Tumble

Key Ability: Dex | Trained Only: No | Armor Check Penalty: Yes

You can keep your balance while traversing narrow or treacherous surfaces, including tightropes. You can also perform acrobatics, dive, flip, and roll to avoid attacks and overcome obstacles.

Balancing: You can use Tumble to move on narrow surfaces and uneven ground without falling.

Check: 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 Tumble skill modifiers noted below. While you are using Tumble in this way, you are considered flat-footed and lose your Dexterity bonus to your AC (if any). If you take damage while using balancing, you must immediately make a Tumble check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone.

Acrobatics as a Performance: You can use your ability to walk tightropes and do gymnastics to entertain an audience as though you were using the Perform skill.

Tumbling in Combat: You can move through a threatened or enemy-occupied square without provoking an attack of opportunity by using Tumble. 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 Tumble 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 Tumble to move past foes. You can use Tumble in this way while prone, but doing so requires a full-round action to move 5 feet, and the DC is increased by 5.

Check: You must make a check the moment you attempt to leave a square threatened by an enemy, but only once per foe. The DC increases by +2 for each foe after the first in one round. In the case of moving out of the threatened square of two foes at the same time, the moving character decides which check to make first (as a DC20 check) and then the second (as a DC22 check).

If you fail your check when moving through a threatened space, you provoke an attack of opportunity as usual. If you fail in your attempt to enter and pass through an enemy-oppupied square, you end your move, lose all further movement left in that move action, and provoke an attack of opportunity.

Many conditions can affect your chances of success with Tumble checks. The following modifiers to target DCs apply to all Tumble skill checks. The modifiers stack with one another, but only the most severe modifier for any one condition applies.

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

Special: If you have 3 or more ranks in Tumble, 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.

Halflings gain a +3 racial bonus on Tumble checks.