XP for mountain climbing and other dangerous skill checks?

[Jon_Dahl]

So I'm pondering, how to give XP for skill checks involving mountain climbing and other dangerous skills checks, such as deepwater diving etc.?

In my view, you can have (at least) two approaches:
a. Who can do it? Well, I could create a 1st-level human Expert who would've went through the whole mountain range up and down and yawned.
b. Compare it to a trap. You could fall quite a distance is you miss your climb check by 5 in a critical moment, and the amount of damage could be insane, since you're on a mountain.

I was thinking giving miniscule amount of XP for ordinary mountain climbing, given that 1st-level Sherpa would shoot up quickly in XP if mountain climbing is considered high CR-business. However, that would good also... Maybe mountain climbing is something where everyone in the world gets lot of XP quickly. There are no 1st-level Sherpas under 20 of of age...? But, I think that generally I think that "who could do this" and if I can think of 1st-level character able to do the same thing easily, I give almost no XP to high-level characters, even if they were in a deep poo-poo with the challenge themselves.

Any views? These players were trying to climb 30 ft of mountain wall, but they fell for 8d6 of damage (because they already had walked up the mountain path). They repeated this twice, and the party wizard ended up dead. He was at 8th-level at that time.

 

[Dandu]

The SRD lists CRs for various environmental dangers.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Thank you, but there is nothing there that answers comprehensively about to my question. I know CR's for avalanches, tornados, sandstorms and forest fires, but that's about it.

 

[Empirate]

First off: if an 8th level Wizard has no better way of getting up a 30' wall without dying than making three climbing attempts w/o Feather Fall, then said Wizard is better off dead. Gosh, isn't Intelligence supposed to be really important for a Wizard?


On to your question: I have modeled environmental challenges as encounters before, but if only the PCs are making any checks, it's not really an encounter. In order to assess EL and XP rewards, I'd try and make it a real 'encounter' with the mountain.

If you think Redhorn Pass in LotR (the Caradhras fiasco), then there is a direct opponent who uses the mountain environment to indirectly attack the heroes: he/it first uses freezing cold and mist, then heavy snowfall, and finally tries to cut off the heroes' retreat. This can easily be modeled as 'attacks' in D&D, such as by extraordinary abilities that cause cold damage over time, make terrain and sensory perception difficult, and set up something like the effect of a Wall of Ice spell, or setting traps in the form of hard-to-see cliff edges.

The heroes basically make Climb checks to progress at all, Fortitude saves to resist cold damage and exhaustion, Reflex saves to not fall into hidden chasms (Jump checks to get over them), and Str checks to wade through deep snow. They can also use spells or other abilities to counter any specific attack, once or even for a longer time. Endure Elements, Overland Flight etc. are good candidates.

There's no way the heroes can 'kill' the mountain, but they can still 'defeat' it (by getting beyond its reach), or 'lose' to it (by giving up and climbing down again, which you shouldn't make too hard on them). You could even model the mountain's resistance to the heroes' scaling attempts by giving it HP. Just think about some easy rules to judge how these can be reduced - something like: a successful Climb check deals 1 point of 'damage' to the mountain per 5 points it's better than the DC; a usefully employed spell deals as many points of 'damage' as its level; a usefully employed piece of equipment deals 1 point of damage; etc.

You can play out the encounter in 'climbing rounds' (instead of combat rounds), which might each take 10 minutes or an hour or so. Each round, the heroes get 'attacked' once and must either come up with a way to foil the 'attack', or take the damage and move on. They can also do their thing 'to' the mountain by climbing, using spellcasting etc. You can track their progress by tracking the mountain's HP.

This way, you should be able to come up with a fitting CR for the mountain encounter, I think.

 

[Debby]

I think it would depend upon how much of the mountain climbing constitutes an "encounter." Normally, experience isn't giving out for making a successful check. However, I have known some DMs who do hand out out bonus XP for such things. If the mountain-climbing is integral to the encounter and you ask them to roleplay the hardships of mountaineering, then I would say award XP on par with CR just as you would with a monster of that Challenge Rating. Part of climbing a mountain is avoiding other obstacles -- obviously avoiding the fall down the mountain but also avoiding rocks and things falling down on you, mice gnawing on your ropes and stealing your food, etc. If all your players do is roll a couple of checks then, they probably haven't earned any real XP. 5 points per success. If they role play hiking up a mountain, setting up the ropes, looking out for hazards, etc. then award XP based on those things as well as the successful checks.

The problem is how much to award. It depends. What level are your players and how long will this mountaineering stuff last? It could be a few rounds (yep you climb up) or it could be a longer encounter on par with a mini adventure.

An 8th level wizard Climbing without feather fall is just poorly prepared. I don't know the details of the adventure, but it sounds like either the Players were ill-prepared or the DC checks were too high.

That said, with all their struggles I would have awarded them XP based on the time and trouble spend. If the wizard was 8th level what was the make up of the rest of the party? If they were all 8th level, then the encounter would be CR 8 and perhaps they'd get 1/4 for their efforts.

Debby