Hello! I'm getting ready to start an under water campaign with my friends. I think there's a lot of fun to be had with deep sea encounters, and some aquatic geared races that can really shine in this campaign. But there's a major roadblock I still need to figure out.
Typically, ranged weapons are very ineffective under water. This is fine in an average campaign since it should only be a temporary inconvenience, but if it's going to affect the entire campaign, I don't want to take ranged weapons completely off the table.
I figure I can just reskin crossbows as harpoon guns and call it a day. Everything else I'm trying to figure out.
For bows, I'm thinking of introducing a low tier magic bow string? It can be equipped to any bow, and all it does is help magically propel arrows through the water. But then they couldn't have any other magic strings on their bow, the arrow or the frame itself would have to be enchanted.
I honestly don't have any idea what to do with guns....If gun powder gets wet it just doesn't work. I don't want it to be a specific enchantment because they couldn't upgrade/get better magic guns later in the game. So I need to come up with a passable reason for them to work in the water based on design or materials.
Throwing knives and similar items, I've genuinely got nothing.
This is a bit of a tall order, but any ideas would be super appreciated! I think I've mostly got solid mechanics to transfer everything else under water, it's just these ranged attacks I haven't figured out.
You do not need to overthink this--wait until you see what types of weapons your players want to use and then only reskin those. If you do not have a player using a bow and arrow, for example, no need to come up with a reason to justify having bows and arrows underwater. Still, since that is not quite what you asked, here are some solutions for the ones you are struggling with:
Guns - take a page out of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and use pressurized air cartridges instead of powder (which is also done in the real world for some spear guns--though less commonly than the ones relying on tension that are more akin to crossbows). If you want a more magical explanation, the "powder" could be some kind of trapped spell, akin to how a Chronology Wizard can produce a mote. When the mote is broken, it casts shape water or gust or whatnot, propelling the round forward.
Throwing knives and such - just use javelins as harpoons and be more inclined to give out those as loot. Unless you have a player specifically wanting a dagger build, you should have some weapons that just do not work well to add to the flavour of the world.
Part of the fun of an underwater adventure is the hostile environment and the challenge it brings. This is a prime example of why session 0s are important. As long as the players know it's underwater and the challenges it brings, they should be ok. If someone really wants to be a throwing knife specialist, then they might choose a Soulknife rogue or they could just struggle (or play melee) until you give them a magic throwing dagger. It really comes down to working with the DM on the character concept. If you simply give them the equipment needed to bypass the environment right away, there's little point to having it underwater. It also makes the items that much cooler when they find them, because of the previous hardships.
As far as homebrewing magic weapons for underwater usage, it's really just digging in and getting creative. It doesn't have to be super complex though. Just name something "of the sea, Atlantian whatever, Bow of the Sea Elf, etc." attach a pearl or something underwattery on it and put in the description that it works underwater (flavor it as you will). Modern guns will fire underwater by the way. So you could present a modern bullet which seals in the gun powder to work with special firearm. It doesn't even have to be magical. The shockwave from firing underwater is considerable so if you're going for more realism, you might consider that.
Magic is shorthand for "the author wants X to happen but it doesn't make sense, but it happens anyway". So I wouldn't stress, just handwave it with "because it's magic".
Specifically with guns, magical fire burns even in space according Spelljammer. So, you could just have the gunpowder ignited by magical fire, which works even under water. Alternatively, they're watertight and contain oxygen as well as the normal reactants.
Bows etc could just be special bows made by locals, and so naturally work fine even underwater.
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I think it's fine to limit options to crossbows. It's ok for players to have to build characters to the campaign rather than the campaign accommodating every single possible choice. And this is coming from someone who doesn't typically like to restrict character options.
You could consider reskinning shortbows and longbows into some cool crossbow-esque draw-and-release arrow-catapult type weapon.
I am working on an underwater adventure myself and I've had this pondered at the back of my mind for a while. I am considering reducing the range of weapons, which will hopefully couple with the inherant ability to "fly" that everyone will have by swimming, and prevent long-range flying snipers from becoming an issue!
In general, I have seen lots of problems with just say MAGIC and it is fine. So take your time and think things through. I have found if a GM uses the PFM (Pure Fracking Magic) technique too much it loses the players interest and emersion. Note: I have seen "Theater of the Minds Eye" type games where this is not an issue as well as people who enjoy very cartoon like campaigns.
In general things travelling in water have the water pressing back on them, much more so then in typical air environment. So much so a person in 5' of water can have bullets from an assault rifle simply bounce off them.
