Quote from: GameDaddy;1012928With D&D...

You can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to your constitution, after that, you make a Con save every round to avoid drowning.

Which D&D? Based on the book you use for your pic, I am assuming you are talking one minute rounds. That seems very generous.

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;1012768On a serious note, I simply waterboard my players so that they can better emulate their character holding their breath.

o_O

This is me.

O_o

With a seriously concerned face.

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;1012768On a serious note, I simply waterboard my players so that they can better emulate their character holding their breath.

Also makes it hard for them to describe what they are doing.  But some people will do any thing for immersion.  

*Ba dum ching*

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;1012768On a serious note, I simply waterboard my players so that they can better emulate their character holding their breath.

Also helpful if their PC is undergoing harsh interrogation in the game. Though personally I favor lighting bamboo shoots under their fingernails. It doesn't get the carpet wet and the smell of smoldering bamboo is very appealing.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1012963Which D&D? Based on the book you use for your pic, I am assuming you are talking one minute rounds. That seems very generous.

But the PCs are big damn heroes. Are you saying you don't think Conan can hold his breath for 20 minutes at a time?

That reminds me of pearl divers.

Apparently you can hold your breath underwater longer than you can hold it above water. The current human record appears to be 22 minutes underwater. But that requires 20 minutes of hyperventilating on oxygen beforehand, cold water, training to lower respiration, and not moving. Skipping hyperventilating on O₂ cuts the time in half. Swimming or otherwise moving around would cut the time even farther. I seem to recall pearl divers diving for 2 or 3 minutes. So maybe cut the time by 75%.

I found the DnD 5e rules for suffocating surprisingly K.I.S.S. useful on average.

Suffocating

A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds).

When a creature runs out of breath, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modi er (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying.

For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes. If it starts su ocating, it has 2 rounds to reach air before it drops to 0 hit points.

(D&D 5e Basic. August 2014. p. 65.)

(note: During dying you have Death Saves, best out of three to fail, which is anywhere from 1 (with damage inflicted) to 5 rounds, round=6 sec, so 6 to 30 seconds. Average 3 rounds, or 18 seconds. So minimum death time without damage is 54 seconds. Great for empashizing the dangers for infants and elderly.)

Given starting characters through point buy (and stat array) can flux between -1 to +3, it's a good workable baseline to get on with the game. I am thinking of porting it over to my DnD 2e, it's so easy.

Quote from: Bren;1013025Apparently you can hold your breath underwater longer than you can hold it above water. The current human record appears to be 22 minutes underwater. But that requires 20 minutes of hyperventilating on oxygen beforehand, cold water, training to lower respiration, and not moving. Skipping hyperventilating on O₂ cuts the time in half. Swimming or otherwise moving around would cut the time even farther. I seem to recall pearl divers diving for 2 or 3 minutes. So maybe cut the time by 75%.

Arabic divers seem to dive for 3 minutes, but do that 50 times per day.
Asian ones seem to dive fewer times, the average is 5 minutes but some do it 7 to 10 minutes.

Without any gear, has to be said.

10 mins seems to be the usual maximum for average humans listed, but the record is somewhere above 22 minutes, although I believe that record wasn't made during other forms of activity (such as finding/opening oysters for pearls) and was done while standing still in water.

I don't know how these numbers compare to the results of calculating time for systems like D&D, plus perhaps there are also Feats/skills which add bonus time?

Quote from: Bren;1013025Apparently you can hold your breath underwater longer than you can hold it above water. The current human record appears to be 22 minutes underwater. But that requires 20 minutes of hyperventilating on oxygen beforehand, cold water, training to lower respiration, and not moving. Skipping hyperventilating on O₂ cuts the time in half. Swimming or otherwise moving around would cut the time even farther. I seem to recall pearl divers diving for 2 or 3 minutes. So maybe cut the time by 75%.

This guy can go down 65 feet for up to "just under 3 minutes", but usually actively hunts in shallower waters for up to 5 minutes. This would represent the "I've been doing this every week of my life in order to have the food to survive" style training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otuf-kG-0Qw

Quote from: Bren;1013025Apparently you can hold your breath underwater longer than you can hold it above water. The current human record appears to be 22 minutes underwater. But that requires 20 minutes of hyperventilating on oxygen beforehand, cold water, training to lower respiration, and not moving. Skipping hyperventilating on O₂ cuts the time in half. Swimming or otherwise moving around would cut the time even farther. I seem to recall pearl divers diving for 2 or 3 minutes. So maybe cut the time by 75%.

I participated in some real world experimenting with this in a public pool in my teens--timing myself and others over multiple summers.  We found that those kind of ratios hold up for more mundane uses of holding your breath, too.  That is, if you can manage 60 seconds just putting your head face down in the water and floating, you can quickly get to double that with a little breathing preparation.  Nothing as extreme as what the record holders do, but the principle is the same.  For us, it wasn't always true on the upper ends of the range, but then we weren't a bunch of highly trained adventurers, either.   For an average person, 4 minutes was really pushing it, even with prep, unless they were particularly good at it without prep--something like 140 to 150 seconds.

We had a vested interest in knowing.  We were playing a fairly extreme version of a popular game, "Gator," in the well of the diving area that involved some wresting underwater as you tried to make it to the other side without getting pulled to the surface.  It was only allowed because the life guard could see into the well, and all the older or bigger players were very conscious of individual player limits--including doing those tests to see what the limits were, and then not getting anywhere near them.

I don't recall the exact numbers, but given any serious swimming activity, we weren't comfortable with more than a minute for a fit teen or older, or half that for a fit younger kid.  There wasn't a person in the game that couldn't hold onto the ladder and stay underwater for a minute, easy, before they were even allowed to play.

All that to say, whatever the game rules are for those kinds of things, I've always assumed half time for no preparation, half time for fighting or other heavy activity, both penalties stack.  Easy to remember, and works well to create some urgency.

Reading the 5e rules I got the impression that someone read off the averages and totally did not take into account exertion.

Probably halve the time then for how long can hold breath.

Quote from: Omega;1013268Reading the 5e rules I got the impression that someone read off the averages and totally did not take into account exertion.

Probably halve the time then for how long can hold breath.

Critical hits on character should also make the number drop.

Also of course it's a different issue if the character has magic on it like Water Breathing. In that situation the calculations are pretty much meaningless.

I make the player put a ziploc over his head and play until he can't take it anymore.

Just take the real world numbers of 3-5 minutes underwater without combat as a starting point, figure out what stat or other aspect of your system can map to that and use it.  Maybe give them one roll to extend a minute.

When it comes to fighting, extreme exertion etc. divide that by 6 or 10, or thereabouts if you want to line up with an in game unit.

Quote from: headless;1012972also makes it hard for them to describe what they are doing.  But some people will do any thing for immersion.  

*ba dum ching*

wakka wakka wakka!