Had an underwater dungeon in my pirate game a few years ago. A megalodon shark controlled by the Aboleth inside hounded them into the dungeon. Inside, there was a trap hallway that contained an incredibly strong current of water that would try to push them out of the dungeon and into the clutches of the shark. Needless to say, two PCs got pushed out there by tritons, and several of the tritons did as well. Though with some lucky rolls, the players manages to claw their way back inside without getting got by the shark.
For the question of the day, I used glowing super-heated rock that was intermittent as lava flowed through channels behind the rock. Keeping it random and inconsistent was fun. I had developed a large aquatic duengeon a while back that was an active underwater volcano in a trench at the bottom of the ocean. It was large enough that there were two factions for the party to interact with. One faction was a group of Merrow, and the other was a small group of Kraken Priests with a following of mixed aquatic and amphibious humanoids. The merrow were trying to move in and set up a hunting ground to get worthy sacrifices for Demogorgon. The Kraken Priests were trying to resurrect an ancient Kraken that lie dormant in the trench due to a curse. The party was hired by a nearby fishing port that claimed all the fish used to sustain their economy were disappearing at a rapid rate. The village had already hired two other adventuring groups, who had disappeared after entering the water as well.
@GoblinsCorner It made an additional hazard for them to consider in combat. If the walls were damaged, it could potentially spurting lava causing fire damage, followed immediately by rapidly cooling lava turning into exploding rock.
This is why my Necromancer ritual casts Water Breathing every morning and every evening on himself and the entire party. No one drowns on my watch! You will only be allowed to become my undead minion when I say so!
On the topic of heavy armor: Most adventurers are probably, realistically speaking, not going to be able to swim anyway, because of their backpacks full of heavy equipment. While I know from experience that swimming in clothes is a lot easier than you'd expect, I imagine the same isn't true if you carry multiple daggers, swords, a cooking pot, etc. all over your body. On the other hand, climbing underwater should be extremely easy and extremely low-risk, as even if you're too heavy to swim, the water still carries most of your weight. As for neutral buoyancy, you can probably use some kind of air filled bladders to neutralize your equipment weight, but keep in mind that those do get "crushed" (compressed) under water, and will become less buoyant the further down you are. If I was running a campaign, I would be heavily tempted to just ignore this problem, as I don't want to take a supplementary physics course just to accurately run the precise details of underwater physics (as in, how quickly does an air bladder lose buoyancy, exactly how fast would you fall, etc.). Adding another weakness to STR builds, which already get the shaft in most cases, is also not really in the best interests of game balance. (STR builds dominate melee combat, but ranged builds dominate STR builds because of how dangerous it is to even be in melee range of anything to begin with, and casters dominate martials because of how strong magic is. A lot of people seem to enjoy the idea of punishing players for using heavy armor, because they overestimate how powerful heavy armor is, or maybe because they're just jerks. I don't. I want everyone to enjoy the freaking game and not feel discriminated against for their class/race/build choices.)
I would rule that spellcasting and communication are handled by the Water Breathing spell. You can just talk normally underwater with that spell active. If you don't have Water Breathing, then I'm not sure how feasible an underwater dungeon is to begin with, but in that case yeah, you'd have to think about how that could work. I would have to test if talking underwater works IRL, but I imagine it would be muffled and I know for a fact you'd lose a lot of air that way. And if you have like a diving suit with breathable air inside (another thing that could get crushed in deep water!), then I'm not sure your words would survive passing from air, to glass/metal, to water, to glass/metal, and finally back into air. Spellcasting should work fine in a diving suit, though, so maybe if one of you has a Message cantrip? Or you could develop a system of hand signals.
