damage while climbing, ignore rule of failing by 4 or less?

[Average Joe 23]

Hello,

Regarding the Climb skill and taking damage while climbing:

Does the section "A Climb check that fails by 4 or less means that you make no progress, and one that fails by 5 or more means that you fall from whatever height you have already attained..." not apply to "Anytime you take damage while climbing, make a Climb check against the DC of the slope or wall. Failure means you fall from your current height and sustain the appropriate falling damage." ?

By RAW, it seems if you take damage while climbing and fail the resulting check by 1 or more, you fall. Does anyone disagree?

Even if by RAW, is that too harsh?

The climb skill reads:

Check

With a successful Climb check, you can advance up, down, or across a slope, wall, or other steep incline (or even across a ceiling, provided it has handholds) at one-quarter your normal speed. A slope is considered to be any incline at an angle measuring less than 60 degrees; a wall is any incline at an angle measuring 60 degrees or more.A Climb check that fails by 4 or less means that you make no progress, and one that fails by 5 or more means that you fall from whatever height you have already attained. The DC of the check depends on the conditions of the climb. Compare the task with those on the following table to determine an appropriate DC.

You need both hands free to climb, but you may cling to a wall with one hand while you cast a spell or take some other action that requires only one hand. While climbing, you can’t move to avoid a blow, so you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any). You also can’t use a shield while climbing. Anytime you take damage while climbing, make a Climb check against the DC of the slope or wall. Failure means you fall from your current height and sustain the appropriate falling damage.

[VoodistMonk]

Sounds about right... It's hard to climb whilst being shot with arrows/stabbed by Wyvern tails/whatever.

Be judicious about using this against the characters. They will whine about it being "rocks fall, party dies", but it's not. It's the standard environmental rules, but everyone forgets about them because they are mighty heroes that never succumb to the environment... it takes dragons and liches and dragon liches to kill heroes.

Finish your fights BEFORE attempting to climb the cliff. Use rope and pitons. Or have ranks in Climb... lol, nobody ever puts ranks in Climb. And that's what makes this particular challenge so fun.

Short answer. Yes. Failure by 1 means that you fall. Life is hard.

[RAWmonger]

Let’s not act like fall damage is even a big deal. You’d have to be incredibly lucky IRL to survive a fall from 50 feet (or at least not sustain permanent severe injury). Meanwhile in pathfinder that’s an average of 18 damage. Level 2 characters can survive that, and most level 1’s won’t immediately die to it (unconscious and dying).

You’ll find me on the harsher side of your argument. If you’re scaling a rock cliff and someone wants to kill you, they’re probably going to get to, because logic.

[glass]

I agree with the consensus.

As an extra data point: If you were to rule that you only fall if you fail by 5 or more on the reactive climb check to avoid falling, then there would be no difference between failing by four or less and suceeding (since not making progress is irrelevant in this case).

_
glass.

[Quixote]

I've always treated falling damage the same as damage from enemy attacks, or more specifically, I've always treated hit points the same, regardless. They represent how well you can take a hit or roll with a punch more than how much physical trauma you can endure.

In my last game, the characters had to climb a giant stone golem/animate hillside, evading falling debris, traps and flocks of tiny gargoyles while the titan tried to shake them off/squash them to paste.
Several characters fell several times, but instead of saying they plummeted the the earth and hit the ground headfirst...then got back up, I said they lost their grip and then scrabbled madly at the turf and ancient stone of the guardian's bulk. Fingernails were torn, muscles were stained, bones were fractured and joints twisted...but they slowed their descent, caught themselves and started the trek upwards again.
So it felt dangerous and real, but not absolutely fatal and impossible. They felt like heroes. Heroes that would be extremely bruised and battered the next day, but what other kind are there, really?

