Having trouble locating anywhere in the rules where it says heavy armor sinks… obviously you can not stay afloat with 60 + pounds of heavy armor. Possible exceptions if you had a swimming speed built in to character. Is there an official ruling on this I overlooked or was it intentionally left out? Ghosts of Saltmarsh, the Dwarven Cleric in plate mail, shield and a sawed off warhammer falls overboard. Not to sound prejudiced but being a Dwarf you think there might be some disadvantage… then add the weight of his gear. No chance of treading water or he’s fine, just swim back to boat and make athletics check to climb back in?
Other than for Mariner's Armor. The rules say nothing.
Mariner's armor is magical, can be heavy and gives a swim speed and floats to the serface if the wearer goes to 0 HP.
I would be inclined to give a creature with a swim speed the ability to swim normally with heavy armour. Without a swim speed things are a bit more difficult. A modern life jacket designed for use with heavy equipment provides at least 275N of bouyancy which would be more than enough to cancel out with 60lb of armor so it is not inconceivable that heavy armor designed for use at sea has padding that is bouyant (bags of air, polystyrene or equivalent) though in reality this would be likely ot cost more, be more combersom or both.
As a DM I would think of the consequnces before deciding what to do. There is nothing worse than tellling a player their character is dead and there is nothing they can do about it. If I was wanting such a situation to be deadly for players when the players boarded the boat I would have an NPC (say the vessel captain) warn them of the folly of wearing heavy armor at sea and give the cleric the option of wearing something else. If the party is of high enough level you can make it an encounter where they might need to use resources to save him. For example if another party member has dimension door they would be able to swim down to rescue him. (You might allow the cleric to make an athletics check and if he fails the party might have to resort to magic). I think the most common treatment is to just wave the difficulty of swimming in heavy armour however.
Figure out how long he can hold his breathe, if he can hold it long enough to get out of the armour, let him swim back to the surface but lose the armour.
Not to sound prejudiced but being a Dwarf you think there might be some disadvantage…
Disadvantage means you're having a significantly more difficult time of it, for whatever reason, than the average other character to whom that reason doesn't apply would. What reason are you thinking of that makes dwarves - all dwarves - horrible swimmers?
The rules generally have very few adverse effects from wearing heavy armour and/or being otherwise under a meaningful burden. There's sleep and there's stealth, and even stealth disadvantage is a function of the specific armour worn rather than the category of armour (even if all heavy armour types impose this disadvantage). The rules don't really specify a whole lot of other circumstantial effects that could impose disadvantage either - spells and abilities, sure, but circumstantial reasons not so much - but they do say "the DM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result." If this feels like an appropriate circumstance to warrant disadvantage to you (I'd be inclined to agree), then go for it. It's what the rules tell you to do: use your own judgment to decide when disadvantage (or advantage) is in order.
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Not to sound prejudiced but being a Dwarf you think there might be some disadvantage…
Nothing in the rules suggests this, and nothing in the rules mentions swimming is impacted by what you are wearing or carrying.
The op was probably using the fact that dwa4ves are heavy for their height and concluding they are quite dense. Not sure if I agree with that as dwarves are also wide for their height so a dwarf could quite likely be the same density as say a human of the same weight.
I recently had my group cross a stream and the Dwarf Cleric (lvl 4) in Heavy armour fell of the Bridge. I didn't find anything in the rules so I improvised. I let him do an Athletics check of (DC12) with disadvantage because he was wearing heavy armour. On a Fail he took 1D8 of damage. On a success he could stay above the water to get hold on a root on the bank of the river and the other player pulled him up. If he had failed a second Athletics check he would go under and hold his breath until he got rid of the Armour and all the heavy equipment.
Normally swimming under normal circumstances require no checks whatsoever. The rules suggest that gaining any distance in rough water might require a successful Strength (Athletics) check Also, a DM could always determine that swimming with heavy gears and armors is also a difficult situation that interfere with your swimming and require one. Just swiming with a sword at your waist must be an hindrance, imagine with a loaded backback, armors, weapons, backup weapons etc While one can carry the weight without hindrance on ground, swimming in water could certainly prove to be more chanllenging.
