Swimming Contest: Dragon Turtle vs. White Dragon

Dark Dragon

Explorer

• Apr 22, 2004

• #1

Last session our party encountered some undead pirates (and their black ship...no, it's not in the caribbean ) during a storm. The shifter jumps into the sea and polymorphs into a dragon turtle, the rest of the party attacks the black ship.

Somehow I had a view on the stats of a White Dragon (a form the shifter takes often to travel quickly). It lists a swim speed of 60 ft. for the dragon, regardless of its size. Same for a Black Dragon.

The Dragon Turtle has a swim speed of 30 ft. No problem with that, turtles are not known for being fast swimmers. But why are some airborne dragons (especially the very young ones) so fast while submerged? Or did I missed an errata?

 

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DarkMaster

First Post

• Apr 22, 2004

• #2

Well the black dragon type is water, and the white one is cold. I don't see why the ability to fly prevent you from being a good swimmer. Black dragon are raised and march it therefore makes a lot of sense that they are good swimmer. And for white dragon, coming from the frozen north most of the food is found in the ocean and not on the ground so being a good swimmer is a must in these land.

 

M

mikebr99

Explorer

• Apr 22, 2004

• #3

Aquadynamics!


Mike

 

Darklone

Registered User

• Apr 22, 2004

• #4

Secret of the Alubelok coast features a black dragon who prefers to swim instead of flying... it's less work and you can just float in the water doing nothing... why should you fly ?

Dragons resemble crocodiles IIRC (body shape) and these buggers swim faster than any turtle I know.

 

M

mikebr99

Explorer

• Apr 22, 2004

• #5

For the record... you don't have to have "dark" in your name to post in this thread.



Mike

 

Dark Dragon

Explorer

• Apr 22, 2004

• #6

The Dark Side of the Force is with this thread...

Ok, good answers so far. As a side note: A hatchling white dragon (tiny) can swim as fast as an adult dragon turtle (huge) ... Just wondering, because the fly speed of the dragons changes with age, the swim speed does not.

 

Kae'Yoss

First Post

• Apr 22, 2004

• #7

Thanks for that, mike. I was just about creating another accound in order to post here ;-)

As for the dragons and swimming: Well, they're dragons

 

D

DarkMaster

First Post

• Apr 22, 2004

• #8

Dark Dragon said:

The Dark Side of the Force is with this thread...

Ok, good answers so far. As a side note: A hatchling white dragon (tiny) can swim as fast as an adult dragon turtle (huge) ... Just wondering, because the fly speed of the dragons changes with age, the swim speed does not.

Click to expand...

I actually noticed that only the flying speed changes, all other type of speed stay constant for all dragons. so the question is why the flying speed changes while the others don't .

 

blargney the second

blargney the minute's son

• Apr 22, 2004

• #9

Tournaments, Fairs & Taverns has rules for running races. Rather than simply saying "Swim speed 60 ft is faster than swim speed 30 ft", there are actual contested rolls to make to determine how the race goes. Makes for more interesting chase scenes!

-blarg

ps - There's also the additional bonus of drinking rules in there.

 

Tessarael

Explorer

• Apr 23, 2004

• #10

I put it down to edition power creep for dragons. "Hrmm, what weaknesses do dragons have left ... they can't swim fast? Oh yes, we must fix that."

Back in basic edition, there was a probability dragons were sleeping when you found them. They had plenty of achilles' heels. And the ancient ones didn't all have massive intelligence and buckets of skill points. Those were the days when adventurers could aspire to killing dragons and going for their horde. These days, only in munchkin and epic land do the dragons fear to tread.

Just my melancholic thoughts for the good old days ...