Unsatisfied with the D&D 5e skill system

Fenris-77 · May 17, 2019

'Tenacious' players can get out of my living room. Any RPG relies on some good faith communication back and forth between the GM and players. If, as the GM, I set expectations about how to approach stating and adjudicating actions and a player is willfully and continually ignoring those instructions and expectations then he's going to find another game. GMs need to remember that they set the expectations for game play, not the players. Ideally the conversation about how things were going to work would have been handled in session zero so that misunderstandings were few and far between, and everyone got to say their piece, but if things have deteriorated or gotten out of hand it's on the GM to may down the expectations and the players to do their best to comply.

GMMichael · May 18, 2019

Sabathius42 said:
you were in the middle of free climbing and had to choose a body for the ascent would you choose....

A) 1st level weakling with no Athletics Proficiency
B) 20th level max-STR barbarian

Obviously B, because you would have a way less chance of falling to your death.

My copy of the PHB says that a failure means you make no progress or you make progress with a setback. That's hardly "falling to your death."

Saeviomagy said:
the reality is that if free climbing was as dangerous as 5th ed makes it, neither they nor I would have chosen to commence the climb in the first place.

You are now safe to resume climbing, Saev.

Saeviomagy · May 20, 2019

DMMike said:
My copy of the PHB says that a failure means you make no progress or you make progress with a setback. That's hardly "falling to your death."

So it's now not actually possible to fall while climbing, is that what you're saying? That doesn't seem satisfactory either!

GMMichael · May 20, 2019

Saeviomagy said:
So it's now not actually possible to fall while climbing, is that what you're saying? That doesn't seem satisfactory either!

Good question. I suppose that the answer is that falling is one interpretation of "no progress." I don't think that free-climbing is a very good example though, because who looks at a climb-or-die cliff and says "hmm, the only solution must be to start climbing!"

For what it's worth: in the Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts gets stuck on a climb-or-die cliff face. He doesn't fall, but he loses a LOT of distance between himself and Buttercup. I'd say he failed his climb roll, there.

aco175 · May 20, 2019

I tend to use the old methods I have seen where if you fail by 5 or more you have a problem, like falling. If you fail by less than 5 you make no progress or suffer a problem making other checks more difficult. For climbing I may have a DC of 15 and if someone fails by rolling a 8 they may fall, but I allow a Dex or Str check to grab something on the way down and only take 1d6 damage. If you fail a lot of checks you may have problems, but generally you get a couple checks to not fail completely. I may even have some monsters come if you keep not making progress. I had skeletons climbing behind the PCs once and they needed to assist the others. I think the thief was using his bonus action to grant advantage to the mages climb check by setting pins in the wall. This also made the skeletons have advantage until the thief went to take them out.

iserith · May 20, 2019

aco175 said:
I tend to use the old methods I have seen where if you fail by 5 or more you have a problem, like falling. If you fail by less than 5 you make no progress or suffer a problem making other checks more difficult. For climbing I may have a DC of 15 and if someone fails by rolling a 8 they may fall, but I allow a Dex or Str check to grab something on the way down and only take 1d6 damage. If you fail a lot of checks you may have problems, but generally you get a couple checks to not fail completely. I may even have some monsters come if you keep not making progress. I had skeletons climbing behind the PCs once and they needed to assist the others. I think the thief was using his bonus action to grant advantage to the mages climb check by setting pins in the wall. This also made the skeletons have advantage until the thief went to take them out.

This is supported by the "Degrees of Failure" rules in the DMG, page 242. What is old is new again!

5ekyu · May 21, 2019

DMMike said:
Good question. I suppose that the answer is that falling is one interpretation of "no progress." I don't think that free-climbing is a very good example though, because who looks at a climb-or-die cliff and says "hmm, the only solution must be to start climbing!"

For what it's worth: in the Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts gets stuck on a climb-or-die cliff face. He doesn't fall, but he loses a LOT of distance between himself and Buttercup. I'd say he failed his climb roll, there.

Yup, "you make it a bit farther but then..." some degree of problems arise. I tend to go with a few escalating style problems before I get to free fall. Slip down a distance, drop gear, get to bad spot with disadvantage to continue or you can backtrack to new line, etc.

Things like free falling I tend to hold back until they have disadvantage and then continue anyway. I have tended to show early on to my players that disadvantaged checks is asking for not just failure but bad to worst setbacks and outcomes too.

Saeviomagy · May 22, 2019

iserith said:
This is supported by the "Degrees of Failure" rules in the DMG, page 242. What is old is new again!

Right... and in this case, our max-level, max-strength, trained in climbing figher (edit - argh, barbarian succeeds automatically!) can feel confident that he can attempt a moderate climb and not risk death! Effectively reducing DCs by 5 feels better than where DCs are currently, because it brings results into the 'cannot possibly fail' region more often, but it's still an across the board change that requires the DM to do a lot more than is written into typical skill checks, and will still often be invisible.

GreyLord · May 22, 2019

The Climb would also depend on how hard it is to scale that particular cliff.

Perhaps a portion of the cliff would be relatively easy for a climber so the DC is 5.

Then a portion is still relatively easy for a climber so that would have a roll of a DC 10. This means that max level max STR barbarian would still basically not even need to roll if we hold it in that fashion.

Then a DC 15 would be something that was particularly challenging...and a DC20 is the one that no reasonable free climber would actually risk as it's too risky.

iserith · May 22, 2019

Saeviomagy said:
Right... and in this case, our max-level, max-strength, trained in climbing barbarian can feel confident that he can attempt a moderate climb and not risk death! Effectively reducing DCs by 5 feels better than where DCs are currently, because it brings results into the 'cannot possibly fail' region more often, but it's still an across the board change that requires the DM to do a lot more than is written into typical skill checks, and will still often be invisible.

Well, the good news is that climbing in D&D 5e is a factor of speed and ability checks are only necessary if there's something about the climb that makes it uncertain, such as a slippery vertical surface or few handholds.