Swim (Str; Armour Penalty)
Check: Make a Swim check once per round while you are in the water. Success means you may swim at up to onehalf your speed as a full-round action or at one-quarter your speed as a move action. If you fail by four or less, you make no progress through the water. If you fail by five or more, you go underwater.
If you are underwater, either because you failed a Swim check or because you are swimming underwater intentionally, you must hold your breath. You can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to your Constitution score but only if you do nothing other than take move actions or free actions. If you take a standard action or a full-round action, such as making an attack, the remainder of the time you can hold your breath is reduced by one round. Effectively, if you are in combat you can hold your breath only half as long as normal. After that period of time, you must make a DC 10 Constitution check every round to continue holding your breath. The DC for that check increases by one each round. If you fail the Constitution check, you begin to drown.
The DC for the Swim check depends on the water, as given on the table below.
Each hour that you swim, you must make a DC 20 Swim check or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage from fatigue.
Action: A successful Swim check allows you to swim onequarter of your speed as a move action or one-half your speed as a full-round action.
Special: Swim checks are subject to double the normal armour check penalty and encumbrance penalty.
If you have the Athletic feat, you get a +2 bonus on Swim checks.
If you have the Endurance feat, you get a +4 bonus on Swim checks made to avoid taking nonlethal damage from fatigue.
A creature with a swim speed can move through water at its indicated speed without making Swim checks. It gains a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform a special action or avoid a hazard. The creature always can choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered when swimming. Such a creature can use the run action while swimming, provided that it swims in a straight line.
Then he saw something else: bronze ladders extending from the ledges to the water’s surface at regular intervals, and there was one just ahead of him. Instantly he struck out for it, fighting the current that would have held him to the middle of the stream. It dragged at him as with tangible, animate, slimy hands, but he buffeted the rushing surge with the strength of desperation and drew closer and closer inshore, fighting furiously for every inch. Now he was even with the ladder and with a fierce, gasping plunge he gripped the bottom rung and hung on, breathless.
– Jewels of Gwahlur