Athletics. Your Strength (Athletics) check covers difficult situations you encounter while climbing, jumping, or swimming. Examples include the following activities:
• You struggle to swim or stay afloat in treacherous currents, storm-tossed waves, or areas of thick seaweed. Or another creature tries to push or pull you underwater or otherwise interfere with your swimming.
While I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting extra rules, I feel like you'd get penalized enough as is.
If you're wearing heavy armor, generally you have an above average to high strength score and proficiency. This means you are trained in the use of heavy armor and have above average strength compared to a normal human.
And unless you have a swimming speed, representing a natural affinity for water if it's from your race or training if it's from f a feat etc, you're already slowed down by in the water.
In practice, I feel like anyone that's wearing heavy armor in water is likely going to be a paladin or fighter with high strength and training in using said armor, and for characters like that I'm willing to waive realism concerns that would just bog the game down. If someone tries swimming without meeting the STR score but not having proficiency, they're slowed down by 10 movement which is compounded by the water being effectively difficult terrain, making them very VERY slow. And I can't imagine a situation where a PC NOT proficient in heavy armor would go swimming in it. If they did though that would be a very bad idea.
All things considered, 5e is fairly generous when it comes to swimming. Unless a player goes out of their way to declare that their character doesn't know how to swim, there's no skill check or proficiency necessary to swim under stable conditions. No special rules for how much you're carrying on your person... whether it's armor, a backpack, or even just a massive shield or something. Most of the time, you can jump into a water with a pocket full of granola and a backpack full of books, and none of it will get soaked and ruined. There aren't even rules about speaking or casting spells underwater...
I don't know if the 5e designers just didn't want to complicate the game further with a lot of special rules for underwater stuff, or if they just didn't think about it at the time. Either way it seems to be one of the most commonly homebrewed aspects of 5e, just because it feels kind of wrong to let people just get away with whatever nonsense underwater without some kind of difficulty or challenge.
I'd give players an insight check to consider the potential perils of having large bits of metal strapped to them while travelling near water. Boats, especially those used by armoured creatures, would have spare floatation devices.
It may be hard and require strength (athletics) checks, but is feasible. Considering swimming usually doesn't even call for a check, I don't even think it calls for disadvantage on the roll.
I would love it if WotC created more in depth environmental rules, but for swimming I think weight vs strength would be a better way to determine whether a character has disadvantage on swimming rather than it rely upon armor type. A 20 strength Paladin in heavy armor shouldn't struggle with swimming while the 8 strength Wizard in robes with a pack full books and other gear coasts by without any issues.
You can swim in heavy armor and in a situation like we see in this video i would probably not ask for any check since the character is under no stress, water is calm, and he is only wearring a chainmail. But characters rarely go adventure with only that on them and let's be honest, no one would jump in water fully geared, they would undress and drag their gear if time permit. The only way it will happen is if a character is forced to, time pressured or fall into water. In this situation, he is probably in combat, under stress, perhaps even moving water (river vs lake) etc many factor could warrant a check, and even disadvantage if the DM deem it necessary.
It may be hard and require strength (athletics) checks, but is feasible. Considering swimming usually doesn't even call for a check, I don't even think it calls for disadvantage on the roll.
To add to this, here is more proof with Heavy Samurai armour.
It is extremely difficult and I'd say someone who falls from a height into deep water would be in very big trouble, but you could definitely cross a narrow stream or body of water with a good enough check. I'd give disadvantage for more sievere conditions and perhaps even 'super disadvantage' for extreme conditions like trying to swim against a flast flowing river.
It may be hard and require strength (athletics) checks, but is feasible. Considering swimming usually doesn't even call for a check, I don't even think it calls for disadvantage on the roll.
From RAW Armor and Shields I'm not sure if the powerful guy featured was wearing closer to a 20 lb chain shirt or 55 lbs of chain mail.
The first video the guy is wearing a chain shirt, the description in D&D is that heavy armour covers the whole body (i.e. including the les) and includes gauntlets. Not sure what the second video would equate to it looks as if it is mostly leather so maybe scale mail would be most appropriate.
Therefore the videos show it is hard but possible to swim in medium armor.
I did find this video of a guy in plate mail without a helm, he managed about 5 seconds on the surface (without the ability to keep his face out of the water) possibly close enought to say it is doable with an ability check.
Unfortunately, Armor and Shields RAW only provides one image which I presume relates to plate armour.
