Is it just me or is the spell Rope Trick kind of absurd?

Mistwell · Jan 3, 2019

I agree with everyone else, cut a 3 foot length of rope and cast the spell on it. The rope rises to it's length for a total of three feet off the ground. Crouch, crawl forward, stand up, sit on interior of rope trick and stand up in it. No strenuous activity involved. When you near the end of the hour, step down out of the portal, and you're done.

There used to be a requirement that it be a long piece of rope during the playtest but they changed it in the final rules to say it can be less than a full length rope - so we know it was an intentional change.

There is no reason for these silly pedantic games that the duration of the spell or activity involved in climbing the rope somehow make a short rest not possible. The spell is, and always was, intended to allow for a short rest without these silly shenanigans.

iserith · Jan 3, 2019

GMforPowergamers said:
I am going to assume you never had to deal with a grade school gym class then... because I can even today lift and carry 100+lbs (and have had to) but I can't climb a rope...I could not at 8 or 15, and now at more then double that still can't... anyone even with a 16 str (lets just assume the whole party doesn't have 16+str) has a hard time doing it under the best of conditions...and if someone has an 11 or less (god forbid the 8) it should be almost impossible.

I don't find arguments like this persuasive when we have the rules of the game explaining how to handle this situation quite clearly.

Gladius Legis · Jan 3, 2019

GMforPowergamers said:
LOL...omg you think climbing a rope is as easy as walking down a hall... again I ask, did you not have rope climb torture in grade and middle school???

Now I don't think I would assign a super high DC to climb it...but let me look at climb DCs in book...

and I can't find any...so I guess climbing both is and isn't an athletics check... So I will go by my own experience here and say you can't climb a rope untrained, but trained it is a DC 10ish

1) We're talking about D&D and the rules of D&D. Not "real life." So your personal rope-climbing anecdotes are irrelevant.

2) Even if you wanted to base a mystical DC on "real life," this is a magic spell. Which, shocker, doesn't exist in real life. Assuming the rope is magically easy for anyone of any strength to climb isn't any more of a stretch than using the same level of spell slot to teleport 30 feet.

Imaculata · Jan 3, 2019

Mort said:
2. The party has to climb up to 60' of rope (regular presumably not knotted rope, and don't you even think of using a rope ladder though interestingly, rope isn't part of the material component) to get into the darned thing! If it's not near a wall, that's not easy!

The player-characters are presumably hardened adventurers, to whom climbing a simple unknotted rope is probably a piece of cake.

Yunru · Jan 3, 2019

Who says the rope has to be straight? The only restriction i on the length of rope. Have a rope ladder.

Oofta · Jan 3, 2019

Yunru said:
Who says the rope has to be straight? The only restriction i on the length of rope. Have a rope ladder.

Most people should even be able to climb a simple knotted rope. Well, assuming they aren't office monkeys who go from sitting at a desk all day to sitting on a couch.

Or it's just a magic rope. Grab on to it and it pulls you up effortlessly. The climb DC is effectively 0 because none is mentioned in the spell.

Unless there are extenuating circumstances like doing a rope trick during a hurricane, I've never seen anyone ask for a check.

Satyrn · Jan 3, 2019

Saelorn said:
It is a good example of how the book isn't written with exacting technical precision, at least. If you assume that it's supposed to let you rest, and RAW says you can't actually use it to rest, then it should give you a better sense of how to interpret things.

Truth.

This is why I find that arguing RAW in 5e is what's truly absurd.

The Crimson Binome · Jan 3, 2019

Gladius Legis said:
Assuming the rope is magically easy for anyone of any strength to climb isn't any more of a stretch than using the same level of spell slot to teleport 30 feet.

No, it's not, for reasons that extend back decades.

Wizards can do anything, because magic isn't real. Fighters can only do what we imagine is plausible for a person to do, because everything a fighter does is based in reality. It may not be true, but that's how the game has been designed since the beginning, and that's what players are willing to accept. It's a major design roadblock, which continues to divide the player-base.

An invisible magical pocket dimension can behave however we want it to behave, because it's magic. Teleportation can work however, because it's magic. A 30' rope is constrained by what it means to be a 30' rope, though.

Umbran · Jan 3, 2019

James Grover said:
Why climb a rope? I am guessing it is in theme with the snake-charmer trick, but otherwise I see no justification for the methods. Why not just make the extra-dimensional space in a wall or the floor?

Because if you put it on ground level, and someone sits a gelatinous cube at the entrance, you are well and truly hosed.

And of course it is absurd! This is the game that gave you flumphs, and gun-toting space hippos!

MaximusArael020 · Jan 4, 2019

Rope trick has great utility beyond the handwaved Short Rest variety.

Need to sneak about a museum after hours? Cast Rope Trick right before closing and you can pop out once the initial guard search is over!

Your mistress's husband comes home early? Rope Trick!

Invite a special "guy friend" to your tree house for activities, but realize you don't have one? ROPE TRICK

The big question is... Can you rope trick underwater: does the extra-dimensional space fill with water or is it kept dry?