D&D 5E (2014) Swimming in armor
- Thread starter brehobit
- Start date
But how is this any different than any other equipment? Wouldn't nearly all PCs be dragged down by their gear in water?
Should there be a weight limit? A weight limit per point of Strength?
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Full plate weighs 15 to 25 kilos. If you can swim while holding a small child above water, you can swim wearing plate.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
Yes, in fact even swimming in your normal clothing is quite difficult. Now throw a leather jacket on top of that and then about 20lbs of chains. Leather is god awful to swim in, and after you do it you've essentially ruined the material unless you very quickly oil it down.
But then we're also talking about fantasy adventuring types who likely have an 18 str and an equally good con. These are strong, hearty people. Per the encumbrance rules, you can carry 15xstr score normally, for your average fighter, that's a 250+lb carrying capacity. I doubt most heavily-armored folks are going to have trouble while swimming.
On a side note, this is one of those verisimilitude issues that usually kicks fighters right in the sweet spot while leaving mages, warlocks and other caster-types alone. It just leads us down that endless path of burdening the martial types with reality while further empowering folks who can already wrap reality around their pinky.
Last edited:
Celebrim
Legend
Of course there isn't. It's impossible to swim in lava, not because lava is hot, but because lava is extremely dense - in some cases denser even that rock - and extremely viscous. Lava is so viscous that it makes peanut butter seem really mobile. It takes tremendous force to bend lava. As such, even though lava is a fluid, hitting it with something like a club wouldn't make much impression and almost everything floats on top of lava without sinking in the slightest. Lava under stress or violent motion might flow over the top of something like a wave might, but a human body that magically did not burn would float on top of lava as buoyantly as a cork or Styrofoam on top of water. It would be literally impossible to sink into lava, much less swim in it, and if you fell down and hit it, it wouldn't splash like water or even part like oil - you might as well be hitting concrete or steel.
Very hot lava under very high pressure - as in the cauldron of an erupting volcano - looks superficially like water. But in many cases those 'splashes' and 'drops' are as dense and heavy as rock (those that aren't, and are well mixed with air, form pumice) and as sharp as glass, and as such wouldn't splash when they hit you, but would hit you like superheated sling stones.
The problem here is the human mind is intuitive and not particularly good at imagining things outside of its daily experience.
As for 'unplayable', I guess it depends on the sort of game you are going for, but I'd suggest that a game that didn't penalize swimming while encumbered probably didn't have 'realism' on its list of supported game play styles or even consider 'swimming' something PC's were likely to do very often. Fortunately, there are probably fairly easy fixes here if you want to do so.
I do not think it does if the table is using any sort of encumbrance rules.
An explorers kit weighs (IIRC) 69 pounds. That's a lot of weight, especially for those 10 Str mages, warlocks, and other caster-types. If they drop that pack underwater, they lose it (typically). Even some of the other kits are fairly heavy.
So I think that this level of verisimilitude is equally penalizing for most PCs of most classes.
it should not be any different than other gear and I agree that gear will pull you down, unless it is in some type of waterproof container (with may make it buoyant).
A weight limit should at least be at least a percentage of Strength.
I think I would at least look at a % of Strength that can be used but in the REAL WORLD the denser your mass the less buoyant you are, it is better to be FAT than have muscles.
Last edited:
Celebrim
Legend
Maybe.
What I find is that in practice, verisimilitude regarding 'epic adventuring' tends to kick heavy armor brutes to the curb, but not necessarily fighters and other mundane heroes. It's not merely swimming that presents a challenge to a would be heavy armor wearer, but anything outside of battle on a level plain or combat on the tournament field. He's slower. He's more likely to trip and stumble. He tires more easily. He has greater difficulty climbing, swimming, and squeezing through tight paces. You are more exposed to deadly heat and humidity and metal armor can be very uncomfortable in the cold. The jungles, caves, ruins, chasms, and mountainous slopes were adventuring takes place tend not to be the sort of places where you want to wear very heavy armor. As a result, most players in my game of any class tend to prefer to avoid heavy armor and compromise on some lighter form of protection. Giving up a few points of AC in exchange for greater mobility usually works out as a good trade. It's not necessarily realistic that this lighter armor is less problematic, but it does have verisimilitude and we do know that real world adventurers - say Cortez, tended to prefer lighter armor.
But favoring light or medium armor over heavier armor doesn't necessarily favor the spell-casters. Clerics end up suffering more than fighters, because unlike fighters, strength is usually a 4th stat for a cleric and dexterity a 6th stat. As such, they can't make up for the problems associated with armor nearly as much as a fighter can. Indeed, since fighters can more readily afford to put points in skills toward swim, climb, and jump and really any other physical skill than a cleric, it's usually fairly trivial for a mid-level fighter to counteract whatever penalties come with his armor. (Under my house rules, this is even more true, so that it's certainly true that one way that mundane classes like fighter, rogue, explorer and hunter excel spellcasters is that they have more reliable mobility with no reliance on spending spell slots to make up for physical shortcomings.) And indeed, since classes like Wizard and Sorcerer likewise can't afford to spend on physical abilities and wear no armor, saying that they aren't as penalized when swimming is making a virtue out of a problem. It's not unusual for the sorcerer with no ranks in swim and an 8 strength score, to have more problems swimming than the fighter in his much heavier armor - after all, the fighter with a +13 or higher swim score could swim like an Olympic athlete (if not Aquaman at higher levels) if he took off the armor. And a sorcerer that spends spells to swim, improve AC, and otherwise defend his person from harm is generally leaving himself with reduced combat options and at risk of running out of spell slots.
Not the same thing as the human body has buoyancy, carrying is not the same as wearing.
Similar Threads
Recent & Upcoming Releases
-
June 16 2026 -
June 16 2026 -
September 16 2026 
Arcana Unleashed(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.
Replies (151) -
September 16 2026 -
October 1 2026 -
October 6 2026 -
January 1 2027
