New Modifier: Swimming

[piratespice]

Another not-so-useful ability, but worth addressing. To put this Modifier in perspective, my general rule is that a character’s swimming speed is one-third of his running speed (or one-half, if it’ll make your life easier).

SWIMMING
Cost = 1 red stone

Description
You can swim as fast as you can run (refer to the Running row on the D&R for swimming speed).

Options
[/li][li] Increase cost to 1 white stone if you can breathe underwater.

Comments
Swimming is not overly useful in most games, which is why it is so inexpensive. In an underwater campaign, or one involving a lot of villains with hidden island bases, you may want to increase the cost of this Modifier to 1 white stone.

Rule for Modifier Box:
[/li][li] Swimming, swim at full running speed
[/b]

[psistrike]

Good little Modifier that is needed for some characters(Namor).But it has been said by Evan Jones that breathing underwater should only be worth 2 Red stones.So for the ability to breath underwater I would change it to say Increase cost to 1 White stone instead of by 1 White stone.

[piratespice]

To be honest, that was a typo on my part. It was, indeed, intended to say, "Increase cost to 1 white stone if you can breathe underwater." That will be changed immediately.

I don't necessarily agree with Evan on this one (though I'm certainly not going to quibble over a 1 red stone difference in cost), but it is worth agreeing with him just to keep the cost of this Modifier clean (rather than 1 red and 1 white).

[beyonder]

Another good, simple Mod by the Spice Boy.

It's useful to note that, for certain activities on the D&R (Weight, Running, Flying, Area/Leaping), a shift one point to the right approximately doubles the outcome, or one to the left halves an outcome; so if you wanna use half-running speed as default swimming speed, it's easy to simply say "Default swimming speed = Running Speed -1". This doubling effect comes in handy at other times, too, as I'm sure you can see.

Query: what if you want a super-speed swimmer, a human torpedo? I think that Namor, f'rinstance, can swim faster than he can run. Make it a similar Mod with a cost equal to (Modifier Number - Speed score) +1?

[piratespice]

Good point about the speed row on the D&R. This just shows how little I really thought about this Modifier (cuz aqua-characters tend to be pretty lame).

As for super-speeds swimmers, another good point. But I specifically wanted to avoid even having a Modifier Number attached to this Modifier. It seems like a waste of stones, to me. A swimming character likely won't get to use his ability very much, so I wanted this power to be a bargain.

For characters like Namor, I think I would instead offer something like an Option making the character's swimming speed based off of the Flying row of the D&R, rather than the Running row. Any thoughts?

[beyonder]

Either that, or maybe Flight with the "Underwater Only" Disadvantage (-3) or "Also Underwater" Advantage (+1).