Spear guns often do not travel as far as a novice things they would and can often go off track for various simple reasons. Most cases of thrown weapons that would do damage would not really be a thing.
But again if you game is very cartoonish in nature do anything you want but if your group expects a little realism dramatically cut ranges and weapon effectiveness.
This question and questions like it, have been asked before so I would also suggest doing a search.
Honestly, if you're playing underwater but everything works just like it does on land because magic, you might as well be playing on land but give everyone a flying speed.
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Put bluntly ranged weapons used underwater are and should be severely nerfed. Water is much denser than air causing hugely greater resistance. Essentially nothing “glides” very far, even fish have to keep swimming more or less constantly. The trick is momentum ( mass x speed) - high mass objects generally maintain their momentum more easily than low mass objects against the friction of the water. This why a bullet loses most of its speed n 2-5 feet but a diver ( think racing dive not board diving) retains most of their speed for almost a pool length. Crossbows work because they do two things 1) fire a relatively heavy (streamlined) bolt at high speed (and momentum). 2) do this with a fairly small flex of the heavy metal bow so that it doesn’t have to displace much water as it snaps forward. Compare that to a long bow with a relatively light arrow fired from a bow with much longer lighter arms that have to travel much further against the water resistance to impart roughly the same speed. Far less efficient. Even then ranges are going to be cut way down ( probably to about 1/4 listed values at best) what that means is that thrown weapons can’t get past melee range and regular bows probably only slightly better with crossbows giving you the best range at something like 20-30 ft. In an underwater campaign ranged cantrips become your ranged weapons as they would retain their range because of the magic.
Best bet - let everyone have a feat at L1 to take magic initiate so they get a couple of cantrips and a L1 ranged spell as their ranged weapon.
In general i have not seen a simple rule that stats "underwater simply reduce all ranges by 1/x" that promote any believability as the topic is more complex.
I have seen cartoon like games simply ignore any believability in underwater adventuring and in this type of games (IMHO) often the GM is directing the player like a writer would or a director on a movie or play set. So it is only important if the director says so everything else is just background scenery.
By putting environmental conditions on ranged weapons, you're not taking them off the table completely, you're adapting them to the environment you've chosen to challenge the party with. There's no enforcement mechanism preventing you as DM from treating underwater as an abstract space that gives everyone complete freedom of movement to fight an Aboleth or Kracken or whatever, so you can just ignore the environment. However, the whole point of taking characters into environments besides dry surface world land with adequate drinking water is to present the characters with a challenging environment. Your players will need to adapt their usual tactics to thrive in or at least survive that environment. And you get to have fun in a way that old planescape manuals used to have. How does magical fire in your game work in the depths? Lightning? What about pressure (I'm thinking W1ldBi11 may have some thoughts or even rule precedence on that). I thumbed through Netherdeep and didn't find an easy reference (other than a pretty gnarly rule on deep water pressure) but I look at old planescape stuff and don't 1:1 port over, but use their conditions on magic and conventional actions as inspirations for unusual environments.
In general i have not seen a simple rule that stats "underwater simply reduce all ranges by 1/x" that promote any believability as the topic is more complex.
I have seen cartoon like games simply ignore any believability in underwater adventuring and in this type of games (IMHO) often the GM is directing the player like a writer would or a director on a movie or play set. So it is only important if the director says so everything else is just background scenery.