From my background away from 5e knowledge, the first video shows a strong person in a generous (long-sleeved) chain shirt. My jury is still out as to whether that person could have been able to swim in 5e's scale mail.
The second video may be judged to feature someone wearing some level of half plate. There are lots of areas of the body not covered.
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Having trouble locating anywhere in the rules where it says heavy armor sinks… obviously you can not stay afloat with 60 + pounds of heavy armor. Possible exceptions if you had a swimming speed built in to character. Is there an official ruling on this I overlooked or was it intentionally left out?
Ghosts of Saltmarsh, the Dwarven Cleric in plate mail, shield and a sawed off warhammer falls overboard. Not to sound prejudiced but being a Dwarf you think there might be some disadvantage… then add the weight of his gear. No chance of treading water or he’s fine, just swim back to boat and make athletics check to climb back in?
Other than for Mariner's Armor. The rules say nothing.
Mariner's armor is magical, can be heavy and gives a swim speed and floats to the serface if the wearer goes to 0 HP.
I would be inclined to give a creature with a swim speed the ability to swim normally with heavy armour. Without a swim speed things are a bit more difficult. A modern life jacket designed for use with heavy equipment provides at least 275N of bouyancy which would be more than enough to cancel out with 60lb of armor so it is not inconceivable that heavy armor designed for use at sea has padding that is bouyant (bags of air, polystyrene or equivalent) though in reality this would be likely ot cost more, be more combersom or both.
As a DM I would think of the consequnces before deciding what to do. There is nothing worse than tellling a player their character is dead and there is nothing they can do about it. If I was wanting such a situation to be deadly for players when the players boarded the boat I would have an NPC (say the vessel captain) warn them of the folly of wearing heavy armor at sea and give the cleric the option of wearing something else. If the party is of high enough level you can make it an encounter where they might need to use resources to save him. For example if another party member has dimension door they would be able to swim down to rescue him. (You might allow the cleric to make an athletics check and if he fails the party might have to resort to magic). I think the most common treatment is to just wave the difficulty of swimming in heavy armour however.
Nothing in the rules suggests this, and nothing in the rules mentions swimming is impacted by what you are wearing or carrying.
Figure out how long he can hold his breathe, if he can hold it long enough to get out of the armour, let him swim back to the surface but lose the armour.
Disadvantage means you're having a significantly more difficult time of it, for whatever reason, than the average other character to whom that reason doesn't apply would. What reason are you thinking of that makes dwarves - all dwarves - horrible swimmers?
The rules generally have very few adverse effects from wearing heavy armour and/or being otherwise under a meaningful burden. There's sleep and there's stealth, and even stealth disadvantage is a function of the specific armour worn rather than the category of armour (even if all heavy armour types impose this disadvantage). The rules don't really specify a whole lot of other circumstantial effects that could impose disadvantage either - spells and abilities, sure, but circumstantial reasons not so much - but they do say "the DM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result." If this feels like an appropriate circumstance to warrant disadvantage to you (I'd be inclined to agree), then go for it. It's what the rules tell you to do: use your own judgment to decide when disadvantage (or advantage) is in order.
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The op was probably using the fact that dwa4ves are heavy for their height and concluding they are quite dense. Not sure if I agree with that as dwarves are also wide for their height so a dwarf could quite likely be the same density as say a human of the same weight.
... I can't argue with that.
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I recently had my group cross a stream and the Dwarf Cleric (lvl 4) in Heavy armour fell of the Bridge.
I didn't find anything in the rules so I improvised.
I let him do an Athletics check of (DC12) with disadvantage because he was wearing heavy armour. On a Fail he took 1D8 of damage. On a success he could stay above the water to get hold on a root on the bank of the river and the other player pulled him up.
If he had failed a second Athletics check he would go under and hold his breath until he got rid of the Armour and all the heavy equipment.
Normally swimming under normal circumstances require no checks whatsoever. The rules suggest that gaining any distance in rough water might require a successful Strength (Athletics) check Also, a DM could always determine that swimming with heavy gears and armors is also a difficult situation that interfere with your swimming and require one. Just swiming with a sword at your waist must be an hindrance, imagine with a loaded backback, armors, weapons, backup weapons etc While one can carry the weight without hindrance on ground, swimming in water could certainly prove to be more chanllenging.
