[Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Climbing is the DX/A skill of, well, climbing things. It's penalised by encumbrance, which is often important and boosted by Brachiator, Flexibility and Perfect Balance. Super Climbing lets you climb faster, but doesn't boost your roll. Clinging removes the need to roll. Bad Grip and One Arm penalise Climbing, and Lame realistically should do so too. Knot-Tying defaults to Climbing. Rope Up and Scaling are standard Techniques based on Climbing. Action 3: Furious Fists adds Rappelling.

Basic has climbing gear, of hammer, spikes and carabineers, which obviously needs rope as well. Low-Tech has much more detail, including types of rope, firing grapnels and equipment of quality. High-Tech has more, and Ultra-Tech has a lot of advanced climbing gear. Unfortunately, rope descriptions use different schemes and safety margins between the three tech books.

DF 16 has the Climber's Axe, plus rules for crossing gaps on a rope and hoisting, both of which use Climbing, and whole sections on climbing mountains, combat in trees, and other climbing challenges. Action and Zombies have climbing rules for modern urban environments. Underground Adventures has the most detailed rules and cross-references to climbing gear in other books.

The rules for using Climbing are nicely clear, and are on B349. Anything harder than a ladder needs a roll, a an ordinary tree is +5, and an "ordinary" mountain is +0, with a lot more cases and speeds in the table. You roll every five minutes, which collapses to "Unskilled climbers can climb a tree on a DX roll". The modern sports of climbing buildings and sheer rock faces are applications of Scaling, and glass/metal buildings can be climbed much more easily using suction cups. I suspect that having climbed the same route several times should give a bonus for familiarity, or a penalty if something has changed and you don't notice.

Climbing is one of the skills every adventurer should have, per How to be a GURPS GM and can float to other attributes surprisingly often: IQ for planning climbs, Per for spotting the best routes, and HT or Will for endurance. The IQ- and Per-based uses might constitute using Climbing as a complimentary skill to itself: making an extra roll in the hope of getting a boost to the actual ascent, but risking getting a penalty. DF 16 has rules for using Per-based skills to assess environmental penalties.

PU2, PU3 and PU7 have several examples that include Climbing. Chinese Elemental Powers has powers that boost climbing, or give automatic success. St George's Cathedral has Climbing penalties and bonuses for parts of such a large building. Magic has both a spell and an elixir that boost Climbing. Climbing appears on templates, lenses or styles in just about every bok that has templates at all: the list would be tedious to recount.

My diplomat character in a THS Mars campaign had an interesting time with Climbing. He initially lacked the skill, but found he needed it for Consular Special Ops work. Being a severely IQ-based character, he did as much pre-planning as possible and when the party were trying to make friends with an adventure travel blogger, found a really good climbing site in Noctis Labyrinthus from satellite images.

What uses of Climbing have been strange, funny or awesome in your games?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I run a lot of action-adventure stories – be they fantasy dungeon crawls or modern-day secret agents – so Climbing is essential. The heroes are just about always called upon to go up something as a group, and usually, they can't take stairs or an elevator. It makes for gripping moments that don't involve combat or chases. In fact, I tend to think of "chases, climbs, combats, and craftiness" (the latter meaning things like impersonation and stealth) as the Four Cs of excitement.

The most amusing climbs I've seen as a GM all came courtesy of Zhang Zhu, a (now-retired) PC in my current secret-agents campaign. Among his most impressive feats:

• Climbing aboard a yacht undetected, shinnying up the mast, planting a GPS beacon up there, and then diving so far and so smoothly from there that the people on the yacht marked the splash down to wildlife.
  
  
• Free-climbing a Tokyo apartment building full of gangsters to avoid the thugs and security systems inside, and then securing and dropping a line from the story just below the penthouse, allowing the other PCs to join him and get the drop on a dangerous Yakuza boss.
  
