Balance

(Dex) Armor Penalty

Keeping your footing is often a matter of life and death when under fire; stumbling could end up making you an easy target for a snipers bullet!

Check: The character can walk on a precarious surface. A successful check lets the character move at half his or her speed along the surface as a move action. A failure indicates that the character spends his or her move action keeping his or her balance and does not move. A failure by 5 or more indicates that the character falls. The difficulty varies with the conditions of the surface.

Being Attacked While Balancing: While balancing, the character is flat-footed (the character loses his or her Dexterity bonus to Defense, if the character has one), unless the character has 5 or more ranks in Balance. If the character takes damage, he or she must make a Balance check again to remain standing.

Accelerated Movement: The character can try to cross a precarious surface more quickly than normal. The character can move his or her full speed, but the character takes a –5 penalty on his or her Balance check. (Moving twice the character’s speed in a round requires two checks, one for each move action.)

The character can attempt to charge across a precarious surface. Charging requires one Balance check at a –5 penalty for each multiple of the character’s speed (or fraction thereof) that the character charges.

Special: A character can take 10 when making a Balance check, but can’t take 20.

A character with the Focused feat gets a +2 bonus on all Balance checks.

Time: Balancing while moving one-half the character’s speed is a move action.

Accelerated movement, allowing the character to balance while moving his or her full speed, is also a move action.