Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 knucklehead May 28, 2005 14:35:43	Have any of you introduced swimming into your campaign? I was looking over the PHB and even though your average DS PC has never seen enough water to swim, the relative DC is low. Should there be an addition penalty above the standard DC's in the PHB? For example increase the swim check for calm water from 10 to 15? Does Athas.org have any idea on the matter?
#2 eric_anondson May 28, 2005 15:51:56	Have any of you introduced swimming into your campaign? I was looking over the PHB and even though your average DS PC has never seen enough water to swim, the relative DC is low. Should there be an addition penalty above the standard DC's in the PHB? I use the skill, but have made it a skill that is always a cross-class skill, and can never be taken as a class skill. Still, anyone who somehow gets a Swim speed (shapechange, spell, or power, etc.) is just fine. The armor check penalties to Swim in 3.5 are pretty steep enough, that combined with it never being a class skill are tough enough. Something to consider though about 3.5 in Core D&D, much less Dark Sun. Right now, there is the problem of some PCs frightened of swimming across a river (even with no armor), while having no fear of leaping off a 100 foot tall height and shrugging off the damage to the body. Making swimming tougher stretches this even more into absurdity. Although if you really want to simulate the extreme difficulty of someone swimming who has never seen water larger than a puddle after a Tyr storm, maybe make Swim a Trained Only skill check, where if you have no ranks in it it becomes a Str, Dex, or Con check, whichever is worse, plus all the normal Swim check penalties... but still allow for the PC to not drown if the water is not deeper than his, or her, chin. Instead, the PC could prevent drowning if he, or she, simply stopped movement, stood up (assuming they are not prevented from standing, like being in a grapple with a swimming creature), and waited a full round to cough out the water. In my games, I also use Critical Failures and Critical Fumbles for skill checks. I don't know where else these may have been published in the D20 universe, but I first saw them in Grim Tales, which I borrow them from. For Swim, a Critical Failure (resulted from a natural 1 on a d20) results in no movement and automatically starting to drown. Of course, Critical Failures, should the DM decide to activate it for that roll, mean the DM rewards the character with an Action Point. (BTW, a Critical Success, from a natural 20 on a d20 Swim check, the player must spend one of the character's Action points to activate it, which results in the character having a Swim speed double the normal swim speed.)