Monster Ability: Llorona Wail and Drowning

[Redjack_rose]

Hey all,

My group ran into a Llorona in an adventure path while on a boat. It's first action it used it's wail ability:

As a standard action, a llorona can unleash a somber wail. Any creature within 120 feet that can hear this wail must succeed at a DC 23 Will save or be compelled to enter the nearest body of water and attempt to drown itself. This effect automatically fails if there isn’t a body of water large enough to drown in within 120 feet. At the end of any round an affected creature is completely submerged in water, it can attempt a new DC 23 Will save to end the effect and cease its attempt to drown itself. This is a sonic mind-affecting compulsion effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Three of our party easily failed the DC 23 save and jumped off the boat. Our GM then ruled that, as they were attempting to drown themselves they wouldn't hold their breath, forgo any saves, and immediately start drowning, as per the drowning rules: In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she drowns.

The problem came with that since the character only got a save after being submerged a round, anyone who went in the water immediately started drowning, fell unconscious, then made their save to resist the effect. At which point even if they succeeded, they are unconscious under water and still drowning.

Does this ruling seem correct? A CR 11 monster can take a standard action to make a boat full of people jump in the water, go unconscious, and die unless someone else pulls them out in less than 3 rounds?

(For the record we killed it and likely would've saved our party members, but this thing managed to hit every sailor and named npc on our boat and we were likely to lose most of them while saving our party members)

[avr]

They wouldn't hold their breath and would immediately start drowning, but the targets would still get Fort saves to not fall unconscious/start dying/die IMO, as well as the Will saves to recover from the wail.

Is the above fair for CR 11? It might be a bit much. I'd ballpark that as an 7th-8th level spell effect (similar to a mass version of phantasmal killer), and CR 11 shouldn't usually have more than 6th. If your GM is removing the Fort saves too I'd call it a 9th level spell effect (similar to mass suffocation) and decidedly more than CR 11 should have.

[Diego Rossi]

I agree with avr. Your GM wasn't wrong if we read the ability description. The problem is that there are no rules that say what "attempt to drown itself" means. Plus the decidedly unrealistic rules about drowning when you have stopped holding your breath.
They work well if you fail after trying to hold your breath, but are horrible when they are used to simulate lack of air. Unless he has some serious underlining cardiac condition, no one dies of asphyxia in 18 seconds.
*Some NASA test says that in space, without a spacesuit, you lose consciousness after 15 seconds and die after a few minutes.
Even not considering the exceptional sturdiness of PC, that is 2-3 rounds for unconsciousness and 10-20 for death.

Besides that, considering the circumstances, a boat in a large body of water (probably a ship in the sea), I would consider the encounter CR way higher than normal even with a more reasonable interpretation of how it works.
I doubt that the PCs have the skill and the manpower to manage a ship, and being stranded at sea until you meet anther ship isn't fun at all (with a cleric or equivalent it shouldn't be hard to stay alive), so something that kills most if not all of NPCs on a ship is a big increase in the CR of an encounter. It stops whatever the PCs were doing and probably means the loss of the ship. If you meet a CR 11 monster probably you can manage teleport, but while teleporting from a ship is feasible, teleporting to a ship isn't. It moves with the currents and after a few minutes you don't know its exact position anymore.