Them Bones of Adventure - I: Climbing

Introduction

I’m of the opinion that good rules make for better rulings.

Starting with this post is a short series dedicated to the tentative procedures I intend to use to adjudicate some of the most common feats in an explorer’s violent and risky existence. With these I aim to establish a working basis from which one can branch out into competent, cohesive and engaging rulings at the table.

The corresponding chapters on the fifth edition PHB and DMG take the carefree and heartwarming approach of letting all of these concerns be suspended on the individual referee’s goodwill. As you may have surmised already, I’m not a very big proponent of goodwill, if only because I think it hurts one's game.

My two main vectors of approach are concerned with hitting a sweet spot on abstraction vs. gameability and a relative minimization of referee interference. I understand we never quite get rid of arbitrariness and that as long as we stick to logic that is not a problem. But if you’re going to have characters cracking their bones and ending their miserable lives in play, you’ll find good value in having the degree of insulation afforded by the players knowing damn well what they sign up for when choosing a risky course of action.

As before, the result of all this will then spill onto a couple of sheets dedicated to general table rules, but since they’re not yet done I’ll be colatting them from posts such as this one.

Let us then begin with Climbing.

As explorer feats go, this one’s not terribly common; many DMs usually opt to make all their dungeons level with the ground or sunk in the convenient way of underground parking garages. Let’s be perfectly clear on this: dungeons feel a lot more like dungeons if the characters have to negotiate serious obstacles to access them and if, once inside, they can feel the press of all that rock above them, reminding that there’s one (or more) hundred-foot climbs separating them from actual freedom. It then ceases being just a question of running for your life if shit goes sour, rather it becomes a matter of needing the full extent of your athleticism and teamwork to even be able to exit the dungeon, let alone doing it while chased or laden with plunder.

Personally, I wouldn’t think to run a dungeon feature – rock spire, canyon wall, deep crevice, reversed gravity room – much less a whole vertical dungeon, without a significant and robust rule basis.

Speaking of holy grails, this can also play a part in making the wilderness a more gameable place, as natural features can become tangible situations to be tackled rather than always folded into simple narration or a slowed rate of progress on the map.

The Crunchy Bits

Main Tool of the Trade – Rope

When purchasing, note how much weight it can hold by its breakage die; for simplicity, its cargo potential can be based on how many people it can hold (typically, half the breakage die total so three grown men for a d6) and extrapolate anything else you might need from there. Note that this is information that the players know, so that important decisions can be taken, instead of activating handwavium or blind guessing. It’s the characters’ lives literally on the line and they’re no amateurs.

In any event, rope breakage should only be tested directly in selected instances, such as when the cargo capacity is clearly exceeded.

Unchallenging Climbs

In usual circumstances, with no threat to life or limb, only the lead climber ever rolls; once he secures a workable rope rig topside any subsequent climbers can be deposited leisurely in the arms of abstraction, elapsing time but dispensing with further rolls.

Conversely, horizontal movement along safety rigging, slow descents with aid from rope and climbing small distances – up to 10’ – can all be handled well by the simple-simon 5E rules of ascent and descent being made at half-speed.

Free Climbing

Assign an openly known DC based on how hard to climb the surface is, keeping it at a low threshold (DC 4-8).

The climber tests his Strength (Athletics) to make headway:

- On failure, the character is stymied by lack of footing, a patch of loose rock or shortness of breath; he makes no progress this round.

- On success, he ascends a number of feet corresponding to the modified roll’s result. On a natural 20, add another d20 feet of progress.

- On a fumble (unmodified 1 in d20), something drastic has befallen the character: stricken by exhaustion, equipment failure, sudden loss of climbing surface integrity or prosaic slippage and he must make a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (applying Acrobatics or Athletics), DC equal to 5 plus the climb’s difficulty. If the save is made, apply d4 damage from overexertion; On failing, the character plunges to his doom.

Not covered as yet: more protracted climbing distances will doubtlessly necessitate some form of additional check for exhaustion.

Falling

Death by physics, such as resulting from a fall, is something utterly dispassionate and uncaring, horrible to behold; by all accounts a profoundly stupid way to die no matter the context.

That said, I’m strongly in favour of immodest falling damage. I hate it that RPGs seem to go out of their way to trivialize falls, to the point where the math turns high-level characters into bouncy videogame avatars.

For the time being I simply doubled the PHB’s falling damage into a flat d6 for every five feet. Meaning a 10’ fall does 2d6 damage, still nowhere near to what reality will dish out but perhaps sufficient for the purpose. Also to be considered, the d6 assumes a soft ground baseline. I advocate shifting to 1 damage for water, d4 for sand, d8 for hard stone surfaces and d10/12 for bespeared pit traps

For retainers and assorted chaff, feel free to either snap their neck on arrival or declare the character Wounded and reduced to 0 hp and skip right to rolling on the dismemberment table.

Protected Climbing

If the character makes use of hammer and pitons, plus a person to stand as a belayer on the ground or at a stable midpoint of the climb, the lead climber can make a much safer ascent by means of sticking the pitons into the rock face and relaying the rope through them.

- Make a note or a rough drawing of the climb; should the climber fall, the fall distance will count as being twice the distance to the nearest placed piton. Arrested falls that avoid the ground will deal d4 damage per every five feet.

Example: the climber drives a piton at a given point during a climb, next turn he progresses 13 feet and then he falls. His fall, given the rope is immediately tensed by the belaying companion, will be arrested 13 feet below the anchoring piton, hence resulting in a total falling distance of 26 feet for 5d4 damage, due to whiplash and slamming against the rock face.

A healthy string of pitons at 3-foot intervals will always keep the damage from a fall at a very survivable d4 but then, for a limited stock of pitons, this leads into a necessity of choice, which is just what I want from it.

Abseiling

Rappelling for a swift descent ought to be resolved by a single Dexterity (Acrobatics) check: you’re always going down, it’s just a matter of at what speed. Failure will probably imply some minor (d6) damage from impacts, rope burn or excessive speed on descent, but nothing drastic will happen unless the character fumbles.

Grappling Hook

Using a grappling hook is a good way to beat a short climb, though a character can’t hope to throw a heavy metal hook with accompanying rope chaser at too high a vertical distance.

Simple it goes: [Strength (Athletics), DC = nr. of feet to the desired anchoring point]

- Once you hit, assume that the hook sticks and it ought to be fairly linear from there: use the simple half-movement rules.

- Failures are exactly that and don’t prevent retries in any way, fumbles indicate that the hook got lost or, though I'm wary of recommending this, older editions do it with some hard scene framing, skipping right into mid-ascent, as the anchor dislodges at a random point of the climb (percentile dice being your friend here).

Closing Thoughts - Avoiding the whole thing

As a closing statement, it is my hope that once I've added this layer of gravitas to a lengthy climb, superseding it with a flight spell or avoiding certain death from it with featherfall will become that much more valued as the players come to appreciate the heft of what they’ve avoided.

Proceed to part two: Light