I'm a newish DM and I'm designing a custom campaign. I have a particular scenario in mind that if the players end up in it, I need to know the DCs for and I'm looking for some opinions on the DCs for it.
The idea is the players are in a prison at the bottom of a lake (although they won't know it yet). The warden allows them to leave after going through some challenges thinking they won't survive swimming to the surface. Thinking 80ft?
Here's where the DC question comes in. They are going to be in a sort of airlock room that instead of filling slowly will allow water to rush in extremely quickly(why the warden was going to let them leave). What would be a solid DC for handling the swim checks in such a situation? What would be good DCs for swimming to the surface afterwards?
P.s. If this sounds too challenging for some reason my players insist on playing it on "hard difficulty". That being the case, I'm considering adding in some possible (random percentile maybe) water creature(s).
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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The DC's for swimming are laid out here. The PC's do not need any checks when the room floods, it is going to fill up. If it is not so fast as to take only one round, then they would make the check at a comparative DC (15 or 20) to the surface conditions as the room filled. After the room is full, well everyone is underwater, so just make checks to swim. At 1/2 speed full round actions this would take approximately [80/(30/2)] or 5.3 rounds. Nobody is likely to drown and your only challenge is if the lake has bad things in it or is experiencing very rough weather and currents.
I think there are some more expanded rules for dealing with aquatic environments but I don't have them on hand.
In the end I would make the getaway the easiest part of the adventure and institute more challenges internally, role playing challenges or investigative ones if you like, combat if you prefer, inside of the prison itself.
Good to know. Thanks for the information.