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Armor check penalty is applied to Jump checks (Acrobatics in Pathfinder).
For each 10ft of speed below 30ft a character suffers a penalty of -6 (-4 in Pathfinder) to jump checks.
Wearing medium or heavy armor reduces a character's speed.

Does a character jumping in medium or heavy armor suffer both penalties? (i.e. armor check penalty and penalty from reduced speed)

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Some creatures, such as Dwarves, do not suffer from speed reduction when they were armors. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 18:15

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In 3.5, yes, the character does. Difficult to prove a negative, but quite simply, nothing says they don’t. And the penalties do not share a type.1

  1. Penalties aren’t really supposed to be typed in the first place, actually. The rules are unclear what you do with them when they happen. Nonetheless, a few typed penalties do exist; I recommend simply ignoring the types in such cases as they should have been removed during editing and their publication was in error.

In Pathfinder, however, the wording states “base land speed” in reference to taking penalties.

Base land speed is your unencumbered speed. Base land speed is calculated by applying all modifiers to your character’s speed with the exception of armor or encumbrance adjustments or any effect that modifies your “normal speed”.

So armor slowing you down wouldn’t count as part of your base land speed, and thus would not resulting in penalties to Acrobatics checks made to jump.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I think Pathfinder may be different: "Creatures with a base land speed below 30 feet receive a –4 racial bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump for every 10 feet of their speed below 30 feet" (emphasis mine), plus the description at the beginning says, "The only Acrobatics modifiers that apply are those concerning the surface you are jumping from" (y'know, except exceptions like that one, obviously). However, in 3.5e I penalize any creature's Jump checks for low speed no matter the lowered speed's source. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Oct 16, 2017 at 20:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ @HeyICanChan Huh, weird. Didn’t realize that they’d changed that. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Commented Oct 16, 2017 at 21:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Ah, that quote about base land speed is what I was missing! \$\endgroup\$ Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 7:04

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