  
• Free-climbing the vertical rock face of a Greek island swarming with Russian mobsters, and negotiating the overhang at the top, dressed in nothing but a pink Speedo. Then he stealthily secured a line at the brink, dropped it to his waiting friends, and helped them up to safe ground at the top, one at a time, undetected.

Honorable mentions go to his many climbs through ducts and service passages to get the drop on people, including one that used Escape as much as it did Climbing, and ended in a flying attack on two people seated under an air vent.

It's safe to say that he didn't see vertical objects as obstacles, but rather as poorly guarded alternative entrances. His player impressed me with his ability to turn high Climbing and Stealth – and mostly that – into an essential part of every mission.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Not something did happen, but something that I would like to consider benchmarking in terms of skill for the sheer cinematic awesomeness:
Stealthily Climb up a tree near a patrol route, hang down partially (without dropping to the ground) from a branch behind the target, disable the target (e.g. by a triangle choke, or by a grapple-and-backstab of some sort, or by a garotte), then climb back up to full height, taking the unconscious/dead enemy back up with you, to hide it.
Taking the whole disabling affair aside, this will require a Climbing roll at -4, assuming that a human body falls within Heavy encumbrance (-4, the mass limit being able to lift BL×8 with two hands, so barely up to 160lbs for ST10, but 192 lbs with ST11 already). Together with an ordinary tree (+5), it seems doable for a moderately skilled and strong character, but definitely not trivial.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

That has to be done the right way. If you're hanging head downwards, gripping the branch with your legs, as you might well if you were just planning to stab when you assumed the position, then getting yourself turned around to climb upwards with the body attached to you seems really hard.

Having a rope that you've already tied off in the tree, putting that round the body and letting it fall to the ground while you get yourself back up onto the branch, and then hoisting the body into the tree sounds a whole lot easier.

Or you could just come down, pick up the body, and then climb with it.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Climbing is one of the more or less "staple" Skills for my character: I only leave it out under three circumstances:

1) It really doesn't fit the character concept (and the concept is deemed campaign appropriate by the GM). Usually I'll have a worthwhile alternative or the character will be focusing on picking up this Skill ASAP.

2) As a somewhat desperate cost cutting measure, which again often means the character has a worthwhile alternative so that they don't bog the party down by being unable to climb well and again, it'll be one of the first things I'll try to have the character learn.

3) I fail my IQ roll for Absentmindedness and/or for Hobby Skill (GURPS). =P

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

One thing I've been thinking about lately: while there is a lot of climbing equipment in the books, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of equipment providing a Quality bonus to climbing. Low-Tech (but for some reason not High-Tech, apparently) has climbing spikes that reduce penalties for smooth-ish surfaces. But that penalty reduction doesn't stack with the Scaling technique, nor does it work on really tough surfaces.

And speaking of Scaling, this is quite an interesting technique. On one hand, it's super cool, since it offsets one of the most important penalties*. OTOH, it's generally only a good deal after putting 4+ points into Climbing, while putting 4 points into Climbing is a controversial choice compared to buying the first level of Flexibility (even though the latter is more expensive overall).


* == though offsetting haste and encumbrance might be another consideration. But since they would likely also be Hard techniques, there's no point whatsoever to take them all. Taking them as perks - Armour Familiarity (Climbing) and Efficient (Climbing) - seems only slightly more attractive, but will eat into the perk limit if the game employs one.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

This was mostly an idea for cinematic flash factor, not efficiency.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I find myself compelled to add the Climbing skill to most any adventuring character, even mages. I suspect the default is too harsh for us monkey-boys.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Also remember the Climbing skill covers Absailing too.

