Climbing Quickly: Do I understand this correctly?

[Ravingdork]

I have a mythic champion who needs to scale a 5,000 foot volcano and somehow abort its eruption before it kills me and everyone within several dozen miles. Fortunately, only the last 500 feet requires actual climbing.

With my mythic abilities, I have climb, land, and swim speeds of 120 feet as well as a +15 Climb modifier.

If a creature with a climb speed chooses an accelerated climb, it moves at double its climb speed (or at its land speed, whichever is slower) and makes a single Climb check at a –5 penalty.

Does this mean that my character can take 10 for a final result of 20 with accelerated climbing and climb that volcano at a whopping 480 feet per round (240 feet per move action)?

Am I understanding everything correctly?

[DM_Blake]

No.

Your land speed is slower than double your climb speed, so your accelerated climbing is limited to being equal to your land speed. For most creatures, land speed is higher than climb speed but for you they are the same, so there is no benefit to accelerating your climbing.

So each move action you'll move 120' while you're climbing, with a Take-10 result of 25 since there is no benefit to taking the -5 penalty to "accelerate" to the exact same movement rate.

[DM_Blake]

p.s. I recommend using a "cold fusion device". It fits conveniently into a suitcase-sized box and apparently it's capable of stopping even super-volcanoes that could otherwise destroy a whole planet so it should be powerful enough to stop your volcano.

You wouldn't happen to be a green-blooded, pointy-eared hobgoblin by chance, would you?

[Ravingdork]

Er...no.

[Ravingdork]

Also, with the current wording couldn't it just as easily be interpreted to mean "double climb speed or double land speed, whichever is slower"?

[DM_Blake]

Ravingdork wrote:

Also, with the current wording couldn't it just as easily be interpreted to mean "double climb speed or double land speed, whichever is slower"?

Nope.

We're talking about two separate prepositional phrases here (italicized below for clarity). The prepositions ("at") each take their own objects and as such they do not share anything between the two prepositional phrases, and the word "double" appears only in one of those objects. From your own quote:

Ravingdork wrote:

If a creature with a climb speed chooses an accelerated climb, it moves at double its climb speed (or at its land speed, whichever is slower) and makes a single Climb check at a –5 penalty.

[Ravingdork]

So I'm just an illiterate ijiot then? :P

[DM_Blake]

You can hardly be blamed for missing the wording, what with your blindfold and all.

[Ravingdork]

It's a magic blindfold. I just didn't know much about prepositions.