Water Breathing Dispelled while character is underwater, drowning or drowned?

[StreamOfTheSky]

Dispelled flight gives you 1d6 rounds of feather falling. I'd allow someone who had it dispelled the ability to begin holding your breath. Any water in the lungs would be removed as part of the dispel, since it wouldn't have been in there if not for the spell.

Let's pretend for just a second that the subject of a water breathing spell literally takes water into his lungs. The spell's duration expires normally. Does he die? He must! His lungs are filled with water, and nowhere does the spell description say that it removes any breathed-in water when it ends! Oh, calamity!

Look, if you want to interpret water breathing in such a way that it becomes a death trap, I can't stop you. But it seems obvious to me that that's not the intent, and it certainly isn't mandated by even an excessively literal reading of the RAW (as I showed with the DMG quote). So why not just interpret it in a reasonable way? The spell allows you to breathe water (as if it were air); if the spell suddenly ends, you can hold your breath (just as if you'd been breathing air).

QFT. If you're going to take such a brutal interpretation, how does the spell not become fatal to someone that just has the spell end naturally on them (after getting to the surface/land)? I mean, all that water in the lungs you claim is there isn't spelled out as going away! What a horrible spell, why would anyone ever use it?!

 

[Sobolev]

I made an account, just to respond to this thread.

This thread is literally insane, and no one in it seems to understand WHY you drown. You don't drown because there is water in your lungs, you drown because you had oxygen deprivation to your brain for ~4 minutes.

Even if a DM wants to rule that your lungs are full of water when the spell ends (the spell says you can breath water now, maybe you have gills, and then your gills go away. Who knows?!) that doesn't instantly slay you. Go swim to the shore and cough it up. You would be unable to expel the water while underwater so just stop sucking in more (holding your breath effectively) and there you go.

 

[Rampant]

I suppose a lot depends on what kind of action holding your breath is.

 

[Sobolev]

I suppose a lot depends on what kind of action holding your breath is.

I'm actually arguing that that's irrelevant. Holding your breath is voluntary oxygen deprivation. Non-voluntary oxygen deprivation should follow the same rules because there are no other rules for it to follow. And obviously being deprived of oxygen isn't an action.

Also, even if you're right. If we conclude that breathing is something other than a free action you can take at any time, including other people's turns, we're going to have a serious problem.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I suppose a lot depends on what kind of action holding your breath is.

It's not an action at all, or a "non action" as a rules of the game article called such things. Just like AoOs or reactive spot/listen checks.

 

[Rampant]

Ok so being surprised is irrelevant, you just start holding your breath automatically (with the exception that you have to cough some extra water out eventually)?

Still it's a pretty awesome scary thing to do to the players. They're swimming into a fight with some Sahuagins and the enemy caster dispels the water breathing. That'll up the suspense.

 

[Aeolius]

They're swimming into a fight with some Sahuagins and the enemy caster dispels the water breathing. That'll up the suspense.

Another option: "...the primitive hagfish – also known as the snot-eel – defends itself by emitting a choking, gill-clogging slime that might be the envy of any surfer under attack from a shark." LINK

That way you suffocate the Drylanders and Sea People in one fell swoop!

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Water breathing allows you to breathe water, as such you are not assumed to be holding your breath when using it. So unless the player is warned, or something, they have a breathing apparatus full of water.

Yes, that's what I'm asking for a citation on.

The effect of the spell is:

The transmuted creatures can breathe water freely.

It's a transmutation. "You grow gills" is just as valid an interpretation of how the spell works as "your lungs can pull oxygen from water."

 

[RogueInRouge]

The character has its lung filled with water.

That's certainly one interpretation of how the spell works... water flows into the alveoli where *magic happens* allowing oxygen to diffuse through the cell walls into the bloodstream. Then you breath out the de-oxygenated water and get some fresh water in.

But it's not the only interpretation, and as you've pointed out it carries a pretty harsh termination condition. Forget about dispel, does this mean you have to get out of the water and "breath out" all the accumulated water in your lungs before the spell expires, or risk drowning as soon as it wears off? I wouldn't have thought the spell description implied that kind of threat.

If you want to stick with this interpretation, I'd suggest that the water in your lungs becomes a bit of an annoyance (CON check to avoid a fit of coughing, maybe?) but the drowning state is really about the oxygen (or lack thereof) in your bloodstream. There's no reason to believe that the oxygen you got from your last "breath" of water would disappear when the spell ends (either naturally or via dispel), so the character would be drownING, not drownED.

Personally I'd go with a different take on the spell, e.g. there's a magic filter somewhere in the nasal and/or oral cavity that transforms water to air as soon as it hits. (And if you don't want recipients of the spell to be producing bubbles when they exhale, then I guess the same filter can take care of diffusing the C02 etc. back into the water.) Bottom line for me is that having your water breathing dispelled should play out in much the same way as having the regulator ripped out of your mouth on a dive.

 

[frankthedm]

I wouldn't have thought the spell description implied that kind of threat.

Even the spell's Name implies that.

I'd suggest that the water in your lungs becomes a bit of an annoyance (CON check to avoid a fit of coughing, maybe?)

Hmm, seems in the right direction. I'd say DC 15 Fort save or be "stunned" thrashing about, make the save and the severity is reduced to the same effect as the Nauseated condition. Maybe that would be too severe, though it sounds reasonable to me for the body's reaction to two lungfuls of water.