Sure. The rules on suffocating are environmentally agnostic.
I'd agree mechanically, but its kind of funky to apply "holding its breathe" to creatures that do not have lungs. I was wondering if a shark on land would skip that and go straight to the choking part of the suffocation rules.
My understanding of gills is that they can still filter some oxygen from the air, but are super duper inefficient at it. The rate at which it would metabolise would be way, way higher than what it can collect that way. It wouldn't immediately start gagging on air, but it would immediately become hard for it to breathe, and would quickly have their capacity begin to diminish after that, until they reach the CO2 saturation where it becomes toxic and they start dying.
But I haven't take a biology class since ~8th grade, so maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Ah, that's a different question. I'd say it'd be up to the DM, but in that specific case I would probably come down on immediately starting to suffocate. Octopi also have gills and can only breathe underwater, but they also have the 'hold breath' trait, so the fact that sharks don't have that trait would make it unlikely, but I could see some DMs saying that that's a case of a specific rule (length of hold breath) applying over a general rule (suffocation), and there's no specific written rule saying that sharks can't use the suffocation length for holding their breath, and the octopus having the hold breath trait makes it clear that having lungs is not a requirement to hold your breath.
Does a creature that can only breathe water follow the suffocation rules when out of water?
Yes.
Sure. The rules on suffocating are environmentally agnostic.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
I'd agree mechanically, but its kind of funky to apply "holding its breathe" to creatures that do not have lungs. I was wondering if a shark on land would skip that and go straight to the choking part of the suffocation rules.
My understanding of gills is that they can still filter some oxygen from the air, but are super duper inefficient at it. The rate at which it would metabolise would be way, way higher than what it can collect that way. It wouldn't immediately start gagging on air, but it would immediately become hard for it to breathe, and would quickly have their capacity begin to diminish after that, until they reach the CO2 saturation where it becomes toxic and they start dying.
But I haven't take a biology class since ~8th grade, so maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Ah, that's a different question. I'd say it'd be up to the DM, but in that specific case I would probably come down on immediately starting to suffocate. Octopi also have gills and can only breathe underwater, but they also have the 'hold breath' trait, so the fact that sharks don't have that trait would make it unlikely, but I could see some DMs saying that that's a case of a specific rule (length of hold breath) applying over a general rule (suffocation), and there's no specific written rule saying that sharks can't use the suffocation length for holding their breath, and the octopus having the hold breath trait makes it clear that having lungs is not a requirement to hold your breath.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep