Captain Bleach wrote:For a mixed group, e.x. land-dwellers like Humans with aquatics like Merfolk, how early should Permanency+Water Breathing be available? I am planning on some deep-sea diving in underwater caves, and this ain't really viable at low enough levels.
Not to plug a source, but I think that Planescape site had something interesting concerning that...
Yep. They do.
Planewalker.com wrote:
Aqueous Air Transmutation, ,
Level: Sor/Wiz 6, Ocean 6
Components: V, S, F
Time: 1 minute per 10 feet transmuted
Target: N/A
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft/level)
Area: 25 cubic feet/level
Effect: N/A
Duration: Permenant
Save: None (harmless)
Spell Resistance: No
This spell transforms an area of normal, everyday air, into something that those who know how can swim through as it it were water. It has no inconsitencies or alterations with normal air, save being slightly heavier to breathe, and feeling very humid.
Where this air is different is that to those who can swim, and who breathe water. This air can be breathed by those creatures, and swam in by them.
Within the area of this spell, creatures who usually can't breathe air can breathe. Creatures may also swim through affected air as if it were water. This means that not only can those characters with a Swim skill use it in these environs to take off from the ground, but also that creatures with a normal Swim movement rate may use it while in the affected air instead of walking or flopping around on the ground.
Large areas of Aqueous Air have been known to occur naturally, on occasion, and produce rather interesting hybrid ecosystems of aquatic, aerial, and land-based life
I had been tinkering on the idea of a set of ruins in the middle of a 'sea' of this stuff, and the ensure the party doesn't encounter anything to make it click until the NPC accompaniment (optimally a Jester) realizes he can scull through the air via the backstroke. In a room that has a lever placed quite high up. Because I have to amuse myself sometimes.
If you don't like the idea of shelling out magic items to let them breathe or just having an NPC cast the right spells on them, you *could* make the caves be full of aqueous air and make up some crap about them having a localized pocket of intense magic.
And make them fight sharks and giant squid on foot.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!