Sorry spammdc, I wasn’t quoting a rule I was speaking from my experience scuba diving and teaching forensic science and physics. Water is an incredibly difficult medium to move in. Crossbows have a listed range of 80ft without penalty. By comparison spearguns have max effective ranges of 6-8 meters (18 to 24 feet) and the loading forces are roughly the same. So my 1/4 range was just taking the ratio between the two. Thrusting weapons work fairly well in water but slashing weapons have great difficulties - his is covered somewhat in the rules. Things that rotate like throwing axes and knives/daggers loose so much to the rotation that you are effectively better off just using them in melee and forgetting them as missile weapons. Darts are the only thrown weapon that has any real chance and even it should probably have an effective range of 10 feet. As I said in my previous post the best missile weapons for underwater combat are cantrips and magic spells. As for pressure problems in deep water they are potentially very real but there are some ways around them. If you have a a way to breathe water you are in fairly good shape but spells like Spelljammer’s Air Bubble have some potentially serious problems. The first problem is lung collapse. If you take a breath at the surface and hold it as you go down you add 1 atmosphere of pressure every 33 feet. So at 33 ft you are under 2 atmospheres and your lungs are squeezed to half their size. At 133 ft your lungs are 1/4 their normal size. The world record for a free dive (surface breath) is about 400 ft or about 12 atmospheres - enough to effectively collapse a person’s lungs . With luck, during the ascent the lungs expand back to their normal size. What SCUBA does is to inflate the lungs by adding air under pressure from the tank. A tank that lasts about an hour at the surface only lasts about 15 minutes at 120 ft because of this. Further, the problem is that even small ascents while holding your breath can be devastating because the pressure decreases and the air n your lungs expands and can explode. A scuba breath at 120 ft expands to roughly 4x its volume as you rise to the surface. Divers are taught to open their mouths to let this excess air out when ascending. This pressure causes 2 other potential problems. The first is somewhat familiar to many - “the bends” this occurs when gasses dissolved into the blood ( especially nitrogen) are released as bubbles into the blood and collect in low pressure spots like joints locking them up and causing intense pain. I’ve been on long dives ( actually a series of deep dives in short order) where by the end we had to make decompression stops to make sure we didn’t have this problem. Simply coming up from depth without such stops could potentially be deadly to a team of adventurers even after an otherwise successful adventure. A less well known problem that increases with depth is nitrogen narcosis. Here the dissolved nitrogen under pressure acts like a narcotic and hallucinogen. Imagine fighting while poisoned (narcotic effect) and subject to an effect like the spell mirage arcane at the same time.
In general i have not seen a simple rule that stats "underwater simply reduce all ranges by 1/x" that promote any believability as the topic is more complex.
I have seen cartoon like games simply ignore any believability in underwater adventuring and in this type of games (IMHO) often the GM is directing the player like a writer would or a director on a movie or play set. So it is only important if the director says so everything else is just background scenery.
Sorry spammdc, I wasn’t quoting a rule I was speaking from my experience scuba diving and teaching forensic science and physics. Water is an incredibly difficult medium to move in. Crossbows have a listed range of 80ft without penalty. By comparison spearguns have max effective ranges of 6-8 meters (18 to 24 feet) and the loading forces are roughly the same. So my 1/4 range was just taking the ratio between the two. Thrusting weapons work fairly well in water but slashing weapons have great difficulties - his is covered somewhat in the rules. Things that rotate like throwing axes and knives/daggers loose so much to the rotation that you are effectively better off just using them in melee and forgetting them as missile weapons. Darts are the only thrown weapon that has any real chance and even it should probably have an effective range of 10 feet. As I said in my previous post the best missile weapons for underwater combat are cantrips and magic spells. As for pressure problems in deep water they are potentially very real but there are some ways around them. If you have a a way to breathe water you are in fairly good shape but spells like Spelljammer’s Air Bubble have some potentially serious problems. The first problem is lung collapse. If you take a breath at the surface and hold it as you go down you add 1 atmosphere of pressure every 33 feet. So at 33 ft you are under 2 atmospheres and your lungs are squeezed to half their size. At 133 ft your lungs are 1/4 their normal size. The world record for a free dive (surface breath) is about 400 ft or about 12 atmospheres - enough to effectively collapse a person’s lungs . With luck, during the ascent the lungs expand back to their normal size. What SCUBA does is to inflate the lungs by adding air under pressure from the tank. A tank that lasts about an hour at the surface only lasts about 15 minutes at 120 ft because of this. Further, the problem is that even small ascents while holding your breath can be devastating because the pressure decreases and the air n your lungs expands and can explode. A scuba breath at 120 ft expands to roughly 4x its volume as you rise to the surface. Divers are taught to open their mouths to let this excess air out when ascending. This pressure causes 2 other potential problems. The first is somewhat familiar to many - “the bends” this occurs when gasses dissolved into the blood ( especially nitrogen) are released as bubbles into the blood and collect in low pressure spots like joints locking them up and causing intense pain. I’ve been on long dives ( actually a series of deep dives in short order) where by the end we had to make decompression stops to make sure we didn’t have this problem. Simply coming up from depth without such stops could potentially be deadly to a team of adventurers even after an otherwise successful adventure. A less well known problem that increases with depth is nitrogen narcosis. Here the dissolved nitrogen under pressure acts like a narcotic and hallucinogen. Imagine fighting while poisoned (narcotic effect) and subject to an effect like the spell mirage arcane at the same time.
