[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?

[Kromm]

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.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

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

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.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

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.

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.

[Otaku]

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

[vicky_molokh]

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.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

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.

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

[Lancewholelot]

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.

[roguebfl]

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.

[Flyndaran]

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