Seen anyone drown in an encounter?

[Arcanus]

In our campaign of return to Temp. of Evil
at the moathouse we split our party and all but 2 of us went back to town.
the other 2 peolpe a Cleric and Paladin stayed behind to gather items and what not.

Our DM gave the rest of the party the opportunity to play some bad guys and mine was an evil cleric. The good cleric was bull rushed into the moat (he was wearing splint mail and shield with a strength of 10) by 2 Gnolls.

My evil cleric summoned a fiendish crocodile (or was it fiendish dire croc) anyway the good cleric drowned before his hit points were chewed away by the croc.

 

[InvaderSquoosh]

Actually, my DM has been running a rather tough campaign (he has a no-mercy rule and is very, very cunning) and our first character death was due to drowning! The way it happened had everything to do with situation and unbiased common-sense rulings, plus our own boneheadedness.

So there we were fighting a very nasty fight alongside a moat. Our Ranger fell in the moat as we were retreating, and before we could get back, he suffocated. How? Well, the DM made it really really tough to get out: First, the moat was ruled to be hard to move in and exit (slippery mud, no slopes). Second, there were monsters along the bank that were ready to clobber our poor Ranger, who was low on HP. These two factors combined prevented him from being able to keep his head above the water.

Did I mention that our DM is cunning? Drowning isn't our only fear, every session is a roller coaster
of frights and near-death episodes! In fact, our entire party just perished last weekend from making one simple mistake! (We tried to exit a dungeon while exhausted, knowing that there was opposition ahead.) This campaign style might turn some people off, but the group can't wait for then next session. Nothing makes an RPG game more thrilling than a DM that makes your party act like a team or face certain death.

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Our entire group fears water.

 

[dcollins]

My evil cleric summoned a fiendish crocodile (or was it fiendish dire croc) anyway the good cleric drowned before his hit points were chewed away by the croc.

Frankly, that seems hard to see happening. What was this cleric's Level/ hp/ Con?

 

[Rashak Mani]

Amazing that no one has Dwarfs in heavy armor stories... they would seem the most prone to drowning "accidents"...

My Dwarf almost drowned but more because he had a water phobia... fell in 5 ft deep water and he was about 4 ft !!!

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Amazing that no one has Dwarfs in heavy armor stories

Oh, one of them was a dwarf...

 

[dcollins]

Yes.

Three party members were knocked into water 30' below. Two were laden and couldn't swim. The other got knocked unconscious from the impact with the water. She subsequently drowned while the other two party members struggled to save their own hides.

Follow-up question: What was occuring in the meantime? Were the characters confronting opponents or some other challenge, or was this purely a function of trying to survive the necessary "remove armor" time?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I remember one of my first D&D Characters, a Barbarian (who had an intelligent, speaking, falchion. If the Barbarian found a book, the Falcion would read it for him ).

We had to go about a weak bridge to get to the other side and attack some enemies (who were using bows). Unfortunately, I fell down and landed in the water. (Without the Falcion, and his Feather Fall Ability, I would have been dead, I think ). It was a very fast water and I had problems swimmin, so from time to time, I actually drowned, but I survived...

 

[Arcanus]

Frankly, that seems hard to see happening. What was this cleric's Level/ hp/ Con?

What seems hard to see happening the good cleric getting chewed up and water logged or the evil cleric summoning a fiendish croc.?

The evil cleric was 6th level and the good one was only 4th.
The good clerics Con was 12-14 and he had been underwater for sometime before i sent the croc. in.
The croc had an improved bite/grab attack that made it possible to drag the character to the bottom and pin him there doing bite damage each round. Hard to hold your breath if you are taking damage and you want to scream.

 

[dcollins]

What seems hard to see happening the good cleric getting chewed up and water logged or the evil cleric summoning a fiendish croc.?

My curiousity is specific to how the victim drowned before running out of hit points.

First: You may need to note that the MM web errata removed all "automatic damage" language from Improved Grab abilities. (Of course, that biases the example further in your favor, but...)

I'll assume the victim is also 6th level, with about AC 20, 42 hp... and maybe he was wearing full plate (as per standard NPC stats, DMG p. 51). If so, then I can see him drowning from the 1d4+1 minute removal time of the armor -- regardless of whether the crocodile was involved or not.

But, computing average damage from the crocodile's attack of bite +6 (1d8+6), versus about AC 20, it should do an average of 3.6 damage per round, depleting a Clr6's 42 hp in about 11 rounds on average. That's far less than the ~26 or so rounds before the cleric needs to start making drowning checks.

So I can see the cleric drowning in the following way:
- If he was in full plate, had already spent ~1.5 minutes underwater trying to remove armor, and was therefore going to drown anyway, regardless of attack by crocodile.

Alternatively:

Hard to hold your breath if you are taking damage and you want to scream.

Does that mean that the normal breath-holding time was reduced in this instance from the book rule?