Climb, Jump, Swim...

[Ealli]

I will soon start an Eberron campaign where all the players are part of the crew of a pirate's ship. I combined Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim and Tumble into what I called "Acrotics". I wanted it to be a must have skill for all players. I'm eager to see if it's too much skills combined or if it's just right.

I strongly suspect that most players will initially put points into Acrotics for Tumble. That's the skill the players know will be able to be used. The one other issue with your conglomeration, who gets Acrotics as a class skill? Balance and Tumble are class skills for only three of the original 11 classes, while the other three are in the 6 to 7 range.

 

[monboesen]

I don't seem to see these skills actually used all that often when I run or play D&D.

Amazing how games can differ. Those skills have been used in just about every gaming session we have had.

Characters jumping on top of tables, climbing houses or scaling cliffs, swimming due to toppled boats roaring rivers etc.


Where do your adventures usually take place?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

This thread makes me want to run a rooftop chase next game...

 

[kaomera]

Amazing how games can differ. Those skills have been used in just about every gaming session we have had.

Characters jumping on top of tables, climbing houses or scaling cliffs, swimming due to toppled boats roaring rivers etc.

Where do your adventures usually take place?

When I DM they take place in a variety of locations, but mostly ruins and/or cities. I have tried setting up encounters to encourage using these sorts of skills, but often the players will find ways to avoid making checks. Much like Orryn Emrys I prefer not to make them roll really trivial checks (especially when only a natural one would be a failure). I'm also pretty lenient about allowing partial success. I've told the players this (because they really haven't had much in the way of chances to see it in action), and yet they will still go out of their way to avoid such checks and/or use up magic circumventing them. (And sometimes they're just idiots and will refuse to have characters with +17 Jump modifiers make DC20 checks to get out of constant missile fire... )

As a player I'd say about 80% of all encounters are in dungeons, and most of the rest of play doesn't involve the dice at all (perhaps the odd Bluff or Diplomacy check). At least one group I've played in really did a lot to encourage avoiding Climb and Jump checks, as just about every failed check ended up with a dead PC (and the DM, of course, seemed to enjoy encouraging us to roll for it anyway). In one other (tangential, but related, case) I've played with a DM who expected every character to have 4 ranks in Ride. If you did, then you could do just about anything on a horse, no rolls needed. If not, then the DM would go out of his way to create situations where you would have to get on a horse, and would then promptly have it throw you off.

Personally I'm looking for some sort of a middle ground where it's not overly expensive to get good at Climbin', Jumpin', etc., but there will still be characters who are better or worse at it. I also like RFisher's idea about partial successes, I'm just not sure how to write it up as an actual rule.

 

[RFisher]

I have tried setting up encounters to encourage using these sorts of skills, but often the players will find ways to avoid making checks.

Which is good!

One of the key moments for me & RPGs, I think, is when I finally realized that you want to avoid rolling dice as much as possible.

(especially when only a natural one would be a failure)

I don't care for the nat1=auto failure on skill checks. (& that doesn't apply to skill checks by the book anyway, right?)

I also like RFisher's idea about partial successes, I'm just not sure how to write it up as an actual rule.

Yeah. Me too.

 

[Ranger REG]

So I picked up the new Star Wars Saga edition (d20) last week... I'm not finished reading through the whole thing, but it works on a somewhat slimmed-down d20 system. One of the specific things that was done was to combine similar skills so that there are now only 19 of them, even with new stuff like Endurance, Initiative, and Use The Force...

One thing that struck me right away was that the skills Climb, Jump, and Swim where all still there, as separate entries. This seemed a bit odd to me, and I wondered why they where not combined into an Athletics skill or the like.

It's the most frequent topic debate these days. I personally prefer to keep them separate. Not many climbers are good swimmers, and not many jumpers are good climbers. Take into account some of the creature's traits that aren't bipedal humanoids (like a narwhal), and the fact that the Athletic skill will be the only Str-based skill among the skill group, make sense to leave them with options.

 

[Klaus]

I prefer them (and Hide/Move Silently and Listen/Spot) to be separate skills. Far more different than, say, Diplomacy/Bluff or Search/Spot or Disable Device/Open Locks.

And by the way, the current world record for a long jump can be met by a result of 27, with a running start. I guess Jump is overpowered, eh?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I would suggest that you re-read the take ten and take 20 section in the PHB. Start with the example for take ten--Krusk climbing a cliff and read on. You'll find that you can take ten regardless of the consequences for failure. What prevents taking ten are either explicit rules in the book (such as for Use Magic Device) or threats/distractions (comparable to goblins firing arrows at you from the top of the cliff you are climbing). Absent those factors, you can take ten. And it's usually a good idea to do so.