Did not have time to fully read post but in general yes.
if you game is very cinematic, cartoonish or in many Theater of the Mind situations I have seen they just treat it like a backdrop with very little to no changes to the system. Note this style of play was frequently brought up on during the PFII play test and was a focus of one group (my choice of words) of people to put forth ideas. Note it could have also been game devs trying out ideas as some of the same things are occurring in the 1D&D doc.
Since I stared gaming in 1978 I have not seen a simple rule in any game system that states simply divide the normal ranges by X, that were not out of wack in some way. I do remember using such simple rule at age 11 simply because we did not have rules in a book to use. In most games I remember that describe underwater combat and actions they often have a chart that lists a weapons new values for range, damage and other things that might affected by using that weapon underwater.
I have seen this question asked on multiple game companies website and I still have not seen a simple rule...unless that system is cartoonish in nature or is very actor and director/author related. By that I mean actors take direction from the director and the script, they act within the boundaries that are presented and often do not act on things the writer or director say they should not react to. I think we/most of us can think of a movie, tv show, video or stream in which the actors were off from the action/direction of the setting around them. Sometimes this is done to be comedic and other times it is not intentional and often the audience may not see this as the scene is reshot.
Theater of the mind is fine but to make an underwater campaign feel like an underwater campaign a certain amount of realism is needed. How much is up to the DM. What I was doing was trying to provide the OP with some idea of what realistically occurs. Thrusting weapons ( spears, lances, tridents, etc) would be the major weapons not swords and other slashing and bashing weapons. Crossbows would be king not longbows and short bows. With javelins, spears and darts as other potential missile weapons and ranges would be greatly reduced to the point where missile weapons might not be much of a thing as you basically would get 1 round and then close to melee. The only “missiles” that would generally retain their out of water ranges would be magic spells and of those cantrips would dominate because of their unlimited spell slots. There are no rules (in game) that I am aware of for “the bends” (decompression sickness) and I gave an idea of how I would play nitrogen narcosis as there are also no rules im aware of for that either. Then there are other problems: 1) lack of light - red light is absorbed by about 15’ down and by about 100 ft only the blue and violet light is penetrating so colors fade to shades of gray and by 1000 ft down no surface light penetrates. This can be handled by darkvision for distances out to 60’ to 120’ and potentially by magic items granting blindsight (sonar) or tremorsense out to greater distances. 2) Cold - while surface waters in the tropics can be quite warm the waters cool quickly with depth and most deep waters are near freezing ( temps in the 30’s to low 40’s) and water absorbs heat from the body much much faster than air so you die of hypothermia in minutes without thermal protection. So items like boots of winter that provide this protection might be essential. 3) back to the bends - because land creatures ( including water genasi and even sea eleven and merfolk have lungs ( evolved from the swim bladder of some types of fish) they are subject to decompression problems. This isn’t dealt with in the lore I’ve read or the game rules how the DM deals with it is up to them.
Another issue with breathing air at depth is oxygen toxicity this occurs if the partial pressure of oxygen is over about 1.6 bar which prevents diving with air beyond about 180ft. Divers should also not ascend more than 60ft per minute (and most recommend a slower rate, especially close to the surface, for example the organisation I dive with say you should take a 1 minute to get to the surface from 20 ft) (2 ft per round!)
I would imagine the air bubble spell works in a similar way to a re-breather, capturing your exhaled air getting rid of the carbon dioxide and optimising the gas mix. The world record for re-breather diving is 950 ft though at that depth the diver was suffering from narcosis due to the partial pressure of nitrogen and shaking due to the partial pressure of helium).
Having said that D&D is a fantasy game not a simulation requiring the players to know all the theory of scuba diving. The rules should do enough to make things different to being on the surface but not too complicated or restrictive. I would ignore the bends, oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis and the like.
Vision: As well as it being dark at depth even is shallow water sea water is never completely clear. I think a reasonable rule would be below 60ft is dim light and below a few hundred foot is darkness however at any depth anything more than 120 ft is heavily obscurred and anythig 60 to 120 ft away is lightly obscurred.
Cold: On an earth like planet in a simulation this would be a problem, but depending on the campaign and how ong you are expecting the adventurers to need to spend underwater you can do any of the following:
Ignore it
Require adventures to make a con save after a certain period on a fail they take cold damage
While the rules don't say anything specific aquatic races are clearly adapted for living indefinately in cold water so I would tend ot ignore it for them. For other races you could potentially provide equipment to extend the period between con saves (the equivalent of a wetsuit) or ignore it (technically Boots of the winterlands already does this but I this a home brew aquatic version would make more sense).
Sort of a digression, but I don't like how Theater of the MInd is being floated (to keep the topic's environment at least in circulation) as some sort of presumption that "rules are out the window" allowing in the case under discussion that an underwater environment just becomes window dressing. Range and environmental factors can all be factored in a theater of the mind scenario. A battlemap is an aid to but not a necessity to factor distance from target and in both a battlemap and theater of the mind, it's on the DM to maintain the environmental rules wherever the encounter is taking place. Frankly I find it much easier to keep track of xyz axis spatial relations with theater of the mind than battlemaps because once you go beyond a flat plane movement and positioning becomes a debate and PITA over manipulating the map and risers as opposed to just saying running things in everyone's head. Between "pure" theater of the mind and battlemaps, there's sketching where relative positioning really matters.
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In general yes, rules should be able to simulate the environmental situation but there are times that that cannot be done easily so you have to chose on what level of realism you want.
Temp, pressure, murk, moving through a more heavy medium and things that do not function like they do in an air environment are key areas to look at for underwater adventures. There are probably others but those are the ones that spring to mind right now.
Where I have tend to see and have seen issues is authors trying to take a too simple approach to environmental issues and causing problems, where as if they offer more complete rules then the GM and players can pick and chose what they want and how to enforce said rules.
I think we have gone around and around on this topic before both here and on at least one other companies forums.
Here yes we may have, other company forums I doubt as I’m not really present elsewhere. I’m in agreement with your latest post by the way. I was mostly trying to provide some since of what those conditions are actually like and maybe some in game ways to handle them for the OP and others that might not have the knowledge or experience but want to try their hand.
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Hello! I'm getting ready to start an under water campaign with my friends. I think there's a lot of fun to be had with deep sea encounters, and some aquatic geared races that can really shine in this campaign. But there's a major roadblock I still need to figure out.
Typically, ranged weapons are very ineffective under water. This is fine in an average campaign since it should only be a temporary inconvenience, but if it's going to affect the entire campaign, I don't want to take ranged weapons completely off the table.
I figure I can just reskin crossbows as harpoon guns and call it a day. Everything else I'm trying to figure out.
For bows, I'm thinking of introducing a low tier magic bow string? It can be equipped to any bow, and all it does is help magically propel arrows through the water. But then they couldn't have any other magic strings on their bow, the arrow or the frame itself would have to be enchanted.
I honestly don't have any idea what to do with guns....If gun powder gets wet it just doesn't work. I don't want it to be a specific enchantment because they couldn't upgrade/get better magic guns later in the game. So I need to come up with a passable reason for them to work in the water based on design or materials.
Throwing knives and similar items, I've genuinely got nothing.
This is a bit of a tall order, but any ideas would be super appreciated! I think I've mostly got solid mechanics to transfer everything else under water, it's just these ranged attacks I haven't figured out.
You do not need to overthink this--wait until you see what types of weapons your players want to use and then only reskin those. If you do not have a player using a bow and arrow, for example, no need to come up with a reason to justify having bows and arrows underwater. Still, since that is not quite what you asked, here are some solutions for the ones you are struggling with:
Guns - take a page out of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and use pressurized air cartridges instead of powder (which is also done in the real world for some spear guns--though less commonly than the ones relying on tension that are more akin to crossbows). If you want a more magical explanation, the "powder" could be some kind of trapped spell, akin to how a Chronology Wizard can produce a mote. When the mote is broken, it casts shape water or gust or whatnot, propelling the round forward.
Throwing knives and such - just use javelins as harpoons and be more inclined to give out those as loot. Unless you have a player specifically wanting a dagger build, you should have some weapons that just do not work well to add to the flavour of the world.
Part of the fun of an underwater adventure is the hostile environment and the challenge it brings. This is a prime example of why session 0s are important. As long as the players know it's underwater and the challenges it brings, they should be ok. If someone really wants to be a throwing knife specialist, then they might choose a Soulknife rogue or they could just struggle (or play melee) until you give them a magic throwing dagger. It really comes down to working with the DM on the character concept. If you simply give them the equipment needed to bypass the environment right away, there's little point to having it underwater. It also makes the items that much cooler when they find them, because of the previous hardships.
As far as homebrewing magic weapons for underwater usage, it's really just digging in and getting creative. It doesn't have to be super complex though. Just name something "of the sea, Atlantian whatever, Bow of the Sea Elf, etc." attach a pearl or something underwattery on it and put in the description that it works underwater (flavor it as you will). Modern guns will fire underwater by the way. So you could present a modern bullet which seals in the gun powder to work with special firearm. It doesn't even have to be magical. The shockwave from firing underwater is considerable so if you're going for more realism, you might consider that.
