Swimming (sage ability)
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Swimming is an unskilled and amateur-status sage ability in the sage studies of Athletics, Beachcomber, Oceanography and Sea Life, that can be performed with a minimum of 1 knowledge point. It's not uncommon for characters to lack swimming skills, but the importance of the activity in some circumstances requires that a clear division is drawn between "able to thrash around to some degree" and actual competency be established.
Contents
Characters with less than 10 points of knowledge in the ability are considered "unskilled." Those with absolutely no proficiency (knowledge: 0), when in sufficiently deep water, are certain to drown. As described below, a swimmer with just 1 point of knowledge is able, at least, to keep themselves from sinking immediately.
Characters with 10 points more are considered "skilled."
Techniques and Sustainability
A character's survival hinges on the duration they can maintain a specific activity. Even the weakest swimmers can "thrash," which can be sustained for 4 rounds per knowledge point. Thus a character with 1 point of knowledge could slap their hands on the water's surface for three-quarters of a minute before sinking — giving at least a little time so that he or she can be saved. Those with 3 knowledge points can actually cover a meaningful distance before losing their strength to continue.
Swimmers with 4-9 points of knowledge can paddle with more proficiency, actually covering a meaningful distance by dog paddling, a slow yet straightforward swimming technique. The swimmer moves their arms and legs simultaneously in a treading motion. This enables the swimmer to keep his or her head above water, with the body remaining somewhat upright. This permits steady breathing and doesn't require the timed coordination seen in other swimming styles.
With amateur knowledge, the character masters the ability to Stroke or Race in a freestyle movement. One arm pulls underwater from an extended position in front of the swimmer's side, while the other arm recovers above water, swinging forward. The swimmer turns their head to one side during the arm's recovery to take a breath, and then rotates it back into the water during the pull. Effectively, when stroke-swimming, the swimmer cannot "see" ahead, not without stopping to bob for a moment to obtain his or her bearings, before beginning to stroke again.
When racing, the swimmer increases the stroke rate, maintaining a more streamlined body position to reduce drag. The swimmer opts for fewer breaths to maintain this position and a faster tempo. A strong racer might breathe only every five or even seven strokes.
| Knowledge | Hexes per action point | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thrashing | Paddling | Stroking | Racing | ||
| 1-3 | 0.4 | unable | |||
| 4-9 | — | 1.6 | unable | ||
| 10-15 | — | 1.8 | 2.7 | 3.5 | |
| 16-29 | — | 1.9 | 3.5 | 5.3 | |
| 30-43 | — | 2.0 | 4.3 | 6.9 | |
| 44-57 | — | 2.1 | 5.1 | 8.3 | |
| 58-71 | — | 2.1 | 5.1 | 9.5 | |
| 72-85 | — | 2.2 | 5.1 | 10.5 | |
| 86 or more | — | 2.2 | 5.9 | 11.3 | |
Distance Travelled
The effect of these swimming styles on the progress is shown on the provided table. The maximumm number of combat hexes that characters can traverse using a specific style is given as a number per action point (AP). This calculation works much like the character's stride, except that the character is swimming.
For example, Jeremy is an unskilled swimmer with just 2 points of knowledge, who has fallen into deep water. Unable to do anything except thrash, he can nonetheless travel 0.4 x his AP — 5 AP if he's unencumbered — or 2 hexes per round. Since Jeremy can flail along this way for 8 total rounds (see above), he might save himself if he can find a solid footing within 16 hexes, or 80 feet. As a round is 12 seconds, others have a little over a minute and a half to catch him before he sinks, and at least a little more time after that if they can find him below the surface.
More able swimmers can achieve effective distances when swimming, up to 34 hexes per round, just less than 3¼ miles an hour. This is somewhat shy of speeds that modern swimmers can perform, but in a medieval world, without enhanced training, medical support or specialised clothing, these numbers are impressive.
When racing, characters expend their stamina at double the usual rate. Therefore, while a character with 40 points in swimming can maintain the stroke for 160 rounds without resting, each round of racing deducts two rounds from this maximum limit.
Resting & Exhaustion
When swimmers exhaust their endurance, they need to rest. If they can find solid ground or a floating object to hold onto, they can recuperate by resting for 5 minutes, or 25 rounds. During this recovery period, they must remain stationary and cannot resume swimming until they've completed the entire duration of rest. Once rejuvenated, swimmers can proceed — however, their effective knowledge points for determining endurance in the next segment of swimming is reduced by 20%. After a second break is taken, the knowledge points are against reduced by 20% of the character's previously adjusted total.
- For example, Toby has 5 AP and 32 knowledge points as a swimmer when he begins the first leg of his swimming effort. He stroke-swims at a speed of 5 x 4.3 = 21.5 hexes per round for 128 rounds before he reaches the limit of his exhaustion (a distance of 2,752 hexes, or 2.61 miles). At this point, he happens to find a rock to rest upon. Thereafter he sets out again, with his "knowledge" reduced to 25.6; not only does this reduce the number of rounds he can swim to 102, it also reduces the speed he swims at to "3.5" per AP. When he rests again, his adjusted knowledge of 25.6 is reduced to just 20.48. And so it goes until Toby is completely exhausted.
