Again though, as intended, you don't "just succeed", you use up precious time to succeed. Unless time has no meaning in a scenario (which again, if that's the case, no need to roll dice at all- if the party can take all day to climb out of a ravine, then just let them climb out).
This very thread! One of the positions is an absolute and you've been providing it cover. You keep lamenting that one side of the discussion is responding as if the other is talking about something happening under any and all conditions rather than looking for compromise or something but you have that backwards because it's a discussion where one side is literally saying that the background feature means that it needs to work under any conditions all of the time (or, an absolute as in the real while nonnegative number of 100%) while you keep criticizing posters already talking about something less than 100%. This was made incredibly clear earlier when there was a literal example of that position posted noted and linked to while I was responding to you earlier . Of course people in disagreement with that position of an absolute guarantee aare going to talk about the position people are literally making rather than the less than 100% certainty of success they are saying should be the standard any sane RAW targets because that is the position that is being put forward in contrast. When you started noticing that said absolute might be a position that is less than reasonable and aimed a bit of criticism at it you still covered for it by throwing shade my way.
i do not have the best knowledge of worldwide cities, i was grasping for whatever my brain could reachone is not like the others
What you describe here as the feature “always working” is the player saying their PC knows someone, but the player isn’t “always” saying that. Such play would quickly be met with groaning and eye rolling from the other participants. There’s a social contract that governs such things with varying levels of tolerance from table to table.
Even if they'd for sure get out of the ravine if they had all day I'd still make someone roll for the party as a guide to how long it took them and-or how many of them got hurt in the process.
Huh. That's definitely a lot harsher than I run my games. It sounds like you run every obstacle as an encounter.
Groan as they may, the player is not in the wrong for doing this; because the rules give that player ironclad backing.
To a point; with the bulk of that contract saying the game will be played using the rules given, including house rules. Unfortunately, it's the DM who has to make those house rules who gets put in a bad spot by crap RAW like this; and while the early editions can be cut some slack due to their designers breaking new ground and learning lessons by trial and error on the fly, later editions have no such excuse.
If it's potentially hazard enough to cause significant injury or delay then I treat it as such, and climbing out of a ravine strikes me as such a hazard.
They couldn't use the 20 on that for two reasons though. Firstly is the fact that it's not something that can be done with a full round or standard action. The second one is because climbing the cliff has a consequence of failure and is literally the example used for a time a player can't due to consequence of failure. Earlier I quoted the full text of the phb entry for it taking 10 & coincidentally the section for "practically impossible tasks that I think would cover your example even if you replaced climbing with something lacking a consequence of failure where the sort of luck you describe deciding how long it takes requires the roll.
