Drowning

[UR Leader Hobbes]

Are there any rules for drowning?

[Jason Richards]

No, but it would suck. Read The Perfect Storm.

[Sentinel]

You die.

[Guest]

Not as such, drowning is mentioned, in passing, on page 25 of Baalgor Wastelands.

You might also try the Q&A section of Rifter #17.

[Sentinel]

I'll have to look more closely at Adventures on the High Seas, and Rifts: Underseas and Coalition Navy. You'd think they would cover drowning a little more in-depth.

[The Beast]

The PF rule is vague bit, the RUE rule is helpful. In order to begin drowning you must fail 3 swim attempts in a row. Now that's answered, on to actually drowning. I believe it was stated somewhere that you could hold your breath equal to your PE in melees, after that you need to be rescued/CPR'd or you drowned.

I think the breath holding rule had something to do with space and the vacuum but, I think it would apply here as well.

The holding breath in space rule sounds right, but I thought when swimming it was PE in minutes.

[J. Lionheart]

Holding Breath for PE in minutes? Not a chance. An "average" human as a PE of 9 in the game, but there are only a few people in the world who can reach 9 minutes holding breath. These folks are professional free-divers who do spend their entire lives practicing this. Even the lowest of the bonus-level PE attributes would be nearly doubling world-records on a regular basis. PE in melees, however, would be much more believable.

[Guest]

Holding Breath for PE in minutes? Not a chance. An "average" human as a PE of 9 in the game, but there are only a few people in the world who can reach 9 minutes holding breath. These folks are professional free-divers who do spend their entire lives practicing this. Even the lowest of the bonus-level PE attributes would be nearly doubling world-records on a regular basis. PE in melees, however, would be much more believable.

Actually, an "average" human has a P.E. of 10.662037037037*, not 9.
*10.66etc as calculated for 3D6 with a bonus D6 on a 16, 17, 18; if that extra die is a six and you allow your players to actually roll AGAIN, the average moves up to 10.69 something.

[Sentinel]

Remember though, the PCs aren't "average" people. They're supposedly people who have achieved some sort of superior accumen as professional adventurers.
This is why NPC normals have so much lower stats. They are the 'average' of humanity (or, the dregs, if you prefer).

[filo_clarke]

Even PE in melees seems a bit of a stretch. Assuming that the average PE of 10 could thereby hold his breath for 150 seconds, or two and a half minutes. While some people can certainly hold their breath for longer than this period, I would hardly say that it is the norm.

Frankly I would assume that most people could only hold their breath for a minute... 90 seconds tops, in some sort of emergency situation.

In fact, while writing this, I timed myself, and could only hold my breath for 96 seconds. And I'm not exerting myself, just writing at a computer.

[J. Lionheart]

Actually, an "average" human has a P.E. of 10.662037037037*, not 9.
*10.66etc as calculated for 3D6 with a bonus D6 on a 16, 17, 18; if that extra die is a six and you allow your players to actually roll AGAIN, the average moves up to 10.69 something.

I'm just going by the printed information in the book saying the average human attribute is 9, rather than doing an average on dice rolls (which as Sentinel points out, are for above-average characters).

[Guest]

Actually, an "average" human has a P.E. of 10.662037037037*, not 9.
*10.66etc as calculated for 3D6 with a bonus D6 on a 16, 17, 18; if that extra die is a six and you allow your players to actually roll AGAIN, the average moves up to 10.69 something.

Remember though, the PCs aren't "average" people. They're supposedly people who have achieved some sort of superior accumen as professional adventurers.
This is why NPC normals have so much lower stats. They are the 'average' of humanity (or, the dregs, if you prefer).

The average of even 3D6 is 10.5, not 9.

I'm just going by the printed information in the book saying the average human attribute is 9, rather than doing an average on dice rolls (which as Sentinel points out, are for above-average characters).

The book's wrong. The math doesn't support an average of 9.

[Sentinel]

Sentinel wrote:
Remember though, the PCs aren't "average" people. They're supposedly people who have achieved some sort of superior accumen as professional adventurers.
This is why NPC normals have so much lower stats. They are the 'average' of humanity (or, the dregs, if you prefer).


The average of even 3D6 is 10.5, not 9.

I wasn't pointing to the statistical average, but the nature of the term "average" in terms of the characters' abilities and attributes.
Replace "average" with "common" or "normal".
Normals get less SDC, and lessend combat abilities.

[Guest]

Sentinel wrote:
Remember though, the PCs aren't "average" people. They're supposedly people who have achieved some sort of superior accumen as professional adventurers.
This is why NPC normals have so much lower stats. They are the 'average' of humanity (or, the dregs, if you prefer).


The average of even 3D6 is 10.5, not 9.

I wasn't pointing to the statistical average, but the nature of the term "average" in terms of the characters' abilities and attributes.
Replace "average" with "common" or "normal".
Normals get less SDC, and lessend combat abilities.

While that's true in some of Palladium's games, it doesn't really apply in PF, where every class from peasant, to merchant, to noble has an OCC available and the NPCs are stated out to reflect that.

[Reagren Wright]

Speaking from 16 years experience as a lifeguard, I'd say first they have
to make a HF save to avoid panic. If you don't panic you can call for help
and have some mild penalties. If they fail the save, they'd be unable to
do anything because their mind is trying to fight off death, rational thought
no longer comes into play. I agree with everyone else that holding breath
is the way to go. 3-4 minutes before declaring them clinically dead or at least in coma.