Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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"Stay on your feet in a tricky situation, or perform an acrobatic stunt."
Except every 'stay on your feet in a tricky situation' instance I can find is given as a dex save, not an acrobatics check. See, for example, the Grease spell, or ball bearings spread on the floor. (Or sometimes a con save, ie, topple).
And there's zero mechanical definition of what an acrobatic stunt is, or what it can accomplish. If there's no mechanical benefit, there's no point in asking for a skill check.
The only actual use I can find is as an alternative to escape a grapple, which basically makes acrobatics into 'strictly worse athletics' with only the one use case?
Examples when you would use Acrobatics:
1) walking across a narrow surface such as running along the top of a fence / wall, climbing the rigging of a ship, crossing a rope/wobbly bridge / tight rope walking or crossing roof beams (e.g. in a tavern to eaves drop on someone).
2) using unstable modes of transport such as skateboards, surfboards, toboggan, jet ski, or the like.
3) Leaping onto a horse & riding bareback (e.g. when escaping from a bandit camp)
4) Leaping through narrow spaces (e.g. jumping through a window)
5) Maneuvering in tight spaces (e.g. crawling through air ducts or down chimneys)
6) Balancing on uneven / steep surfaces (e.g. running across steep rooves)
7) Various acrobatic stunts such as : swinging from chandliiers, vaulting over walls, jumping on/off a running horse or vehicle, swinging from a rope across a river/crevass, traversing through treetops jumping from branch to branch, bouncing off a trampoline, poggo stick, or springy-boots.
1/ Based on all the actual instances of balancing in the rules, I'm unconvinced #1 shouldn't actually be dex saves... Like, why can't i use acrobatics for a Grease spell if it handles balance situations? And I'm not sure what most of those instances actually get you.
2/ ??? Maybe doing tricks on a skateboard, but... when was the last time you saw a skateboard in a game?
3/ Shouldn't riding bareback be handle animal? (What's the rules difference between leaping onto a horse and just mounting it, anyway? If it's just style, you should just do it, no roll.)
4/ What stops you from just jumping through a window otherwise, if you can fit through the window?
5/ So can you squeeze through a smaller space than you normally could? Or does it remove the difficult terrain movement penalty for squeezing?
6/ see #1, same thing, really.
7/ Jumping is explicitly controlled by Athletics, as i would imagine swinging on a rope should be or vaulting over walls. And swinging from branch to branch is probably covered by climbing (certainly a climb speed should do it), so also Athletics.
I'm not seeing much on this list that is likely to be ruled as acrobatics, terribly likely to come up, and useable by the player for mechanical benefit.
This is sounding a lot like 'well, if the module/DM just happens to stick an acrobatics check in the adventure, you can do it', but there's little use the player can make of it without the DM facilitating it, and given few players are likely to have it, the module test probably isn't critical to finishing the adventure.
Isn’t this true of pretty much every skill check except perception? I’ve gone entire campaigns without someone making a medicine checks, or handle animals.
And I don’t think few characters will have it. I’d say lots of monks and rogues, and probably dex fighters will have it. Maybe some other subclasses like genie paladin or dance bard.
Also, any module that has a single skill check being critical to finishing an adventure is a pretty bad module. There should always be options.
It lets you use Dexterity instead of Strength. Which is in general a fair description of athletics: if there's a physical movement task that you're trying to accomplish, and it feels more like Dex than Str, use Acrobatics. Merging them into a single skill that can float between Dex and Str as needed is a reasonable house rule, neither skill is amazingly useful and I can't think of a lot of character concepts where it makes sense to have only one of them.
You've hit on one of the most persistent rules ambiguities and balance complaints in Fifth Edition D&D. The core issue with Acrobatics (Dexterity) is that the rules text relies heavily on vague, cinematic flair rather than concrete mechanical triggers. When the Player's Handbook suggests rolling Acrobatics to "stay on your feet in a tricky situation," it directly steps on the toes of saving throws—specifically Dexterity saves designed to resist forced movement or prone conditions, like those triggered by Grease or ball bearings. This creates a confusing overlap where DMs often have to guess whether a sudden hazard calls for a reactive saving throw against a set DC or an active skill check.
