[Basic] Skill of the week: Climbing

[johndallman]

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?