Does the Acrobatics skill have any use in combat?

I'd always believed that a successful Acrobatics test let you jump over something as part of a movement Half action, so I'd taken it for some parkour skills

Sadly, I've been informed by my GM that it's apparently a Full action to simply jump over a bar (you know, those things barmen stand behind and hide weapons in?), a fact making this skill seem much more pointless - why would anyone invest in something that you'll almost always choose not to use? Isn't just shooting people generally better?

I know that it can be combined with the Assassin strike talent. Are there any other similar things that make use of the Acrobatics skill?

Edit: This is from a powergamer's perspective of course. I'm playing someone whose hobbies involve dancing and martial arts, so I took it mostly for background reasons. I'm just trying to see if I just "wasted" XP, and if it's worth improving it to +20 like I'd planned.

With a successful acrobatics check you can disengage as a half action. I guess you could disengage to 1m and then shoot at point blank range? Haven't tried this combo though.

You can fall further and use acrobatics for jumping instead of agility. Also think that the talent catfall might have some synergies.

Depends on you and your GM honestly. Our group had an assassin that got some really good mileage out of Acrobatics. Doing stuff like leaping off a bridge onto a moving vehicle, vaulting off a guy's back to get to the guy behind him, springing themselves up and out of a trench. Yeah, my GM treated it a lot like a general "parkour" skill, with an added bonus of being able to pull off Hollywood maneuvers. Once he also allowed the Assassin to use an Acrobatics test to make her harder to hit (similarly to running) on the basic idea that she was moving so erratically that the enemy had trouble getting a bead on her.

If you have a flexible GM that is happy to let you try out cool maneuvers in battle, then it's pretty useful, but it probably does require a flexible GM to do it.

Pretty sure RAW if you spend your action to jump over the bar that'd put you in melee engagement with the barman, so he couldn't shoot at you (unless it's a pistol). Not the action movie badassery you wanted, but there it is.

In my group, the distance you cover with your jump is part of your movement for the round, unless jumping down. So if you're on one side of the bar jumping over, that's just a portion of a half-action move. If you are across the room, it may be a full move.

The rules for drop clips also prescribe a given "fall speed" per round, I think it's 10 or 20m. Freefalling up to 20m should be no more than a half action regardless of pass/fail on the acrobatics test. If you're playing in a Hive, verticality can easily become a factor. Catfall can make potentially lethal maneuvers tactically viable.

I've made good use of the Disengage+Shoot tactic. Especially good if you can pull a grenade via Quick Draw or a Tac vest, get out of a hairy melee and make others regret being there.

Pretty sure RAW if you spend your action to jump over the bar that'd put you in melee engagement with the barman, so he couldn't shoot at you (unless it's a pistol). Not the action movie badassery you wanted, but there it is.

Yeah... At least my nice GM ruled that his miss was caused by my acrobatics making it hard to aim - which is cinematic enough for me if I think about it (the loss of a turn was quite inconvenient tactically in the end, but anyway...)

In my group, the distance you cover with your jump is part of your movement for the round, unless jumping down. So if you're on one side of the bar jumping over, that's just a portion of a half-action move. If you are across the room, it may be a full move.

Is that a houserule? My past group played it like that, but seeing as I couldn't produce a page reference I didn't really try to argue the point with my new GM (who's a cool guy btw, but I don't know him well so I don't want to start an argument without proof for next time I try that).

In one of the last games, the GM made me do a tough acrobatics test to jump off a staircase and hit the ground running. If it really is ONLY a full action, it takes some of the fun and usefulness out of it, plus acolytes deserve to be able to pull off a cinematic move....sometimes, otherwise hilariously fail.

Honestly, we didn't read over the section too carefully. Let me do that now...

The section for Climbing lists that a simple climb performed under duress requires a Challenging Strength/Athletics test. Success on the test indicates that you can climb "at a rate of one-half your half-move speed", plus one meter per DoS. Because an Athletics test is required, jumping back over to Athletics test, such tests are a Full Action unless specified otherwise. Lame. Being gracious, I would say that "at a rate" indicates your Full Move rate, thus allowing you to complete a climb as part of a half-move if the height of the climb is less than half of your "climb rate" as determined by the test.

TLDR (house/RAI); When you climb, make an Athletics test. Your half movement speed for that climb is AB/4 +.5 per DoS. RAW, your full movement speed is AB/2 +1 per DoS.

Leaping is explicitly listed as a Full Action, but the inclusion of a 'running start' in the description of the action leads me to believe it is a special type of Run or Full Move that includes the leap at some point during the move. Notably, a running Vertical Jump is the only Leap/Jump that explicitly ends the turn on landing. Other Leaps/Jumps I would interpret could be used in mid-move if there is additional run distance remaining after the leap.