Only a handful of times since the advent of Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 have I had the occasion to drown a player character. I’ve been playing in or running D&D games nearly-continuously since the release of the d20 rule set, and it simply doesn’t come up that often. When it has, it has been frustrating, especially the v3.5 version.

Drowning should be a harrowing situation. The very air you need to survive is denied you as you struggle to surface, yet the rules as written make it a cakewalk in all but the most extraordinary circumstances.

How it works

All one must do to swim at half-normal-movement in rough water is roll a 15 on a Swim check, which is available untrained. One must roll merely a 10 to stay afloat. This is a Strength-based skill, so most characters have a 55% chance to stay up without investing a single rank in this skill. Any warrior-type has significantly better odds.

But what about the prodigious amounts of gear that a typical adventurer brings along with him? Surely that factors in. Take your typical Full-Plate-wearing melee monstrosity with his various two-handed weapons, several bags of equipment and loot, and see what it’ll take to give him pause:

• Armor Check Penalty: Full Plate armor has a -6 penalty. When making Swim checks, this is doubled to -12, a significant blow. Masterwork Full Plate would inflict a -10 penalty.
• Encumbrance: A typical melee type will have a 16 or greater Strength attribute, meaning he will have to be carrying at least 87 pounds aside from his armor before he is under a medium load. That would be the equivalent of over nine gallons of water strapped to his back.
• Strength Bonus: That same 16 or greater Strength attribute gives a +3 or greater bonus to the Swim checks.
• Consequences: Our heavily-armored friend stands a good chance of failing here, at which point he is submerged and it’s time to crack open the drowning rules.

Our melee expert is looking pretty bad with his d20-7 check, needing to roll a 17 or higher to keep afloat in rough water with 75 pounds strapped to his behind. What terrible peril to be knocked into a body of water while wearing such burdensome armor! Well, maybe not that perilous after all, as the drowning rules are the real problem here. The man trapped in his armor is sinking fast, and will soon be at the bottom of the river, lake, ocean, or jacuzzi that he has fallen into. How long before the crushing black depths rob him of his life? Well, that depends on some stats and some luck:

• Constitution: Before our water-logged friend has to even pick up his dice, he has a number of rounds equal to his Constitution attribute during which he simply hold his breath automatically. For a typical Human, that would be 10 rounds, or one minute. For the kind of character mostly likely to actually fail his Swim check (the aforementioned melee-expert), it is more likely to be 14 to 18 rounds. Let’s assume 14 rounds.
• Fortitude Saves: On the 15th round, the melee expert will need to beat a Fortitude save of DC 10. With his 14 Constitution and at least a +1 base save (likely more, as most melee-friendly classes have a good progression in Fortitude), he will need, at worst, to roll at 7 on a d20. On each subsequent round, the difficulty increased by one. Happily, he is unlikely to ever need to make this roll because…
• Armor can be removed: That’s right, it takes one minute (10 rounds) to remove a suit of heavy armor completely, unassisted, and only five rounds to remove with a little help from a more lightly-armored friend. With assistance, the drowning melee-type will have nine rounds to get back to the surface.
• Consequences: If by some quirk of fate the character were to fail to get back to the surface before finally failing a Fortitude save, things get terribly perilous very very quickly. The drowning character immediately drops to 0 hit points and falls unconscious. On the following round, he drops to -1 hit points. On the following round, the character dies. Wow. From fully-functional for a minute and a half (likely longer) to dead in 18 seconds. That’s quite a curve.

The problem

The rules as written provide little-to-no danger until by dint of a die-roll, they turn very deadly very quickly. The difference between making that last Swim check to get to the surface and failing that last Fortitude save are quite severe. The character that rolls reasonably well suffers no ill effects, the character that rolls poorly needs to hope his buddies have access to resurrection magic. It’s essentially a save-or-die situation drawn out over a rather long period of time. Remember the last combat you ran that lasted fourteen combat rounds? I don’t.

