Five Foot Terrace: Climb? Difficult Terrain?

[DM Livgin]

In a scenario I'm running soon there are several five foot terraces at an encounter location (archaeological dig site). What would be required to travel up an down these terraced steps for a medium creature? For a small creature? For a huge creature?

Since both medium and small creatures have a space of 5x5x5, I assume that it would be a climb check for both to climb up 5 ft (quarter speed, requires both hands free, loose your Dexterity bonus to AC). For a huge creature, the step is a small portion of has height, so I assume it would be just difficult terrain.

As for travelling down a terrace, I always read fall damage as damage for every full 10 feet, you could run down the terrace without penalty.

Thoughts?

[OldSkoolRPG]

DM Livgin wrote:

In a scenario I'm running soon there are several five foot terraces at an encounter location (archaeological dig site). What would be required to travel up an down these terraced steps for a medium creature? For a small creature? For a huge creature?

Since both medium and small creatures have a space of 5x5x5, I assume that it would be a climb check for both to climb up 5 ft (quarter speed, requires both hands free, loose your Dexterity bonus to AC). For a huge creature, the step is a small portion of has height, so I assume it would be just difficult terrain.

As for travelling down a terrace, I always read fall damage as damage for every full 10 feet, you could run down the terrace without penalty.

Thoughts?

I would just run it as every 5' drop costs 2 squares of movement. Keep it simple.

[Cevah]

For the large creature, treat it as stairs. Difficult terrain going up, no penalty going down.

For small & medium, I usually see it played as difficult terrain going up with an easy climb check. The drop, being less that 10', I would say since the DC is 15 Acrobatics to avoid damage from a 10', you could have it be a DC 7 to avoid damage from 1/2 1d6, but only if rushed (i.e. in combat). Usually you can Take-10 on the check out of combat, which auto succeeds unless you have armor check issues.

Now, myself, with a Take-10 acrobatics of 39 jumping up, netting a 19.5' jump up, I don't think it would be difficult terrain. But that's me.

/cevah, the agile.

[tchrman35]

Cevah wrote:

For the large creature, treat it as stairs. Difficult terrain going up, no penalty going down.

For small & medium, I usually see it played as difficult terrain going up with an easy climb check. The drop, being less that 10', I would say since the DC is 15 Acrobatics to avoid damage from a 10', you could have it be a DC 7 to avoid damage from 1/2 1d6, but only if rushed (i.e. in combat). Usually you can Take-10 on the check out of combat, which auto succeeds unless you have armor check issues.

Now, myself, with a Take-10 acrobatics of 39 jumping up, netting a 19.5' jump up, I don't think it would be difficult terrain. But that's me.

/cevah, the agile.

Well, high jump DC is actually feet x4. So your take 10 gets you not-quite 10 feet of jump.

Still quite impressive.

[Cevah]

Unless you have a certain class ability or special talent. :-)

/cevah

[hiiamtom]

By RAW it's a DC20 acrobatics check or DC40 without moving first, and there is no good climb guideline.

By 3.5 it's too tall to hop up but you can climb it with a DC15 climb check for medium creatures for 20ft of movement (DC20 for 10ft), a small creature has the same climb DC but must also make a DC4-8 acrobatics check (depending on running start), and a large creature just has to make a DC10 acrobatics check for 10ft of movement.

I would just call is climb with a DC of 5 so it can cost 20ft of movement or 10ft of movement with a DC10 climb check. I would say failure means spent movement without climbing the terrace or rolling onto the terrace and ending up prone. I doubt I would change it for small vs medium, but I would drop the DC5 for each size larger than medium and raise it for each size smaller than small.

[DM Livgin]

Thanks for the input everyone. As a follow-up, this is how I intend to run it:

It is standard climbing rules to climb the 5 ft ledge, base DC of 10 plus modifiers for fast climb and corners. It will just be difficult terrain for large or larger creatures. Going down the steps will be without penalty or check. Of course, acrobatics checks can bypass climbing (ever try jumping with cheetah's sprint? it is obscene.).

Although I like the idea of keeping it simple and just counting it as difficult terrain, but this is a PFS scenario and PFS runs as close to the rules as possible and more importantly: highly rewards the mobility of PCs. So to not cheapen the encounter as they wrote it, I will keep those pits kinda difficult to climb out of.

I'm using the DC 10 to reflect that you are really just pulling yourself up to a ledge at chest height, not that difficult unless people are also trying to club you to death.

I'm not going to use the incremental fall distance (5ft fall, DC 7, 1d3 damage), the pain of having a high armor check penalty is reflected enough in trying to climb out of the pit. Although falling 5 feet and breaking a leg is a real thing, the players will already be frustrated by the climb check, and there is no crystal clear rules for a 5ft fall, so this is where i'm stopping when it comes to rewarding better mobility.

[hiiamtom]

What if when they fall they make the acrobatics check or fall prone without damage? It's already a "debuff" that impacts the game.

[_Ozy_]

DM Livgin wrote:

I'm using the DC 10 to reflect that you are really just pulling yourself up to a ledge at chest height, not that difficult unless people are also trying to club you to death.

DC10 is like trying to climb a rough wall with handholds, this should be DC5 or maybe even DC0.