Rope tying and knots.

[garhkal]

Over on one of my gaming boards someone is wondering. If i take a 50ft long rope, and knot it up to make climbing easier.. How much would the rope shorten up??

Anyone know or have a damn good guess??

[thekillman]

You could calculate it. More practical would be either making a knot and measuring it, or estimation.

Thinking quickly, if a rope is thickness D (diameter), then a basic knot would be forth-back-forth. A quick test showed me that it's about 3D wide and 5D long. So, the knot length you take is roughly 2x(5D) (long sides) and 2x(3D) (for the loops)= 16D.

It may be a bit on the high side (it depends on the exact properties of the rope and how well you can make knots out of it). 10D would be a likely lower number. a 16-meter rope may need about 14 knots. At roughly 5cm thick rope, that's .7 meter of knot. The amount of/ spacing of knots depends on your size though, this number can easily be 2 or 3 folded.

You would have about 14 meters left (roughly) or 45-46 ft.

[Gatefan1976]

In gaming terms?
For every 10% loss of length, you get +1 to your climb check.
So, 50ft rope is standard, for +1 you get 45 ft vertical. For +5, so damn near any monkey can climb it, it's only 25 ft vertical.
Hope most of your PC's have standard adventurer pack A

[garhkal]

It was someone else on dragonsfoot who asked the question, and since i know several SCA people are here, i figured i would inquire with them..

[Gatefan1976]

SCA?

I used to do stuff with the RPGA, but SCA I don't know.

[garhkal]

Society for Creative Anachronisms..

[Gatefan1976]

Society for Creative Anachronisms..

Ah yes, we had them out here as well.

[SoulReaver]

Over on one of my gaming boards someone is wondering. If i take a 50ft long rope, and knot it up to make climbing easier.. How much would the rope shorten up??

Anyone know or have a damn good guess??

my guess is it would shorten by the length of the knot