Question: Hello! This may be a stupid question, but I was wondering - could one dash in water while swimming? I'm aware that swimming halves your movement, but people like Michael Phelps don't just swim - he books it. Trying to understand the point of swimming if you are that slow, if it's just based on movement speed (which I have been told).
If you mean, is there a way to go the same speed as your normal Dash while swimming without having a power that does that, the answer is no, there is not. This is just based on normal human capabilities; even those who can swim like gangbusters still can't hold a candle to the speed of a person running on foot, not surprising since humans specifically evolved to do most of their travel on land. The fastest swimming speed ever recorded was just over 5.1 miles per hour (or 8.2 kilometers per hour, for the non-US folks in the audience), but the fastest running speed recorded is almost 28 miles per hour at a dead sprint (44.7 kilometers per hour). Actually, putting swimming at only half of running speed is pretty generous for those numbers, although it gets closer to realistic as you move down the curve away from the insane super athletes toward the speeds of more everyday humans.
But, anyway, people are slow in water, and that goes for your Scion, too. He simply can't swim as quickly as he can run, even if he's an Olympic athlete who could leave Phelps eating his wake, because that's not how his body is constructed. Since you're going to have that humanoid body for at least the first part of your career as a Scion, you're going to have to deal with its water limitations.
But you're still a Scion, and that means you have magic at your disposal! The easiest way to get up to speed (I am hilarious!) is to get the Lightning Swimmer knack, which allows you to swim as quickly as you could normally dash, blowing past the competition far beyond mortal capabilities. That only gets you to normal dash speed, but you can layer it with Fast as Thought and/or Peregrine Fleetness for truly crazy feats of swimminess. You can also add speed with appropriate Animal Features; fins, tails or whatever else you think might make you a better swimmer could add a speed bonus instead of dice. Water boons (including Water Mastery and Water Vortex) may be able to scoot you along at greater than your normal speed. And, of course, you could also dedicate some of your Birthright points to a relic that grants you swimming speed bonuses, making you better right out of the gate.
As for what the point of swimming is, that would probably depend on what's going on. If you're just trying to get from point A to point B and there are equally valid ways to do so on land and sea, then yeah, there's no "point" - it'll always take twice as long to swim there as it would to run. But there are plenty of situations where you might have to swim - there's no land way to get there, or you have to go somewhere underwater, or you're being attacked by a flood, or being in the water lends you some camouflage, whatever.
So if you want to swim, by all means, swim! Like most character choices in Scion, all you need to do is specialize into the right powers and go with it.
I may be wrong, but I think he is asking if you can take the Dash action while swimming? This would be a total speed of Dash / 2 while you are in the water and continuing to take Dash actions.
ReplyDeleteHmm, in that case, the answer is you can dash, but it's halved so it won't be a lot more than your normal movement speed on land.
DeleteThank you as the poster yes i was wondering if you could dash even if halved cause with water mastery you would negate that half then lighting swimmer would then activate. Thank you for the question I never thought of getting speed bonus due to fins or something going to run it by my GM considering she has already agreed to me becoming the First Naga of our world, and creating a race of Naga's. could be fun Thank you Anne like always you are the best. PS Any update on Gangs of New York Fiction i been fiending for some like a crack head on withdrawal.
DeleteAs you can see from the bar, it's getting there but not quite there yet. This story turned out much longer than I anticipated, but I promise I'm working on it!
DeleteLol, I have to admit sometimes I can think kind of strangely. I had a scion of the Irish part of a band that at times can be boneheaded. We were in New York and were trying to relax. When a terrorist attack took out our hq for all scion stuff there, the police were given our descriptions and told to apprehend with extreme prejudice. Well, we didn't like it when we saw one of our friends get taken down, so we scattered, trying to get whoever is after us to split up their focus. It worked somewhat. The scion of Pecos Bill gave himself up in a bar after having a drink with a squad of SWAT, our chinese friend was the first to go down by taser, Aphrodite's daughter got cornered when trying to escape with our Atlantean, the Atlantean tried to fly away in the middle of New York, but got caught by another scion, the Norse fellow decided to come in peacefully cause he didn't want to slaughter an entire precinct of cops and I was driving a stolen car. I was trying to pick them up at places where they were cornered, but unfortunately I was too late. I was found after trying to rescue one of my team mates and had to book it out of town, heading towards the docks. I was able to outmaneuver the cops and almost made it to the water front, but then I had an Avatared down god of his come down and stop me, but he gave me a tip to save my own skin which I used.
ReplyDeleteMy plan though before I was stopped is that my character had some dealings with the water. He was planning on crashing the car into the water after he found out his team mates were all captured and put into stuff that demigods would find tough to break into or out of. He already had Water Breathing at the time and a lot of Stam and Dex with max Epics at the time. His plan was to swim the entire Atlantic Ocean to Ireland where he had some protection from the US Government. I did the math with how fast he could swim at a dash and how far it was from New York to Ireland. If he took only breaks to get water in his system, he could make it and just be extremely exhausted afterwards.
But then I was stopped by a god and dropped off at the Irish Embassy, so the US could not stop me. The only reason why he did not want me to succeed is that he didn't want one person escaping his net cause of the shitstorm that came next. Luckily, I had an umbrella.
Well, using animal features is a given, but does using unusual alteration to change legs to or grow tail(s) count?
ReplyDeleteWe'd probably give a small swimming bonus to folks who gave themselves fishy parts, yes. :)
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