User:Luigifan18/Ukemi (3.5e Feat)

Author: Luigifan18 (talk) Date Created: November 8, 2012 Status: Complete Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Ukemi [General] You get knocked down, but you get up again, they can never ever keep you down!Prerequisites: Balance 4 ranks, Jump 8 ranks, Tumble 8 ranks, Base +5 Reflex save, must have handsBenefit: This feat comes with 3 benefits:

• Negate Prone: Whenever you would be knocked prone for any reason, you may attempt a Reflex save to avoid being knocked prone. If the effect that knocked you prone does damage and doesn't ordinarily allow a save to avoid being knocked prone, the save DC to perform an ukemi is 10 + ½ damage taken. If the effect doesn't do any damage and doesn't ordinarily allow a save to avoid being knocked prone, the DC is the attack roll − 10 (if it was an attack roll, such as being tripped) or its DC if it did allow a save (if it doesn't involve an attack roll; this includes any skill check DCs that may be allowed to avoid being knocked prone (you make a Reflex save against the same DC −5)). If the effect already allowed a save to avoid being knocked prone, you make a second save against the same DC increased by 5 (this second save is a Reflex save, even if the original save wasn't). The ukemi attempt is made when you are knocked prone (more specifically, when you hit the ground) — no sooner or later. If you succeed on your Reflex save, you bounce off of the ground as you hit it and leap back to your feet, standing up without requiring an action to do so (or provoking attacks of opportunity). You only get the one (additional) save to avoid being knocked prone.

If the effect that would have knocked you prone dealt damage, success on the Reflex save (for either the ukemi or the effect itself) negates 6 points of that damage. This effect is similar to damage reduction, but it isn't actually damage reduction, and can't be penetrated like damage reduction can. This damage negation stacks with anything else you may have that would reduce the damage, including but not limited to success on the initial saving throw (if applicable), damage reduction, and energy resistance, but this damage negation occurs as a result of the successful ukemi and therefore doesn't affect the save DC if it was influenced by the damage. (If the damage was reduced as a result of the saving throw, the reduction courtesy of the saving throw occurs before the reduction from the ukemi does.) A successful ukemi negates only being knocked prone and 6 points of damage; any other consequences of the effect (including all of the remaining damage) are sustained as normal. (You may fall prone anyways if the effect that attempted to knock you prone also took away your ability to stand up, such as by damaging your legs or placing a very large and heavy object or creature on you.)

When you successfully perform an ukemi to avoid falling prone, you may move 5 feet in any direction away from the space where you would have been knocked prone.

If the effect that would knock you prone has a duration of 1 round or less (including something like an earthquake), you need only succeed on one ukemi attempt to avoid falling prone. However, if your ukemi causes you to land on terrain that is sufficient to knock you prone all by itself (such as ground affected by a Veles whirl or a very narrow surface (assuming that you fail on your Balance check to remain upright)), you may immediately attempt another ukemi against the same DC as the previous one (or the Balance DC of the difficult terrain − 5, whichever is higher) to try to avoid being knocked prone and maneuver yourself to someplace where you can actually stand up. Each ukemi after the first consumes one of your attacks of opportunity for the round (time that you spend bouncing around is time that can't be spent reacting to openings in your foes' defenses), and if you run out of attacks of opportunity, you can't perform any more ukemis in response to that terrain. If you fail on even one ukemi attempt, or if you still can't stand up when you run out of attacks of opportunity (or are unwilling to expend any more), you immediately fall prone, your opportunities to escape that fate utterly exhausted. The original effect that knocked you prone no longer applies (at least for the purposes of your ukemi attempts) when your successive ukemi attempts begin; any damage that it inflicted has already been sustained, and you can't reduce it any more than you already have.

You can't use an ukemi to stand up if you're already prone, as the ukemi is a highly momentum-reliant technique. It can only be used to negate being knocked prone in the first place. If you're already prone, you must use a move action (and provoke attacks of opportunity) as normal to stand up; this feat won't help you.

• Spring Off Wall: Whenever you are sent flying by any effect (such as an awesome blow or a Setting Sun throw), and your movement is prematurely terminated by a collision with an object or creature, you may negate the damage suffered as a consequence of the collision with a successful Reflex save (DC = 10 + the number of feet remaining in your movement at the time of the collision). Success means that you push yourself off of the object or creature as you hit it and spring away, completely negating the force of the impact through an application of opposite force that spares both yourself and whatever you collided with from suffering damage. (If you collided with a creature of a size equal to or less than yourself, an ukemi off of that creature may knock it prone, and it may need to use an ukemi itself to avoid falling over; the save DC of such an ukemi is equal to ½ of your Reflex save result + ½ of your Jump check result (see below).)

