D&D 5E Climbing a tower rules 5e

Nebulous

Legend

• Feb 6, 2021

• #1

Yeah, I should know this by now, but it came up the other day and stumped the group. They wanted to throw a grappling hook on a knotted rope 80 feet up and snag a small window they'd broken. We were trying to figure out how much the knotted rope would help, but the best we could find was that a magic rope of climbing gives you advantage on the climb check. Fine. So I said your grappling hook knotted rope does the same thing. You climb half speed, so to get that far up would be three checks. The tricky part was setting the DC. I said 12, but maybe that was too high with the knotted rope. The fat dwarf cleric wants to climb up too and the player (my brother) wants it easy peasy it's so easy. DC 5 is he thinks is reasonable. Which, I guess back in 3.x a knotted rope does drop the DC to 5. Maybe I should have said DC 8 or 10. I wanted some difficulty of climbing up 80 feet. Failure wouldn't mean you fall, it means you don't make progress and have to make another check.

The fat dwarf had Athletics +5. The rogue only had Athletics +1. They ended up trying something else because it seemed too dangerous to climb a knotted rope that high up.

How should I have handled this better?

 

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iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Feb 6, 2021

• #2

You probably didn't have to ask for ability checks in the first place. Unless there's a difficult situation the PCs encounter while climbing, then climbing is just a factor of their speed. If, however, they were attempting to climb a sheer or slippery cliff, avoid hazards while scaling a wall, or cling to a surface while something is trying to knock them off, there's really no need for a check in my view. In this case, given the context you provided, they were simply climbing a knotted rope with no added complications.

Knowing that they had to make several checks to accomplish this task, the players made the right decision as I see it to avoid climbing this tower at all.

 

DEFCON 1

Legend

Supporter

• Feb 6, 2021

• #3

Failure meaning you don't fall you only don't progress is a pointless hindrance unless the group is under time pressure. If there is no chance of falling, then it doesn't matter how many checks it takes for them to finish climbing. They'll just do so.

In this particular case... you just needed to ask yourself what you wanted to happen? Did you want them to climb but possibly fall and get hurt? If that's the case, then sure, have them make checks. If you didn't want them to get hurt from falling but DID want them to get through the window, then don't even bother with checks and just say that over X amount of time, all of the party can get up into the window.

 

DEFCON 1

Legend

Supporter

• Feb 6, 2021

• #4

Another option would be to tell them that they will eventually be able to make it, but the amount of time it takes for them all to climb might draw attention to them or allow more enemies to get into place. At which point you could have them make a series of checks and how many it would take for each PC to roll the DC you set would determine how long it took and what they would find once they got up through the window.

 

cmad1977

Hero

• Feb 6, 2021

• #5

Ok!
So what I would do here is... maybe... not roll much at all.
Maybe the first person(the athletic one), needs to make a climb check to get up high enough and plant the hook. Then I’d just let the rest of the group climb up and move on. Unless there are guards they need to avoid or some hazard other than randomly rolling a 1.

On the whole though I think lowering the DC to make a climb with a rope the way I would do it. With advantage/disadvantage coming into play when other circumstances arrive in the moment:

 

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Feb 6, 2021

• #6

Something to consider as well is why you're making judgments as to feasibility of action and DCs based on some other game. This isn't helpful and, in many cases, is harmful to the game experience. I recommend treating any edition of D&D as a separate and distinct game and avoid dragging assumptions from one game into another. The games just work better this way in my experience.

 

Nebulous

Legend

• Feb 6, 2021

• #7

iserith said:

Something to consider as well is why you're making judgments as to feasibility of action and DCs based on some other game. This isn't helpful and, in many cases, is harmful to the game experience. I recommend treating any edition of D&D as a separate and distinct game and avoid dragging assumptions from one game into another. The games just work better this way in my experience.

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Because my brother kept bringing it and his insistence on 3.x rules, which was only complicating stuff in my brain. I wanted a CHANCE of falling, that's all. Not instant success but enough to make you think twice. They had no time constraints and no immediate guards.

 

Nebulous

Legend

• Feb 6, 2021

• #8

I think I should have just lowered the DC considerably, but I guess even the rogue was disappointed that his "climb walls" ability was +1, but that's his PC build.

 

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Feb 6, 2021

• #9

Nebulous said:

Because my brother kept bringing it and his insistence on 3.x rules, which was only complicating stuff in my brain. I wanted a CHANCE of falling, that's all. Not instant success but enough to make you think twice. They had no time constraints and no immediate guards.

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So in D&D 5e unless there's an actual complication to the climbing, the PCs just succeed. So if you want there to be something to overcome here, you need to establish it when describing the environment: dangerous razorvine growing up the tower's walls, strong winds that cause the PCs to sway precariously while climbing, or someone pouring pots of boiling oil or water on the PCs. Stuff like that.

 

Nebulous

Legend

• Feb 6, 2021

• #10

iserith said:

So in D&D 5e unless there's an actual complication to the climbing, the PCs just succeed. So if you want there to be something to overcome here, you need to establish it when describing the environment: dangerous razorvine growing up the tower's walls, strong winds that cause the PCs to sway precariously while climbing, or someone pouring pots of boiling oil or water on the PCs. Stuff like that.

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Just to clarify then, gravity and height don't count as difficulty? What about a single check then just to see if they have the strength to make it up.