Rolling Back Flight

[Mendicant]

Is there a situation that:

A) Doesn't split the party

or

B) Leads to something interesting on a failure

when using climb, swim or jump? If there isn't, you're just rolling for the sake of rolling. Extra rolls just slow down the game.

Spoiler: Response

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There are two ways to make movement skills interesting and useful without rolling for the sake of rolling. The simplest are flat barriers that require an auto-succeed take 10. These should be used like a lower-tier version of Passwall, Teleport or Plane Shift--spells which give the party strategic flexibility in how they approach challenges without actually contributing much drama. Success in this case should lead to immediate or almost immediate success for the less physically capable specimens--you put in pitons, open a gate, whatever. This barely intrudes at all on playtime or flow, but it does let the party fighter contribute something outside of combat.

In combat, climb and acrobatics (FWIW, I'm using Pathfinder's skill list -fly, because screw the fly skill. I'm not making people invest skills into a movement type only available to them at another player's sufferage. I've referred to 3.5 skills like jump because I'd like this to be as broad a discussion as possible) should open up tactical options created by terrain. Two examples from my own game, which just hit 6th level and only has a (frequently absent) cleric in terms of full casters:

Last session, they had to fight their way through a graveyard built into several concentric, broken rings of low cliffs, with a wide staircase going through it. At the top of the hill is cleric who is the focal target of the encounter. Without flight, the terrain creates a layered challenge which affords skill-users the interesting choice of either trying to punch through the knot of enemies on the stairs or outflanking them and going after the cleric directly. With flight the encounter becomes a brawl in an empty football field, basically. As it turned out, the Ranger and Rogue stealthily took door number two and the rest of the party waited until the two were in position, then assaulted head-on to draw the cleric's defenders away from him.

Coming up either tomorrow or next session, the party is probably going to be fighting in the canopy of a forest with immense trees. The branches provide a bunch of snaky catwalks which require acrobatics to maneuver at any speed, and the foliage provides cover and concealment that makes ranged combat less effective. Climb lets the players maneuver between levels of the canopy, opening up new paths across the battlefield.

At too low of a level, the movement challenges in these encounters might be too difficult for even skillmonkeys to succeed at consistently enough, especially challenge 2. The fight would be either a slog or a swingy mess. By around 6th level though, characters who want to be acrobatic are really acrobatic, and can reliably auto succeed on most of these tasks. Getting into the thinner, higher branches is a higher-risk higher-reward proposition that the really talented can consider.

Or a wizard could just give everybody flight. The other side better have access to flight too then, or this is going to be an ugly rout. Expanding the level space where flight isn't available would expand the number of stories and encounters available by widening the band where a characters bonus to a movement skill is high and also useful.

Makes a very good point about ranged attacks.

Spoiler

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This is a good point. Keep in mind though, if flight bumps a creature's CR anywhere from 1 to 3 points higher, there should be a very narrow range where the party is facing flying creatures without having access to flight itself. This doesn't perfectly solve the problem though, since the opportunity cost of casting flight relative to other ranged options has increased.

A problem I see is if you have no one to cast flight on you, at the very least you can drink a potion of Fly and have the option of engaging otherwise unreachable enemies. Having Fly be a level 4 spells renders it ineligible for potions. Like others have said, this hurts non-casters more than anyone.

This is a good point.

If you want the Climb and Swim skills to get some use, I'd steal from 4th edition. Wrap up Swim and Climb into a general Athletics skill (which also works well as a 'Smash stuff' skill, if you are so inclined), so skill monkeys don't have to spend as much to get some usage out of their skills. Also, combining other skills (I'm looking at you, Disable Device. What, is a lock not a device now?) will probably help more then nerfing a very powerful buff.

Also, let your players climb the monsters. People love that in my experience.

I considered it, but because I'm playing with Pathfinder's skill list, I feel like I've already got a pretty well condensed skill list--nobody weeps for you, use rope--too much skill consolidation and you cross back into hurting the skillmonkeys again. Climbing creatures sounds awesome, do you have any advice for making that a possibility? Like Venger says, looking at the available rules, it seems like it'd be a complicated mess. I'll have to scrounge around for "Hammer and Piton."