Swim / Sink / Recovery

[EnigmaRamus]

Still learning the PF system from the ground up. I was reading the Swim skill today and see that it tells you about going under and holding your breath if you fail the check, but doesn't tell you anything about recovering and getting back to the surface.

[EnigmaRamus]

Does anyone have any insight? Surely you're not limited (by RAW) to simply drowning once you go under unless someone else pulls you up. There must be some mechanism for recovering from a failed swim check, no? At the very, very least there should be a way to attempt removing some of your armor or jettisoning some other gear and then a check for getting back to the surface and having another go at it.

[Some call me Tim]

I don't know of any rules for how quickly you sink in water.

Here's how I do it. When you fail the first check you start to sink. For every turn you sink (fail your swim check by 5 or more) you have to swim up one turn to get back to the surface.

(Assuming full round actions) For every consecutive check you fail you sink 15 feet down. After one round of failures you're 15 feet down. This way if you fail two consecutive checks you're under 30 feet of water and it will require two successful checks just to return to the surface (or you could elect to swim horizontally underwater).

It makes it easier to just deal with it if one turn sinking=one turn swimming up.