D&D 5E Climbing a tower rules 5e

[DND_Reborn]

skill proficiencies are not the problem, expertise is not the problem, DCs from 5 to 30 are not the problem. D20 is!

Yeah, I am not thrilled about the linear d20 for everything, either. 2d10 or 3d6 work better in that respect IMO, too.

But I hardly agree DCs are "meaningless".

 

[Charlaquin]

as long as we have d20 instead of 3d6, these DCs for skills are meaningless.

d20 is just not a good die to represent something that is reliable, as skills.

it works in combat for attack/saves as it gets rolled 30 time or more so that evens out sometimes, but when you have exploration/social encounter that only requires one or maybe two rolls, d20 simply does not work.

skill proficiencies are not the problem, expertise is not the problem, DCs from 5 to 30 are not the problem. D20 is!

If you had to make a check to do anything that had a chance of failure, I would agree that a d20 would be too swingy. However, if you only call for checks when failure has a meaningful consequence, the swinginess isn’t so much of a problem.

 

[Blue]

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.

Nope. Picture this: I am 10 feet from the top of a ladder. Is it more difficult to climb to the top if I am at the bottom, or came on 70 feet up an 80 foot ladder? No, both are the same. They do have a different penalty for failure in terms of falling damage which increases risk, but not the difficulty.

Now, height can mean that if there's uncertainty there may be more checks, but doesn't create that uncertainty by itself. Unless you are talking about height as a proxy for "will you get tired climbing that far?", then that's can be an actual hazard. Sounds more like a CON ( CON (Athletics) if using the PHB variant allowing different ability scores ) to avoid, after you've climbed a certain amount.

A knotted rope might have been challenging enough to call for one or more checks - it's harder than a ladder. I personally probably would give that an uncertainty. My players will tell you I throw DC 5 checks at them fairly regularly when they are under time pressure and there's a risk but small.

Note, with your three checks at DC 12, the +1 Athletics rogue needs three 11+ die rolls. That's an 87.5% chance of failing. And that's before other characters could also fall. So they were smart to avoid it. Regardless of your feel for realism, your DM decision to set that DC eliminated that as a possibility and closed off the player route. If that was not your goal - if you wanted a chance for their plan to work - then you should have adjusted the DC regardess.

Even with the DC 5, that's a 20% chance per check for someone with no modifier to fail. The rogue with the +1 athletics having to make 3 checks would still have close to a 40% chance to fail one of the rolls. Though if going by the rules, the rogue's ability to dash as a bonus action means that they will be climbing more every round, so it will be less actions to get to the top.

 

[Flamestrike]

* We're then, with full adventuring gear, going to climb 80 feet up the wall using the rope (which we'll assume is knotted)*. The percentage of people that could climb an 80 rope with 50 lbs of gear is .... well, small is an understatement.

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

Any reasonably fit person could climb that.

Most of us would die if our lives depended upon it. Still, these are heroes....

How I would handle it:
If they figured out how to get the rope up there, I'd set a Strength DC on how hard it is to climb that rope. The DC would be 10 if the person was minimally equipped

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?

 

[jayoungr]

As a point of comparison, I recently ran Lost Mine of Phandelver again. In Wave Echo Cave, there's a 20-foot-deep ravine with ropes hanging down one side. The difficulty for an Athetics check to climb up or down without using a rope is 10. A creature falls, takes damage, and lands prone if the check is failed by 5 or more. (No guidance is given on what you're supposed to do if someone fails the check by less than 5. I might just have them land prone without taking the damage.) No check is required for climbing with a rope.

You could always just send it up there with Mage Hand

Mage Hand has a range of 30 feet.

 

[Quickleaf]

DC 15 to climb a free hanging rope? This is something children routinely do at high school, and Soldiers routinely do during basic training:

View attachment 132297

I dont see kids and soldiers falling off ropes 75 percent of the time they try.

An adult human in good physical condition (Str 10) automatically succeeds in climbing a free hanging rope. The DC (if any) should be no higher than 5, with only failure by 5 or more resulting in a fall (meaning that only weak individuals with no training have a chance of falling).

As long as you're not morbidly obese and are capable of pulling your own body weight up, you just do that, and then scissor lock the rope with your feet, and repeat.

You're absolutely right, Flamestrike.

I think I pulled that DC 15 reference from 3rd edition? I can't remember. 5e is much more loose about these things, and doesn't give helpful definitions of what constitutes a Medium difficulty check for, say, Acrobatics vs. Athletics.

I was just pulling at the only reference value that I had on hand, but I agree that having more accurate references for skill check DCs would be helpful.

Getting back to the OP's question, though, when I think of loose crumbling rock with few footholds/handholds - what I hear are two things which should boost the Difficulty of an unassisted free climb (no rope): (1) Loose/crumbling rock & (2) Few footholds. How a DM translates that into a DC is really up to an individual DM. Just to be clear, this is assuming the OP's ideal intent – regardless of how the encounter actually played at their table – was to have a single PC need to ascend without rope in order to successfully anchor the grappling hook 80 feet up (for the rest of the party to ascend on rope without needing to make checks).

My gut instinct is that throwing even a lighter silk rope with a grappling hook attached 80 feet accurately to a secure anchor would be really difficult, but I've never tried that in real life.

 

[Charlaquin]

You're absolutely right, Flamestrike.

I think I pulled that DC 15 reference from 3rd edition? I can't remember. 5e is much more loose about these things, and doesn't give helpful definitions of what constitutes a Medium difficulty check for, say, Acrobatics vs. Athletics.

It gives the only guideline that’s needed: consider what the player hopes to accomplish and how the character is trying to accomplish it. Could that action reasonably achieve that goal? Could it fail to do so? Would there be a meaningful consequence if it did fail? If all of these things are true, would be easy, moderate or hard to achieve that goal by those means? Assign a DC of 10, 15, or 20 respectively. On a success, the character achieves the goal. On a failure, apply the consequence (which depending on context may or may not include failure to achieve the goal).

 

[Rabulias]

Even considering that a grappling hook in 5E is 4 lbs (a bit overweight IMO, but whatever), 80 feet of silk rope would be 8 lbs. Now, by spinning the hook on the rope, you gain speed and can launch the hook towards the window.

IMO the harder part than the weight and distance is the target. How do you determine the check needed? Is it a Strength (Athletics), or even Dexterity (Athletics) check? What is the DC? 20? 25? 30!?! Do you use an attack roll and set an AC for the window as a target?

Agreed with this. IMO, the 80-foot distance is easy with the torque from spinning the rope, but hitting a 1-foot-by-1-foot area is the tough part. Usually grappling hooks are thrown up toward a ridge or the top of a wall where it does not matter as much where you hit it.

 

[iserith]

It's worth considering if you're subordinating fantasy to reality and whether that has a good impact on your D&D game experience.

 

[Imaculata]

Indeed.

Do you want to dedicate a lot of time to your players failing to throw a grapplinghook up to a window, and ultimately leaving disappointed? Or would you rather move things forward to whatever it is they find inside the tower?