Take the Plunge!

Friday, June 23, 2017

Let me guess, another adventurer scared of getting a bit wet are we? Beneath the sea there's another world waiting for those brave enough to challenge the depths. And you're not wrong, it can be scary down there if you're not prepared. Unlike any other terrain on the face of Golarion, venturing underwater constantly reminds you that you're as out of place as the proverbial fish out of water. Krakens, lusca, and worse swim circles around you while you're still worrying about little things like breathing. Looking for a bit of help? Well, you've come to the right place!

Aquatic Adventures includes a lengthy section on Aquatic Rules with more rules content than normal for a book in the Campaign Setting line, including simple but in-depth rules for handling the challenges of underwater adventuring on the topics of swimming and aquatic adventures, fighting underwater, and underwater hazards and features. The rules for swimming consolidate and expand previous swimming rules that were written from the perspective of a land campaign where the Swim skill is described as a way mainly to avoid going underwater in the first place. The rules for fighting underwater collect and adjust the various changes to weapons, spells, and more when used underwater. For instance, creatures with a natural swim speed can ignore penalties for using their inherent natural attacks underwater, so an octopus or kraken doesn't deal less damage with its tentacles. Water attacks that deal bludgeoning damage, like a kineticist's water blast, work without penalty underwater as well! Finally, underwater hazards and features abound, making it easier than ever to add exciting new features to underwater adventures while always having the various threats (drowning, pressure, temperature, and more) right at your fingertips, with guidance about how they vary in different oceanic zones.

But that's not all! This tome also contains pages and pages of aquatic options to customize PCs and foes alike. The strange alchemists known as aquachymists have adapted their craft to the particular hindrances of undersea life, while aquakineticists and deep shamans of waves allow two water-related options to further master the realms beneath the sea. Meanwhile, the tidal trickster rogue moves around in the middle of her full attacks, throwing her foes off-balance. But the aquanaut fighter has one of the coolest abilities: "At 15th level, as a full round action, an aquanaut can spin ferociously underwater, creating a whirlpool around himself with a spinning force that drags all creatures within 120 feet of him 30 feet closer to him. Creatures closer than 30 feet spend the 30 feet of movement circling around the aquanaut in a single direction of his choice. The whirlpool isn't fast enough to deal damage, but the aquanaut is unaffected by his own whirlpool, allowing him to make attacks of opportunity against creatures moving in it."

Illustration by Julien Carrasco

Before venturing beneath the waves, make sure to buy various mundane items useful to adventuring underwater, such as sureseal bladders to keep your potables safe and ready to drink and pressure pills (good news, it's not a suppository!). Teach yourself a variety of aquatic feats including two new style chains based on the ways dolphins and great white sharks hunt their prey (it turns out dolphins are kind of jerks to their prey, and you can be too!). Discover new magic items like the apparatus of the octopus (a more affordable apparatus of the crab), the practical underwater weapon special ability, and the tidefinder, best friend to terrestrial vampires vacationing under the waves. There's even a new major artifact as well as the paladins who seek it, finally sating your curiosity as to what that Pathfinder Society boon for Aquatic Adventures was talking about.

Illustrations by Vicky Yarova

While many of the spells have undersea applications, like invisibility bubble or lead anchor, I'll leave you with a spell that's equally fun above the waves as it is below (one undersea deep platinum medallion to the first person who remembers the forum thread that led directly to this spell's creation)!

STEAM RAY FUSILLADE

School evocation [fire, water]; Level sorcerer/wizard 7 Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, M (a scraping from a hydrothermal vent) Range personal

Target you

Duration 1 round/level

For the duration of the spell, you can fire three rays of steam once per round as a standard action (and you also fire three such rays as part of casting the spell). These rays function similarly to the rays from scorching ray (you can fire them at close range, they're ranged touch attacks, they deal 4d6 points of fire damage each, and spell resistance negates them) except that they work both underwater and above water without a caster level check for being a fire spell.

Mark Seifter
Designer