While I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting extra rules, I feel like you'd get penalized enough as is.
If you're wearing heavy armor, generally you have an above average to high strength score and proficiency. This means you are trained in the use of heavy armor and have above average strength compared to a normal human.
And unless you have a swimming speed, representing a natural affinity for water if it's from your race or training if it's from f a feat etc, you're already slowed down by in the water.
In practice, I feel like anyone that's wearing heavy armor in water is likely going to be a paladin or fighter with high strength and training in using said armor, and for characters like that I'm willing to waive realism concerns that would just bog the game down. If someone tries swimming without meeting the STR score but not having proficiency, they're slowed down by 10 movement which is compounded by the water being effectively difficult terrain, making them very VERY slow. And I can't imagine a situation where a PC NOT proficient in heavy armor would go swimming in it. If they did though that would be a very bad idea.
All things considered, 5e is fairly generous when it comes to swimming. Unless a player goes out of their way to declare that their character doesn't know how to swim, there's no skill check or proficiency necessary to swim under stable conditions. No special rules for how much you're carrying on your person... whether it's armor, a backpack, or even just a massive shield or something. Most of the time, you can jump into a water with a pocket full of granola and a backpack full of books, and none of it will get soaked and ruined. There aren't even rules about speaking or casting spells underwater...
I don't know if the 5e designers just didn't want to complicate the game further with a lot of special rules for underwater stuff, or if they just didn't think about it at the time. Either way it seems to be one of the most commonly homebrewed aspects of 5e, just because it feels kind of wrong to let people just get away with whatever nonsense underwater without some kind of difficulty or challenge.
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I'd give players an insight check to consider the potential perils of having large bits of metal strapped to them while travelling near water.
Boats, especially those used by armoured creatures, would have spare floatation devices.
You can swim in heavy armor.
It may be hard and require strength (athletics) checks, but is feasible. Considering swimming usually doesn't even call for a check, I don't even think it calls for disadvantage on the roll.
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I would love it if WotC created more in depth environmental rules, but for swimming I think weight vs strength would be a better way to determine whether a character has disadvantage on swimming rather than it rely upon armor type. A 20 strength Paladin in heavy armor shouldn't struggle with swimming while the 8 strength Wizard in robes with a pack full books and other gear coasts by without any issues.
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You can swim in heavy armor and in a situation like we see in this video i would probably not ask for any check since the character is under no stress, water is calm, and he is only wearring a chainmail. But characters rarely go adventure with only that on them and let's be honest, no one would jump in water fully geared, they would undress and drag their gear if time permit. The only way it will happen is if a character is forced to, time pressured or fall into water. In this situation, he is probably in combat, under stress, perhaps even moving water (river vs lake) etc many factor could warrant a check, and even disadvantage if the DM deem it necessary.
To add to this, here is more proof with Heavy Samurai armour.
It is extremely difficult and I'd say someone who falls from a height into deep water would be in very big trouble, but you could definitely cross a narrow stream or body of water with a good enough check. I'd give disadvantage for more sievere conditions and perhaps even 'super disadvantage' for extreme conditions like trying to swim against a flast flowing river.
That guy in the video trying to swim in mail looks like he is about to drown 🤣
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From RAW Armor and Shields I'm not sure if the powerful guy featured was wearing closer to a 20 lb chain shirt or 55 lbs of chain mail.
The first video the guy is wearing a chain shirt, the description in D&D is that heavy armour covers the whole body (i.e. including the les) and includes gauntlets. Not sure what the second video would equate to it looks as if it is mostly leather so maybe scale mail would be most appropriate.
Therefore the videos show it is hard but possible to swim in medium armor.
I did find this video of a guy in plate mail without a helm, he managed about 5 seconds on the surface (without the ability to keep his face out of the water) possibly close enought to say it is doable with an ability check.
https://vimeo.com/13634653
Having said that our characters are superheroes in a fantasy world so it is up to the DM what they can do.
Unfortunately, Armor and Shields RAW only provides one image which I presume relates to plate armour.
From my background away from 5e knowledge, the first video shows a strong person in a generous (long-sleeved) chain shirt. My jury is still out as to whether that person could have been able to swim in 5e's scale mail.
The second video may be judged to feature someone wearing some level of half plate. There are lots of areas of the body not covered.