My normal movement is 30'; lacking any feats, class abilities or items that would modify my Climb rate, I can get up that cliff at 7.5' per Move action (15'/round using two Move actions.)
The DC for the 75' cliff is 20, and my Climb skill isn't high enough to make this an automatic success.
How many Climb checks to I have to make to see if I fall, make no progress or continue to ascend? One per Move action (7.5' of movement: 10 checks) or one per round (15' of movement: 5 checks?)
"Action: Climbing is part of movement, so it's generally part of a move action (and may be combined with other types of movement in a move action). Each move action that includes any climbing requires a separate Climb check. Catching yourself or another falling character doesn't take an action."
First off a quarter of 30ft movement is 5ft, not 7.5, you round down to the nearest 5ft increment. You also must take a climb check every moveaction. Total of 15 climb checks. If you cant hit th dc on a 10, I wouldnt recommend it. Get someone good at climbing to get up there and throw you a rope.
If the GM is willing to give you a break, you could climb as a full-round action to move 15 ft at a time. That would be five checks.
If you are out of combat you can take a 10 on the climb check. If you have a +10 modifier (with strength and ranks hopefully) then you're good. You wont fail. If you don't have +10 climb modifier or are in combat I wouldn't recommend trying to climb the cliff. You are likely to fail and fall before reaching the summit.
Well, if nothing else the responses to this thread might give me a reason to roll a d4. :/
Can you ever Aid Another during a Climb check? If so, have someone climb with you. If it's your cleric/divine caster, make sure they have guidance and have them cast it on you before each check. That plus using a knotted rope virtually guarantees success.
Don't have any of these? Impress your GM with some of the following suggestions:
1. Utilize belts, sashes or other forms of clothing as an improvised rope
2. Use daggers as climbing spikes
3. Have a flying familiar to scout handholds for you, or else have your mage hand holding a ground familiar to do the same thing
4. Explain how you're using a bit of nearby tree-sap and gritty dust or chalk for added grip
5. Use a mage hand to probe hand and footholds and test them for you
I'm sure there's lots of other suggestions others will have. If your GM plays purely by RAW none of these will net much of anything in the way of a situational bonus, but if your GM enjoys a bit of roleplay and a well-thought-out plan, they may throw you a little bonus for the effort.
The point of my question was not "how do I avoid falling" or "how do I maximize my Climb check"; it was "How often do I have to make Climb checks?"
I thought it was a simple question. The three people who actually tried to answer it, rather than answering a different question, gave me three mutually exclusive answers.
You also must take a climb check every moveaction. Total of 15 climb checks.
So you must make a climb check for every 5' of movement.
Hope that answer's your question.
As a ref I regard the climbing rules as a bit on the broken side because the number of climb checks that have to be made (one per move action I believe so probably 15) mean that unless a character has put a lot of points into climb, they're just not going to make it. This is realistic, but not much fun. I tend to raise DCs a bit and allow one climb check for the whole climb.
Since you appear to be rolling dice to figure out which answer to use, let me add one more correct answer to increase the odds that you'll randomly get the right one:
15 checks, for the reason given by Kolokotroni.
But what Elinor said is also interesting. Climbing is a bit ridiculous in this game. Let's say the DC of your climb check was 20 and your climb skill is 9. You roll 15 times, failing on a 10 or less and succeeding on an 11 or higher. That means you will have a 0.00003 chance of success, or you will succeed 3 times out of 100,000 tries. Not good odds. Not good at all. Now, if you wait a level and put a point into Climb, so that your skill is a 10 instead of a 9, now you can just Take-10 and make it to the top with 1.0 chance of success. No chance to fail.
To me, that seems like a strange way to do it, and that cliff is not very tall. Only 75 feet.
Here's another strange thought. If you get your wizard friend to cast Haste on you, you will only need 5 checks. Moving 2x as fast reduces your checks from 15 to 5. Even better, your odds go up to 0.03125, or about 3,125 times out of 100,000. Still not good, but it's 1,000x better than without the haste. To reiterate, going faster (which seems much more risky and accident-prone) actually makes it 1,000x more likely that you will succeed.
So, the moral is, if you want to succeed, get all the Strength and masterwork equipment and anything else you can think of, and get Haste cast on you before you climb because haste does not make waste when you're climbing in Pathfinder.
I'm finding a houserule rattling around in my head but it's in the wrong forum so I spoiled it:
To me, this is an example of a skill that is mechanically unsound. I would much prefer a mechanic that sets one roll for the climb and increases the DC for the height of the climb (mechanically, it might be something like the Jumping rules where greater distance equates to higher DC - you don't see people making multiple jump rolls in mid-air to see if they can get extra distance).
Of course, that would get wonky too because an ever-increasing DC means that if a cliff is tall enough it could have a DC so high that nobody could ever climb it. Ever. So I guess the DC would just have to have a cap after which the time increases without increasing the DC - if you're good enough to hit the cap, you can climb Mt. Everest without ever falling (and some people actually do).