Consider the following situation. A party member is suddenly teleported, without warning and submerged, into a pool of liquid that they can't get out of easily. Do they:
1) Immediately hold their breath, and we start using the Con Countdown rules for drowning?
2) Start drowning because they couldn't take a breath... (the 'attack' was by surprise) and so are automatically sent to 1 hp?
3) Get some sort of save to catch their breath before they teleport?
This has come up several times in my campaigns, and I need a definitive answer here... basically, for any time a character is not expecting to drown and is suddenly put in a situation where they will without holding their breath. Please help!
Squid
Creative Director
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Hmmm... good question!
I'd give the victim a Reflex save to catch their breath; something like a DC 15 save sounds about right. Success lets them hold their breath and then you start using the Con countdown. Failure means they don't get a chance to take a deep breath. In this case, I'd still give the character 1 round before the actual drowning starts, though.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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The real question is whether 2 rounds per Con point is too long, in a tactical sense.
According to the Swim rules, you get 1 round per Con point, -1 for every standard or full round action you take. However in the DMG under the condition Drowning, you get 2 rounds per Con point. Obviously with the conflicting rules it seems the DMG would take precedence, seeing as it's the primary source for Conditions.
I think 2 rounds per Con point is too much. No PC is ever going to come close to drowning in a given encounter. The average encounter lasts 3-6 rounds. The average commoner can hold their breath for 20 rounds! Even joe blow dirt farmer can hold his breath for 2 minutes on average!
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Creative Director
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Actually, if the DMG and the PHB conflict, I'd go with the PHB, since it's the "primary" book of the three core books.
So if you're doing standard and/or full-round actions each round in an attempt to escape drowning, you've effectively got only 1 round per Con point before you'll have to seriously consider warming up those 4d6 for the replacement character.
The real question is whether 2 rounds per Con point is too long, in a tactical sense.
According to the Swim rules, you get 1 round per Con point, -1 for every standard or full round action you take. However in the DMG under the condition Drowning, you get 2 rounds per Con point. Obviously with the conflicting rules it seems the DMG would take precedence, seeing as it's the primary source for Conditions.
I think 2 rounds per Con point is too much. No PC is ever going to come close to drowning in a given encounter. The average encounter lasts 3-6 rounds. The average commoner can hold their breath for 20 rounds! Even joe blow dirt farmer can hold his breath for 2 minutes on average!
(responding as D&D player)
I'm not a big fan of the drowning rule. 2 minutes before you even have to start rolling? Even one minute (1 round / average CON of 10) is too long to get for free.
Consider the following situation. A party member is suddenly teleported, without warning and submerged, into a pool of liquid that they can't get out of easily. Do they:
1) Immediately hold their breath, and we start using the Con Countdown rules for drowning?
2) Start drowning because they couldn't take a breath... (the 'attack' was by surprise) and so are automatically sent to 1 hp?
3) Get some sort of save to catch their breath before they teleport?
To answer the original question, I would suggest option #1 because, unless I am mistaken, the rules don't say anything about needing to take a breath. That's a logical assumption, but applying logic to this gaming situation might require you to scrap the official rules for drowning entirely.
However in the DMG under the condition Drowning, you get 2 rounds per Con point.
Acutally, that is listed under the "Suffocation" condition, quoteing from the SRD:
"SuffocationA character who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 2 rounds per point of Constitution.
When the character fails one of these Constitution checks, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hit points). In the following round, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates."
So the rules in the PHB apply only to drowning, and the rules in the DMG apply to any situation in which the charicter can not breathe, but is not underwater.
Rob to answer your question, the reason why you get 1-2 minutes before you start rolling is that if you fail a check, you automatically die in three rounds, which is pretty nasty. I don't have a problem with the rule myself, that would mean an average human can hold his breath for 1 min before he would have to start making checks (when underwater). That is fair enough, IMHO
As for the original question, I agree with James
My take on this is that you would use option 1. Here is why. They are being teleported. They cannot see their destination. If it is taking the character off guard, they don't have that split second to grab a breath before being whisked away to their potential watery grave. That is not to say they don't realize that they are under water when they get there. Common sense says they would know automatically.
After rereading the drowning rules (pg 305 in the 3.5 DMG), I don't think there is anything wrong with how they are written except that they will slow down the encounter. The rules for drowning are realistic though.
Neomorte