So, I'm a newbie GM, setting up my first real game in quite a while.
One of my players is going to be a Lizardfolk that focuses in grappling, and wants to drag people underwater to drown them, since he has a swim speed and can hold his breath for so long.
The included rules for drowning seem intended for exploration, and take way too long to come up in a fight it seems. Plus instantly reducing their HP to 0 might get dumb for high level enemies.
I was thinking something along the lines of them taking constant suffocation damage per round they're kept underwater, as long as they're not a creature that can breath underwater or hold their breath for extra long. I want it to feel strong in the situations where he can use it, since he's being clever, but not sure exactly how to go about this.
The included rules for drowning seem intended for exploration, and take way too long to come up in a fight it seems.
The suffocation rules are actually written as they are so that "you fight in the water" isn't basically an immediate death sentence, so that monsters of aquatic types can be used even if the players haven't gotten their characters specially prepared for underwater combat and not leave everyone upset at the DM's choice of putting deep enough water to drown in into an adventure.
However, you can easily make getting unexpectedly submerged in water more frightening than the rules for holding your breath would make it without changing any of the rules; just treat any time you didn't intentionally hold your breath and enter the water as choking - then you only have your Constitution modifier (minimum 1) rounds to get back to the surface and take a breath before you drop to 0 hit points and are dying.
And for a guideline as to when a creature has enough warning to hold their breath, I'd say that if the lizardfolk grappler can get them under the water with a single turn of dragging them they are not able to, but otherwise they are because they've had plenty of time to assess an answer to "where is this lizardfolk taking me?"
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So, I'm a newbie GM, setting up my first real game in quite a while.
One of my players is going to be a Lizardfolk that focuses in grappling, and wants to drag people underwater to drown them, since he has a swim speed and can hold his breath for so long.
The included rules for drowning seem intended for exploration, and take way too long to come up in a fight it seems. Plus instantly reducing their HP to 0 might get dumb for high level enemies.
I was thinking something along the lines of them taking constant suffocation damage per round they're kept underwater, as long as they're not a creature that can breath underwater or hold their breath for extra long. I want it to feel strong in the situations where he can use it, since he's being clever, but not sure exactly how to go about this.
The suffocation rules are actually written as they are so that "you fight in the water" isn't basically an immediate death sentence, so that monsters of aquatic types can be used even if the players haven't gotten their characters specially prepared for underwater combat and not leave everyone upset at the DM's choice of putting deep enough water to drown in into an adventure.
However, you can easily make getting unexpectedly submerged in water more frightening than the rules for holding your breath would make it without changing any of the rules; just treat any time you didn't intentionally hold your breath and enter the water as choking - then you only have your Constitution modifier (minimum 1) rounds to get back to the surface and take a breath before you drop to 0 hit points and are dying.
And for a guideline as to when a creature has enough warning to hold their breath, I'd say that if the lizardfolk grappler can get them under the water with a single turn of dragging them they are not able to, but otherwise they are because they've had plenty of time to assess an answer to "where is this lizardfolk taking me?"