D&D Suffocation

[Prak]

How does 3.5 handle suffocation?

[Psychic Robot]

Poorly, most likely. Also, your signature has destroyed this thread. Please fix ASAP.

Suffocation

A character who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 2 rounds per point of Constitution. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check in order to continue holding her breath. The save must be repeated each round, with the DC increasing by +1 for each previous success.

When the character fails one of these Constitution checks, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hit points). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates.

Slow Suffocation
A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. When a character falls unconscious from this nonlethal damage, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the next round, she suffocates.

Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time.

[Prak]

yeah. that does suck. Ok... cobra naga poison is now just paralytic, because I don't want to write functional suffocation rules...

(and it wasn't my sig, it was me accidentally hitting the quote tag button, deleting the opening code, then not realizing the ending code would automatically get entered when I posted.)

[TOZ]

I had a DM screw up the rules. He skipped the 'hold breath' part and went right to suffocation. Our cleric took out at least half of the enemy party with a wall of sand.

[Xur]

Suffocation

A character who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 2 rounds per point of Constitution. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check in order to continue holding her breath. The save must be repeated each round, with the DC increasing by +1 for each previous success.

I can see that they wanted to give each character some rounds, even the ones with bad CON modifiers, but 2 rounds per point of ability is weird and introduces yet another type of calculation at the table. Also it means that with 10 CON you can hold your breath for like 2 minutes, doing combat and shit? Seems like more than enough time to me to do whatever needs to be done to get out of the liquid that suffocates you.

When the character fails one of these Constitution checks, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hit points). In the following round, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates.

So once you begin to suffocate, there is no saving throw but just watching three rounds? Great.

Slow Suffocation
A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. When a character falls unconscious from this nonlethal damage, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the next round, she suffocates.

Now its a 15 minutes count? With "proportionally reducing", meaning two people/sources take 1d6 every 7,5 minutes? Also its now only 2 rounds till death when you run out of air? Oh dear.

Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time.

This is outright offending to me.

[ubernoob]

Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time.

This is outright offending to me.

Small being the size category. Of course, it SHOULD be an eighth and not half.

[Archmage]

Small being the size category. Of course, it SHOULD be an eighth and not half.

A gnome only needs one-eighth as much oxygen as a human? I don't buy it.

[magnuskn]

There's some sort of perverted joke in this thread title...

[Psychic Robot]

Here's a better topic: Why is holding your breath a Constitution check and not a Fortitude save?

[virgil]

Small being the size category. Of course, it SHOULD be an eighth and not half.

A gnome only needs one-eighth as much oxygen as a human? I don't buy it.

Same principle of all equipment for Small size characters weighing only half as much, and Large gear weighing twice.

[Koumei]

A DM once wanted us to all black out and then wake up in an unfamiliar place with a quest-giver. But we were stubborn, and everyone there felt like being an asshole. So when he said the doors to the room slam shut, the rules-savvy player said "Relax, it's a big room and we're half-dragons, the lowest Con here is like 16 and the highest is more than 20. Even if we were immersed in water here we'd have like five minutes before we all passed out. We can just hack the door down."

"The door is adamantium."

"Fine, we'll hack the stone walls down. Urak' Guy here has a Strength of what, 34, we'll smash the wall up in under a minute."

So we did.

"The corridor also has no air."

"Of course it doesn't, but remember your own map? We're right next to the entrance to the castle, we'll smash the wall down and wander out, and then you can tell us if the outside world also has no air."

We won that one, and the quest-giver had to walk over to us and try to act impressive.

[Prak]

heh, that must have been a hell of a scene...

[RobbyPants]

Small being the size category. Of course, it SHOULD be an eighth and not half.

A gnome only needs one-eighth as much oxygen as a human? I don't buy it.

Well, I think that estimate is based on the relationship between linear and cubic measurements. If something halves in all three dimensions (not just height), then it should be an eighth the size (1 / 2^3).

As to how that affects Oxygen consumption, I don't know. If nothing else, it would seem that the lungs would be an eight the size, but I also thought that smaller animal's hearts beat faster, so they might have higher metabolisms. I'm just guessing at this point.

[Username17]

Children have a substantially higher oxygen consumption than adults. Babies use almost three times the oxygen per kilogram of adults. It's higher for mice than people.

I have no trouble whatsoever believing that gnomes breathe more per kilogram than humans do, an no problem at all believing that giants breathe less.

-Username17

[souran]

A DM once wanted us to all black out and then wake up in an unfamiliar place with a quest-giver. But we were stubborn, and everyone there felt like being an asshole. So when he said the doors to the room slam shut, the rules-savvy player said "Relax, it's a big room and we're half-dragons, the lowest Con here is like 16 and the highest is more than 20. Even if we were immersed in water here we'd have like five minutes before we all passed out. We can just hack the door down."

"The door is adamantium."

