Idea: Climb Assess. A way to gauge the difficulty and distance of a climb.

[Brokkr]

If you give a lathe or a climbing harness to the Sentinelese, what do you expect them to do with them?  Sure, that is one edge of the argument, but the idea that you have to take yourself out of modern thinking and assumptions is important.

The other is it is a game, with thought out benefits and detriments, not a simulation.  Not having climb sucks, intentionally.  Stuff exists to help out with the 1 room QoL need to get out of this place situations for folks without climb, not climbing over several rooms with some degree of safety to explore.  Intentionally.

I think people are just surprised at the change, and the attitude of "Well of course it works this way" like we all know how the code works vis-a-vis skillsheets and bonuses.

It may be me, but what I was expecting was either "You're right, and we'll look into making a change" or "This is done this way intentionally, and we currently have no desire to change it."

So. There's no "different" difficulty in climbing, so there's no way to 'gauge' success for a climb. But what about the other suggestions of "Seeing how far the drop is, without walking into an open pit"?

There was no change.  I simply informed folks that half the original idea was misinformed, as there are no difficulty ratings.  Additionally that someone trying something that may have made sense to them wouldn't work the way they thought it would.

I haven't addressed the directional aspect at all, as I am pretty much completely neutral on it.

That said I did more poking and found a bug in how some of the climb stuff seems to work between people that have the skill and those that don't.

[Jihelu]

If you give a lathe or a climbing harness to the Sentinelese, what do you expect them to do with them?  Sure, that is one edge of the argument, but the idea that you have to take yourself out of modern thinking and assumptions is important.

The other is it is a game, with thought out benefits and detriments, not a simulation.  Not having climb sucks, intentionally.  Stuff exists to help out with the 1 room QoL need to get out of this place situations for folks without climb, not climbing over several rooms with some degree of safety to explore.  Intentionally.

I think people are just surprised at the change, and the attitude of "Well of course it works this way" like we all know how the code works vis-a-vis skillsheets and bonuses.

It may be me, but what I was expecting was either "You're right, and we'll look into making a change" or "This is done this way intentionally, and we currently have no desire to change it."

So. There's no "different" difficulty in climbing, so there's no way to 'gauge' success for a climb. But what about the other suggestions of "Seeing how far the drop is, without walking into an open pit"?

There was no change.  I simply informed folks that half the original idea was misinformed, as there are no difficulty ratings.  Additionally that someone trying something that may have made sense to them wouldn't work the way they thought it would.

I haven't addressed the directional aspect at all, as I am pretty much completely neutral on it.

That said I did more poking and found a bug in how some of the climb stuff seems to work between people that have the skill and those that don't.

And by bug do you mean that it was a lot harder than you thought it was previously or what?

I've been on the receiving end of 'Oh it works like this Jihelu don't be a dumb dumb' then the situation was figured out as 'Oops looks like it was bugged haha' so knowing would be nice.

[Brokkr]

Easier.

[Jihelu]

If what we had was easier than what it should be then god damn is climbing not meant to be fun for anyone.

[Brytta Léofa]

Climbing has generally felt fine and fun to me at advanced (raider, no I didn't attempt anything insane) and master (stalker, miscreant) levels when used with tools. True that it's excessively dangerous to do high climbs at lower levels, but that's kind of typical of a lot of Arm skills.

If what we had was easier than what it should be then god damn is climbing not meant to be fun for anyone.

Any chance this is partly a low stats issue? (I think my experience has always involved at least decent agility, which you'd expect to be a factor and of course could be too much of a factor.)

[Jihelu]

Climbing has generally felt fine and fun to me at advanced (raider, no I didn't attempt anything insane) and master (stalker, miscreant) levels when used with tools. True that it's excessively dangerous to do high climbs at lower levels, but that's kind of typical of a lot of Arm skills.

If what we had was easier than what it should be then god damn is climbing not meant to be fun for anyone.

Any chance this is partly a low stats issue? (I think my experience has always involved at least decent agility, which you'd expect to be a factor and of course could be too much of a factor.)

I tend to play young humans so my agility is generally not awful, but I haven't properly tested it.

[Veselka]

If you give a lathe or a climbing harness to the Sentinelese, what do you expect them to do with them? Sure, that is one edge of the argument, but the idea that you have to take yourself out of modern thinking and assumptions is important.

