adjacent space. If the enemy is larger than you by 2 size categories or more, you land on top of it. If the enemy is within 2 size categories of your size, you can attempt to grapple it with a +5 circumstance bonus on your CMB roll. Regardless, if your fall is high enough to cause damage both you and the target take the same amount of damage from your fall onto it. Your target still gets attacks of opportunity if it sees you coming.

Pounce From the side: Modified Grapple check, ends movement.
You leap at your opponent and attempt to tackle him with a running start of at least 10'. This is mechanically a charging grapple and not actually a direct application of Acrobatics. Instead, use your Acrobatics bonus in place of your dexterity modifier in your CMB when determining the outcome of the grapple. Attacks of opportunity still happen if your target sees you coming. Failing the grapple leaves you prone.

Hopefully these give you some ideas of other ways your to spice up combat with agile characters.

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