I agree. Encumbrance and swimming might have a minor place thematically, but in general punishing players isn't really our thing. There's probably an argument somewhere with combat and how much stuff you have in the water, but again it depends on your game. We tend to ignore a lot of the technical stuff in favor of how interesting a story it makes because, well, this is all fantasy anyhow
Pressure will not crush you. That is not, and never was, how it works. The only reason water pressure crushes a submarine is because it's a _rigid_ can filled with a _compressible_ gas, at a pressure not matching the outside. Pressure has some weird chemical effects that can kill you, like turning the very oxygen you breathe into a poison, and dissolving nitrogen into your blood that will start to boil out and explode you from the inside when you enter an area of less pressure, but unless you have hollow, gas-filled bones or something ridiculous like that, pressure will not crush you. (I guess if you're an aarakocra you might have to worry about your hollow bones getting crushed/broken/breached, and your flesh getting forced into them.)
@@GoblinsCorner Clarification. By "explode you from the inside out", I meant it can cause the same damage as high blood pressure. In extreme cases, blood vessels or even your cells themselves can rupture. It's not as dramatic as a literal explosion. The reason water pressure cannot crush you is because it is homogeneous. It's the same pressure (or close enough to it) from all sides. An air-filled balloon apparently deflates in high pressure, as the air inside is compressed, and then re-inflates as the pressure is reduced again. Liquids aren't compressible (or at least, it takes extreme pressure differentials for any noticeable compression to occur), and neither are solids (again, extreme differences necessary for any noticeable compression). The reason the pressure of a hydraulic press crushes you, is because it's different from different directions. There's pressure from above as the press descends onto you, and pressure from below as the ground/table/whatever resists your resulting attempt to move down. But there's no significant pressure on the sides, so the materials you are made of are forced into the sideways directions. You get flattened like a pancake, and your materials are broken or torn in the process, liquids forced to squirt out as containers rupture, etc. I have no idea where the misunderstanding that water pressure will crush you like a grape comes from, but people often fiercely hold onto it for no reason even if you explain to them why it's wrong.
Had an underwater dungeon in my pirate game a few years ago. A megalodon shark controlled by the Aboleth inside hounded them into the dungeon. Inside, there was a trap hallway that contained an incredibly strong current of water that would try to push them out of the dungeon and into the clutches of the shark. Needless to say, two PCs got pushed out there by tritons, and several of the tritons did as well. Though with some lucky rolls, the players manages to claw their way back inside without getting got by the shark.
And that wasn't even the funniest encounter in the dungeon
For the question of the day, I used glowing super-heated rock that was intermittent as lava flowed through channels behind the rock. Keeping it random and inconsistent was fun. I had developed a large aquatic duengeon a while back that was an active underwater volcano in a trench at the bottom of the ocean. It was large enough that there were two factions for the party to interact with. One faction was a group of Merrow, and the other was a small group of Kraken Priests with a following of mixed aquatic and amphibious humanoids. The merrow were trying to move in and set up a hunting ground to get worthy sacrifices for Demogorgon. The Kraken Priests were trying to resurrect an ancient Kraken that lie dormant in the trench due to a curse. The party was hired by a nearby fishing port that claimed all the fish used to sustain their economy were disappearing at a rapid rate. The village had already hired two other adventuring groups, who had disappeared after entering the water as well.
This is a cool mental image of glowing stone. Bonus points to change your lights that color if you play in person
@GoblinsCorner It made an additional hazard for them to consider in combat. If the walls were damaged, it could potentially spurting lava causing fire damage, followed immediately by rapidly cooling lava turning into exploding rock.
Well my Players complained about not having had water adventures, so...
Hopefully this will help :)
Great ideas in this.
loving the content guys!
You're quite welcome!
It is lit up by fiber optic kelp that propagates light from a central magma vent
My first thought of an old underwater temple being lit by perpetual flame. And thermal vents to fry/trap intruders.
This is why my Necromancer ritual casts Water Breathing every morning and every evening on himself and the entire party. No one drowns on my watch! You will only be allowed to become my undead minion when I say so!
Smart move.
On the topic of heavy armor: Most adventurers are probably, realistically speaking, not going to be able to swim anyway, because of their backpacks full of heavy equipment. While I know from experience that swimming in clothes is a lot easier than you'd expect, I imagine the same isn't true if you carry multiple daggers, swords, a cooking pot, etc. all over your body. On the other hand, climbing underwater should be extremely easy and extremely low-risk, as even if you're too heavy to swim, the water still carries most of your weight.
