Cling to the ceiling?

[Taed]

I'd start by saying that someone could not climb 15 feet across a ceiling without a climber's kit or a clever solution to the problem (throwing a small character with a rope to the other side, building some sort of bridge, etc.). Just looking at it from a real-world perspective, that's just not something that could be done without the assistance of tools. This is assuming that it's a typical stone ceiling, and not, say the roof of a cave (which might have hand-holds), but even for a cave roof, I'd give that an Athletics DC 25 without tools.

Knowing my players, they'd solve that by tying a rope to the halfling rogue and having the dragonborn fighter throw him. I'd give that an Athletics DC 15 for the throw and a Acrobatics DC 15 for the landing without damage, which they should have no trouble with. At that point, they'd tie the rope to something on both ends (or go across by low-to-high weight/strength), which is another Athletics DC 15 for either the person climbing across or the person pulling the rope. If they thought ahead to having another rope tied to each person going across, they could easily get across without any real danger.

Using Ghost Hand would also be a good use for moving the rope across and tying it to something.

Of course, it's also only 15 feet, so most would be able to jump it with at most a few tries (Athletics DC 10 with a running start?), and if they had a rope tied to them, there would be no real danger again.

Given all that, I'd make it 30 feet.

But you also mention that they have to climb up first, so if that's a significant distance up, that would put a kink in solutions such as that.

 

[Jack99]

Here's the thing, you WANT the players to do these cool and amazing things. If you set the DCs to numbers that are a 50/50 shot for the most skilled possible characters, or at least the most skilled ACTUAL characters in the particular encounter, then they are rather unlikely to attempt them.

Consider, I'm the player of the hypothetical +11 Athletics character. If say the wall is DC14 and the ceiling is a DC21 I have around a 40% chance of climbing the wall and the ceiling, assuming they are each one check. So I'm trading at least a full round of attacks for a 40% chance of success vs a 60% of failure most likely resulting in a 'mission kill' (IE once I'm in the pit it sounds like I'm out of action pretty much, plus it seems like at least a 2d10 damage fall, which is not too bad but not encouraging either).

I don't know what the reward is for getting across or how absolutely necessary it is to cross. I also don't know if this is something ALL the characters are going to need to do or just one. As a rule of thumb though IMO you want to set the DCs for heroic actions to yield around a 75% chance of success, and maybe even 90%-95% if the failure consequences are dire. Statistically players really can't afford to be making very many 95% success or die type attempts very often in the character's adventuring career or it will be a short career. Intelligent players know this. For lesser consequences they should still have something beyond 50% and 75% really is a good rule of thumb.

So assuming one character needs to succeed and the reward is fairly significant and the consequences not too dire then you probably want the wall climb to be practically a gimme and the ceiling climb to be successful on around a 6+. That would yield for the +11 guy a DC of around 17 for the ceiling and realistically about a 12 for the wall. This puts the ceiling into moderate difficulty by what appears to be the new DCs or hard difficulty by the current ones for 4th level.

Now, if ALL the PCs need to climb across, and assuming there's no real way that they can make it easier for the less capable with ropes or some sort of magic then the DCs really need to be even lower. You're bound to have some back ranker with a STR of 10 and no Athletics training sporting a +2 Athletics check modifier. For this character a DC of 10 is problematic. Really though with cases like this there just needs to be a way to either bypass the check or mitigate the consequences somewhat, or a way to string him some ropes needs to be provided, etc.

I have played with the same people for 20 years now. So obviously, the way I do things is influenced by our collective preferences.

I do not tell them a DC beforehand. I say things like: "It looks like something you should easily be able to do", or "This looks (extremely) difficult" etc. Then they can ingame make the choice. This is of course not how everyone plays. Some DM's want their players always (or almost) to succeed, and thats totally okay. But me and my players just prefer things a bit more hard-core. While hard-core is probably not the right word, I am sure you can understand what I mean.

They like to be put in positions where they need to cooperate and maybe think a bit more, instead of all being able to solve things with a skill check. For example, in the case of the ceiling that started this debate, the goliath barbarian or the dwarf fighter in my party would probably climb up, maybe even helping each other, and then focus on getting the others up, using ropes and such. I see no problem with obstacles based on a single or two skills, so that some can shine while others need help.

So, in short, I guess we agree. IF the ceiling represents the ONLY way to progress, and there is no way of helping those characters with low Athletics, and no other way to deal with the obstacle, it would be pretty crappy adventure design by the DM to place a DC25+ ceiling at level 4. But, if we set aside bad DM'ing, I see no issues with difficult checks.

Cheers

 

[cavalier973]

Perhaps one of the characters could first shoot iron bolts straight into the ceiling, to act as hand-holds.

 

[giant.robot]

I'll preface by saying that I feel die rolls are for suspense only. If you want the characters to climb the wall and cross the ceiling make the difficulty such that you can assume the weakest character can take 10 and get across safely. They should only roll a dice if the situation is dramatic and suspenseful, if the fail something really bad happens. Don't make them do a check if the only penalty for failure is them taking some falling damage that they then need to waste a healing surge on or an action point to avoid.

If you really want them to make checks maybe treat the whole thing like a skill challenge rather than simple skill checks. Doing so will be a little more forgiving of check failures yet be pretty suspenseful and dramatic. Allow aid another rolls for characters that are close by, e.g. a character slips from a handhold but a nearby character catches them and keeps them from falling.

Also give the players some alternate but not immediately obvious ways of bypassing the pit. They might have the most athletic character climb across with a rope and then tie it off so everyone else can just climb across using that. Put some sturdy handhold in the ceiling (lest no one be able to make it across) that a character could loop a rope through and the rest could swing across.

I've been in this exact situation before, I've come up with an awesome visual for a game and tried to implement it within the rules. Slavish devotion to the rules will too often dampen a cool idea. Getting too focused on what I wanted players to do meant I was just telling my players what actions they were going to take. This sucks for them because the only interaction they get is rolling their dice. I want to make sure my players are more involved them just being in charge of their dice rolls and keeping track of their character sheet. If that's all the involvement players have then I'm just reading them a story and we're not playing a game.

 

[Squire James]

Expanding on my previous comment, if I were running the adventure, I'd place a high DC to things like clinging to ceilings (unless Spiderman is in the group). I'd also be sure to have at least 2 other methods of negotiating or circumventing the hazard, and be prepared for a fourth method to be suggested by the players.

For instance, my players would probably not even think of climbing the wall and clinging to the ceiling - they would rig some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption that hurls everyone across with a portable catapult before they'd think of that...