Good luck with your campaign!
Magic is shorthand for "the author wants X to happen but it doesn't make sense, but it happens anyway". So I wouldn't stress, just handwave it with "because it's magic".
Specifically with guns, magical fire burns even in space according Spelljammer. So, you could just have the gunpowder ignited by magical fire, which works even under water. Alternatively, they're watertight and contain oxygen as well as the normal reactants.
Bows etc could just be special bows made by locals, and so naturally work fine even underwater.
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I think it's fine to limit options to crossbows. It's ok for players to have to build characters to the campaign rather than the campaign accommodating every single possible choice. And this is coming from someone who doesn't typically like to restrict character options.
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You could consider reskinning shortbows and longbows into some cool crossbow-esque draw-and-release arrow-catapult type weapon.
I am working on an underwater adventure myself and I've had this pondered at the back of my mind for a while. I am considering reducing the range of weapons, which will hopefully couple with the inherant ability to "fly" that everyone will have by swimming, and prevent long-range flying snipers from becoming an issue!
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In general, I have seen lots of problems with just say MAGIC and it is fine. So take your time and think things through. I have found if a GM uses the PFM (Pure Fracking Magic) technique too much it loses the players interest and emersion. Note: I have seen "Theater of the Minds Eye" type games where this is not an issue as well as people who enjoy very cartoon like campaigns.
In general things travelling in water have the water pressing back on them, much more so then in typical air environment. So much so a person in 5' of water can have bullets from an assault rifle simply bounce off them.
Spear guns often do not travel as far as a novice things they would and can often go off track for various simple reasons. Most cases of thrown weapons that would do damage would not really be a thing.
But again if you game is very cartoonish in nature do anything you want but if your group expects a little realism dramatically cut ranges and weapon effectiveness.
This question and questions like it, have been asked before so I would also suggest doing a search.
Honestly, if you're playing underwater but everything works just like it does on land because magic, you might as well be playing on land but give everyone a flying speed.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Put bluntly ranged weapons used underwater are and should be severely nerfed. Water is much denser than air causing hugely greater resistance. Essentially nothing “glides” very far, even fish have to keep swimming more or less constantly. The trick is momentum ( mass x speed) - high mass objects generally maintain their momentum more easily than low mass objects against the friction of the water. This why a bullet loses most of its speed n 2-5 feet but a diver ( think racing dive not board diving) retains most of their speed for almost a pool length. Crossbows work because they do two things 1) fire a relatively heavy (streamlined) bolt at high speed (and momentum). 2) do this with a fairly small flex of the heavy metal bow so that it doesn’t have to displace much water as it snaps forward. Compare that to a long bow with a relatively light arrow fired from a bow with much longer lighter arms that have to travel much further against the water resistance to impart roughly the same speed. Far less efficient. Even then ranges are going to be cut way down ( probably to about 1/4 listed values at best) what that means is that thrown weapons can’t get past melee range and regular bows probably only slightly better with crossbows giving you the best range at something like 20-30 ft. In an underwater campaign ranged cantrips become your ranged weapons as they would retain their range because of the magic.
Best bet - let everyone have a feat at L1 to take magic initiate so they get a couple of cantrips and a L1 ranged spell as their ranged weapon.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
In general i have not seen a simple rule that stats "underwater simply reduce all ranges by 1/x" that promote any believability as the topic is more complex.
I have seen cartoon like games simply ignore any believability in underwater adventuring and in this type of games (IMHO) often the GM is directing the player like a writer would or a director on a movie or play set. So it is only important if the director says so everything else is just background scenery.
