Aquatic Adventures I: Introduction & Advice

The long tendrils of the jellyfish wrapped around limbs, stinging and burning with they found exposed flesh. Roderic struggled, his wand unreachable in his belt, his mind fumbling for magic that would disentangle him from his squishy foe. But all the spells that came to mind were fire-based. His trusty burning hands would do little now. The man-sized beast spun in the water, churning the water and yanking the young wizard in a wide, wild arc. Dark water rushed past him and pressed against his frame like a heavy formless blanket.

Roderic wished he’d stayed on dry land.

Introduction

Exciting adventures are not confined to the land. Prior editions of the Dungeons & Dragons game included a myriad of undersea races and monsters that could be used to craft underwater encounters or adventures. Most of these classic creatures are absent from the current edition of the game, and aquatic adventures – or other types of 3 Dimensional encounters – have not been prominently featured.

The likely reason is that underwater encounters can be tricky, and in a 3D space it’s hard to have the same tactical miniature-based combat for which the current edition is known. 3D battlemaps are not easy to draw or construct. And purely narrative combat does not mesh well with the 4e rule set.

This is the first in a series of articles dedicated to the subject of adventuring underwater.  This series will focus on some solutions to the mapping problems and advice on adventuring, as well as adding a whole sack of new monsters and descriptions of the various undersea peoples.

Campaign Considerations

How much of this and the subsequent articles apply to your game depends on your campaign’s scope: how long the party will be underwater. A party could be beneath the waves for an encounter, an adventure, a story arc, a tier, or even the majority of a campaign. It’s a good idea to start with this information when planning, because so much else depends on the duration spent undersea.

Short Term

For a single encounter, the GM does not need to worry about such concerns as breathing underwater or complicated 3D terrain. An average party should be able to hold their breath for the entire fight, even those with low Con scores and Endurance checks. However, the focus should be on making a good underwater encounter, and less on making a good encounter that happens to be underwater; the fact the fight is underwater should not be trivial. Every such encounter should feature a monster or mechanic or bit of terrain that can only exist underwater, the aquatic elements should not be superfluous or forgettable. Underwater encounters should not just be an excuse to dump the PCs in a pool of difficult terrain or take advantage of a lack of strong swimming skills or appropriate powers.

It’s a good idea to exercise restraint when planning a single encounter. There shouldn’t be monsters AND unique terrain AND multiple 3D elements AND constant skill checks. There should be enough underwater elements to emphasise that the unique nature of the fight, but not so many as to be overwhelming. Balance is less of a concern, beyond the standard balance needed for an encounter. The GM does not need to establish firm rules for underwater combat or set fair DCs for skill checks. Instead, attention should be paid to making a fun one-shot encounter; the underwater rules become a type of mini-game.

For example, an encounter might have swift-moving currents of water that can carry a character across the battlefield but have harder Athletics checks needed to swim normally. Or there could be a swirling vortex moving randomly across the battlefield shuffling characters as it passes, while the moving water might make it easier to swim one direction but harder the other.

For a full adventure, the rules require a little more attention. They have to be consistent and usable for an extended period without dragging or slowing down play. If every single encounter requires repeated Athletics checks for every single move action – even travelling an incidental distance – the players without that skill will quickly become frustrated. It’s possible to forgo checks for simple and standard movement, however longer distances or quick movement should still require checks: the characters are literally out of their element and the gameplay should still reflect this.

It’s a good idea to write-up a campaign cheat-sheet, a copy of the rules for underwater combat and the Athletics DCs for swimming. Both are likely to be referenced multiple times and having a quick-reference copy will greatly speed-up play and reduce page flipping.

An underwater adventure also needs a way for the party to breathe. For most adventures, a simple ritual will suffice. There are two rituals that devoted to underwater survival: water breathing and water’s gift (found in the PHB1 and Primal Power respectively). The first confers just the ability to breathe while the second does the same while making underwater combat far easier. Alternatively, new alchemical items or consumable magic items will also serve. However, these do not need to be permanent. In fact, it works better if there is a built-in time limit, driving the story and party forward, while reinforcing the fact that their survival is entirely dependent on an outside force.

