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Message: <blockquote data-quote="P1NBACK" data-source="post: 5715132" data-attributes="member: 83768">There's no mention of how the original iterations of the game did such things, which is contrary to the previous poll (where 76% of people were interested in preserving history). "Let's preserve history! Woooh!" "Ok, onto how D&D presents climbing rules. Let's talk about the approaches 3E and 4E take!" Wtf? People rag on the Thief percentage skills of early editions, but most of the time they are taken out of context. Using Monte's "scheme" for determining a grade of complexity, the early editions fall between the 1st and 2nd examples, and I find are a perfect balance of rules and judgment. [I've been playing a lot of old school D&D lately...]For example, most climbs are assumed to be automatic: climbing a rope, a tree with branches, a wall with handholds, etc. This is similar to his example 1. This keeps the action fast-paced and keeps the game from devolving into a series of mundane skill checks. "Oh, wait. You rolled a 1 to climb that 10 ft wall? Ummm. Yeah, you don't go anywhere.... Uh, try again." Then, difficult climbs, defined as "sheer surfaces" require special training (i.e. a Thief skill). Less than his example 2 because not every climb requires a check. And, not everyone can even attempt those extremely dangerous climbs. This gives the DM a solid judgment point to declare whether someone can climb or not, and if they have special training to climb those dangerous cliffs, there are mechanics in place for that. The good thing is, the DM doesn't have to set any sort of DC, it's simply rated as "Hard enough to require special training" - a simple judgment call - and is therefore set against the skill of the person with the actual training. This poll doesn't even have the option for something like that. It's "Other" options are: radically different and nothing. For talk of preserving the past, I guess I expected more discussions about how each iteration of D&D has handled things like this, not just a look into how 3E and 4E presented the rules...</blockquote>

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