I do think there should be some sort of mechanic to catch yourself/others on the way down, though. If only to prevent one bad roll from resulting in having to re-roll the last 100 or so. Plus, the whole "he slips and falls, then she grabs him and they're both hanging on the cliff face, trying to find purchase" sort of deal is a classic action scene.

[Mark Hoover 330]

If PCs take damage they fall and take more damage, no 4 or less, THEN they fall. That's what I always understood/ruled anyway. However...

Anecdotally, no one ever voluntarily climbs anything in my games. I like throwing objects and obstacles in my encounters, for PCs or monsters to use as Cover, gain Higher Ground from, etc. My players routinely ask: can I Jump over it? If not, do I HAVE to make a Climb check or does it just slow movement? If the answer is ever that they MUST roll a Climb check for anything, they purposely avoid the obstacle and find other places on the battle map to move.

When presented with vertical surfaces like cliff faces, dungeon walls, etc, I've had players spend up to an hour going back and forth, finding utility scrolls that grant Climb speeds or flight, using Knowledge: Geography for easier ways up, and so on. ANYTHING to avoid climbing the surface.

On the rare occasion that I require the PCs to make a Climb check I get grumbles or dirty looks from players. In one of my current campaigns the module handed out a Rope of Climbing early on; this device has been preciously guarded and preserved for those rare times from level 2 to level 9, roughly a year IRL game play.

I don't know WHY they hate climbing so much. I know how exposed/vulnerable PCs are while climbing and I'm a softy GM so if there might be monsters attacking while on a prolonged climb I'll telegraph the presence of said monsters for MILES so the players can take any precautions they'd like to pre-buff. I have once in over a decade of GMing had weather hazards affect a prolonged climb. Basically my players could be using this skill to either gain minor tactical advantage or just move slowly upwards most of the time unperturbed, but they refuse.

[AwesomenessDog]

@Quixote That's basically how the wounds and vigor system says you should be looking at hit points anyway and tries to remodel itself to. The first 90% of your HP is your sustaining power, the last 10% is the "actually taking damage" portion.

[Quixote]

AwesomenessDog wrote:

That's basically how the wounds and vigor system says you should be looking at hit points...

3rd edition, too. And I'm sure it wasn't the first.

[Diego Rossi]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

I don't know WHY they hate climbing so much. I know how exposed/vulnerable PCs are while climbing and I'm a softy GM so if there might be monsters attacking while on a prolonged climb I'll telegraph the presence of said monsters for MILES so the players can take any precautions they'd like to pre-buff. I have once in over a decade of GMing had weather hazards affect a prolonged climb. Basically my players could be using this skill to either gain minor tactical advantage or just move slowly upwards most of the time unperturbed, but they refuse.

Probably because they hate spending precious skill points for a "useless" skill.

Probably I am part of a minority, but I like to spend a few skill points to take skills that I feel are part of the life of an adventurer.
Generally not enough to overcome typical dangers in adventures, but at least enough to be a decently competent person.
Having skills ranks equal to your character level and limiting what you can do through feat access is something that I found interesting in Pathfinder 2. Sadly the whole system is too convoluted to tempt me into mastering it.

I am trying to make home rules that will give more skill points to classes starved for skills without allowing the players to instead maximize one more skill and still not develop a more rounded character, but it isn't easy.
Super-specialization generally make a more potent character.

[Mark Hoover 330]

@Dora's Cousin: maybe instead of granting skill ranks you give a bonus Skill Focus or multi-skill feat to the PCs on off levels. Like, on every odd level they get their usual feats; on the even levels they get to pick from Skill Focus, Deceitful, Acrobatic and so on.

The PCs don't get any more skill points but they suddenly get a tiny boost using specific skills they don't usually sink any ranks into. You could mandate that the bonus feats can only affect certain skills once, that way someone isn't taking Skill focus Bluff AND Deceitful along with sinking points in AND gaining it as a Class skill by a Trait so that by level 5 the PC has Bluff +19!

