How long would it take an average PC on foot to reach the top of a mountain that's 10,000 feet high? At what point does the PC stop walking and start having to make Climb checks (at a quarter speed)? How many Fortitude saves against fatigue will the PC have to make?
See the Climb section.
Basically, it is up to the GM to decide when a Climb check is needed because of slope or wall. Slope is anything measuring 60 degrees angle or less and wall is anything measuring more than 60 degrees angle.
So, if the PC is attempting to climb the mountain (as in climbing vertically up) then it is 10,000 / (base speed*.25). If there is a 30 ft move speed for the PC, then 10,000 / (30*.25), which is 10,000 / 7.5 = 1333.33 rounds. That would 1333.33 * 6 seconds = 8000 seconds which is 133.33 hours. Which is further, 5.556 days. That is of course assuming no rest or stopping and climbing hand over hand the whole time.
If you assume half the mountain can be walked, then the number you'd be interested in is the base speed * .25 . Anytime they succeed their climb check they move that far.
30 degrees angle is a pretty steep slope, and I would personally say that anything more than 30 degrees angle would start requiring climb checks. Especially loaded down with equipment.
It is intentionally vague on WHEN this happens to allow GM discretion. Not many people want to spend hours in a gaming session rolling climb checks to get up a mountain...especially when there is likely to be some paths they can walk or they can fly or teleport or what have you.
For Fatigue...check the Forced March section. There's a table for terrain such as mountains with no road and how fast and how long they can go through that terrain in a normal day. For a wild and trackless mountain, you'd get 1/2 your normal day's overland travel before needing to make a check for fatigue. Normally you walk for 8 hours before becoming a forced march, so if on a trackless mountain, then 4 hours.
Whew!
8000 seconds = 133.33 minutes, not hours.
Depends on the mountain. Pendin's answer (excepting the small mathematical mistake is correct. If it is the focus of the session then design multiple routes up it. Some easy to climb and long, with dangerous creatures inhabiting likely lair's. Some shorter but requiring increasing difficulties of climb skill and fewer creatures - though some flying creatures would be appropriate.
Thanks n00bxqb...didn't mean to say hours...that wonkered up my days! :)
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Unless the adventure calls for a section of mountain to climb for dramatic effect or during an encounter use the rules for overland movement (hourly or daily) in mountain terrain.
So 10,000 feet is just shy of two miles. At best on a road or trail it'll take about 45 minutes, if its trackless then it'll take about 2 hours. Obviously this is silly, but we are talking about heroes. Now obviously a mountain that's 10,000 feet tall isn't only 10,000 feet long! It's several miles of overland travel gradually climbing up the slope.
Take a look at Google maps and try to find the distance from the foot of a mountain to the top if it has a road. That's a good place to get a feel for it.
An example is Pike's Peak, Colorado. The toll road from the base to the summit is just shy of 20 miles long and it weaves back and forth along the face. According to Google it'll take 5 hours and 32 minutes to walk it. Pike's peak is 14,000+ feet tall.
--Vrock Climbing Kit
If everyone had a climbers kit, wasn't too encumbered, and maybe even had training in Climb, I might be inclined to let one character - the mountain guide - roll the Climb checks for the party.
I had a bit of a think about this as an adventure session last night and realised it could make for an interesting skill based chase type challenge.
First of all split the mountain into 1000 foot segments, or whatever is appropriate. Then decide how many routes there are for any segment, this could vary so the top of a mountain has fewer than the bottom for example. Set these up so that the end of one segment can connect to two of the next segment.
Now for each section assign (either randomly or by selection) a climb score and if appropriate an acrobatics score for the entire segment.
Climb choices: N/A Path, DC0 Steep slope, DC10 ledged climb, then DC15, 20, 25 and 30 for varying difficulties of actual climb.
DCs up to 10 may be on narrow routes which would require an acrobatics check as well. Determine how wide the path is either randomly or assign it.
Then there could be additional hazards such as:
No hazard, slippery, avalanche risk, obstructions, monster (remember it should be able to get to its lair easily), long jump required, high jump required.
A character should be able to assess the relative merits of the next segment but seeing the choices beyond would be increasingly difficult, say DC10 Perception for the next segment increasing by 5 for each additional segment.
Most serious Mountain Climbing would involve very stiff Survival and Endurance rolls, more so than Climbing. The latter would occur, of course, but the real difficulty for a good climber will start to happen when the exhaustion penalties pile up. It's very tough to get appreciable rest through sleep at high altitudes.
On the other hand, a 10k' mountain isn't necessarily epic in scope. Mt. Kilimanjaro is almost 20k' and you can walk most of the way up along the Rongai path with fairly minimal training.
Mt. Kenya, with peaks of 16-17k', is much more dangerous, although not as tall.
It all depends on what story your GM wants to tell :)
I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but at some point the air starts to thin out and all sorts of crazy fun will happen from lack of oxygen. Including walking off of a cliff.
Thanks for the input, everyone. I agree that it really depends on what the GM wants to make out of it - a well-designed challenge could be a lot of fun. But it's also helpful to have an idea that it'll take somewhere between two and five hours.
I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but at some point the air starts to thin out and all sorts of crazy fun will happen from lack of oxygen. Including walking off of a cliff.
Yes, that was what was behind my original question about Fortitude saves. The relevant rules are found in the Environment section, under Mountain Travel. Essentially, between 5,000 and 15,000 feet you have to make a DC15 Fort save every hour or become fatigued.
Note, that the DCs in the Environment section are absurdly low compared to how it works in reality. That goes for almost any environment - not just mountain travel. But that's RAW - houserules are up to you.
I'm curious now Callum, are you running or playing a campaign featuring a mountain to scale?
I attempted to place a session where the PCs had to venture up a mountain to find the entrance to the dungeon. I thought it would be fun with all the environmental challenges along the way, not to mention inhabitants to fight on the way up. The mountain was 15k feet high and their informant told them that the entrance was around 12k up. It took an entire session to make it up about 2/3rds and the PCs seemed bored and defeated by the environmental stuff along with terrain. I myself thought it was cool, but what do I know? I would like to be in that type of campaign. Have fun!
Pendin, I'm running an Age of Worms campaign. In the adventure "The Library of Last Resort", the PCs have to travel to a roc's nest that is on top of a 10,000-foot-high mountain - on an island where no teleport-type spells work. However, nothing more is said about the mountain or the journey, and when I started thinking about it, I realised I had lots of questions about how it would play out.