A character is climbing through a tunnel. Suddenly, water bursts through and starts flooding the tunnel, creating a dangerous current in the opposite direction as the character wants to go.
By how much would this raise the climb DC? Assume the character is still climbing rather than swimming against the current.
You take the normal DC of the climb and add the slippery factor (+5 to DC), that is the climb DC.
About the water coming down on your PC, I would use a Str check to keep him attached to that wall. What the water is doing is similar to a bull rush while drowning (assuming it is enough water to drown your PC).
I know it is a bit annoying doing the a few tests instead of one, but I would use that. The DCs are up to you (I don't know the strength of the current you envisioned nor the wall DC of your tunnel, so it's up to you.).
When unsure about DC such as this, I refer back to the general DC guidelines:
| Difficulty | Check |
|---|---|
| Very Easy | 5 |
| Easy | 10 |
| Medium | 15 |
| Hard | 20 |
| Very Hard | 25 |
| Almost Impossible | 30 |
Going forward from this table, think to yourself, "realistically how hard would it be for the PC to hold their footing and continue climbing".
You can also factor in how tall they are, what armor they're wearing, whether they're fatigued and injured or not and so on. To give you an answer, if I was the DM in this situation and the water that started flooding the tunnel was more of a torrent than a stream I would probably give a DC 20 check.
Depending upon how technical you and your group like to be, I suggest you add to the DC for each of the following conditions.
The initial description isn't clear, but I'd have them start at DC 5 or 10 and then add whatever is appropriate from the 3 items suggested. (All ROUGH approximations of my experiences while spelunking)
