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Severus Snape wrote:Well, the rules state that you can hold your breath for a period of time equal to a calculation based on your PE, but the exact calculation escapes me. I think it's 1/4 or 1/5 of your PE in minutes, but I'll have to look that up.

As far as to what happens when your time expires: I use a flat 1 HP in damage for every melee round that elapses after your time is up. You hit 0 HP before you can get air and you're dead.

Bill wrote:It was just pointed out in another thread that there don't appear to be any rules for drowning or suffocation. What other rules have you found to be completely absent or very difficult to find? What fixes are you using?

If there is another thread on this topic, please provide me a link. I am interested in reading it.

Severus Snape wrote:Well, the rules state that you can hold your breath for a period of time equal to a calculation based on your PE, but the exact calculation escapes me. I think it's 1/4 or 1/5 of your PE in minutes, but I'll have to look that up.

As far as to what happens when your time expires: I use a flat 1 HP in damage for every melee round that elapses after your time is up. You hit 0 HP before you can get air and you're dead.

Damian Magecraft wrote:

Bill wrote:It was just pointed out in another thread that there don't appear to be any rules for drowning or suffocation. What other rules have you found to be completely absent or very difficult to find? What fixes are you using?

If there is another thread on this topic, please provide me a link. I am interested in reading it.

I would have sworn there were rules for drowning in Rifts:Undersea

AUGG, Page 213 wrote:Without a breathable atmosphere/air supply the character will suffocate. Once the atmosphere is gone, characters have four melee rounds (one minute) to do something, before they black out.

Forget holding one's breath, since the vacuum won't allow it. As soon as an atmospheric pressure is gone, the air in one's lungs exhales with one great rush that cannot be stopped. Each melee beyond the first four requires a save vs. lethal poison and each save is made at a cumulative -2 to save. If the first such save is successful the character remains conscious, but loses all of his SDC. Each subsequent round that a save is made, reduce the character's Hit Points by 10%; when they reach zero, he is unconscious, regardless of saving throws.

If at any point, the attempt to save fails, the character blacks out, and Hit Points are reduced to zero. At the end of the round in which a character blacks out, he will die if not returned to an atmosphere and given prompt medical attention.

Adventures on the High Seas, p25 wrote:...a person will start to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen within six melee rounds (roll versus P.E. for every subsequent melee round).

The period that a character may hold its breath without significant effort is equal to its Physical Endurance in actions. A character not performing any actions may effectively hold its breath up to its PE in melee rounds.

Beyond this point the player must roll percentile to avoid the character blacking out with a base chance of 1-50%, +10% per two actions (or melee round doing nothing). Apply any bonus that the character has versus Coma/Death to the die roll. Once the character has blacked out, roll versus Coma/Death (1-20%) every round until the character dies or is resuscitated; failure indicates that the character has died.

Resuscitating a drowned or suffocating character requires a First Aid or related medical skill check. Apply a -5% penalty to the check for every round that the character has been unconscious. After the successful resuscitation check, the player of a drowned character must still make two successful saves versus Coma/Death per the table on page 355 of Rifts Ultimate Edition. Failing to succeed on two checks indicates that the character has lapsed into a coma from complications related to drowning/suffocation such as water in the lungs, a collapsed trachea or other life-threatening problem. Characters that survive drowning will feel weakened and may be vulnerable to pneumonia and other diseases; temporarily reduce the character's PS and PE by 1d6 each. The character recovers both PS and PE at a rate of 1 per week without hospitalization and 1 per day if he or she is receiving treatment at a hospital or other medical facility.

Characters with supernatural endurance multiply their PE by 10 for purposes of calculating how long they may hold their breath. Characters with superhuman levels of endurance are very unlikely to drown.

Severus Snape wrote:Ok, so I did some digging and I did find a suffocation rule in AUGG, page 213. Granted, this only takes into account suffocating in space and does not allow for holding one's breath, but the same rules should apply when the air supply is depleted:

AUGG, Page 213 wrote:Without a breathable atmosphere/air supply the character will suffocate. Once the atmosphere is gone, characters have four melee rounds (one minute) to do something, before they black out.

Forget holding one's breath, since the vacuum won't allow it. As soon as an atmospheric pressure is gone, the air in one's lungs exhales with one great rush that cannot be stopped. Each melee beyond the first four requires a save vs. lethal poison and each save is made at a cumulative -2 to save. If the first such save is successful the character remains conscious, but loses all of his SDC. Each subsequent round that a save is made, reduce the character's Hit Points by 10%; when they reach zero, he is unconscious, regardless of saving throws.

If at any point, the attempt to save fails, the character blacks out, and Hit Points are reduced to zero. At the end of the round in which a character blacks out, he will die if not returned to an atmosphere and given prompt medical attention.

I looked in Adventure on the High Seas, RUE, and Atlantis, and cannot find anything regarding how long one can hold their breath.

Reagren Wright wrote:I've seen so many rule changes over the years with different books I'm not sure which to follow
any more.

Severus Snape wrote:Well, the rules state that you can hold your breath for a period of time equal to a calculation based on your PE, but the exact calculation escapes me. I think it's 1/4 or 1/5 of your PE in minutes, but I'll have to look that up.

As far as to what happens when your time expires: I use a flat 1 HP in damage for every melee round that elapses after your time is up. You hit 0 HP before you can get air and you're dead.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Severus Snape wrote:Well, the rules state that you can hold your breath for a period of time equal to a calculation based on your PE, but the exact calculation escapes me. I think it's 1/4 or 1/5 of your PE in minutes, but I'll have to look that up.

As far as to what happens when your time expires: I use a flat 1 HP in damage for every melee round that elapses after your time is up. You hit 0 HP before you can get air and you're dead.

That would make the average person able to breathe water for 2.5 minutes.

Severus Snape wrote:Seriously, you are correct. I thought I remembered seeing something regarding holding one's breath, but I don't think anymore that it was for PB. I'm thinking the average person could hold their breath for something like 4-5 seconds for every point of PE. Comfortably. This means that with a PE of 10, you'd be able to hold your breath comfortably for about 40-50 seconds before you need to "come up for air", so to speak.

Anyhow, that sounds good to me.

Tadrith wrote:Dead Reign Source book 2:Dark places pg 57 has some notes on drowning, basically just some real world stats on how long you can hold your breath as well rules for resuscitation.

As I understand it I can't post them on the forum right?

SpiritInterface wrote:Suffocation, Drowning, or Strangling a person all take so long as to to be non-combats events. The skill Swimming and Scuba have the rules for drowning(RUE page 317).

Damian Magecraft wrote:

Reagren Wright wrote:I've seen so many rule changes over the years with different books I'm not sure which to follow
any more.

I have kit bashed a "unified" rules set I use in all pally games I run.

flatline wrote:

Damian Magecraft wrote:

Reagren Wright wrote:I've seen so many rule changes over the years with different books I'm not sure which to follow
any more.

I have kit bashed a "unified" rules set I use in all pally games I run.

I don't know what it means, but "kit bashed" has got to be the funniest term I've seen in a while.

Thanks for the chuckle

--flatline

Bill wrote:It was just pointed out in another thread that there don't appear to be any rules for drowning or suffocation. What other rules have you found to be completely absent or very difficult to find? What fixes are you using?

If there is another thread on this topic, please provide me a link. I am interested in reading it.

Colt47 wrote: Often people have to go looking through multiple books to find certain situational rules instead of having them all in one organized place.

Colt47 wrote:The problem with the current published material is that they don't have all the rules for the system in one basket. Often people have to go looking through multiple books to find certain situational rules instead of having them all in one organized place. It's one reason the system is considered to be unwieldy.