Adventures themselves should emphasise the fact the players are strangers in a strange world. Under the sea should be presented as alien, as if the characters had journeyed to another plane or unknown world. The party should have some trouble performing normally simple tasks. A deed that is a simple skill check on the surface might be the basis of a short Skill Challenge, and something that might be done automatically might require a check. However, the PCs are still heroes and should be treated as such. Things should be harder but not impossible, and the GM should emphasise their successes in such an alien environ.

Long Term

For the initial few adventures, it’s a good idea to start with some of the short term advice. It gives the players a sense of progress as their characters advance from fumbling outsiders to more comfortable surface-world expatriates.

Longer underwater tales, lasting for multiple adventures or an entire tier, mean that encounters need a little extra work to avoid repetition. If every fight features ocean currents and 3D combat the game risks becoming boring or predictable. It becomes much more permissible to have encounters that just happen to be underwater; it’s should still be a key element, but not every fight needs to showcase the underwater world or its tactical opportunities. It’s easier to ignore skill checks for swimming, except for extraordinary situations. It’s also possible to add more elements to combats, as the DCs for Athletics checks should have become common knowledge and be easily recalled. This allows encounters to get a little more complicated with more going on without slowing down play.

The largest concern for extended stints underwater is breathing. Rituals can work, but will quickly become an expensive tax on survival, unless the group is particularly high level. Low-level groups might be unable to afford or perform the necessary rituals, and some groups might even lack a ritual caster and be unable to reliably and regularly cast breathing rituals.

It’s easier to simply give the characters a way to breathe underwater early, such as a boon or permanent magical item. An NPC ritual caster somewhat works, especially at the beginning of the arc, but eventually there should be no time restriction on survival permitting lengthy stints away from safety and security.

It’s also a good idea to give the characters a base of operations, a safe haven where they can store perishable items, sleep, cook, and generally be dry. This might be a small island, an air-filled cavern, a magically protected keep, or some kind of fantasy submarine (such as a large apparatus of Kwalish). While the characters should feel comfortable underwater, it should not be their home and there should still be some small element of the surface world to remind the players than their characters are just visiting.

For long term adventures, the underwater world should be portrayed less like an alien world and more like a foreign land. There are strange customs, incomprehensible languages, and unusual ways of doing familiar things. But there should be recognisable elements of day-to-day life, common activities that tie the surface and aquatic worlds together. DMs should add quirks to the populace and think of unusual ways common tasks might be performed, but follow that up with something familiar and common to both the players and their characters.

Permanent

It’s also possible to run an exclusively underwater campaign. This might feature aquatic races in addition to the normal PC races, and instead it’s forays onto the surface that are ventures into an unfamiliar or alien world.

The characters need no attachment to the surface world and might operate out of an underwater settlement, a Nentir Grotto. This might even be their home, where they have spent all their lives. Or they might sleep out in the wilderness, like surface adventurers camping out between towns.

In this style of campaign the GM should assume the PCs can breathe and function underwater, perhaps awarding a free bonus to Athletic skill checks related to swimming (or simply lower the DCs to reduce the memory load). There should be no mechanical bonus to playing a native underwater race or penalty for playing a surface race; players shouldn’t be punished for playing the character they want to play. As such, all characters should start with a boon or ability or small magic item allowing them to function underwater, and simply be required to justify this in their backstory.

Look for the second blog in this series in a few weeks, which discusses encounter design. I plan to follow that up with expanded underwater rules, terrain, a big blog o’ monsters, PC races and magic, and maybe something else.

Similar Posts:

•      Aquatic Adventures III: Rules
•      Aquatic Adventures II: Encounters
•      Aquatic Adventures IV: Terrain