"Fine, we'll hack the stone walls down. Urak' Guy here has a Strength of what, 34, we'll smash the wall up in under a minute."

So we did.

"The corridor also has no air."

"Of course it doesn't, but remember your own map? We're right next to the entrance to the castle, we'll smash the wall down and wander out, and then you can tell us if the outside world also has no air."

We won that one, and the quest-giver had to walk over to us and try to act impressive.

Congradulations. You have contributed to the reason why all adventures (homemade and prewritten) suck ass.

This is the reason why every trap has to be gygaxian levels of arbitrarary to ever be effective.

Stone walls should not be broken down as easily as they are in 3.x. However, suffociation should also not suck as much ass as it does.

(Honestly, when you started your story I thought you were going to say how the rules laywer person managed to earn a TPK by pointing out that a suffocation trap doesn't really work because you go from fine, to ko to dead in 18 seconds.

Anyway, suffocation is silly, its easy to easy or bang your dead.

[virgil]

If you're at the level where a character has a 34 strength, then you're in a story where such characters wouldn't be too hindered by stone walls.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I don't see what has you in such a bitchfit, souran.

[mean_liar]

"...we'll hack the stone walls down. Urak' Guy here has a Strength of what, 34, we'll smash the wall up in under a minute."

You do half damage underwater unless you use a piercing weapon, which generally can't be used for Smashing an Object.

With STR 34 and a two-handed Power Attack doing, say, 40 damage per stroke regularly that's 20 damage underwater, or 4/5th of an inch per attack.

With the low CON being 16, that's 32 rounds - two attacks per round is just over 4ft. You were actually pretty close to drowning.

[Quantumboost]

You do half damage underwater unless you use a piercing weapon, which generally can't be used for Smashing an Object.

With STR 34 and a two-handed Power Attack doing, say, 40 damage per stroke regularly that's 20 damage underwater, or 4/5th of an inch per attack.

With the low CON being 16, that's 32 rounds - two attacks per round is just over 4ft. You were actually pretty close to drowning.

Unless I'm missing something, they weren't in a room full of water - it was a sealed room with a limited air supply. So the underwater rules have nothing to do with it.

[souran]

Yeah, I don't see what has you in such a bitchfit, souran.

I just absolutely hate how easy it is to destroy walls in 3.x. The "haul out the adamatinium maul/pickaxe and just go through the walls" strategy pretty much unmakes every prewritten advenutre.

Honestly, I hear so many "so then we destroyed the WALLS!" stories in 3.x that they are not clever anymore. 3.x walls are made of papermache to characters who want to be strong and characters who aren't strong use magic. It honestly more an exploit of the system than a "heroic exploit" of in game daring.

The next time I see somebody trying to smash down a wall in 3.x I am going to ask them to tell me how their character identifies the load bearing members/portions so that he doesn't cause his whole team to heroically die in a self inflicted demolition accident.

[virgil]

For the lower levels, I can understand that sentiment. However, it's a different story for the scenario that set you off, because at least one member of their party was literally as strong as a cloud giant; and I'm seriously disappointed in any story or adventure that expects a cloud giant to be stopped by a bricklayer.

[Crissa]

This is why you have someone with the engineering skill ^-^

Even so, I always run into walls that are fairly thick. That makes it so tunneling is difficult.

-Crissa

[erik]

Amen. If someone invests in an adamantium pick axe or hammer and the strength of a giant, then absolutely let them tear things down.

Occasionally a ceiling may collapse, but for a party that strong it should just be a humbling experience with moderate damage and extensive noise and inconvenience rather than a death sentence.

What annoys me more than wall-hacking characters is DMs needing to whip out their penis and flagellate it over the PCs head. Sure I did it when I was a younger, crappier DM, and I feel stupid for doing it now.

Now, I have no problem making rulings like having a non-magic weapon take damage if its hardness is equal or lower than the hardness of whatever it is hitting in a sunder attempt, simply so that an uber strong character with power attack doesn't beat down dungeons with a rubber dildo.

I am on the fence for letting Power Attack work on inanimate objects. It makes sundering so danged easy. A strength 13 character who uses power attack can mow through any object given modest BAB.

[Koumei]

The DM primarily ran World of Shite Darkness, so yeah, he was used to ignoring rules, just having shit happen to players, and basically masturbating at the table with his awesome made up stuff. We weren't exactly surprised by the situation, just determined to piss him off. It was more a game of "Who can antagonise the other to a stress-ulcer first?"

And if anything, the strength of a cloud giant should be able to kick walls down rather than sunder them. It's a pity the game doesn't have "If [Ability] is this high, you can do [incredible heroic acts]".

[Prak]

You know.... with a person's main experience being WoD, I can understand players with a "piss the DM off" attitude, come to think of it, hell, last WoD session I played in, we decided to fuck with the DMs world because we were tired of getting treated like shit by it....