You could even take it a step further: any skill-enhancer feat can only be taken on either non-class skills or class skills with no skill ranks added. Lots of classes get Perception and this is one of the best skills to max out so if a player can ALSO get a free Skill Focus on it at level 2 they likely will. However say a Wizard needs to be able to avoid Surprise rounds and has a decent Wis already but no ranks in the non-class skill, grabbing a free +3 on the skill is a good thing.

… also, sorry for calling you Dora's Cousin. No offense intended, I just kinda do that with peoples' names on forums.

[Quixote]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Probably because they hate spending precious skill points for a "useless" skill.

Probably I am part of a minority, but I like to spend a few skill points to take skills that I feel are part of the life of an adventurer.

Right there with you. That's why I took Climb, Fly, Ride and Swim and combined them all into Athletics. You use Athletics for tests of strength and endurance and Acrobatics for tests of deftness and agility.

Which has actually resulted in most checks involving jumping to use Athletics, which is nice. I usually see an even split of ranks between the two on most characters at my table, favoring the one with the lower key modifier.

Super-specialization doesn't really happen at my table, partly because of the questions and feedback I give during character creation, partly because DC's aren't always so high as to demand specialization (and actually make it kind of pointless), and partly because failure results most often in a more difficult path to the character's goal, rather than an outright denial of it.

[Diego Rossi]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

@Dora's Cousin: maybe instead of granting skill ranks you give a bonus Skill Focus or multi-skill feat to the PCs on off levels. Like, on every odd level they get their usual feats; on the even levels they get to pick from Skill Focus, Deceitful, Acrobatic and so on.

The PCs don't get any more skill points but they suddenly get a tiny boost using specific skills they don't usually sink any ranks into. You could mandate that the bonus feats can only affect certain skills once, that way someone isn't taking Skill focus Bluff AND Deceitful along with sinking points in AND gaining it as a Class skill by a Trait so that by level 5 the PC has Bluff +19!

You could even take it a step further: any skill-enhancer feat can only be taken on either non-class skills or class skills with no skill ranks added. Lots of classes get Perception and this is one of the best skills to max out so if a player can ALSO get a free Skill Focus on it at level 2 they likely will. However say a Wizard needs to be able to avoid Surprise rounds and has a decent Wis already but no ranks in the non-class skill, grabbing a free +3 on the skill is a good thing.

… also, sorry for calling you Dora's Cousin. No offense intended, I just kinda do that with peoples' names on forums.

It seems a small boost, and it can be a small boost against static numbers, but when you make an opposed skill check it suddenly becomes very important. When you compare the skill total of the PC against the opposite skill total of the NPC that +2 changes the chances of success noticeably.

[Reksew_Trebla]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

I don't know WHY they hate climbing so much. I know how exposed/vulnerable PCs are while climbing and I'm a softy GM so if there might be monsters attacking while on a prolonged climb I'll telegraph the presence of said monsters for MILES so the players can take any precautions they'd like to pre-buff. I have once in over a decade of GMing had weather hazards affect a prolonged climb. Basically my players could be using this skill to either gain minor tactical advantage or just move slowly upwards most of the time unperturbed, but they refuse.

Probably because they hate spending precious skill points for a "useless" skill.

Probably I am part of a minority, but I like to spend a few skill points to take skills that I feel are part of the life of an adventurer.
Generally not enough to overcome typical dangers in adventures, but at least enough to be a decently competent person.
Having skills ranks equal to your character level and limiting what you can do through feat access is something that I found interesting in Pathfinder 2. Sadly the whole system is too convoluted to tempt me into mastering it.

I am trying to make home rules that will give more skill points to classes starved for skills without allowing the players to instead maximize one more skill and still not develop a more rounded character, but it isn't easy.
Super-specialization generally make a more potent character.

Look into the optional rules Background Skills. Might not be exactly what you are looking for, but you can modify what skills can get the bonus skill ranks put in them for your purposes.