D&D 5E ,Q&A: New Skill system, Skill dice, and profiencies (May 2)

[Sadrik]

That's a pretty good example of a whole lot of wasted rolling, though. Let's say it takes 4 checks to get up a wall. You might have to roll 20 times to successfully ascend, maybe taking some damage, maybe not, maybe waiting on one person, maybe not.

Just have someone roll once for climbing the wall, and move onwards, with however successful or not they were.

Depends on how abstract you want it. In round by round combat scene you want round by round, in overland movement mode you want the abstraction, perhaps even in the local movement scale too you want the abstraction. At the tactical scale you want the detail I think.

 

[keterys]

Nah, even on a tactical level that's not interesting to me. I'm not sure they'll find a better solution, but I'm increasingly less interested in mechanics that drag the action and roleplaying down with minutia or penalizing mechanics.

If the response to "I want to do this cool swashbuckling maneuver" is "Make seven rolls, likely getting screwed up by the process" then the system's failed me.

 

[Dausuul]

Well, as far as the wall goes, a little smart planning could go a long way in reducing the number of rolls. For instance:

When you try to climb a vertical surface, make a Climb check. The base DC is 15 for a surface with lots of handholds, 20 for a surface with few or shallow holds, and 25 for a surface with almost no holds. This assumes you are climbing 10 feet. For every additional 10 feet, add +2 to the DC.

If you fail the check, you fall and take damage as appropriate. How far you fall depends on how badly you failed the check:

1-4: You fall one-quarter of the way through the climb.
5-9: You fall one-half of the way through the climb.
10-14: You fall three-quarters of the way through the climb.
15+: You fall just before completing the climb.