Help with my climbing encounter?

[tim01300]

Can skills count for encounters? Like a CR 4 climb or something like that?

So I am running a loosely mixed 3.5 core campaign that started as a dragonlance campaign but I am planning on dropping the Red Hand of Doom module in shortly.

This week my players will kill their first dragon using the blue crystal staff artifact. The dragon is struck, has horrible seizures and the cavern the players are in begins to flood/collapse. When they see other npcs and cave creatures climbing to escape.

So the characters have some time, but not a lot to climb. It's a 800 ft climb up the face of the cavern to safety. With rocks falling around them. I want to make it a scary situation but not wipe the party after they have just killed their first real boss.

The party consists of a lvl 4 gnome mage, lvl 5 half orc barb, lvl 5 dwarf cleric, and a lvl 5 half elf druid. None of them have any magical items that would help much.

How would you guys handle this? I am having a hard time making my game about more than just combat

[CaladanMoonblad]

Sounds like there is only one way out... climbing.

Were I your heroes, I'd try to find a safe place to weather the rock storm and dig/climb my way out after. : /

Unless you have an easy path out, best not to destroy the BBEG's lair upon their death : ?

[Palanan]

As it happens, I ran a climbing scenario just a couple weeks ago. I worked it up with some invaluable input from the Playground; here's the design thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269500). (My players stay out--you guys have more climbing in your near future.)

For my lessons learned from that encounter, you can skip to my last post, where I mention some of the things I wish I'd done differently. I also heartily recommend Mephibosheth's Skill Obstacles (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269565) thread, which I used to construct my party's route.

I should also mention that if your party doesn't have pitons and a whole lot of rope, they're going to be in a world of hurt. Free-climbing eight hundred feet of rock face with no safety gear is almost certain disaster. Do they have any resources at all that they could use for this?

[t'zran]

the druid could just wild shape into a bird, but probably won't after probably having used his alotted ammount per day in the dragon battle

then your spellcasters might think to cast a flight or skill increasing spell.

The only question I would ask would be: what kind of gear do they have that could help them out? and if they don't have climbing gear ( grapnels, climbing axes etc.) or any useful magic items then you might think of including something to that effect in the treasure for an encounter; on that front I would suggest Immovable rods (page 235 of the dungeon masters guide)

thats some of the ways I'd get past the encounter, if they have none of that, well, the best you can do is let the dice roll.

[Laserlight]

If there's only one practicable route up, you are essentially saying "make a series of skill rolls"--unless the party has expendable resources, such as spells prepared today, stonecutter potion, spider climb potion, that sort of thing. In which case there will be spots where they have to decide every now and again "whether this tough spot is tough enough to justify spending that resource".

On the other hand, if you say "Route A is harder and you'll spend more resources, Route B is faster but more likely to have rocks fall on you, Route C isn't all that hard but you'll have to climb right past that tribe of kobolds", then they have a little more strategic input. Of course, rocks may still fall and knock them all off the rope and they fall 400 feet, but that's life. Until it isn't.

[Gazebo's Bane]

Assuming mostly mundane climbing (as opposed to flying, etc) then realistically the characters wouldn't be able to see which potential route was easy or hard or safe or not from the bottom. So, you could draw up a big paper map of the cliff face; cover most of it up; just show them the bottom 50' or so and reveal more as they go up. Maybe they start on what looks like an easy route but it suddenly has no handholds and they have to retrack or use their resources. Maybe they have to pick out a long route with lots of traverses to avoid the dangerous sections. Maybe you add tension by adding occasional aftershocks and rockfalls and emphasising they need to hurry or they'll get buried.

[tim01300]

Yeah right now they have 2 sets of rope and 1 climbers kit, but I guess I should drop some other items around before they get there.

I'm thinking I should also change the 800 feet to something smaller, or maybe after a certain ways the climb gets much easier.

Thanks for the input gang

[Laserlight]

Assuming mostly mundane climbing (as opposed to flying, etc) then realistically the characters wouldn't be able to see which potential route was easy or hard or safe or not from the bottom.

While that may be true...from a gaming perspective, there's not much point in saying "You need to choose route A, B or C, and you can't tell anything useful about any of them."

[Gazebo's Bane]

While that may be true...from a gaming perspective, there's not much point in saying "You need to choose route A, B or C, and you can't tell anything useful about any of them."

I know. That's the point: they do know something useful about the first stage and as they climb they discover more about what's ahead of them. Let them see 50' or so further than wherever they are up to so they have to make multiple decisions as they go instead of one choice of A, B, C at the start. OP said he's having a hard time making the game about more than combat; this way you could have a half-hour section of the game session turn into a puzzle-solving minigame with real consequences for game resources and you avoid the climb option just being 40 climbing skill rolls in a row.