Piton Intervals?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The rules state that you need to use one piton for every 3 feet of distance. That seems crazy to me.

Are their any mountaineers out there who can confirm/deny? At what interval are pitons used in the real world?

 

[KarinsDad]

I suspect that you are correct. It appears that even on difficult climbs, pitons are rarely used (pitons also damage the rock, so many climbers refuse to use them).

http://www.mountaineers.org/climbing/Reference/1947FA.html

A total of three pitons were used on the mountain, two ascending, and one for rappelling.

...

No pitons were used on Big Snagtooth, although a shoulder stand was required to ascend the last fifteen feet to the summit.

...

The party then attempted a fourth pinnacle on the ridge. Trusty Tooth, which proved to be the hardest climb. Halfway up the first 100 feet, Fred required the use of a piton and rope sling for direct aid. From this point, after three attempts while standing on Jerry's shoulders, Fred succeeded in reaching a crack in the vertical rock face to drive a piton. Then traversing to the right. he reached another crack which, though rotten, al lowed passage upward to a point ten feet below the summit where another piton was driven for safety.

...

Five pitons were used ir ascellding, two for direct aid.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I suspect the 'piton every 3 feet' rule is a worst case scenario. While true that modern day climbers avoid the use of these 'crude' devices, DnD climbers may not be as eco-freindly nor will they hae all the cool gear that makes them less nessecary.

They also tend to not wear encumbering armor and pointy weapons

If I was running a group up a high sheer face, I would propably stick to the rule of a piton every 3 feet. As the slope's pitch decreases and quality of natural hand-holds/niches increase, the reliance on pitons would slide down the scale rapidly.

Running lead it is common to place 'protection' every 10 feet or so. {protection is a point placed to tie the rope to the rock face, either a piton or more eco-freindly modern gear}
One of the main concerns in placing protection is when you fall, you fall past the point of your last protection... so placement depends more on how confident you are that you wont fall than in any set rule of placement.

IMHO, unless you have a group of climbing gamers, it would be best to gloss over the details of the climb and assume the character with the Climb skill knows how/when to place this stuff. If falling off a lead, you could use the amount they miss the climb check by to determine how far ahead of thier protection they had gone.
In essense dealing subdual damage for falling twice the distance they failed by.
You could also use the distance of the fall as a STR check to see if the protection {or belay man} can stop the fall. Failure results in another drop of 1D20 feet to the next protection point..and repeat. The falling climber only takes damage at the end of the failures..or when they find the ground.

Really the only time you should see pitons in action inside a DnD game will be jamming doorways
A full blown 'everyone is climbing' 200+ sheer face climbs just don't feature that often.
Usually the Rogue prances up the short cliff-face and top-ropes for the less skilled party members. {okay, that might be an exageration }


Caveat, Rappelling/Climbing for 20 years and I top out at a 5.8 route and have only done one short lead climb to date. Folks with more experience at this are definately out here.

 

[ceratitis]

i think it really depends on how far you're willing to fall. the piton doesnt stop you from falling it stops you from falling all the way down so you basicly only fall twice the distance to the last piton you placed. by the rules that would be at most 6 ft ensuring you wont get hurt and the the piton doesnt take too much of a pull when stopping your fall or it will break/get pulled out.
Z

 

[argo]

Keep in mind that the way you use pitons in dnd is different from the way real life climbers use them. In the climb section it says that if you have a cimb that lacks sufficent handholds and footholds that you can pound in a piton every 3' and convert the surface into one with "adequate handholds and footholds" which is a DC 15 climb check. Thus the rule of one piton per 3' since that is about as far as a person can reach from one piton handhold to the next.

The real world climbers in KarinsDad's post are using pitons differently. They are basically making DC 25 climb checks (natural rock wall) and every so often they pound in a piton and tie off a rope so that if the fail their climb check by 5 or more then they only fall the distance to the last piton plus the length of their rope. They are using pitons as insurance against falling, not as handholds.

That said, I let my players use pitons as handholds at a distance of every 5 feet, just because that fits into the game sytem better (one piton per square of vertical movement).

Hope that helps.

 

[Stormrunner]

Yes, the RAW assumes that the lead climber is basically creating a "ladder" of pitons for the less-skilled party members to climb.
Note that the use of nuts and cams is not just eco-friendliness; they can be inserted into cracks and holes where using a piton would be difficult to impossible, they're much faster to use than pounding a steel spike into rock, and they're generally lighter in weight. Cams require precision machining and thus are unlikely in D&D outside of deep gnomes or whatever race are the super-engineers in your world, but nuts just require knowing what shape to make the chunk of metal and thus could theoretically have been invented in a medieval setting. Oh, and removing them is easier than removing a piton, which can be important if you don't want foes following you up the cliff face.