The wording for climbing is really strange in Only War:

"…attempting such a climb requires a Hard (–10) Athletics Test. With one Degree of Success, the character completes his climb at a rate of one-half his Half Move speed. For each further Degree of Success, the character climbs an additional metre. If the Test is failed, the character falls from his starting climbing position."

So you complete the climb if you pass the test. What's the point in the additional meters for extra degrees of success if you have completed the climb? If you complete the climb on a pass, then climbing isn't really dangerous as you always fall from your starting location (the ground). Not to mention it leads to silly things like climbing a 20m wall with one test, as on a passed test you complete the climb.

In Dark Heresy:

"…On a success you ascend at or descend at the rate of of one half your half move speed. For each degree of success you climb an additional metre. On a failed test you fall from your starting climbing position…"

The rules from dark heresy make sense, you climb a number of meters depending on your success, and then test again until you complete your climb or fall. This also means there is a risk in climbing a 20m wall: say you climb 5m after the first test, if you fail your second test you would fall from 5m, and so on.

It looks like there was a poor copy paste or a badly thought out rule change here. I can understand wanting to simplify climbing, but then you would need to remove "For each further Degree of Success, the character climbs an additional metre. If the Test is failed, the character falls from his starting climbing position." as it has no effect on the current iteration of the rules, and replace it with some other risk, eg: "on a failure you fall from half way up your climb."

Thoughts? Am I reading the climbing rules wrong?

I think that you can take the Only War text as being right, as long as you read "complete your climb" as "climb up to this distance" or "complete this movement". I think they mean to refer to the climbing you manage from one test. This would give a mechanic identical to the original DH one.

It isn't clear at all though. As written, you could easily read it to mean a single check can complete an ascent of a 200m-tall wall, or a titan's leg. This probably isn't the intention.

Armour said:

Yeah that's what I was assuming the intent was, or at least they were trying to imply "complete this movement". Otherwise there is no real risk in climbing, which is nice from a player point of view but makes no sense.

At the end of the day it's an RPG so house fixes are expected, but It would still be nice if things like this got cleared up in an errata.

Thanks for the reply.