Be it so the chopper does have to land, or to make down the side of a building to make a surprise window entrance from the roof. or to escape from you cell used knotted bedsheets.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Climbing covers everything vaguely related to climbing for humans. Could someone specialize or hyperspecialize for just free-climbing?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

My current character would likely specialise in climbing without the aid of spikes/ropes/etc. if such an option existed. But I suspect this option is not RAW.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Why shouldn't it be? It would be a greatly reduced skill compared to all of what basic Climbing covers.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Because:It would also merely provide a skill level one worse for non-free climbing.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Yes, unless ropes etc. always give at least a relative +2 bonus over the free climb, there will be times when it would be safer to abandon the gear and climb without it.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

And they don't give it:
And climbing spikes from Low-Tech reduce the penalties of Scaling, but it's probably better for a free-climber to invest into Scaling.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

So cats that know Climbing must by R.A.W. know how to rappel, use spikes, harnesses, etc.? That makes sense to everyone here?

I feel that limited free Climbing should benefit from at least a one point specialization. I simply cannot imagine any internally consistent argument to the contrary.
Most characters above TL 0 would be much better served with the full skill, but Gurps is supposed to be generic and work for non-humans.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

From my admittedly limited knowledge, most climbing gear seems to mitigate failure and drastically increase safety rather than make climbing itself easier.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Cats are IQ<6, so they can't know those things.

Oh, so this. There's one item that negates penalties, but that's still not the same as a flat Quality bonus.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

It isn't enough to qualify as a Technique? Not quite the same since you'd still have at least a point into the regular Climbing Skill, but then again how good can you be at one form of climbing without being at least a little more competent in general climbing?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Free-Climbing as a Technique? That sounds unbalancingly tempting.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Is that because it is too broad? I won't pretend I'm well informed on free climbing and I suppose climbing without aides is the default GURPS use... but now we are getting to how a basic hand strike for Karate can't be learned as a Technique but Kicking can. @_@

With Rope-Up and Scaling as Techniques, it doesn't seem too far fetched.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

The problem with Free-Climbing is indeed that it starts out at Climbing+0, so either it cannot be raised (in which case there is no point writing it up as a Technique), or it can be, in which case it is very much a 'Technique of using the skill most of the time' (because after raising it, you will be, barring a minority of cases).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I'd argue that Free-Climbing is in fact the core of the Climbing skill and, as such, is prohibited from being a technique.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Heh! Same issue with low-tech burglars, mountain-scrambling shepherd boys, and birdsnest-raiding hunter-gatherers. Unless we make it "Climbing/TL" (which does not appeal to me) free-climbing has to be the core task for Climbing in a generic universal game. As Last Pawn says, you don't make the core ability of a skill into a Technique.

It seems to me that climbing gear started out as safety equipment to mitigate failure, and that once its use was established people started working out ways to use it first to assist difficult climbing tasks and them to accomplish climbing tasks that aren't even possible to a free-climber. I'd consider the use for safety as a familiarity — not even charge a point for it, the price of an SOP. And I suggest that the use of climbing equipment to cancel difficulty penalties and allow otherwise-impossible climbs to be a TL-limited Technique, or perhap a family of them for different equipment such as gecko gloves.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Part of the difficulty here is that we may be asking GURPS to go beyond its useful resolution. A Climbing roll determines whether you crossed the distance you needed to, safely: a failure may mean that you didn't get started, or that you made it most of the way, but lost your footing, and the safety line caught you, so you didn't make any overall progress.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

By RAW, "Any failure means you fall." I think it's a common house-rule that failure means no progress and only critical failures result in falls.

I have a few questions about climbing.

How often do people here call for rolls and how do you assess fatigue, for climbs using the "Combat" column? The Basic Set says at least one FP, or double the FP cost determined by the adventure or GM. But it doesn't give any other guidance.

'Regular' climbs call for rolls every 5 minutes. But 5 minutes seems too a long a time frame to be meaningful for 'Combat' climbs. Also, since the movement is usually about 3 times faster on the 'Combat' column, using the same five-minute climb would let you get 3 times as far with the same success rate by climbing faster, which logically should penalize your success. However calling for a roll every second someone is climbing in 'Combat' mode doesn't make sense either, and would result an way to many falls. Dividing the time between rolls by three (rolls every 100 seconds) would make the distance covered between rolls the same in most cases. This is still too long to track or be meaningful in actual combat, but at least it removes the unintended benefit.

