D&D 5E Climbing a tower rules 5e

[DND_Reborn]

It is pretty simple. If a 6 year old can learn to do it within 5 minutes, I think Aragorn can do it with ease.

Yeah, ok, and yet lots of kids and teenagers in school still have problems with it.

The player characters are more than just the sum of their ability score. They are the heroes. The main characters of the story. They are not some random farmer... and even if they were, a farmer would definitely be able to climb a rope 100% of the time. Lots of upper arm strength and all.

Sure, I already addressed that. But the fact is the numbers are the numbers. A PC with STR 10, no proficiency in Athletics, and a background as a Sage shouldn't be able to climb 100% of the time. As I said, hand-wave it away if you want--your choice.

Which is ludicrous! Do people fail at climbing ropes that often in your reality?

Yep, go to just about any school gym class (which is still meeting live anyway...) and you will find a few students who can't do the rope climb, and that is typically only 15-20 feet, not 80!

Climbing a rope is not that difficult.

Tell that to those kids...

An adventurer would be able to do it with ease.

In your games, knock yourself out.

 

[iserith]

Another thing to consider is what happens if you fail a check in such examples?

Failure only means lack of progress or progress with a set-back in 5E. It doesn't mean you fall and can't try again. So, by their logic even with such examples you just keep making a check until you succeed--which removes all such challenges pretty much and makes them all pointless. The only way you can't succeed is if the DC is so high that with modifiers you can't reach it.

You either can't fail or can't succeed. Doesn't seem like good game design to me, personally.

You may have overlooked DMG page 242 in which the DM is given flourishes like Degrees of Failure to set up such stakes. In this case, the DM can present a difficult situation while climbing, call for ability checks according to what the players describe their characters as doing, then rule that failing by 5 or more means falling whereas failing by less than 5 means no progress or progress combined with a setback. The latter would generally be my preference in this situation because no progress is boring (unless there's a meaningful time constraint).

 

[iserith]

Which is fine, but then you are ignoring the core 5e rules on climbing. This is what @iserith has been trying to explain to you. 5e is very clear on the fact that distance in climbing is not a factor. It is your movement and nothing more.

Right, and we don't even need to deal with the realism of the DCs here which I think is a red herring (even if it is funny). The rules are clear as you say. What this discussion looks like to me is that some posters are used to doing something in a way the rules don't actually support (perhaps having learned it from other games), so then they go look for the general rules to back up their preferences, while ignoring the specific rules that refute them (specific beats general - that's a rule). That's common in forum discussions. Of course, nobody is saying they're wrong to do it however they want, but it's wrong to assert they're doing it the way the rules say to do it.

 

[Imaculata]

Yep, go to just about any school gym class (which is still meeting live anyway...) and you will find a few students who can't do the rope climb, and that is typically only 15-20 feet, not 80!

Look, when I was that age, there was maybe one obese kid that could not do it. But if you know how to do the footlock, it requires no upper body strength at all. Every kid can climb a rope 100% of the time if taught how to do it, barring any physical imparements. Either that or the teacher is not teaching them properly. My own gym teacher was an old man, and by no means an army drill instructor. But he could climb that rope with ease, and he could easily teach us how to do it within minutes.

Now, if you were roleplaying a class of 6 year olds, perhaps this would make some sense. But these are adventurers. Hardened heroes, experienced in overland travel and climbing. I think they would know how to do a basic footlock on a rope.

Having a DC for climbing a rope, when there are no complications, is absurd and a bad ruling! There, I've said it. And I would call a DM out on it if he made that ruling.

 

[jgsugden]

It's a knotted rope with a wall to brace on.

Any reasonably fit person could climb that.

DC 10 to climb a knotted rope with a wall to brace on?

It's DC 0 in 3.5 to climb a wall with a knotted rope to brace on, and you could take 10 in any event, meaning if you were not rushed, a Str 10 commoner (with no Climb skill ranks) just succeeds, even on a roll of 1 (or by taking 10).

Did ropes get slippier between editions?

Why are Str 10 Commoners suddenly falling off ropes 50 percent of the time?

Please send a video of you making this climb in Renn Faire cosplay. Please buy life insurance first.

It was too easy in prior editions.

 

[iserith]

Having a DC for climbing a rope, when there are no complications,

That's the crux of it. It's the difficult situation that makes the climb uncertain, not the climb itself. It's not "If climb, then Strength (Athletics) check." Rather, it's "If climb with difficult situation, then maybe Strength (Athletics) check." We say "maybe" here because the players may have a way of dealing with the difficult situation that removes uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence for failure. The rules offer us examples of the kinds of difficult situations in the environment they intend and "climb itself" isn't one of them.

 

[billd91]

Right, and we don't even need to deal with the realism of the DCs here which I think is a red herring (even if it is funny). The rules are clear as you say. What this discussion looks like to me is that some posters are used to doing something in a way the rules don't actually support (perhaps having learned it from other games), so then they go look for the general rules to back up their preferences, while ignoring the specific rules that refute them (specific beats general - that's a rule). That's common in forum discussions. Of course, nobody is saying they're wrong to do it however they want, but it's wrong to assert they're doing it the way the rules say to do it.

The rules are pretty clear that you should be rolling when there's uncertainty of success. But the situations in which there is uncertainty of success are DM judgment calls, particularly since there's no way to enumerate all the potential complications that may make a climb check appropriate. So there's no issue of making up rules here or not doing it the way the rules say to do it.
There's just your judgment vs someone else's on what constitutes uncertainty.

 

[Charlaquin]

If @iserith's answer to my first question is indeed "no", then my follow-up question related to the reasonableness of a DM ruling that "a potentially lethal fall" is the same type of complication as "climbing a slippery vertical surface" or "climbing a surface with few handholds".

Nowhere in my question did I compare "climbing a knotted rope with a wall to brace on" as a similar type of complication to the two listed in the text.

The thing is, a potentially lethal fall isn’t a complication, it’s a consequence for failure. If we determine that success and failure are both possible, then we know there’s a consequence for failure, so it would be appropriate to call for a check. The approach of climbing an 80-foot knotted rope certainly seems like it could succeed in achieving the goal of reaching an 80-foot window. So that leaves us with the question of if it could fail. And since 5e tells us that climbing is a factor of speed in the absence of additional complicating factors, the answer would be no. Unless of course there’s an additional complicating factor, which the DM could easily establish if they thought it was important that a check be made in this situation.

 

[DND_Reborn]

But these are adventurers. Hardened heroes, experienced in overland travel and climbing. I think they would know how to do a basic footlock on a rope.

A PC with STR 10 and no proficiency in Athletics has the same modifier as a commoner. If you throw in a special thing to "require" the check, they both fail with the same chances, despite the PC being a "hardened hero" as you call them.

Having a DC for climbing a rope, when there are no complications, is absurd and a bad ruling! There, I've said it. And I would call a DM out on it if he made that ruling.

Fine. Then there is no further point in this discussion. We disagree. A long climb, risking serious injury or even death, would require a check of some sort. If you don't want to do STR (Athletics) to climb the rope, then a WIS save to overcome the fear.

You are a fool if you climb a rope that high without a safety harness, etc. There, I said it.

Have a nice day.

 

[iserith]

The rules are pretty clear that you should be rolling when there's uncertainty of success. But the situations in which there is uncertainty of success are DM judgment calls, particularly since there's no way to enumerate all the potential complications that may make a climb check appropriate. So there's no issue of making up rules here or not doing it the way the rules say to do it.
There's just your judgment vs someone else's on what constitutes uncertainty.

You're paraphrasing the general rules. Now paraphrase the specific ones.