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<blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 8088393" data-attributes="member: 1165">Some years back I played in an RPG where our group (with pretty strong ranged attacks) were being attacked by barbarians. We had a few hours notice, but expected them to assault at dawn. Having read too many books on medieval sieges (and playing a character with high Intelligence), I suggested we build some sloping architecture. Enemies would basically come at us walking up a 45 degree slope, so a bit like making them walk through difficult terrain (at least that was my plan). We were still heavily outnumbered and would probably have to resort to melee a round later.However, the game wasn't D&amp;D. It was Warhammer 40,000, notorious for making PCs (and therefore NPCs) incompetent, such as these Chaos cultists (stronger than average, but maybe not specifically trained in climbing). Each round only one barbarian made their Climb-equivalent check and could come at us, and they would be instantly blown away. (All barbarians would make checks, but they kept failing. I think they had a 20% chance to succeed, but I don't actually know their stats.) One round two of them made it, but we outnumbered them 2:1 so we still smoked them. We held them off until reinforcements came.Now I wish I could say I was a genius and saved our party, but that is definitely not the case. We won because climbing was too hard (unrealistically hard) and fortunately that was hurting the NPCs but not us this time. IMO a rough pit shouldn't be very hard to climb out of. Taking away someone's actions for even a round is worthwhile in combat (my favorite pit traps are kind of shallow, but are put right in front of ranged weapon using/spellcasting characters, so anyone charging them might fall in; this could influence behavior even if characters know there's pit traps there).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(Psi)SeveredHead, post: 8088393, member: 1165"] Some years back I played in an RPG where our group (with pretty strong ranged attacks) were being attacked by barbarians. We had a few hours notice, but expected them to assault at dawn. Having read too many books on medieval sieges (and playing a character with high Intelligence), I suggested we build some sloping architecture. Enemies would basically come at us walking up a 45 degree slope, so a bit like making them walk through difficult terrain (at least that was my plan). We were still heavily outnumbered and would probably have to resort to melee a round later. However, the game wasn't D&D. It was Warhammer 40,000, notorious for making PCs (and therefore NPCs) incompetent, such as these Chaos cultists (stronger than average, but maybe not specifically trained in climbing). Each round only one barbarian made their Climb-equivalent check and could come at us, and they would be instantly blown away. (All barbarians would make checks, but they kept failing. I think they had a 20% chance to succeed, but I don't actually know their stats.) One round two of them made it, but we outnumbered them 2:1 so we still smoked them. We held them off until reinforcements came. Now I wish I could say I was a genius and saved our party, but that is definitely not the case. We won because climbing was too hard (unrealistically hard) and fortunately that was hurting the NPCs but not us this time. IMO a rough pit shouldn't be very hard to climb out of. Taking away someone's actions for even a round is worthwhile in combat (my favorite pit traps are kind of shallow, but are put right in front of ranged weapon using/spellcasting characters, so anyone charging them might fall in; this could influence behavior even if characters know there's pit traps there). [/QUOTE]

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