Does extra-effort work for climbing? It seems like using the 'Combat' column covers going faster but spending FP to do it, potentially at much lower cost than extra-effort - tripling speed, rather than increasing it by 5%. You could argue that the 'Combat' column is only available in actual combat situations or when fright checks or self-control rolls for appropriate disadvantages are failed, that would leave some space for extra-effort to be useful in other situations.

By the chart, Basic Move doesn't impact climbing speed at all. Should it, and by how much? Realistically do you think someone who can run twice as fast as an average person could climb any faster over 5 minutes? Or does a fast climber need to take "Enhanced Move (Climbing)"

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Pretty much this.

—

A skill does not get a "/TL" merely because equipment exists to make it easier or safer to use. That's true of just about all tasks . . . it isn't as though you need Brawling/TL to account for brass knuckles and sap gloves, or Hiking/TL to get the benefit of better boots, or Writing/TL to exploit word processors. GURPS assumes that higher TLs bring better tools for almost all skills. Certainly, such devices can raise issues of familiarity, but going all the way to designating the skill as "technological" (or "/TL") only happens when using technology is the whole of the task. This is true of, say, using a car (Driving/TL) or a sensor (Electronics Operation/TL), because those tasks don't exist without technology. It is not true of Hiking to cover the exact same ground as Driving/TL, or Observation to watch the exact same objective as Electronics Operation/TL; while good boots or binoculars, respectively, could aid those efforts, the tasks themselves remain possible without the tools.

And of course using tools at all is dependent on having IQ 6+. To quote p. B15: "Sapience is defined as the ability to use tools and language. In GURPS, this requires at least IQ 6." Thus, IQ 1-5 creatures can still have tool-assisted skills like Brawling, Climbing, Hiking, and Observation; they just can't benefit from the tools. And they can't have tool-use skills like Driving/TL or Electronics Operation/TL, or for that matter language-use skills like Writing.

(Obviously, there are exceptions for specific tools in particular situations. Some IQ 1-5 animals do poke at termite hills with sticks or "pick locks" with their beak. These would be racial perks of some kind, akin to Cutting-Edge Training, Special Exercises, or Unusual Training. Think of each one as 1/20 of a level of IQ if you want. The IQ stat is broad and sweeping, so tweaks will be needed for the things it covers.)

The upshot for Climbing is that IQ 1-5 animals will always do it "free." Tech level 0 sapients (IQ 6+) will most likely do so as well. However, higher-TL sapients will have access to the climbing aids known up to their TL, giving them an advantage. This is part of why having IQ 6+ costs more than IQ 1-5, and why TLn costs 5 points more than TL(n-1).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Is there any particular reason this needs to be the case, though? I don't see any definition-level problem with Climbing being a /TL skill. It's probably not a good fit to bring in all the weight of the TL differential penalties for Climbing with wrong-TL gear, but there are official /TL skills for which that objection applies.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Largely "a playable game needs cutoffs." Specifically:

• IQ 6 is where tool-use becomes possible.
• Technological vs. non-technological skills designate mandatory vs. optional tool-use.
• TL rates tool quality.

Any player can look at character IQ, look for the "/TL" on a skill name, look at the number after the "/TL," and immediately know how that skill will interact with gear and with that particular character. There's no ambiguity in the system. A questioning reader may find arbitrariness that raises doubts in his or her mind, but that's inevitable in any effort to approximate reality with a few numbers, as in game design.

You're free to disagree with the specific implementation, but as designers, we like it. It's simple, clear, and does a good job of rating who can do what. It also shuts down rules lawyers who want to do the illogical – like have their IQ 3 Ally animal use climbing gear – because nothing in the rules says they can't.

