[sblock=Climbing]
The following is copied from the Players Handbook:
Climb
Make an Athletics check to climb up or down a surface. Different circumstances and surfaces make climbing easier or harder.
Climb: Part of a move action.
✦Success: You climb at one-half your speed. When you climb to reach the top of a surface, such as when you climb out of a pit, the distance to reach the top includes allowing you to arrive in the square adjacent to the surface. The last square of movement places you on that square.
✦Fail by 4 or Less: You stay where you started and lose the rest of your move action, but you don’t fall. You can try again as part of a move action.
✦Fail by 5 or More: You fall (see “Falling,” page 284) and lose the rest of your move action.
✦Grant Combat Advantage: While you are climbing, all enemies have combat advantage against you.
✦Uses Movement: Count the number of squares you climb as part of your move.
✦Taking Damage: If you take damage while climbing, you must make a Climb check using the DC for the surface you’re climbing. If that damage makes you
bloodied, increase the DC by 5. If you fail the check, you fall from your current height. If you try to catch hold when you fall, add the damage you take to the
DC to catch yourself.
✦Catch Hold: If you fall while climbing, you can make an Athletics check as a free action to catch hold of something to stop your fall. The base DC to catch hold of something is the DC of the surface you were climbing plus 5, modified by circumstances. You can make one check to catch hold. If you fail, you can’t
try again unless the DM rules otherwise.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Lo-Kag] The DC for the stone shaft is 10. Both rolls were successes, so that means that you can move 1/2 speed 2 times during the climb. Due to your armor's propery, you can choose to use a minor action to give yourself a -1 AC and from then on (until you spend another minor action) you can ignore the speed penalty of your armor. This would mean that you could use two move actions to climb (as you have done) which allows you to move at 1/2 speed on a successful check (which both were). This would mean you climbed down 3 squares out of 4 (20ft drop; 5ft per square) on the first roll, and you could then drop to the ground (just a 5ft drop, no damage). This would leave you with another move action to move out of the shaft and into the basement. If you do NOT take the -1 penalty to AC, you will suffer the speed penalty and only be able to move 2 squares down on the first success. This means that you can climb down 2 squares, then jump down 2 squares, taking 1d10 damage from the fall, then you could use another move action to enter the basement, OR you could use your second move action to continue climbing and land at the bottom of the shaft taking 0 damage (since you will not have fallen).
Choice is yours to make [/sblock]