Compounding this problem is the complete lack of a framework for what an "acrobatic stunt" actually achieves in combat or exploration. Because the rules do not assign mechanical benefits to backflips, vaulting, or tumbling past enemies (outside of the specific rules for moving through hostile spaces, which usually just require an ability check that Athletics can often contest or that costs extra movement), players are left performing flashy maneuvers purely for flavor. If a daring leap or mid-air twist doesn't grant advantage, bypass an obstacle, or mitigate damage better than standard movement, calling for a skill check violates the fundamental principle that a roll should only be requested when both success and failure carry meaningful consequences.
Ultimately, this leaves Acrobatics pigeonholed into a very narrow utility, most notably as the alternative to Athletics for escaping a grapple. Because grappled creatures use Athletics (Strength) to break free, allowing an escape via Acrobatics essentially creates a lopsided tax: Dexterity-based characters get a lifeline, but Strength characters retain the dominant skill for offensive shoving and wrestling. Without homebrew clarification or explicit DM ruling to give Acrobatics parity—such as allowing it to reduce falling damage or actively dodge specific positioning hazards—it remains a situational trap option that fails to live up to its broad description.
All skill checks are deliberately vague,
Why should convincing someone of something be Persuasion vs Deception vs Intimidation vs Insight?
Why should diagnosing Poison Ivy be Medicine vs Nature vs Survival?
Why should climbing over a wall be Athletics vs Acrobatics vs Survival?
You are missing one entire pillar of fun in the game. Which is being creative in how you use the skill your character has to solve a problem. Skill checks are not supposed to be rigourouslly defined, they are not supposed to be make-or-break, it is intentional that not every character nor every party will have access to the same skills. The design of the game is that the DM sets up an obstacle, the players pitch their creative solution to that problem, the DM decides what skills / tools / equipment is necessary for that solution, and the dice decide whether that solution was successful or not.
But all of that goes for every ability in the game. You don't need any specific spell to beat a campaign, you don't need any specific weapon to beat a campaign, you don't need any specific class in your party to beat a campaign, you don't need any specific saving throw proficiency to beat a campaign, nor any specific tool proficiency to beat.a campaign, nor any specific skill to beat a campaign.
D&D is designed to have many possible solutions so that any party with any combination of classes, any combination of skills, and any combination of spells (or no spells at all) can beat any campaign. Because players are met to be free to build their character however they envision them to be without those choices meaning you have lost the game before it has even begun. That is smart game design.
While acrobatics has fairly narrow use cases, I would argue that both intimidation and investigation are worse, as they tend to either be treated as inferior versions of perception and persuasion, or just not used at all.
Agree Acrobatics and Athletics should be the same skill.
As for Acrobatics vs. DEX save, I'd treat a save as reactive, while a skill check is active. i.e. ball bearings, in combat you're constantly moving around, you're not expecting them, make a DEX save. vs. walking over a tightrope, you choose exactly when you're going to walk over that tightrope, make an Acrobatics check. (Yes, you might be aware of the ball bearings sometimes, I'd either say that because it's combat you don't have time to think about how you're going to move through them carefully and thus it's still a DEX save, or house rule it as an Acrobatics check.)
Yes, if you define everything as belonging to other things, Acrobatics isn't very useful.
A good rule of thumb IMO is that Athletics is about power, while Acrobatics is about maneuvering. Any situation where you need to do anything complex to get from point A to point B may well require an acrobatics check.
I take acrobatics way more than I do athletics.
They absolutely should NOT be.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Why not?
I've seen Investigation come up an awful lot. Never seen an acrobatics check called for outside escaping a grapple.
All of Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation should be the same skill - they're all just different kinds of persuasion. You're trying to convince someone of something or to do something.
If there's no explicit mechanical benefit, there's no point in a roll. And without an explicit mechanical benefit, you're basically stuck trying to convince the DM to give you a mechanical benefit the rules don't actually give you. At which point, there's no incentive to take acrobatics at all, unless you know you can get the DM to agree to things on the fly.
I mean, this is part of why the Rogue feels so bad as a class. Too many skills that don't actually let you do anything.
If we're talking about creative solutions to problems, we're passed skill checks even being needed. Magic will frequently solve any problem much easier, and there are plenty of creative solutions which will never require a skill check.
Each skill should have explicit use cases with DC guidelines and known mechanical benefits, so players can make rational choices (and DM's have appropriate guidance).