The other is it is a game, with thought out benefits and detriments, not a simulation.  Not having climb sucks, intentionally.  Stuff exists to help out with the 1 room QoL need to get out of this place situations for folks without climb, not climbing over several rooms with some degree of safety to explore.  Intentionally.

^^^

[Jihelu]

Brokkr using a bad example doesn't prove your point Veselka, I'm sorry to say.

[The Gruffalo]

Climb has problems:

1) It should be a skill you can pop like ride or pilot, which caps on a combo of your stats, probably weighted by endurance/agility/strength/wisdom. You'll never scramble the cliffs like a stalker, but you'll get out of holes.

2) It's absolutely goofy that you get knocked out, and even goofier that you get knocked out on crit-fails. What would make more sense is a "stunned" status much like we currently have for waystruck, except it would last anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes depending on how far you fell.

Climbing would still be dangerous. You'd get hurt bad from long falls. You'd be stunned at the bottom, unable to do anything (imagine, the wind knocked out of you, groaning, coughing for breath, figuring out what is broken, etc).

3) If you have climbing gear and you are following someone who knows how to climb, they should be able to pass on a bonus modifier to you, to represent helping you with the climb. AKA Follow the Leader bonus from tabletop.

4) The way DIKU treats climbing is binary and outdated, and should not be looked to as a measuring stick for realism.

5) Have you ever tried to run a big RPT where several PCs have to climb down a hole with you? Unless staff is willing to assist and temporarily make the rooms no-climb to represent tying a rope ladder so they can get down, you're basically stuck hanging around for 20 minutes while half your crew tumbles down the slope like a bunch of morons, glossing over off the fact that they were just literally concussed per the code, then continuing on your way.

If you want to foster interaction, we should make it easier to engage in group activities. Making climbing harder by removing the ability to make up for lack of skill with assistance from gear? That's the opposite of that.

[Birdbrain]

Well, Brokkr has been extremely helpful in shedding light into the mechanics. Esp. with how climbing gear works in relation to the skill.

So:
Stop running RPT's involving skill checks that binary check if people die or not based on having the skill.

-OR-

Actually verify the people who are going to go on your absurdly dangerous encounter know how absurdly dangerous it is.

Final thought: Climbing by all accounts, seems to be made deliberately dangerous and a content gate. Content gates locked to some classes aren't a bad thing. Just adjust your RP.
People complaining that this doesn't promote interdependence have totally WHOOSHED the concept here. If you can't do something then.. RP and hire someone! Hey! Interdependence!

[The Gruffalo]

Okay. Sorry guys, half the clan has to stay home on this mission we've been given because you can't climb.

Have fun sitting around sparring for the 12897th time in a row.

[Yelinak]

There's a huge difference between a lathe and some leather straps that go around your body so you can attach a rope to yourself. Zalanthans also aren't Sentinelese, everybody in the game's world lives within riding distance of a city and everybody has the capacity for telepathic communication with potentially anybody in the world. Any playable race at least will have had enough contact with other people to where it's fair to say that someone without the climb skill isn't so out of the loop that they wouldn't understand how to utilize the extremely primitive climbing equipment that is in the game. It barely qualifies as technology. We're not talking about mech-suits here.

My opinion hasn't changed. Characters without the climb skill are so bad at climbing that it's dumb. It would help if we took out that ridiculous thing where failing climb without the skill even at ground level has like a 10% chance to cause you to flip upside-down and land on your head for 100 stun damage, or if there was a way to actually tie a rope to something in order to climb down a well without a 99% chance of falling. As somebody else suggested, it should be made into a skill that anybody can learn at a low level. The degree to which unskilled climbers suck at it is too unrealistic and it really, really blows anytime there's some event that involves climbing.

"Stop running RPTs that involve climbing" is a facetious response. Hard to believe anybody would even say something that inane.

[Riev]

I think a better point is that while the Sentinelese may have no idea what to do with the lathe because they've never been exposed to it, it STILL would be more helpful in doing what its designed for, than nothing.

Still isn't THE point though, which is that multiple tools don't help, if you don't have the skill.

[Alesan]

I don't think all the discussions of everyone's version of realism is going to change the fact that it's a balance decision to have climbing be difficult to impossible without the skill. And since about half the classes available have the skill, that you should have picked one of those if you want to climb, according to the designers of the game.