Good drowning rules

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Death saves? After X minutes, or immediately if you take certain actions?

 

[Tukka]

I don't know if this is any good, and it involves action denial conditions which players justifiably hate, but my thought was to take RangerWickett's idea, and change the consequences of failing an Endurance check so it kind of resembles the Sleep spell. The player is dazed and makes a save at the end of his next turn. If the player fails the save, he is unconscious and dying. If he makes the save, he is still dazed and has to continue to make saves, until he's able to take a breath.

The unconscious/dying condition doesn't drop you to 0 hp or entail any HP loss. Players who are rendered unconscious underwater can't be returned to consciousness by methods that would normally do so if they can't breathe, but are stabilized by them. Even if a player that was rendered unconscious from lack of air is stabilized, he will still die if he is not revived within 3 minutes.

Maybe this is too cute, but I would also also consider a rule where a player can Second Wind to recover from the dazed from drowning condition and reset the Endurance check DC to 20.

 

[Viking Bastard]

The trouble is that in reality, nearly drowning doesn't cause injury or really fatigue you much in the long haul. I can dive underwater and hold my breath for a minute-ish, then pop up, get fresh air, and try it again after a minute. If you held me down and I had to flail to get to the surface a few seconds after I started to run out of air, I'd be short of breath and probably wouldn't want to go under again for a few minutes, but I'd be able to.

So breath shouldn't use healing surges or hit points.

Well, that's why I let the players roll for Endurance to regain the surges once they were able to catch their breath. In hindsight, I should've let the regain more surges than they did, but that's also because it took them longer to get out of the pit than I expected.

But I often use Surge-loss to simulate fatigue and then sometimes give them back if it makes sense.

 

[Sadras]

When deprived of food, water, or air, the rule of three applies. An adventurer can handle three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air outside of strenuous situations.

The Endurance skills descrip I believe counters this somewhat - I actually got confused between the two sections as they did not seem to gel. The above 3 minutes (which is incredibly long for a decent trap encounter) I believe is for when you are prepared and hold your breath, not necessarily when you are fighting/stuggling under water. I believe that would cut your 3 minutes quite substantially, so I go on the 5 free rounds and then you start rolling as per the mechanic described in the Endurance skill in the PHB with the DC being 10+1 per subsequent round - failure results in surge loss after which hp damage kicks in.
It makes more sense than 3 minutes+

 

[Sadras]

I don't know if this is any good, and it involves action denial conditions which players justifiably hate, but my thought was to take RangerWickett's idea, and change the consequences of failing an Endurance check so it kind of resembles the Sleep spell. The player is dazed and makes a save at the end of his next turn. If the player fails the save, he is unconscious and dying. If he makes the save, he is still dazed and has to continue to make saves, until he's able to take a breath.

The unconscious/dying condition doesn't drop you to 0 hp or entail any HP loss. Players who are rendered unconscious underwater can't be returned to consciousness by methods that would normally do so if they can't breathe, but are stabilized by them. Even if a player that was rendered unconscious from lack of air is stabilized, he will still die if he is not revived within 3 minutes.

Maybe this is too cute, but I would also also consider a rule where a player can Second Wind to recover from the dazed from drowning condition and reset the Endurance check DC to 20.

I like this. Thanks