I do: Climbing is not an equipment-operation skill that becomes impossible without equipment. It's an athletic skill that's optionally assisted by tools. To me, the distinction is as clear as day.

Sure, sometimes the nature of tool use just doesn't change that much with TL; Guns/TL provides an ideal example. Still, if the task itself is impossible without the tools (try shooting a gun without, you know, a gun!), we bite the bullet and call the skill technological. The problem there isn't with technological skills vs. non-technological skills but rather with the one-size-fits-all nature of TL penalties. Given infinite page count, each /TL skill would have its own progression . . . but in the real world where games take time to design and edit, a single progression is a forgivable crime.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Neither is Mathematics, as the most dramatic example. Physical science skills only are when you're using them to operate scientific equipment, not when you're using them for a knowledge base. First Aid scarcely qualifies and Physician is dubious.

And on the flip side, Melee Weapon skills clearly are equipment-operation skills...


That distinction might be moderately clear, but it doesn't seem a great fit to the actual usage of /TL. (I don't think sciences being /TL is at all a problem but I think it serves a totally different purpose than this.)

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Kromm has an implied limitation of DX vs DX/TL skill.

IQ/TL skills are the skills behind the technology where each TL is basically it's on paradigm of thought where Mathematics got relaxed by consent such a as zero, posizational notation, calculus, etc.

the Physical Sciences's TL also is not defined by the tool, but the paradigm's around the TL theories.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Speaking as a (former) scientist, I took it as read that people would realize that theoretical models and mathematical methods are tools as surely as labs and telescopes are. They evolve over time because the real work of scientists is using and evolving those tools. Scientists understand nature via those tools, not directly. If the latter were possible, we wouldn't need science.

But it's true that abstract tools aren't always recognized as "technology" by people, so I could see that leading to questions about why, say, Mathematics/TL has a "/TL" on it.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Certainly you can characterize the theory, models, and methods as abstract tools, but I don't think that conceptualization makes the sciences "equipment-operation skill that becomes impossible without equipment". The 'equipment' in those cases is built in to the skill.

And I don't think that having models that serve as abstract tools is any kind of preserve of the /TL skills. Just looking at the very start of the list, Accounting, Administration, and Animal Handling surely all have their own abstract toolboxes that have changed over time.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Modern math damn sure becomes impossible without e.g. the mighty Zero.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Try understanding the Standard Model of particle physics without field theories, field theories without tensor algebra and the Lagrangian formalism, and so on. I don't think people realize just how dependent the sciences are on the toolboxes and databases of ideas that came before. You can't "do science" that's meaningful to the current TL without those things. This convolution of the tools with what they work on is why sciences rate as Hard skills as well as technological ones. I'll grant that the tools don't qualify as "equipment" in this case, but you could replace "equipment" with "tools" in my earlier remarks without obscuring my meaning at all.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

But if you have the skill Math/TL8, you have zero. If you don't have zero, you don't have that skill at all. (Or a personal TL anywhere close to TL8, really.)

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

What some of us are trying to say is that's why Mathematics/TL is a /TL skill. "Depends on tools" isn't the same as "depends on tools external to the skill." Some skills are bootstraps; Mathematics/TL is one of them. It depends on concepts that emerge at specific TLs to develop further concepts that meet the needs of specific TLs; to work within that framework, it necessarily has to depend on TL itself.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Are there any IQ based skills that aren't TL in at least some degree?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Probably not. This is SJGames and American usage is almost always preferred. It covers rappelling.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Trying to make the "equipment-operation skill" classification simultaneously cover skills for operating actual equipment and skills that involve the mental manipulation of models seems to eliminate any discriminatory power it could have.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I spent a decade in theoretical physics hearing that . . . "Oh, theory. Well that isn't the same science as actually doing experiments." No, it's exactly the same science – you can't separate the two. That's my point here; the tools of theory and experiment certainly differ, but they're all part of what GURPS would call the same science skill. At most, they differ by a familiarity penalty.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I'm slightly disappointed we went on a tangent of tools-and-sciences in a thread about Climbing while we still have such a curious bunch of questions to sort out:

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

For starters Acting, and not being /TL animal IQ 1-5 can use it too.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

...What? I didn't say anything remotely like that. I criticized your stated method for determining whether a skill was /TL or not, I didn't dispute whether theoretical and lab science are the same.

