"Can't Swim" Disadvantage

[Bathawk]

Hey I was wondering if this showed up anywhere in the game. I think I may have seen it as a quirk, or even a zero point feature, but I would think sinking liek a stone with potentially lethal consequences should be worth more than that unless your playing a desert campaign or something similar

[Inky]

Apparently, the quirk you're referring to is on page 165 of Basic Set (where it's actually called "Cannot Float" which might be how you missed it).

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

Hey I was wondering if this showed up anywhere in the game. I think I may have seen it as a quirk, or even a zero point feature, but I would think sinking liek a stone with potentially lethal consequences should be worth more than that unless your playing a desert campaign or something similar

IIRC, there's nothing about Cannot Swim in RAW.

Canonically, there's Incompetence - which might cover swimming - and Cannot Float, which is another Quirk. Slightly different rules but the same idea.

Over the years there has been some dispute over whether complete lack of certain types of mobility (e.g., Cannot Climb, Cannot Swim) is a -5 point disad or a Quirk.

I'd be inclined to make Cannot Swim a -5 point problem if it messes with all forms of self-powered water movement. Treat it a variant of Sessile but you just bob around helplessly or sink straight to the bottom and stick there. Cannot Float or Incompetence (Swimming) can be overcome if you wear or carry items which provide sufficient buoyancy.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Bathawk

Hey I was wondering if this showed up anywhere in the game. I think I may have seen it as a quirk, or even a zero point feature, but I would think sinking liek a stone with potentially lethal consequences should be worth more than that unless your playing a desert campaign or something similar

Most entities with Cannot Float do not need to breathe. People with Incompetence at Swimming rarely actually have to swim and can rely on teammates who are not so handicapped to haul them through the water. People with an actually deadly inability to swim can be represented with a phobia that causes them to panic when in deep water.

[Blind Mapmaker]

I always thought that Cannot Float was cheap for a possibly very severe disadvantage in a standard fantasy campaign (or really anything where physical adventuring in an earth-like environment mattered). Sure it can be worked around, but not everybody wants to lug around floatation devices or learn the Walk on Water spell.

Compare it to something like Colorblindness that gives -1 to six skills you might not need (and three of which might not even exist at most TLs). Sure, Swimming might be an esoteric skill in a Dark Sun setting and a really bad idea in some After the End settings, but that really shouldn't figure in the standard. I feel they just didn't want to give robot characters a lot of points for stuff they might not really suffer from that much. As a Divine Curse I would rate Cannot Float at at least -5 pts.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

As a Divine Curse I would rate Cannot Float at at least -5 pts.

Presumably that would be "Cursed to sink", meaning you always sink in water and can't be kept afloat by anything short of riding in a boat?

[RGTraynor]

It's a big It Depends. In my campaign, where deep sea water travel happens a lot, I'd give it more than Quirk-level treatment. In a campaign that's limited to "You sail a week to X and you get there just fine, now let's have the actual adventure," not so much.

[Rupert]

Either Incompetence: Swimming or Cannot Float could represent someone who can't swim - the former means they don't know how and can't learn, but they can float in calm water where they don't need to roll or can roll with large bonuses. The latter means they might well know how to swim, but sink without aids of some sort. Having both, well they'll want to avoid water deeper than a bathtub.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

It's a big It Depends. In my campaign, where deep sea water travel happens a lot, I'd give it more than Quirk-level treatment. .

Yes. Should someone be so daft as to contemplate Gurps: One Piece (which like most long running anime has Too Much Canon) an entire class of Supers would hav e this as a major weakness in what's very close to being a "water world". That would get a higher pt value treatment. More typical games? Not so much.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

It's a big It Depends. In my campaign, where deep sea water travel happens a lot, I'd give it more than Quirk-level treatment. In a campaign that's limited to "You sail a week to X and you get there just fine, now let's have the actual adventure," not so much.

It's not actually as big an issue as you might think.
Historically a *lot* of sailors couldn't swim - what sort of incompetent sailor couldn't even hold onto the ship? And ships moved fast enough, and were sufficiently hard to maneuver, that if you fell overboard while the ship was moving in anything but the lightest winds, they probably could not have rescued you if they wanted too even if you could swim for a few hours.

Swimming is one of those skills that is oddly patchily distributed historically - being almost unknown in a lot of cultures. People in those cultures just accept it as common sense that you don't try to go into water too deep to wade in.

And it's a rare enough accident swimming helps with that it doesn't much matter in terms of death rates - that's just the way the big push for it in our (modern American) culture happened to be framed in the early 20th century. It's very successful propaganda rather than any reflection of real risks of not being able to swim.

Edit: Hm the cultures swimming is historically common do seem to be ones that live next to a fairly calm shallow body of water - lagoons, large shallow harbors, slow moving rivers - probably because those are the places it's actually good for something. You can use it to access resources on the shallow bottom or across a narrow strip of water.