What constitutes a good fix

There should be a perception on the part of the drowning character’s player that there is some real peril here, but that hope is not yet lost. Calmly waiting to hit a lake-bed and walking up to the shore a minute or two later shouldn’t look like an appealing option. The longer the character spends submerged, the worse-off he should be, but some possibility should exist for a smart, properly-equipped, properly-skilled, or lucky character to emerge unscathed. Less-than-smart, poorly equipped, unskilled, and unlucky characters should still have a chance to get out, but should suffer some repercussion.

Proposed house rule

The swimming rules strike me as being pretty reasonable, aside from encumbrance. Replace the Strength score in the Carrying Capacity table with the character’s total Swim skill bonus. This will greatly increase the odds of a character having a medium or heavy load, so don’t double the penalty for the actual swim check. This would encourage seafarers to equip themselves as lightly as possible, which strikes me as quite reasonable.

The drowning rules need the threat curve moderated. Instead of holding one’s breath for a number of rounds equal to the Constitution attribute, make it a number of rounds equal to his Constitution bonus. A Fortitude save upon being submerged should let the character take a big breath on the way down for two extra rounds. A DC equal to the Swim check (to move, not to simply stay afloat) should suffice. Let the character automatically succeed on this check if he’s intentionally submerging. This would give the example melee-expert three to five rounds of grace before he’s seriously in trouble. This happens to be how long it would take to remove that bulky armor if he got a good lungful on the way down.

Once the grace period has expired, let the penalties be progressive: the same Fortitude saves (starting at DC 10, increasing by 1 per round submerged), with the penalty being Constitution damage. The Fortitude saves continue progressing as the character drowns, with the character’s Fortitude save suffering from any Constitution damage already suffered, making it increasingly dangerous to stay underwater. Upon reaching 0 Constitution, the character dies. A worst-case scenario would look something like:

• Melee-expert is bull-rushed off his pirate ship wearing Masterwork Full-Plate armor but bearing no significant additional equipment.
• The seas are choppy, so he’ll need a Swim check of 15 to get back to his ship. Unskilled in the Swim skill, with a Strength score of 17, he isn’t going to be able to accomplish this unaided. He tries to stay afloat, but rolls a 12, totaling only 5 against his target of 10.
• He tries to gulp down a lungful of air on the way down, but rolls a three on his Fortitude save, totaling twelve after his various bonuses. He now has three rounds before the real trouble begins (due to his 16 Constitution).
• Quickly realizing that, with his armor check penalty and zero ranks in Swim, he cannot get back to the surface in his current state, he starts removing his armor. This process will take ten rounds, as his comrades have their hands full back on the surface.
• After two rounds, he hits the seabed sixty feet below. It will take four rounds of successful Swim checks to reach the surface.
• After three rounds, he starts making Fortitude saves. His Fortitude bonus is +9, so he can’t fail at first.
• Round five he begins a horrifying series of bad rolls, getting a natural 1. With his +9, that’s one shy of the 11 he currently needs. He takes two Constitution damage.
• During the following four rounds, he continues frantically removing his armor, failing each Fortitude save in turn. Finally free of his armor, his Constitution score is a dismal 6, and his Fortitude save bonus is a mere +4. His next Fortitude save is DC is 17, and he needs to roll a 12 to make his DC 15 Swim checks on the way up.
• With a still-progressing series of Fortitude saves ahead of him and needing to roll 12 on at least four Swim checks, this character has a very good chance of never seeing dry land again.

If by some quirk of fate, the terrible run of dice luck reverses itself and he makes it back to the surface in one piece, he’s going to need some serious magical healing (primarily in the form of a Restoration spell). He and all of his comrades will have a newfound respect for seafarers’ tendency to wear light or no armor.

Odds are that somebody would have helped him out, or that he would have made the bulk of the first several Fortitude saves, leaving him a little rattled with a little Constitution damage to drive home the lesson he just learned. On his next trip, expect to see some Leather armor and a couple ranks in Swim.