Recovery
Once complete exhaustion occurs, sage and expert-status characters (60+ knowledge points) can regain each reduction to their swimming ability after a full hour's rest. Thus such persons reduced to 0.8 x 0.8 of their knowledge would require two hours to become fully restored.
Authority-status characters (30+ points) require 3 hours of rest for each reduction. Amateur characters, once exhausted, must wait 6 hours for each reduction; if swimming again that day until needing a rest, they're considered to be completely exhausted again at that point.
Nowhere to Rest
Characters who cannot find a place to rest once their endurance is spent must depend on being rescued somehow before succumbing to their tiredness and drowning. By saving up available rounds of swimming, a character can use each round to tread water for five full rounds (1 minute). For example, Toby can initially swim for 128 rounds before needing to rest; if he discovered there would be no place to rest ahead of him, he could stop after expending 110 rounds; that would leave him 18 more to tread water, which he could then do for 18 minutes before running out of energy and sinking below the surface to drown.
It's therefore very important that a character makes an accurate judgement of the distance they intend to swim. It's also well to let others know where they might locate the character, in case the distance is too great. Treading water increases the chances of being found by a stranger, or encountering floating debris, which would suffice as a "place to rest." By treading water and looking about, the character might be able to find such, whereas while swimming a log or piece of wreckage would have passed unseen.
Drownproofing
D&D characters cannot "drownproof," as the practice wasn't invented or introduced until 1940. A DM may wish to include this in "special knowledge," and if so, the technique can increase the character's survival by three times that of treading water (1 round of duration = 3 minutes of drownproofing). A drownproofing character is nearly invisible in the water, however, so its important for characters to spend 1 in every 3 duration rounds lifting up and treading water, to look around and present a more easily found silhouette in the water.
Encumbered Penalty
When swimming, so long as a character's arms and legs possess complete freedom of movement, and the hands and feet are bare, encumbrance may be pressed to just shy of losing 1 point of AP without affecting the character's ability to swim. However, if the character loses 1 AP due to encumbrance, then he or she counts a loss of 2 AP towards their ability to swim. A second point of AP due to encumbrance counts as a loss of 4 AP in swimming. Thus, if a character needed 2½ AP to swim a single hex, he or she would be unable to do so, even while paddling.
Normally, characters with 5 AP due to encumbrance will float; but the loss of a single AP causes the character to sink, so that much of the character's effort is required to remain on the water's surface. A character lacking 1 AP due to encumbrance cannot tread water at all.
If the character can breath water, whether as a spell or an ability, then it may be possible for an encumbered character to sink to the bottom and move along, without fear of drowning.
Currents & Wind
Natural currents and wind have their own affects on swimming, making it difficult for swimmers to maintain their equilibrium or keep on course.
Currents
Rivers can flow at speeds up to 120 ft. per round, whereas rip tides in the ocean can move up to 96 ft. in the same time period. When swimming in currents that move faster than the swimmer, there is a high risk of the swimmer being overpowered by the water. If this happens, a swimmer can be dragged into whitewater that makes it impossible to reach the surface, or thrown against rocks and ledges in and along the river bed. With a rip tide, the swimmer can be put so far out to sea that it's impossible to swim back. This is why swimming in any current faster than 12 ft. per round is very dangerous.
Remember to take into account the movement of the current when calculating the swimmer's vector across a water's surface. Once a swimmer has been overpowered, they can be saved only by outside assistance or by chance. Generally, allow a 1 in 6 possibility each round that the swimmer chances to grasp a rock or some other surface that allows them to arrest their downward passage. Each failed roll causes 4-10 damage from being pummeled upon the stream's bed or strain on the character's lungs. Even if purchase is somehow found, the overpowered swimmer must be saved by outside means, since he or she will be too weak, cold and wet to climb out with their own strength (no matter how strong they are!). If they are not saved, sooner or later their grip will falter and they'll be dragged through the river again, sure enough to die eventually.
A 1 in 10 chance of the character being thrown on to a tiny beach or a rock bench, where they can rest or lay without straining themselves, is a reasonable possibility. The DM can increase this chance, but a happenstance like this is probably more of a 1 in 100 chance rather than 1 in 10.
Winds
Similarly, winds that blow faster than 8-12 miles per hour (F-3) create large wavelets, as crests break on the surface. This adds an additional a movement cost of +½ AP when swimming. With greater force (F-4), frequent white horses occur, with a movement cost of +1 AP. As a fresh breeze takes hold (F-5), anything beyond paddling is impractical, while a strong breeze (F-6) disallows any swimming at all, though it's still possible to tread water. An F-7 wind, a near gale, makes even this impossible. Those caught in the water in a near gale without some physical means of staying afloat will drown within 2-5 rounds.
Progenitor Backgrounds
Unless a character possesses a certain background or the sage ability, they cannot swim at all. Backgrounds are determined by the character background generator, which could indicate the character was raised by fisherfolk, sailors, boaters, explorers, shipwrights or buccaneers. Those raised by pirates often cannot swim, as most who become pirates receive no training as such.
See also,
