Terrain

Several types of terrain can complicate your movement by slowing you down, damaging you, or endangering you.

Difficult Terrain

Difficult terrain is any terrain that impedes your movement, ranging from particularly rough or unstable surfaces to thick ground cover and countless other impediments. Moving into a square of difficult terrain (or moving 5 feet into or within an area of difficult terrain, if you’re not using a grid) costs an extra 5 feet of movement. Moving into a square of greater difficult terrain instead costs 10 additional feet of movement. This additional cost is not increased when moving diagonally. You can’t Step into difficult terrain.

Movement that you make while you are jumping ignores the terrain that you’re jumping over. Some abilities (such as flight or being incorporeal) allow you to avoid the movement reduction from some types of difficult terrain. Certain other abilities let you ignore difficult terrain on foot; such an ability also allows you to move through greater difficult terrain at the normal movement cost as for difficult terrain, though it wouldn’t let you ignore greater difficult terrain unless the ability specifies otherwise.

Hazardous Terrain

Hazardous terrain damages you whenever you move through it. An acid pool and a pit of burning embers are both examples of hazardous terrain. The amount and type of damage depend on the specific hazardous terrain.

Narrow Surfaces

A narrow surface is so precariously thin that you need to Balance (see athletics) or risk falling. Even on a success, you are flat-footed on a narrow surface. Each time that you are hit by an attack or fail a defence check on a narrow surface, the surface makes an attack against your Dexterity defence with an attack bonus equal to the DC minus 10. On a hit, you fall.

Uneven Ground

Uneven ground is an area unsteady enough that you need to Balance (see athletics) or risk falling prone and possibly injuring yourself, depending on the specifics of the uneven ground. You are flat-footed on uneven ground. Each time you are hit by an attack or fail a defence check on uneven ground, the surface makes an attack against your Dexterity defence with an attack bonus equal to the DC minus 10. On a hit, you fall prone.

Inclines

An incline is an area so steep that you need to Climb using the athletics skill in order to progress upward. You’re flat-footed when Climbing an incline.