Climbing is never hard if you have rope

[LucyG92]

It seems like the moment a character possesses some rope, climbing isn't hard at all. "A rope with a wall to brace against, or a knotted rope," is DC 5.

Additionally, I can't remember any rules about fatigue when climbing.

So in effect, my Str 8 (human) character can take 10 to climb a slippery(!) cliff-face 110ft high and get to the top in around 45 seconds.

I don't know about most people, but I don't think I could do that. Why is climbing equipment even a thing if it's that easy?

Maybe I've miscalculated or am misunderstanding how tall 110ft actually is...

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

No, you haven't. It's the designers who have misunderstood how difficult climbing is. In this case the 3.0/5 designers, and the PF designers just kept it.
Part of the rationale, I think, is to not make a simple wall an almost impossible obstacle for low-level adventurers.

[Matthew Downie]

Are you assuming the knotted rope is already tied to the top of the cliff?

Normally you climb at quarter speed. I make that 15 feet per round. So if you can climb at that speed, you can do 110 feet in 8 rounds (48 seconds).

But it's only +5 to DC to double your speed, if you have a wall to brace against and a knotted rope (DC 0) and at least -5 Climb skill you could be up in 24 seconds.

[BretI]

Slippery is a modifier after the DC for rope. Using a rope to climb a slippery surface would be DC 10.

You should also keep in mind that you can't take 10 in battle, and someone has to place the rope. There may be places where a grapnel doesn't work for that.

[Agent Eclipse]

Someone is going to have to get that rope up there first.

[Claxon]

Yeah, the hard part is getting the rope anchored to where you want to climb up to.

Also, climbing stops being very relevant once you reach middle levels where fly becomes available, so the only way to keep it at all relevant is to make it so that low level characters can succeed, otherwise no one ever invests in it.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Should an action hero fail to climb a knotted rope?

That's what's driving the low DC. The PCs are supposed to be larger than life quasi supernatural (or explicitly supernatural) superheroes. They can fight a dozen trained soldiers and win, they can get stabbed and shrug it off, they can take on 20ft tall giants armed only with a dagger, they can fly and shoot fireballs, they're superhuman action heroes.

You could make climbing difficult, but it would be super weird if you left in hit points, level 8 humans, and magic. If you took all those unrealistic things out you wouldn't have anything resembling heroic fantasy anymore.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

High school gyms often have a rope attached to the middle of the ceiling that kids are expected to climb without knots or a wall to brace against. It takes most of them a lot more than 45 sec to travel far, I'm sure, but most kids manage eventually. And they probably don't have any ranks in Climb.

Climbing rope isn't hard. Getting the rope into place is hard.

[Dasrak]

If you could somehow anchor a rope to the top of that 110 ft cliff face then yes, it's very easy. With that said, getting such a rope in place usually requires at least one party member climbing up ahead of everyone else to put the rope there in the first place.

Pathfinder doesn't have much in the way of fatigue rules for strenuous activities. There are rules that apply to overland travel, but they only kick in after an hour. This becomes a bit of an issue whenever you're taking several minutes of physically intensive activities without a break.

[Matthew Downie]

There's also the risk that the GM will decide to disallow Take 10, in which case it's still very quick, but very dangerous too.

[ryric]

As a person who probably has about an 8 Strength in real life, based on carrying capacity, climbing a rope next to a wall is super easy. Climbing a knotted rope is trivial.

The climbing speed may be a little unrealistic but speeds in RPGs generally have issues when looked at closely.