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the rules provide that a botched check on even a marginally easy roll can lead to catastrophic results, and the rules don't allow characters to "take 10" if there is a consequence for failure, if an action like this isn't really difficult (particularly if a Take 10 would succeed), I don't require rolls. Generally speaking, I don't want a pointless fall or miss to kill a character. If the scenario requires tension, on the other hand... like it's in the middle of a chase or a fight...

Well, that's a different story.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I tend to agree that these skills don't really add much to my games. (Be they 3e or another system with such skills.) I expect all PCs to be roughly competent at all of them. I'm not interested enough in variation in these areas to bother with.

But...to the "save or suck" aspect: I've been trying to use die rolls more often to determine partial success v. complete success (or no progress v. progress) rather than success v. failure.

For example: A successful jump roll might mean the PC is on the other side of a pit. A failed roll, that they're now dangling from the far edge.

I also like RFisher's idea about partial successes, I'm just not sure how to write it up as an actual rule.

Curiously enough, the core rules actually offer a mechanism for these partial successes.

A Climb check that fails by 4 or less means that you make no progress, and one that fails by 5 or more means that you fall from whatever height you have already attained.

Long Jump: A long jump is a horizontal jump, made across a gap like a chasm or stream. At the midpoint of the jump, you attain a vertical height equal to one-quarter of the horizontal distance. The DC for the jump is equal to the distance jumped (in feet).

If your check succeeds, you land on your feet at the far end. If you fail the check by less than 5, you don’t clear the distance, but you can make a DC 15 Reflex save to grab the far edge of the gap. You end your movement grasping the far edge. If that leaves you dangling over a chasm or gap, getting up requires a move action and a DC 15 Climb check.

Check: Make a Swim check once per round while you are in the water. Success means you may swim at up to one-half your speed (as a full-round action) or at one-quarter your speed (as a move action). If you fail by 4 or less, you make no progress through the water. If you fail by 5 or more, you go underwater.

 

[kaomera]

[QUOTEk]Curiously enough, the core rules actually offer a mechanism for these partial successes.[/QUOTE]
That's true, but I don't think it's quite what I'm looking for. I would have to find some way to ensure that no such check could be failed by 5 or more. The problem is that falling / uh... falling... / drowning just isn't much fun. Swim is probably the least troublesome of the lot, as you can manage several failures and still be "in the race" to a lesser or greater degree.

I suppose that one option for Climb checks would be to make them opposed checks. At least that would work in cases where you where racing someone. And it is pretty rare, at least at level 4 (or so) and above, to be climbing where a spill would mean instant death. (I guess I'm perhaps a bit more gunshy, personally, of Climb than I'd like to be... I had a tendency in AD&D to play Thieves, and one DM in particular liked to throw tons of 20' deep open pits at us... Climb up and down enough of those and you'll fall a bit...)

Jump is more problematic. I think one possibility for encouraging Jump (and Climb) checks would be to have the DCs more obvious to the players. Possibly record them on the table somehow (easy on a battlemat, since I've switched to Dungeon Tiles I'm not sure...). However, there are going to be far more cases where the PCs are going to be jumping across drops that could cause serious problems. Not only is there falling damage, but it also splits the party up, quite possibly in combat.

I'll admit I'm kind of lazy about taking 10 / taking 20. If I think something is within reason I usually just decide how much time it should take instead of assigning a normal DC (assuming no distractions, etc). That might be part of the issue, as I'm not sure players really "feel it" as much if they don't get to roll the dice, but at the same time they tend to not value anything from non-combat play as much as they do from stuff that involves a fight...

Ideally I'd like an option that will let the players roll dice during combat, give them a meaningful bonus for success (and probably a noticeable, but not crippling, penalty for failing), allow them to get positive circumstance modifiers for good thinking / planning, not slow down the game too much, encourage cool descriptions / action scenes, and that the players will voluntarily attempt, rather than having to force it on them.

(Because I'm pretty sure that "There's a ten-foot wide, twenty-foot deep pit in the corridor. You need to either jump across or one of the Thieves will have to climb down and then back up so you can get your portable rope-bridge set up..." wasn't really all that cool back in 1979... Sorry, Jeffy!!! )