Although I would say (and I am sitting in a laboratory right now, where I spend a sizable fraction of my waking hours) that the lab work skill set involves a lot of stuff not particularly based in theory, and theory is only needed to a very shallow level for much of it, though of course that changes when you go to trying to really interpret what you've got. It could easily and reasonably be split into different skills, if one wanted to. (Both those skills would be /TL, though for what I'd call different reasons.) Dunno if this is specific to my niche in biology, though I doubt it. I know a chem PhD student whose actual duties are largely about maintaining and repairing ultra-high-vacuum equipment.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Many real world animals lie which is a situational form of acting.
I had a cat that affected a limp after intentionally ramming my leg. My human level IQ noticed that she always limped with the same leg even if she rammed with her other side.
She was odd to say the least but not super intelligent all things considered.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

If only to reduce otherwise inevitable deaths, I think climbing failures should be verified before falls. Unless PCs ignore inherent dangers of lacking safety gear and taking their time.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

This post from Kromm is also relevent to this thread 8)

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Really the fast climbing should probably be less-than-equal in terms of safety, as you suggest yourself. Maybe make it roll per minute, or even worse than that, though probably not a roll every second.

If using RAW, of course, it's straightforward enough. Active tactical combat climbs will have the one roll for the start of the climb and that will usually be all.
Extra effort for movement is applied to running. I'd suggest that 'non-combat' climbing is more analogous to walking. If you use Extra Effort, I'd pile it on top of combat-rate climbing.

This seems to diverge somewhat from RAW given that combat climbing is supposed to absolutely require emotional justification. I can't help it, I am unable to buy that sort of constraint.
Basic Move probably shouldn't. Any connection between ability to run across mostly flat surfaces and ability to clamber up things is very distant.

However, I don't like Enhanced Move (Climbing) either. The dynamics of Enhanced Move (acceleration over multiple turns) don't fit climbing at all well. The mechanic of multiplying the existing rates is sort of nice, given so many different rates, but...

There should be a way to buy faster climbing. Actually, there is one, but the Super Climb mechanic makes way less sense than Enhanced Move (Climbing) would.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

In my house rules, instead of climbing being binary success = climb and failure = fall, I've ruled that if a climb is easy enough to receive a bonus to your skill roll, a failure works like this instead:

failure < bonus = climb halfway, then get stuck unable to proceed. You can look for another path (takes 1 minute) and try again at a cumulative -1.

failure >= bonus = fall upon reaching halfway.

critical failure is always a fall.

If the climb is difficult enough for a penalty (or no bonus), then it works just as it does now, with any failure resulting in a fall.

With an unskilled climber (DX-5 default, so skill of 5) climbing an average tree (+5), you're therefore rolling against a 10. So on a roll of 10 or less, you make it to the top, on a roll of 11 to 14, you make it halfway up, and on a 15 or more you fall. While I certainly don't have any real-life tree climbing accident statistics, it just sounds like these effects are much more "realistic." (And let's not forget +5 is an average tree.. easy to climb trees are probably +7 or so, while more difficult trees might only be +2 or +3).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I always found plain ropes to be the easiest things to climb. I bet knotted ropes are downright trivial for anyone capable of using their arms and legs fully.
Trees seem infinitely variable in difficulty.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Plain ropes are easy if you got a good underbody strength to weight ratio so you can haul you self up.

