Swimming
So, White Wolf never really outlined a process for setting swimming speeds. And since I'm creating a campaign in a sea-based setting, I sort of need to know. So here's what I've come up with.
-- Darkkling
Sprinting:
- Strength + Athletics (in yards)
This was pretty easy since I used to swim competitively. It's far less than land movement; people aren't meant for the sea. Wyld twisted beings that are for the sea should have special abnormalities that make it easier for them. Also, Strength vs. Dexterity, it should be Strength. First, Strength is more important as it's about propelling onself through water, overcoming resistance, sort of like jumping uses Strength to overcome gravity. Secondly, Dexterity is already so powerful as a deciding factor in the White Wolf systems. It's gotten a little better with Exalted, and a little better still with Power Combat, but it's still way too pivotal at times. Even the devs know this, hence the increased for Dexterity in Lunar DBT.
w/ Actions:
- 1/2 (Strength + Atheltics) (in yards)
This was trickier. How do you go from an already small movement rate to something even smaller. This is how. There are a couple of notes on this though. Do anything other than just swimming is incredibly hard. So I've made swimming movement that isn't sprinting, into a dice-action. If you want to do anything while swimming (and I mean actually moving, not just treading water), you get to split your action. The bonus is that since you're not rolling anything for movement here, the multiple action penalities don't apply. But the swimming dice-action is the first that you take in the round. Secondly, if you have no athletics, you don't just halve Strength, you can't swim. Congrats, and not everyone who has Athletics can swim. Though any Exalt with Athletics should be assumed to be able to swim (otherwise you don't deserve your mote).
Modifiers:
Mobility Penalties and other die penalties
Simple. All of this type of die penalty gets applied directly to the movement rates for swimming.
Wound Penalties
Since wound penalties have different effect on movement than do other sorts, they have a separate effect here as well. Basically, just use the system that Exalted has for augmented speeds working under injuries. That is:
- -0 - no change
- -1 - subtract 30% from all movement rates
- -2 - subtract 60% from all movement rates
- -3/-4 - subtract 90% from all movement rates
