So, this came up in my RoTRL campaign.
We are fighting a Colossal creature (space of 30ft) which is apparently "swimming" in 10ft of water. (swimming speed being 3x faster than its land speed).
So...yeah, is that really legal?
Apparently your GM is the group's munchkin. ;)
It is the GM's duty to arbitrate these things. What creature was it? Epic mythic dire fiendish manta ray? A flat creature might be able to do it.
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RAW, no limit.
Realistically it does depend a bit on shape and method of swimming. An effective kick can be surprisingly shallow. A merfolk could probably swim without trouble in 2ft of water if they used a breaststroke-like arm motion or the tail alone. I can breaststroke in 2ft of water if I don't feel like wading. That's not too different from 30ft / 10ft.
It was a Black Magga.
This is really up to the GM, and it is assumed he will be realistic about it. There is no way a creature that big should be swimming in 10 feet of water however.
RAW it doesn't really specify. A good rule of thumb though is that the water should be at least as deep as the creature's height. I would say "space" because it's a 30 foot creature you'd think 30 feet of water would be needed but considering a halfling is only about 3 feet high and take up a 5 foot space even PC races don't make sense if you go by that rule.
Really it's up to the GM to make the decision on this. I've had GMs that responded to things with "I know, it's stupid, but technically I can do that."
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RAW it doesn't really specify. A good rule of thumb though is that the water should be at least as deep as the creature's height. I would say "space" because it's a 30 foot creature you'd think 30 feet of water would be needed but considering a halfling is only about 3 feet high and take up a 5 foot space even PC races don't make sense if you go by that rule.
Really it's up to the GM to make the decision on this. I've had GMs that responded to things with "I know, it's stupid, but technically I can do that."
Why as high as the creature? When I go to the pool I get in at the shallow end (about waist height) and I can swim just fine in that. With breast stroke I'd be fine in water even shallower.
So, this came up in my RoTRL campaign.
We are fighting a Colossal creature (space of 30ft) which is apparently "swimming" in 10ft of water. (swimming speed being 3x faster than its land speed).
So...yeah, is that really legal?
According to the sdr the black magga has 20ft space not 30ft. Combined with what others said about being able to swim in water less deep than they are large (which I, too am capable of) it sounds good.
Why as high as the creature? When I go to the pool I get in at the shallow end (about waist height) and I can swim just fine in that. With breast stroke I'd be fine in water even shallower.
For most creature's it's detrimental to be swimming compared to walking.
If the water is deeper than the creature is tall you should assume that the creature needs to be swimming if it wants to stay on top of the water.
If the water is less than that, assume the creature has the option of one or the other (having a swim speed is advantageous in such a situation, because walking through difficult terrain will likely be slower though it would be faster than swimming without a swim speed).
Waist height really seems like around the minimum amount of water needed for a humanoid creature to swim properly (meaning about half the creature's height) but this rule can't really be applied to non humanoid creatures or humanoids with natural swim speeds either.
"Does it make sense?" and "Make an argument for it." are phrases that could apply to this situation.
It was a Black Magga.
Black Magga? That's basically an octopus -- which can swim in a parking lot puddle. I see no issue here.
I've had cases where GMs made bad decisions -- Huge creatures hiding behind trees no thicker than a quarterstaff, dragons flying through tunnels that the halfling had to crawl through -- but I don't think this is one of those.
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Why as high as the creature? When I go to the pool I get in at the shallow end (about waist height) and I can swim just fine in that. With breast stroke I'd be fine in water even shallower.RAW it doesn't really specify. A good rule of thumb though is that the water should be at least as deep as the creature's height. I would say "space" because it's a 30 foot creature you'd think 30 feet of water would be needed but considering a halfling is only about 3 feet high and take up a 5 foot space even PC races don't make sense if you go by that rule.
Really it's up to the GM to make the decision on this. I've had GMs that responded to things with "I know, it's stupid, but technically I can do that."
I would agree. Most people can probably easily swim in water that is at least deep as 1/2 their height.
So if you need a rule of thumb, I would go with that to avoid getting into things like: "what kind of swimming technique are you using", "how buoyant are you", and such.