Trees gets you a good mix where you lower body strength can actually help move your weight too.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

If you use proper technique, it doesn't take a lot of strength at all.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

No argument. I used an average tree (+5) as my example as it's one of the examples from the RAW which I personally found odd that unskilled people would fall out of 50% of the time (default at +5). It's what prompted me to create my house rules. As I stated in my last post, I vary the bonus of climbing a tree from +2 to +7 in my games. I picked that range because it's an easy 1d+1 to determine the modifier :) Anything worse than +2 is basically a pole (branchless tree) or giant tree that I treat the same as scaling a wall.

As to rope, I consider specialized climbing/grip rope to give a bonus. I treat it as an equipment quality variation, where Good quality gives +2 and Fine quality gives +4 (either of which replaces the normal -2 for rope up of non-climbing quality rope). A school/gym will likely have the latter +4 version for insurance reasons. Since climbing rope gives a bonus, with my house rules, you're much more likely to get at least halfway up and not fall...

Oh, and I specifically consider rope climbing to be -2 skill (or +2 or +4 with quality rope), whether up or down, and Rappelling down, which is not the same as climbing down, as -1 to skill.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

The only tree I was ever able to climb into with any amount of effort was a crab apple tree with so many thick, low-hanging branches that it was practically a staircase; anything else I was unable to ascend.

I've never been able to climb any sort of rope or wall of any sort, only ladders (which need no skill roll). I'm rather confident that I'm ST 11, in the range of DX 9-11, and only Overweight rather than Fat in GURPS terms.

I never had problems with a slippery grip or the like, only that I could never pull with my arms or push with my legs well enough to go upwards. This could mean I have Incompetence(Climbing) but I'm much more apt to believe that I would simply be an example of working from default.

Hearing about how easy it it's supposed to be to do the gym exercises I was never capable of like climbing ropes, sit-ups, pull-ups, and so on always baffles me.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I imagine that most kids not falling all the time instinctively take extra time climbing trees. The basic rules assume fast as possible with no extra safety precautions.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

That describes me for the most part. Back in school days I was plain fat, but could shimmy up ropes quite fast. I inch wormed using both hands then both thighs, unlike idiot jocks using only their arms.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I'm sorry, but in senior classes (IIRC 9+), the male norm is being able to climb all the way without grabbing the rope with legs. It's a matter of having the arm ST, coordination and skill to do it with arms along, not of smarts.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

Using fewer points of contact to climb than possible is unnecessarily risky. Jocks in my schools risked their lives for bragging reasons alone. That makes them idiots.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

If climbing with two arms at the gym with all the extra safety that entails is considered risky enough to be so disapproved and considered so idiotic, I suppose you might as well prohibit PE/sports in schools all across USA entirely. Soccer seems to result in significantly more traumas than rope-climbing. Heck, pommel horse jumping seems to barely compare with soccer trauma-wise, and that's the sort of exercise that is nasty when crit-failed.

You can can catch the rope with your legs long before you run out of hand endurance to hold onto it with hands alone, and slipping off suddenly is kinda unlikely (not impossible, of course).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I stand by my opinion that screwing around when 20 feet of the ground is reckless. If you merely need to show off arm strength, then perform fancy pull ups. That way a mistake won't break your neck and traumatize witnesses.

Climbing is always dangerous. Drastically increasing its risk for no reason other than machismo should be condemned, especially in a gym.
Reckless behavior doesn't just endanger those doing it. Witnessing tragedy causes harm as well.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

The USMC technique uses legs and arms to do it, I can't imagine doing it quickly enough safely without that technique.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

You can't count on every squad having a rope and a grapple when you are clearing a village or going over a hill.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing
 

I'm assuming that USMC trains in applied climbing, as opposing to using climbing as one of the generic physical exercises for a harmonious-ish physical development, right?

I mean, stuff that is done to raise certain sub-attributes and sub-sub-attributes is not necessarily applied 'in the field': e.g. the training of a pole vaulter includes bits and pieces of weightlifting in regimes that are quite different from the stresses experienced during a vault, both in terms of technique and in terms of force magnitudes/durations/directions involved.