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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yesway Jose" data-source="post: 5649621" data-attributes="member: 6679265">If swimming is the rules default and a player voluntarily gives up swimming ability, then I think it's up the DM and player to decide otherwise, but I don't the official rules should explicitly reward the deficiency. I understand that can be exploited by power-gamers loading up on mechanical drawbacks in order to max out on extra mechanical perks. The perk of roleplaying, say, a dwarf deathly afraid of water should be the reward in itself. For clarity of worldbuilding, I'd personally go with the status quo that most NPCs do not know how to swim by default, at least in medieval societies that don't have the luxury or inclination or access to swimming. I don't think that all PCs should be assumed to be able to swim specifically because they're heroes per se. Even the most exceptional hero may not have ever gotten around to swimming lessons. However, I can imagine a great knight having the wits to tread water and swim albeit badly. I guess it's not mechanically unbalancing for PCs to get a "free" swim skill, and fictionally, I guess most PCs could squeeze in a swimming lesson on the side during their class training. So if a player chooses that their PC can tread water or swim, I'd say it's not because he's a hero, but because the player just chose a PC that happens to be able to swim. EDIT: I think it is possible IMO to have skills that are listed as costing 0 points to purchase, although it reads a little silly, the player realizes that the skill is not automatically inherent to every PC and NPC but that players can buy it at no cost if it fits their character concept AND it provides transparency for the DM to pick and choose what elements fit in a custom tailored campaign.</blockquote>

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