Swimming up waterfalls!

[Master-of-Mayhem]

Swimming up waterfalls! Are skills to crazy or is it just me.

I was looking at the epic level handbook, just looking around seeing what skills and feats would be good for my char. And I was looking at the skills and i was looking at the Tables for all the skills and just seeing what i can do if i got a high check. I saw the swimming one and looked at it...
DC Task
80 Swim up waterfall

I though it was funny that you could swim up a waterfall! Then i was on a hunt for more out of this world stuff, so i ran into balance it said.....
Surface DC
1-2 inches wide 20
Up to 1 inch wide 40
Hair-Thin 60
Liquid 90
Cloud 120

OK a cloud!
Is it me or dose these Tables seem a little WOW.

 

[Numion]

Cloud 120

OK a cloud!
Is it me or dose these Tables seem a little WOW.

At around level 100 where that would be possible thats not the only "WOW" thing your character can do.

 

[Olive]

Given that you can do these things much more easily with spells and the like, I don't see it as a problem.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Salmon swims up waterfalls so at least they have a sufficiently high swim score.

 

[Tallok]

I would actually use a climb check for that, you can't swim in a cloud or a spray of water, it's not physically possible, and that's not aided by magic, so, thus it doesn't work

 

[A'koss]

You can simply say that these high level skills are simply the character developing his ki or chi to do the impossible - a kind of quasi-psionic or "mystical" ability.

A'koss.

 

[Ackem]

There are fish that can swim up small waterfalls.

Now consider that, without magic, at level 20:

-A Barbarian will likely be far stronger then a Bear. I'ld like to remind you that Bears are strong enough to rip open a car like it was a can of sardines.

-A Fighter could kill a T-Rex with a kitchen knife. I'm not even going to get into the feats that a Monk could pull off with his fists alone.

-A Rogue could take NO damage from that nuclear weapon that just went off next to it.

-A Monk could run 51 miles/hour.

-Just about any character could withstand falling off the Empire State Building. Most melee characters could go skydiving from a 747, without a parachute, walk away from it, then do it again without any healing or rest.

High-level characters in D&D are insane even before you factor in magic. Doing the unbelievable is for mere midlevel characters, doing the impossible is a regular affair for high level characters. Epic characters are generally beyond the absolute pinnacles of possible achievement. An epic character, who actually bothers to pump Swim, is likely the greatest swimmer his world has ever seen or ever will. His ability to swim is downright inhuman and probably physically impossible, but it's not any more crazy then the fact that, without magic, a level 20 barbarian can survive for 30 seconds while swimming in lava or that a first level character can use friggen' magic.

And this is just at level 20, a character capable of swimming up a waterfall (DC 80) would need to be in the 70's to achieve that without magic. He could also probably kill gods, lift mountains, slaughter the combined armies of the world, decipher the meaning of life prior to his morning run (which would be around the world three times) and eat plutonium for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with no ill effects besides some indigestion

 

[Si_RW]

you have to remember that this is an altered reality. one thing i found in the 3.5 phb was that if a 400 pound statue fell 100 feet on to a characters head it only dealt 4d6 points of damage. this is just one example of oddities in the game, and that it works both ways. meaning that somethings that are impossible happen for good or bad.

 

[MerakSpielman]

There's been some debate over whether mundane skills should allow your character to do things that are literally impossible - like squeeze through openings that are a good deal smaller than your skull, balance on clouds, or whatever.

I don't see a problem with it. This is D&D. Impossible stuff happens all the time. If you think about it, the normal maximum for a 20th level character is 23 ranks in a skill. With skill focus and high stats (but no magic) this person might squeek up to a +30 on their skill check. If they rolled a 20 they could meet a DC of 50. Remember, this person is the literal best in the world at doing this particular thing.

So, I consider the maximum human limit to be +30 on skill checks (note that this is nowhere near high enough to do "impossible" things). If you get beyond that somehow, no matter if you do it with epic levels or with items that increase your modifier, then your abilities with that skill are so incredible as to be indistinguishable from magic. Somebody with a +50 balance modifier is better at balancing than anybody you've ever seen in RL. You would probably swear that their feats of balancing were staged, fake, or even magic. But no, it's just their incredible, amazing, unearthly skill.

 

[TiQuinn]

Considering that a DC 100 or 120 is probably only going to be accomplished by a 30th to 40th level Epic character with magic items up the wazoo, I don't think it's a big deal. As written, the Epic Level Handbook is for a very specific type of campaign. The characters have reached a level of power that make them THE movers and shakers of your campaign world. Their foes include major demons, fiendish undead great wyrms, wizards of legend whose power would make them demigods, etc. In a way, it's not just an epic game anymore, it's a game of mythological proportions. It's all in the way that you approach Epic gaming. If you have a problem with a 30th level character being able to squeeze his way through a wall of force, then the ELH probably isn't your cup of tea to begin with.