The act of the ukemi involves springing off whatever you collided with at roughly a 15° vertical angle, so if you successfully execute the ukemi, you must also make a Jump check with a −10 penalty to determine how far away from that surface you land. (See the page for the Jump skill for information on the correlation between a Jump check result and actual jump distance.) A negative result on the Jump check means that you didn't successfully perform the ukemi after all (this is very unlikely by the time you acquire this feat, but it could happen to lower-level characters, especially if the character in question has a poor Strength score). (If you collide with something else mid-jump, you may perform another ukemi to spring off of that and avoid hurting yourself anyways, but the DC for each successive ukemi is increased by 5 (though otherwise recalculated for your new travel distance; DC increases for successive wall ukemis are cumulative), and a cumulative −5 penalty is added to each successive Jump check. It's still possible to bounce up a chasm with several ukemis, but that's much easier said than done, and certainly far more difficult than an intentional wall jump series.)

• Soften Fall: Whenever you would take damage from a fall, you may make a Reflex save (DC = 10 + 1 per 10 feet of effective falling distance for determining fall damage). If you succeed on this Reflex save, you bounce off of the ground as you hit it, converting some of the impact of your fall into a little bit of vertical and horizontal momentum; you treat the distance you fell as though it were 10 feet less than it actually was. (This falling damage reduction is applied as a result of successfully performing the ukemi, and so is not factored into the DC). You may attempt to deliberately land in a prone position so that you can use the first ukemi technique to negate actually ending up prone and reduce the damage sustained by 6; this is seldom a good idea, though, as it may prevent you from using abilities that can reduce your effective fall distance (such as slow fall and Catfall).

Example: Since this is a complex feat with many applications, it may need several examples:

• Negate Prone (Reflex save already allowed): Let's say you get knocked prone by Earth Reaver, a 5th-level spell that does 4d6 fire damage and 3d6 bludgeoning damage, and also knocks subjects prone. It allows a Reflex save to negate being knocked prone (though not to negate the damage; then again, its damage output is rather low for its level). Since earth reaver is a 5th-level spell, its base DC is 15, and its minimum spellcasting score is 15, which grants a +2 bonus. Let's say earth reaver is being cast by a wizard with 20 Intelligence (enough to cast epic/10th-level spells, and more importantly, bestowing an ability modifier of +5), so the spell's save DC is 20. If you fail your Reflex save to avoid being knocked prone, but you have Ukemi, you can attempt a second Reflex save against a DC of 25 to avoid being knocked prone after all. Success on either Reflex save also reduces the damage you take by 6 (even though the spell normally doesn't allow a successful save to reduce the damage).

• Negate Prone (Knocked prone by attack roll w/o damage): Let's say you get tripped by a wolf, and its attack roll on the trip attempt was 21. Your Reflex save DC to negate being knocked prone is 11.

• Spring Off Wall: Let's say that a Setting Sun master uses comet throw to throw you into a wall. He beats you by 16 on the opposed check, so he gets to throw you 25 feet. You collide with the wall after traveling 15 feet, so you have 10 feet of movement left. Therefore, you must succeed on a Reflex save against a DC of 20 to bounce off of the wall and negate the damage that you and the wall would otherwise take. However, even if you succeed on your ukemi attempt, you do not negate the 4d6 damage that you take from the comet throw itself.

As a side note, you can't attempt an ukemi when a Setting Sun adept trips you to perform a throw, as he performs the throw before you actually wind up prone. You would instead attempt the ukemi when you land, assuming that you don't get thrown into a wall or another creature (in that case, you would first attempt to spring off the wall/creature, and then make an attempt to negate falling prone if your attempt to spring off the wall/creature failed). Ballista throw doesn't allow you to perform an ukemi in response to being thrown into another creature, as the maneuver causes you to be thrown right through said creature, without losing your momentum, and continue traveling out to 60 ft. away. You may perform an ukemi to negate falling prone when your movement stops, as you fall prone at that point.Normal: You can't react to a collision with the ground or a wall to stay on your feet and reduce the impact.Special: Regardless of how you use it, the ukemi technique requires the use of your hands to perform. If you have multiple pairs of hands, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Ukemi-granted Reflex saves per extra pair of hands (for instance, a girallion would get a +2 bonus, and a marilith would get a +4 bonus). If you have an incomplete extra pair of hands (i.e. only 1 extra hand), it only gives you a +1 bonus. If you have only 1 hand free, you take a −4 penalty to Ukemi-granted Reflex saves. You cannot use Ukemi if you have no hands free, and if you don't have any hands at all, you can't even take this feat.

Size bonuses and penalties to attack rolls and Armor Class are also applied to Ukemi-granted Reflex saves. The larger you are, the more difficult it is to perform this technique.

When you attempt an ukemi, you've already been knocked prone (an ukemi is performed by converting the force of the impact with the ground into momentum that is immediately used to leap back to your feet). Therefore, an ukemi does not benefit from any stability-related bonuses (such as a dwarf's resistance to being overrun).

Ukemi can be taken as a fighter bonus feat.

Tome of Battle (Book of Nine Swords)

Spell Compendium