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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 7070526" data-attributes="member: 6776887">The answer, as everyone has pointed out is: it depends. It depends on the situation, your attributes, and the difficulty of the task.D&D at its most basic consists of a Dungeon Master (DM) setting up a situation, the players having their characters (PCs) trying to deal with that situation, and the DM telling them the result of their actions. Sometimes the actions of a PC will automatically succeed or fail, but most of the time success is uncertain. In those cases we roll a 20-sided die (d20). A Difficulty Class (DC), or how difficult it is to do the task, is set. The d20 roll plus modifiers, some of which come from your character's abilities, must meet or exceed the DC for the action to succeed. Almost every d20 roll you make will include modifiers that are determined from your character sheet.There are 3 types of d20 rolls in D&D:1. Ability Checks: this is where you try to do something, such as climb a wall. The DM sets a DC, and your d20 roll must meet or exceed the DC.2. Saving Throws: This is when you try to avoid something bad happening to you. The DM sets a DC, or it comes from a creature's block of statistics, and your d20 roll must meet or exceed the DC.3. Attack Rolls: This is when you try to attack something directly with a weapon or certain spells. Your d20 roll must meet or exceed the target's Armor Class (AC) which is a computed value from whatever armor, ability scores, and special features the target has.So for your exact question above, the following scenario plays out:Climbing a wall is a Strength (Athletics) ability check. This means that your d20 roll is modified by your Strength score. If you have proficiency in Athletics, your d20 roll also has your proficiency bonus added to it. If your Strength score is 10 then your ability modifier is +0. If you do not have proficiency in Athletics, you also do not add your proficiency bonus. So the modifier for your d20 roll would be +0. This means that the number on the 20-sided die would have to meet or exceed on its own the DC the DM set for climbing the wall. So a DC 10 wall would require a 10 on the die, and a DC 20 wall would require a 20 on the die. Everyone above has given pretty good examples of different situations when the DC would be higher or lower.On the other hand, a level 20 character with a 20 in Strength and proficiency in Athletics would get +5 for the Strength Score and +6 for the proficiency bonus. This means the total bonus to the d20 roll would be +11. This character cannot fail to climb a wall of DC10 because the minimum roll of a 1 plus their +11 modifier means that their lowest possible Strength (Athletics) check is a 12. This character would need a 9 on the die to climb the DC 20 wall.Please, let us know if you have any other questions.</blockquote>

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