By putting environmental conditions on ranged weapons, you're not taking them off the table completely, you're adapting them to the environment you've chosen to challenge the party with. There's no enforcement mechanism preventing you as DM from treating underwater as an abstract space that gives everyone complete freedom of movement to fight an Aboleth or Kracken or whatever, so you can just ignore the environment. However, the whole point of taking characters into environments besides dry surface world land with adequate drinking water is to present the characters with a challenging environment. Your players will need to adapt their usual tactics to thrive in or at least survive that environment. And you get to have fun in a way that old planescape manuals used to have. How does magical fire in your game work in the depths? Lightning? What about pressure (I'm thinking W1ldBi11 may have some thoughts or even rule precedence on that). I thumbed through Netherdeep and didn't find an easy reference (other than a pretty gnarly rule on deep water pressure) but I look at old planescape stuff and don't 1:1 port over, but use their conditions on magic and conventional actions as inspirations for unusual environments.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Sorry spammdc, I wasn’t quoting a rule I was speaking from my experience scuba diving and teaching forensic science and physics. Water is an incredibly difficult medium to move in. Crossbows have a listed range of 80ft without penalty. By comparison spearguns have max effective ranges of 6-8 meters (18 to 24 feet) and the loading forces are roughly the same. So my 1/4 range was just taking the ratio between the two. Thrusting weapons work fairly well in water but slashing weapons have great difficulties - his is covered somewhat in the rules. Things that rotate like throwing axes and knives/daggers loose so much to the rotation that you are effectively better off just using them in melee and forgetting them as missile weapons. Darts are the only thrown weapon that has any real chance and even it should probably have an effective range of 10 feet. As I said in my previous post the best missile weapons for underwater combat are cantrips and magic spells.
As for pressure problems in deep water they are potentially very real but there are some ways around them. If you have a a way to breathe water you are in fairly good shape but spells like Spelljammer’s Air Bubble have some potentially serious problems. The first problem is lung collapse. If you take a breath at the surface and hold it as you go down you add 1 atmosphere of pressure every 33 feet. So at 33 ft you are under 2 atmospheres and your lungs are squeezed to half their size. At 133 ft your lungs are 1/4 their normal size. The world record for a free dive (surface breath) is about 400 ft or about 12 atmospheres - enough to effectively collapse a person’s lungs . With luck, during the ascent the lungs expand back to their normal size. What SCUBA does is to inflate the lungs by adding air under pressure from the tank. A tank that lasts about an hour at the surface only lasts about 15 minutes at 120 ft because of this. Further, the problem is that even small ascents while holding your breath can be devastating because the pressure decreases and the air n your lungs expands and can explode. A scuba breath at 120 ft expands to roughly 4x its volume as you rise to the surface. Divers are taught to open their mouths to let this excess air out when ascending. This pressure causes 2 other potential problems. The first is somewhat familiar to many - “the bends” this occurs when gasses dissolved into the blood ( especially nitrogen) are released as bubbles into the blood and collect in low pressure spots like joints locking them up and causing intense pain. I’ve been on long dives ( actually a series of deep dives in short order) where by the end we had to make decompression stops to make sure we didn’t have this problem. Simply coming up from depth without such stops could potentially be deadly to a team of adventurers even after an otherwise successful adventure. A less well known problem that increases with depth is nitrogen narcosis. Here the dissolved nitrogen under pressure acts like a narcotic and hallucinogen. Imagine fighting while poisoned (narcotic effect) and subject to an effect like the spell mirage arcane at the same time.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Did not have time to fully read post but in general yes.
if you game is very cinematic, cartoonish or in many Theater of the Mind situations I have seen they just treat it like a backdrop with very little to no changes to the system. Note this style of play was frequently brought up on during the PFII play test and was a focus of one group (my choice of words) of people to put forth ideas. Note it could have also been game devs trying out ideas as some of the same things are occurring in the 1D&D doc.
Sorry got really tied up.
Since I stared gaming in 1978 I have not seen a simple rule in any game system that states simply divide the normal ranges by X, that were not out of wack in some way. I do remember using such simple rule at age 11 simply because we did not have rules in a book to use. In most games I remember that describe underwater combat and actions they often have a chart that lists a weapons new values for range, damage and other things that might affected by using that weapon underwater.
I have seen this question asked on multiple game companies website and I still have not seen a simple rule...unless that system is cartoonish in nature or is very actor and director/author related. By that I mean actors take direction from the director and the script, they act within the boundaries that are presented and often do not act on things the writer or director say they should not react to. I think we/most of us can think of a movie, tv show, video or stream in which the actors were off from the action/direction of the setting around them. Sometimes this is done to be comedic and other times it is not intentional and often the audience may not see this as the scene is reshot.
Theater of the mind is fine but to make an underwater campaign feel like an underwater campaign a certain amount of realism is needed. How much is up to the DM. What I was doing was trying to provide the OP with some idea of what realistically occurs. Thrusting weapons ( spears, lances, tridents, etc) would be the major weapons not swords and other slashing and bashing weapons. Crossbows would be king not longbows and short bows. With javelins, spears and darts as other potential missile weapons and ranges would be greatly reduced to the point where missile weapons might not be much of a thing as you basically would get 1 round and then close to melee. The only “missiles” that would generally retain their out of water ranges would be magic spells and of those cantrips would dominate because of their unlimited spell slots.
