can you target specific state(s) using value held in a variable

I'm guessing this might be typical newbie query . . . .

OK, lets say I have a ladder with 20 runs/steps on it. I call the graphic ladder, and I create 20 custom states, each showing a workman climbing up the steps, lets say I call the states step1...step20. The ladder graphic appears on some, but not all slides.

I also have a variable called climb_height which is a number. I'm using it to store a number (likely to be between 1...20) and is intended to correspond with the ladder graphic states. This is incremented/decremented by various different parts of the application.

I'm after a simple solution which:

1. on each slide that has the ladder graphic I need it to display the correct state derived from the corresponding value held in the climb_height variable. A working solution for this is to have a trigger on each slide that says [ change the state of ladder to step4 when the value of climb_height equals 4 ]. This works but it seems I need 20 individual triggers - one for each state/variable-value test.
   1. Is there a simpler way of constructing just one trigger that says [ change the state of ladder to one that corresponds to the value held in climb_height ]. Something like state of ladder==climb_height.
2. similarily, on each slide that has the ladder graphic I also need to update it when there is a change in the value held in the climb_height variable. A working solution is to again have a seperate trigger for when the value changes to that of a specific ladder state.  Again this works but it seems I need 20 individual triggers - one for each state/variable-value test.
   1. Is there again a simpler way of constructing just one trigger that says [ when there is a change in the value of climb_height then change the state of ladder to one that corresponds to the value in climb_height.

Can anyone offer some guidance? Otherwise it's 40 triggers per slide I need to be adding!