So one of my players was wearing full plate when the boat he was in was blasted out from under him in TGS campaign ...

I said there was no real way he could swim, and that the best he could hope for was to try and strip the armor off. He thought I was being to strict because his character was strong and had athletics trained. I usually don't like just saying no, so I said he could role the encumberance of the armor in Challenge die to stay afloat. In this case the plate was superior quality and had a reduced encumberance of 6, so it would have been a 6d challenge. I was considering making this the standard for armor (encumberance = # challenge die for swim skill check) when swimming.

1) If you allowed a player a roll to stay a float in full plate what would it be? Was I being too tough? Would you allow a roll at all?

2) Do you allow for challenges beyond Daunting (4d)

3) What kind of rolls would you give other armors for swimming checks?

It turned out that before this character could act his co-player, who was getting ready to throw a grappling hook onto the bad guys boat from shore, instead throwed the rope to his party mate. I made him make an athletics check to hold onto the rope and while being dragged to shallow water ... so he never had to swim, but I was wondering what others thought ...

However strong you are, i guess you just cannot swim in a full plate armor ... So your option of a 6+ challenges test is fine to me

I would say that Cloth & Leather are not that much of an indrance. Maybe use half the Soak value for the Athletic check (1 Misfortune for Cloth, 1 Challenge for Leather). For Metal armor, use the full Soak value. Swimming in a Chainmail is difficult but not impossible (3 Soak / Challenge), Breastplate & Chains is Daunting (4), Full Plate is worse even (5). If the armor is of superior quality, maybe give a Fortune, but that is it. Not mater how well it is crafted ... metal makes you sink (if magic armor of doom with Soak 43, use the base model as reference)

I recall reading a history article about 14th century medieval knights mastering swimming in armor. I know the japanese have a whole discipline called suiei-jutsu , that is the art of swimming in armor.

It is possible, for short distances, but since the steel makes you negatively bouyant, it takes a lot of energy.

Considering that, I'd say that you can swim under normal circumstances by adding the soak value of your armor to the difficulty and then be allowed to reduce the armor induced difficulty dice by suffering fatigue on a 1:1 basis.

This is one thing that I think most fantasy RPGs get wrong about armor. Plate armor doesn't slow you down at all and it's really not that heavy.

Plate is a nice solid 45-50 pounds at it's lightest (20 kg or so) but you can certainly try to swim in it. Its also distributed across the body, so you easily run, jump, do cartwheels, and so on.

Of course the weight is going to vary greatly based on what the armor is made of. Iron is going to be heavier than tempered steel for instance. But given the rough state of technology in the Empire, black powder, I'd assume that most plate is going to be made from steel. To put it into prospective, modern soldiers carry more weight than a knight did plus it was far more evenly distributed, those giant backpacks are harder on you than a cuirass. So if a modern soldier can jump out of a boat with full combat gear and swim, I'd have no problem with a guy in plate doing the same.

Now the water itself is going to create a larger issue than the weight of the armor. The resistance against all the loose flaps and dangling bits is going to be tough, but not impossible. I'd be more concerned if the character knows how to swim at all.

Should swiming in armor warrant a penalty? Absolutely, but it should not be outright impossible. I'd probably give it 2 or 3 challenge dice at most, 1 or 2 for other armors. In my opinion it's more about water resistance and buoyancy than weight. You can also always walk along the bottom if its not too deep.

What most people think of when they hear plate armor is actually tournament plate which was far thicker, heavier, and less maneuverable than combat plate. Its much better to get out of the way of the mace than to take the hit even in armor. Tournament plate was designed to keep people from getting killed when they had lances coming at them. For example, King Henry II of France was killed in a peaceful tournament because a lance punctured his helmet.

Thanks everyone ...

All I had to compare with was trying to move heavy weights while swimming. Trying to pull 40-50 pounds off of the bottom of a pool or pond is pretty difficult and can probably only be done for a short time. I've hiked for a couple weeks before with a 45lb pack and there is no way I could swim with it for more than 30 sec or so. Of course as mentioned by Kosem, plate armor is much better distributed. Based on that, I like Gallows idea of allowing characters to spend fatigue to lower the amount of dies. So it can be pretty easy for a short amount of time. I could also see making a distinction between treading water and trying to move with all the plates causing drag, which would also be tiring.

So in my mind + 2-3 die is a tad low ... if you add +(soak) die then you end up with 5 at full plate armor which might be high, but if you let characters buy off some die with fatigue, it can quickly be pretty easy for a short time period ... so that seems like a nice compromise. Most armor would just add 1-3 without using fatigue to modify.