There are no rules (in game) that I am aware of for “the bends” (decompression sickness) and I gave an idea of how I would play nitrogen narcosis as there are also no rules im aware of for that either.
Then there are other problems:
1) lack of light - red light is absorbed by about 15’ down and by about 100 ft only the blue and violet light is penetrating so colors fade to shades of gray and by 1000 ft down no surface light penetrates. This can be handled by darkvision for distances out to 60’ to 120’ and potentially by magic items granting blindsight (sonar) or tremorsense out to greater distances.
2) Cold - while surface waters in the tropics can be quite warm the waters cool quickly with depth and most deep waters are near freezing ( temps in the 30’s to low 40’s) and water absorbs heat from the body much much faster than air so you die of hypothermia in minutes without thermal protection. So items like boots of winter that provide this protection might be essential.
3) back to the bends - because land creatures ( including water genasi and even sea eleven and merfolk have lungs ( evolved from the swim bladder of some types of fish) they are subject to decompression problems. This isn’t dealt with in the lore I’ve read or the game rules how the DM deals with it is up to them.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Another issue with breathing air at depth is oxygen toxicity this occurs if the partial pressure of oxygen is over about 1.6 bar which prevents diving with air beyond about 180ft. Divers should also not ascend more than 60ft per minute (and most recommend a slower rate, especially close to the surface, for example the organisation I dive with say you should take a 1 minute to get to the surface from 20 ft) (2 ft per round!)
I would imagine the air bubble spell works in a similar way to a re-breather, capturing your exhaled air getting rid of the carbon dioxide and optimising the gas mix. The world record for re-breather diving is 950 ft though at that depth the diver was suffering from narcosis due to the partial pressure of nitrogen and shaking due to the partial pressure of helium).
Having said that D&D is a fantasy game not a simulation requiring the players to know all the theory of scuba diving. The rules should do enough to make things different to being on the surface but not too complicated or restrictive. I would ignore the bends, oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis and the like.
Vision: As well as it being dark at depth even is shallow water sea water is never completely clear. I think a reasonable rule would be below 60ft is dim light and below a few hundred foot is darkness however at any depth anything more than 120 ft is heavily obscurred and anythig 60 to 120 ft away is lightly obscurred.
Cold: On an earth like planet in a simulation this would be a problem, but depending on the campaign and how ong you are expecting the adventurers to need to spend underwater you can do any of the following:
While the rules don't say anything specific aquatic races are clearly adapted for living indefinately in cold water so I would tend ot ignore it for them. For other races you could potentially provide equipment to extend the period between con saves (the equivalent of a wetsuit) or ignore it (technically Boots of the winterlands already does this but I this a home brew aquatic version would make more sense).
Sort of a digression, but I don't like how Theater of the MInd is being floated (to keep the topic's environment at least in circulation) as some sort of presumption that "rules are out the window" allowing in the case under discussion that an underwater environment just becomes window dressing. Range and environmental factors can all be factored in a theater of the mind scenario. A battlemap is an aid to but not a necessity to factor distance from target and in both a battlemap and theater of the mind, it's on the DM to maintain the environmental rules wherever the encounter is taking place. Frankly I find it much easier to keep track of xyz axis spatial relations with theater of the mind than battlemaps because once you go beyond a flat plane movement and positioning becomes a debate and PITA over manipulating the map and risers as opposed to just saying running things in everyone's head. Between "pure" theater of the mind and battlemaps, there's sketching where relative positioning really matters.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In general yes, rules should be able to simulate the environmental situation but there are times that that cannot be done easily so you have to chose on what level of realism you want.
Temp, pressure, murk, moving through a more heavy medium and things that do not function like they do in an air environment are key areas to look at for underwater adventures. There are probably others but those are the ones that spring to mind right now.
Where I have tend to see and have seen issues is authors trying to take a too simple approach to environmental issues and causing problems, where as if they offer more complete rules then the GM and players can pick and chose what they want and how to enforce said rules.
I think we have gone around and around on this topic before both here and on at least one other companies forums.
Here yes we may have, other company forums I doubt as I’m not really present elsewhere. I’m in agreement with your latest post by the way. I was mostly trying to provide some since of what those conditions are actually like and maybe some in game ways to handle them for the OP and others that might not have the knowledge or experience but want to try their hand.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.