Underwater encounter success


Underwater encounter success
Used 5e’s swimming and breath-holding rules successfully last night to run a set-piece encounter. The rules are simple enough.
- Movement is halved
- Hold your breath a # of minutes equal to your Con bonus (so 10 rounds x Con bonus), or 30 seconds if you don’t have one (5 rounds).
- I added a houserule: If you take damage, you lose 1d4 rounds of breath.

The underwater area was pretty big, and they didn’t know where the exit was. I put three leaky pipes bubbling out air in various places and they could recharge their breath by spending an action.

The players were nervous because they had to track their breath. The spellcasters were frantically finding spells they could cast without verbal components, which they did and put to creative use. The monsters seemed more dangerous (until I blew every roll for the shark. Not one hit.)

Comments

  1. Casey G.

    Just to check, is the above formula meant to be 10 segments x CON bonus, or 5 (30 seconds)

    I believe:
    6 seconds = 1 segment
    10 segments = 1 round
    10 rounds = 1 turn
    6 turns = 1 hour

    :O)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is 5e, so a round is 6 seconds.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ... it burns, it burns!!!
    Oh, I see
    :O)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Like an action movie scene. Not a random encounter.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This is my gaming circle minus my ACKS players.