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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5651087" data-attributes="member: 22779">But, Yesway, you're making presumptions also.&nbsp; You're presuming a baseline where the PC's cannot swim based on the idea that it makes sense for some PC backgrounds.&nbsp; Never mind that my desert dwelling nomad traveled from oasis to oasis and that's why he can swim.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Sure, it does make sense for some PC backgrounds that they can swim.&nbsp; The next question you have to ask, how common are those PC backgrounds?&nbsp; Is it more common around gaming tables that PC's come from deserts or other locations where it would be very rare to learn to swim, or is it more common that they would actually learn to swim in the first place?Considering most medieval towns and whatnot exist on rivers/lakes/bodies of water, it's not totally unreasonable that a PC would have basic swimming skills.&nbsp; I mean, in 3e, Swim was untrained so everyone baselined to basic swimming skill.&nbsp; If you wanted a character that couldn't swim, you'd have to state it as an exception for that character.&nbsp; Which is perfectly fine.&nbsp; There's no problem with that.&nbsp; But, again, the designers have to set the baseline somewhere.&nbsp; In D&amp;D, the baseline has always been &quot;able to swim in a basic sort of way&quot;.&nbsp; Trying to argue this as edition based is a bit strange because every edition has had the same baseline.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 5651087, member: 22779"] But, Yesway, you're making presumptions also. You're presuming a baseline where the PC's cannot swim based on the idea that it makes sense for some PC backgrounds. Never mind that my desert dwelling nomad traveled from oasis to oasis and that's why he can swim. :D Sure, it does make sense for some PC backgrounds that they can swim. The next question you have to ask, how common are those PC backgrounds? Is it more common around gaming tables that PC's come from deserts or other locations where it would be very rare to learn to swim, or is it more common that they would actually learn to swim in the first place? Considering most medieval towns and whatnot exist on rivers/lakes/bodies of water, it's not totally unreasonable that a PC would have basic swimming skills. I mean, in 3e, Swim was untrained so everyone baselined to basic swimming skill. If you wanted a character that couldn't swim, you'd have to state it as an exception for that character. Which is perfectly fine. There's no problem with that. But, again, the designers have to set the baseline somewhere. In D&D, the baseline has always been "able to swim in a basic sort of way". Trying to argue this as edition based is a bit strange because every edition has had the same baseline. [/QUOTE]

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