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I think most people just call for one check in exploration mode. However, this is also one reason Assurance Athletics is a great pick.
I guess if you wanted to justify needing 10 checks to climb a 100 foot cliff... On a critical failure the character falls, and if you make that one check you have the awkward position of needing to decide how far up they got before falling. The 10 checks gives you the answer to how high they were, but it also vastly increases the odds of rolling a crit failure. So Assurance is the best bet if you're a player with this concern. If you're a GM, just make some house rules.
There are other examples of this problem where actions designed for encounter mode feel annoyingly repetitive in exploration mode. Picking a lock springs to mind. The multi-success model is great if you're trying to hurry and pop the lock before the room finishes filling with poison gas. But usually you're lock picking when no one is aware of you yet and will succeed eventually.
I don't think d20 games have entirely caught up on this particular but of game design, but other games make sure that any die result changes the state of play, even if it was a failure. Meanwhile Pathfinder and 5e ask for a lot of rolls where a failure means nothing happens.
This sounds like it might be based on the 10ft cliff in the Beginner Box. If so, that uses the Climb action, which should be defined elsewhere in the rules pamphlet. You climb 5ft on a success and 10ft on a critical success, so it's possible to do it in one roll. On the other hand, a 100ft cliff could easily call for 20+ rolls.
I would strongly recommend making it 1 roll, yes. You may also want to remove some of the other Climb checks where they come up, as they don't really add anything to the game either.
I would either make the 100 foot cliff zero rolls - or make it a victory point skill challenge.
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Coming from 5e only 1 check is required to accomplish a task. In PE2 you have to make 2 rolls? Example: climbing down a 10 foot wall. Make an athletics check for the first 5 feet and another for the second 5 feet? Why? considering you do not even take any damage from a 5 foot fall.
Now if the wall was 100 feet. You have to make two checks. One for the first 50 feet and another for the next 50 feet. Two checks for 10 feet or two checks for 100 feet. This make no sense.
I will be dming my first pe2 game in a few weeks. I am thinking of making skills checks just one roll.I would like some input from others about this. Maybe I am not understanding something!
Thank you.
A check is one roll. How many checks you need to accomplish a task depends on how complicated that task is, really.
Climbing speed is based on your land speed as well as how difficult the surface is.
I suspect you're looking at a certain encounter in the Beginner Box? I think that one is the way it is--low stakes, eventual success pretty much guaranteed, but requiring multiple checks--because it's a tutorial on making skill checks, ways to influence them, and how the critical failure/critical success system applies to them.
If your players are familiar with other editions of similar games, it might be less necessary.
There are other examples of this problem where actions designed for encounter mode feel annoyingly repetitive in exploration mode. Picking a lock springs to mind. The multi-success model is great if you're trying to hurry and pop the lock before the room finishes filling with poison gas. But usually you're lock picking when no one is aware of you yet and will succeed eventually.In my experience you're also usually lock picking something that can be Forced Open, which only requires one successful check.
I don't think d20 games have entirely caught up on this particular but of game design, but other games make sure that any die result changes the state of play, even if it was a failure. Meanwhile Pathfinder and 5e ask for a lot of rolls where a failure means nothing happens.This is something I'm really not a fan of in published adventures, as a GM. It's not the end of the world, since I can just not call for the checks in the first place (or write my own adventures), but it does often feel like the game wants you to roll dice simply for the sake of rolling dice.
This is why I still use "random" Monster rolls or Wandering Monsters. Yes, you can Force Open the door but it will most likely alert creatures nearby. Best to try the stealth option and pick the lock.
Even picking the lock should have a bit of risk too to facilitate Player choice. Do you Critically Fail picking lock? One of your picks break. At least that's how I run it.
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Players had to do two checks to climb down a 10ft wall. One of the players actually commented. Really, I have to do a second check for the last 5 feet? LOL.
Only if you don't want to fall on your butt and embarrass yourself in front of your cool adventurer friends.
There are other examples of this problem where actions designed for encounter mode feel annoyingly repetitive in exploration mode. Picking a lock springs to mind. The multi-success model is great if you're trying to hurry and pop the lock before the room finishes filling with poison gas. But usually you're lock picking when no one is aware of you yet and will succeed eventually.In my experience you're also usually lock picking something that can be Forced Open, which only requires one successful check.
I don't think d20 games have entirely caught up on this particular but of game design, but other games make sure that any die result changes the state of play, even if it was a failure. Meanwhile Pathfinder and 5e ask for a lot of rolls where a failure means nothing happens.This is something I'm really not a fan of in published adventures, as a GM. It's not the end of the world, since I can just not call for the checks in the first place (or write my own adventures), but it does often feel like the game wants you to roll dice simply for the sake of rolling dice.
Yeah, Force Open requires less checks, but risks altering whatever is on the other side. So it may make sense to be a stickler for the multi check thing if there's someone to be alerted on the other side of the door. If the players get impatient, they can still Force it.
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Players had to do two checks to climb down a 10ft wall. One of the players actually commented. Really, I have to do a second check for the last 5 feet? LOL.Only if you don't want to fall on your butt and embarrass yourself in front of your cool adventurer friends.
If you Fall 5 feet or less, you take no damage and don't land prone.
So why not just release from the wall and drop the last 5 feet?
Climbing up the wall would be a different matter though.
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Players had to do two checks to climb down a 10ft wall. One of the players actually commented. Really, I have to do a second check for the last 5 feet? LOL.Only if you don't want to fall on your butt and embarrass yourself in front of your cool adventurer friends.If you Fall 5 feet or less, you take no damage and don't land prone.
So why not just release from the wall and drop the last 5 feet?
Climbing up the wall would be a different matter though.
Even better. You can fall 5 feet on another creature and you both go on with your lives, no harm done.