As for neutral buoyancy, you can probably use some kind of air filled bladders to neutralize your equipment weight, but keep in mind that those do get "crushed" (compressed) under water, and will become less buoyant the further down you are.
If I was running a campaign, I would be heavily tempted to just ignore this problem, as I don't want to take a supplementary physics course just to accurately run the precise details of underwater physics (as in, how quickly does an air bladder lose buoyancy, exactly how fast would you fall, etc.). Adding another weakness to STR builds, which already get the shaft in most cases, is also not really in the best interests of game balance. (STR builds dominate melee combat, but ranged builds dominate STR builds because of how dangerous it is to even be in melee range of anything to begin with, and casters dominate martials because of how strong magic is. A lot of people seem to enjoy the idea of punishing players for using heavy armor, because they overestimate how powerful heavy armor is, or maybe because they're just jerks. I don't. I want everyone to enjoy the freaking game and not feel discriminated against for their class/race/build choices.)
I would rule that spellcasting and communication are handled by the Water Breathing spell. You can just talk normally underwater with that spell active. If you don't have Water Breathing, then I'm not sure how feasible an underwater dungeon is to begin with, but in that case yeah, you'd have to think about how that could work. I would have to test if talking underwater works IRL, but I imagine it would be muffled and I know for a fact you'd lose a lot of air that way. And if you have like a diving suit with breathable air inside (another thing that could get crushed in deep water!), then I'm not sure your words would survive passing from air, to glass/metal, to water, to glass/metal, and finally back into air. Spellcasting should work fine in a diving suit, though, so maybe if one of you has a Message cantrip? Or you could develop a system of hand signals.
I agree. Encumbrance and swimming might have a minor place thematically, but in general punishing players isn't really our thing. There's probably an argument somewhere with combat and how much stuff you have in the water, but again it depends on your game. We tend to ignore a lot of the technical stuff in favor of how interesting a story it makes because, well, this is all fantasy anyhow
harboons with chains. underwater plant growth...heat metal with additional :steam damage"
characters carry cages (like bird cages) but keep bioluminescent creatures/ plants in them.
Yoo gonna use pistol shrimps for days
pocket of air, turtle farts- toxic gas.
Pressure will not crush you. That is not, and never was, how it works. The only reason water pressure crushes a submarine is because it's a _rigid_ can filled with a _compressible_ gas, at a pressure not matching the outside.
Pressure has some weird chemical effects that can kill you, like turning the very oxygen you breathe into a poison, and dissolving nitrogen into your blood that will start to boil out and explode you from the inside when you enter an area of less pressure, but unless you have hollow, gas-filled bones or something ridiculous like that, pressure will not crush you. (I guess if you're an aarakocra you might have to worry about your hollow bones getting crushed/broken/breached, and your flesh getting forced into them.)
Good knowledge to fit into the databanks. I feel we both missed this science fact about water pressure. Thank you!
@@GoblinsCorner
Clarification.
By "explode you from the inside out", I meant it can cause the same damage as high blood pressure. In extreme cases, blood vessels or even your cells themselves can rupture. It's not as dramatic as a literal explosion.
The reason water pressure cannot crush you is because it is homogeneous. It's the same pressure (or close enough to it) from all sides. An air-filled balloon apparently deflates in high pressure, as the air inside is compressed, and then re-inflates as the pressure is reduced again. Liquids aren't compressible (or at least, it takes extreme pressure differentials for any noticeable compression to occur), and neither are solids (again, extreme differences necessary for any noticeable compression). The reason the pressure of a hydraulic press crushes you, is because it's different from different directions. There's pressure from above as the press descends onto you, and pressure from below as the ground/table/whatever resists your resulting attempt to move down. But there's no significant pressure on the sides, so the materials you are made of are forced into the sideways directions. You get flattened like a pancake, and your materials are broken or torn in the process, liquids forced to squirt out as containers rupture, etc.
I have no idea where the misunderstanding that water pressure will crush you like a grape comes from, but people often fiercely hold onto it for no reason even if you explain to them why it's wrong.