What causes a character not stepping over stairs?

The character controller's step offset is too small (or zero), so it treats stairs and small ledges as walls and stops instead of stepping up.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Character Not Stepping Over Stairs or Small Ledges

Quick answer: Set a step offset that covers your stair height, keep step height below the controller's limits, and ensure stairs are within the slope and step tolerances.

A character stuck on stairs has too small a step offset. Raising it lets it climb. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Set the step offset

The character controller has a step offset (max step height) it can climb without jumping. If it is smaller than your stairs, the character stops at each step. Set it to cover the stair height.

2. Keep steps within limits

Step offset must be less than the controller's height and sensible relative to its radius. Stairs taller than the offset, or oddly shaped, still block. Build stairs within the controller's step tolerance, or use ramps.

3. Check slope handling

Some setups handle stairs via slope limits or invisible ramp colliders. Confirm the slope limit and any step-smoothing are configured so the character glides up stairs instead of catching on each edge.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The errors you never hear about are the ones quietly costing you players. Visibility turns them into a worklist.