Thanks again for the good info (particuarly the distinction between plate and tourney armor),

(BTW these guys where in the Deep River location so it was a Hard (d3) Athletics check (with no armor penelties) not to get swept away, so it was pretty hard conditions to begin with)

(full disclosure: I am one of the players in the situation, but not the one in plate).

One easy way you could do it is add the encumbrance value in misfortune dice to the already Hard (3d) check. If encumbrance is over strength, you could then assign fatigue per round (either 1 or 1/encumbrance over).

Considering how often our trained Mercenary would fail even Average Athletics checks, 5+ challenge dice starts to seem like sadism.

I kinda just threw out the number of challenge dice. I'm still learning the system myself so if that sounds too easy for a decidely hard task then go with something higher. The thing about armor is just a pet peeve of mine, so sorry if I sounded a little heavy handed. It wasn't intended. Happy to hear that it was useful though.

I think what you did sounded fine, actually. Even leather armour is heavy and awkward compared to clothes, and swimming in normal clothes is difficult and tiring enough. I like the idea of buying off challenge dice with fatigue. That and fortune dice mean that falling into the water isn't an instant death sentence for a PC, but I think it should be something they're really fearful of.

Kosem said:

No Problem.

I'm not sure if you'd find this useful but this helped me as I was getting used to the die rolls ...

These percentages are for someone with just 3 Characteristic dies (average human attribute score) with no modifiers. The second number is just me rounding it off to make it easier to remmember. The first number is the actual percentage chance of success.

Success Rates with 3 Characteristic Dies
-
Simple 0d = 87.5% (~90%)
Easy 1d = 59.5% (~60%)
Average 2d = 38% (~40%)
Hard 3d = 24% (~24%)
Daunting 4d = 14.5% (~15%)

The idea of buying off dice with fatigue in this case doesn't work well in my mind. It certainly makes sense as a mechanic, but makes no sense at all in game. (The choice is between what? Swimming hard and swimming hard, but differently? Is there some way that the guy in plate can swim without tiring himself?)

If the action is tiring, then just assign fatigue. In the case of the initial idea, make the roll Diff 3 but then assign fatigue equal to Encumbrance - 3 (basically forcing them to "buy down" difficulty).

Doc, the Weasel said:

Yes, its the difference between using brute force (buying off fatigue) and using proper technique (cupped hands, correct leg kicks, etc.) – less tiring but harder to do.

Doc, the Weasel said:

I get what you're saying, but the reason I like this, is that it really drives home to players just how dangerous jumping into a river in plate armour is. They probably are 'forced' to accumulate a lot of fatigue (and at a faster rate than they would normally), but just reinforces how much trouble they're in.

The choice isn't between swimming hard and swimming hard but differently. It's between swimming very hard (lots of fatigue) and (in all likelihood) drowning.

What's the problem. I go swimming every day with a 30kg Plate

No really not that the plate pulls you down into the water it makes the motion to keep you up almost impossible.

Been swimming a lot my entire life, and plate armor being distributed around your body does not help you, it makes it even harder.

I made a bet with a friend to swim with chain armor, and I quickly found out it was 10 times easier to swim with it bundled up under one hand, while I swam with the other, compared to frapped around my body.

The problem is how water flows. When you swim the problem is not our weight, it's the resistance against our body. When you're wearing clothes this resistance is a LOT higher, because the water flows between your clothes, and every movement pushes the water back and forth, creating even more resistance (which is why you should remove your clothes when you need to swim greater distances, and keep it bundled up.

Chain mail even has holes, which makes the water pass through easier, a full plate would be nearly impossible to swim with.

You have both insane weight (remember when you dive, the normal weight to keep you under water is 8 kg, where 4 comes from bottle and 4 from lead... against 30-40???).

AND you have absolutely insanely crappy water dynamics, every movement would be completely hindered.

I'd say you need to be olympic swimmer to swim/stay above water in such a thing, if you were to do it for more than a few minutes.

And again, if I were to swim with plate, I would make a bundle and pack it in that, having it around my body would be a death sentence.

Excellent info, lots of good thoughts from everyone. I'm glad I asked .

Take aways:

– armor is not as necessarily as restrictive to movement as I imagined,

– but it is not the lack of movement thats the problem, but the resistance created in water,

– swimming with armor is probably best modeled by a system that allows for a short time period that causes a high amount of fatigue

– heavy armor still being more problematic then cloth or leather.

GullyFoyle said:

Remember that every little swirl of water you create, consumes power, and something as solid, and yet hollow, as plate armor will create a ton of swirls

But weight is still an issue. With plate armor, you'll be dragged down by the weight, and be unable to get back up due to the resistance it creates.