I didn't define these things as belonging to other things. The game defined these things as belonging to Athletics.
Interesting opinion. My opinion is that the DM agreeing to things on the fly is the entire point of the game. If everything is about the mechanics, it seems we're in video game territory rather than D&D.
I would hate a system like what you describe.
I'm curious though, do you see a difference between mechanics and narrative? For example, you're trying to talk your way past a guard, the DM asks you to roll Persuasion. You succeed, and the DM says, "okay, the guard lets you through". I wouldn't call that a mechanical benefit of Persuasion, though it certainly has a large impact on the game. Would you consider this to be an explicit mechanical benefit?
I would call that an explicit mechanical benefit. It's a little more loosey-goosey, but all the social interaction stuff is. You still have a clear motivation for taking and using the skill, and a reasonable expectation that you can use it to get NPCs to do things you prefer.
Acrobatics, otoh, it's completely unclear what your motivation is for taking it. Any specific use you might have in mind is going to interact with far more mechanically rigid rules than persuasion will.
Acrobatics necessarily and intimately interacts with hard rules relating to the action economy and the combat rules. If it's not explicitly spelled out, any significant use you put it to is either going to get denied or make other people think you're getting away with murder doing something that shouldn't work. Why would you plan your character around that unpredictability unless you knew the DM was going to agree to you breaking the rules on the fly with a skill check?
Edit: I happen to think all of those are perfectly reasonable uses of the acrobatics skill that should convey mechanical benefits. But they explicitly break the rules of the game.
Yeah, a lot of it comes down to looking at the recommended stat for picking which applies, especially for STR vs DEX.
They're plausibly distinct, but it's a distinction that the game doesn't make at all clearly, and it's also quite uneven.
Deception is the skill of coming up with a convincing lie. It's not really about persuasion at all (you're not trying to get someone to do something) though it can be a component of persuasion ("go away and I'll give you this pouch of gold" is persuasion. If the pouch of gold is actually copper with a bit of gold on top to sell the illusion, there's also deception).
Intimidation, as normally understood, is getting someone to do something via explicit or implicit threats. Given how casually violent typical PCs are, this really should be a pretty effective strategy, but it's something that's mostly useful against people you don't mind hurting, and in a lot of games when PCs encounter someone they don't mind hurting, they won't bother with intimidation, they'll just proceed directly to "dead people can't object".
Persuasion is the default friendly persuasion, and being the default, is extremely broad. It also tends to be unreasonably effective in games, in that DMs will frequently allow persuading NPCs to do things against their own interests.
Persuasion: I want you to believe something is true. (As typically applied, this something is subjective or unfalsifiable, rather than objective.)
Deception: I want you to believe something is true, even though it isn't.
Same thing. Sure, one requires lying. Getting them to do something is the consequence of them believing a certain kind of thing is true, such as 'helping me is a good thing for you'.
Consider the goal of convincing someone 'the king would want you to help us'. You could try to persuade them that what you're doing will benefit the kingdom because you will be able to eliminate some bandits. Or you could try to persuade them that you're duly authorized agents of the king (when you're not). The latter is obviously deceptive, but they're both argumentative gambits towards the same ends. (And if you don't actually plan to eliminate the bandits, are you still being deceptive if their help would allow you to eliminate the bandits? You could tell no lies and still deceive them.)
Similarly, Intimidation is just persuasion with a threat. 'Be a shame if something happened to this nice tavern. Sure you don't want to give me a free room?' Your goal is still to persuade them.
If there's any actual difference, it's that deception and intimidation should be able to get them to do things that are against their interests. But really, so should persuasion - in each case, you're just getting them to change their interests because you've persuaded them to believe something else is more in their interest. (That something may be what their beliefs are about what will help their boss, whether true, unfalsifiable, or a blatant lie; or it may just be that they prefer their kneecaps intact more than they fear their boss's ire). Now, depending on how much of a change in their interests you need to make, this should maybe be a lot harder than many DMs make it....
For the reason that some action require more agility than strength and vice versa.
Running, swimming, climbing, are examples that require more strength than dexterity.
The aboce example of diving through a small hole such as a window or doing cartwheels across a room are agiity/acrobatics skills.
They are not interchangeable. In your example of combining the skills, which stat would you use for bonuses or penalties?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale