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The Thief archetype Rogue's Second-Story Work (PHB, p. 97) feature states:

[...] you gain the ability to climb faster than normal; climbing no longer costs you extra movement.

However, the Centaur's Equine Build racial trait (GGR, p. 16) says:

In addition, any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet, instead of the normal 1 extra foot.

Both of these in my opinion are specific, in the "specific beats general" type of rulings, but does one supersede the other? Would a Centaur Thief climb 40 feet or 8 feet (1+4 extra feet) per round?

V2Blast
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bubbajake00
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    Maybe this will help someone. Doesn't work as well for centaurs, but sometimes my wolf animal companion has to make climb checks. I imagine them working like this: https://youtu.be/OPgh-wywsKA?t=589 – Nacht May 25 '19 at 11:49

4 Answers4

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From logic, one would arrive at:

  1. "Climbing for a thief no longer costs the thief extra movement,"
  2. "Climbing for a centaur costs 4 extra feet,"
  3. "4 extra feet is extra movement," (implied from "instead of the normal 1 extra foot")
  4. (2&3) "Climbing for a centaur costs extra movement"
    C. (1&4) "Climbing for a centaur thief would not cost any extra movement."
Cab Zx
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    Welcome to RPG.SE! This is a great first answer. The tour and the help center are available if you want to know more about how we do stuff. Happy gaming! – Red Orca May 23 '19 at 22:22
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    I feel that this is a perfectly acceptable reading of the rules, but potentially breaking the spirit of them. - DM and Players may benefit from a discussion to decide if adding that much power to a character is in the spirit of their campaign. ["The centaur thief climbs as well as a bipedal non-thief for example", or their penalty is reduced by 1, could be more fitting.] – TheLuckless May 23 '19 at 22:33
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    @TheLuckless: Counter argument: mountain goats. – nick012000 May 24 '19 at 05:20
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    @nick012000: Mountain goats are not particularly fast when climbing (compared to them running), and I interpret the extra movement to be intended to account for slower climbing (compared to running) in a given turn. – Flater May 24 '19 at 11:45
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    @nick012000 Counter Counter argument: They're talking about centaur thieves, not satyr thieves... Horses aren't known for their great ability to climb walls, and are no more a goat than a plucked chicken is a man... The first rule of applying rules in a table top game is that the group should enjoy working with said rules. To avoid conflict, the party and DM should acknowledge how they prefer to have a rule like this actually read and applied. – TheLuckless May 24 '19 at 15:58
  • Why do you arrive at this conclusion, and not the one where 4 extra feet of movement supersedes no extra feet? – Mark Wells May 25 '19 at 00:35
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    Because that does not follow the logic. Both 4 extra feet and 1 extra foot are in the category "extra movement". According to proposition 1, any cost that falls in the category "extra movement", is not paid by the thief. Notice that proposition 3 claims that 4 extra feet is extra movement, because the ruling uses the wording "instead of the normal [...]" impliying that this new cost is also extra movement; yet not the regular extra movement that is applied of 1 extra foot. You can also make the claim that the use of the word "extra" implies that 4 extra feet is extra movement by itself. – Cab Zx May 25 '19 at 12:08
35

The way to reconcile these, IMHO, is to realise that the Thief ability is written assuming that the character is an ordinary humanoid biped. They would pay one extra foot of movement for each foot of climbing, and the ability removes that penalty.

So you could plausibly claim that a centaur Thief with Second-Story Work pays three extra feet of movement for each foot of climbing, rather than four. That gives them a climbing move of ten feet, better than a normal centaur, but worse than a biped non-Thief. That seems like a plausible outcome within the game world.

Being a centaur who climbs buildings isn't a very sensible idea, and should not be made plausible by over-literal rules interpretation.

John Dallman
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    +1 for that last sentence especially, realism is important too – NathanS May 23 '19 at 21:28
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    Counter argument: mountain goats. – nick012000 May 24 '19 at 05:21
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    @nick012000 Counter-counter argument: Centaurs are not mountain goats. – BradenA8 May 24 '19 at 08:02
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    I'd like to see a mountain goat climb a drain, or a straight wall without ledges... – Jorn May 24 '19 at 08:41
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    I would argue that hoofs can find much better purchase on thin ledges than humanoid feet do. Professional climbers have special shoes with stiff soles after all. And sometimes it is probably advantageous to have four legs to put pressure on instead of only two. Maybe it's all about the technique, and a trained centaur is just as good a climber as a humanoid? – M.Herzkamp May 24 '19 at 11:14
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    Before people get too far onto the realism train, let's remember that DnD has never been the best about duplicating reality with its rule set. – Winterborne May 24 '19 at 12:47
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    Sorry, this is not an answer in the Stack standards. This is just a houserule without any basis. – Mindwin Remember Monica May 24 '19 at 12:57
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    A wall-climbing centaur not only needs to overcome issues of gripping with hooves, it needs to overcome issues with the limited range of motion in their horse legs. – krb May 24 '19 at 13:07
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    It would have to be a pretty damn smooth wall (including where the stones are mortared) for a goat to not be able to climb it. http://earthporm.com/insane-mountain-goat-photos-that-prove-theyre-the-worlds-best-climbers/ – T.E.D. May 24 '19 at 13:43
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    agree with @BradenA8, a horse is not a goat. A centaur is not a satyr. Even satyrs only have two legs vs. four for a goat. Mountain goats (goat-antelopes?) are incredible https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/m/mountain-goat/ – Brian D May 24 '19 at 20:32
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    @Mindwin I don't know what you're complaining about. The basis for it is entirely clear: it's based on treating both changes to climb speed as additive and adding them together. – Mark Wells May 25 '19 at 00:44
  • @markwells show me the RAW or RAI intend them to be treated as such. DnD is not "sensible" or "realistic". It is a game with well laid-out rules. – Mindwin Remember Monica May 28 '19 at 14:04
  • @Mindwin: I think "well laid-out" would imply "would not get laughed out of the room in the most cheesy of movie writing rooms". A biped doing parkour or weird swinging ninja tricks to climb a sheer wall as fast as they walk? Sure, why not? A centaur doing the same thing? Frankly, the centaur climbing such a wall at all beggars belief a bit, the idea that they could receive ninja training and just ignore the fact that they're using human strength hands, and useless hooves, to lug a horse weight body up a wall at full speed kinda demands flexibility in rules interpretation. – ShadowRanger Jan 13 '23 at 03:52
8

Specific Beats General Still Applies

Second-Story Work’s description is:

[...] you gain the ability to climb faster than normal; climbing no longer costs you extra movement.

This rule applies to any climb you make, whether that is up or down a vertical surface or object, such as a rock wall or a rope, or if you are climbing along a horizontal surface, such as a cliff edge or monkey bars.

The Centaur’s Equine Build’s description is:

In addition, any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet, instead of the normal 1 extra foot.

However, if a climb requires both your hands and your feet, this second rule comes into play. This is because a “climb that requires both your hands and feet” is a more specific term than just a “climb”, so specific beats general.

A vertical climb, more often than than not, requires both your hands and your feet to climb (your hands to reach up and your legs to push you). However, a horizontal climb may only require use of your hands and not the use of your feet so this second rule would not come into force. Using the example of monkey bars, your legs typically dangle downwards and you swing your body forwards to grab the next bar, they do not require use of your feet, only the use of your hands to grab the bars and your body to swing you forwards.

Additionally, any climb that only required the use of your feet, such as climbing stairs, or hills, or rocks or any other uneven surface. As long as your hands weren’t needed for the climb, the second rule would not apply.

So then, if a climb required both the use of your hands and feet, you could only climb 8 ft (1ft + 4 extra cost). If however a climb required only the use of your hands or only the use of your feet, then you could move 40 feet.

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Liam Morris
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1

Order of operations suggests that it doesn't cost extra movement to climb. It's ripe for DM interpretation, though.

Consider specific versus general, and look at it as an order of operations thing. If the Thief is more specific, then the centaur increases it from 1 to 4, and then the thief nulls it. If the centaur is more specific, then the thief nulls it, and the centaur... well, the centaur's feature says "instead of", and by the time you get there, there is no "1 extra foot" for the "4 extra feet" to replace. As such, it falls off again, and you wind up with the same answer.

That having been said, there are two things to consider. The first is that this is a somewhat implausible type to begin with. Centaurs don't get any dex bonus (which the thief needs), they do get a str bonus (which the thief can't really use), and they have nothing in particular that makes them all that good at being rogues (carrying capacity?). Those few centaurs that do want to be rogues would probably want to be Scouts, rather than thieves. The only way one of these is showing up in campaign is if the DM puts it there deliberately as an NPC or a player decides to do it because they want to be wacky.

As such, this is not a "limits of optimization" question. A centaur thief-rogue is already significantly nonoptimal. This is a "how silly do you want your gameworld to be" question. If your wacky, wacky player wants to run a centaur who can climb walls faster even than other thieves, do you want that in your gameworld? There's a sliding scale of serious vs silly-but-awesome and the real answer to the question (in the cases where it'll actually be asked) should be based more on that than on a legalistic reading of two rules that pretty clearly weren't intended to meaningfully interact.

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Ben Barden
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