Surf & Turf
My illustrator has informed me that this month is #mermay. Far be it from Handbook-World to buck the trend. I do think we’re slightly less cute than the rest of the hashtag though.
Any dang way, this particular experience comes from a long-ago Pathfinder game where I thought it would be a good idea to roll up a merfolk. If you’ve never given the race a look, I’ll go ahead and save you some reading:
Base Speed (Slow Speed): Merfolk have a base speed of 5 feet. They have a swim speed of 50 feet.
That movement speed means the second you write “merfolk” on your character sheet you’re in damage control mode. Assuming you’re in a standard adventure rather than a Krill & Krakens campaign, a merfolk PC is going to find herself flopping through the dungeon like a friggin’ magikarp. And let me tell ya, it’s no fun running from the monsters with only a 20 foot run speed.
In my case, damage control began with combat style, which made archery a good starting place. Standing still and plunking away with a bow is pretty standard at low level. And thanks to the stand-still-to-full-attack nature of 3.X archery, I could keep my eye out for mobile archery platforms at higher level.
Next were the options baked into the race. Both the Strong Tail and Secret Magic alternate racial traits provide relief for that abysmal movement speed, increasing it from 5 to 15 feet or giving you access to the fins to feet spell respectively. Since this particular campaign was set several hundred miles from the nearest ocean in Golarion’s River Kingdoms, I opted to make my guy a mudskipper merfolk with a stubby Strong Tail. Behold my majesty.
At this point my Cajun hobo river pirate merfolk still needed a class, so I sought about for anything that could buff movement. Bard was the natural choice, with options at every level. Expeditious retreat, summon monster II (horse) and haste were all there for the taking. Plus bard plays nice with the archery shtick anyway, building naturally into the arcane archer prestige class. We never quite go to that point though. More’s the pity, this campaign only lasted to level 3. Even so, it was still all kinds of fun planning a build around this one interesting weakness.
That brings us to our question of the day! When you look at all those cool aquatic races that you’ll “never get a chance to play,” what stops you from giving them a shot? How would you go about optimizing one of these suboptimal options for a standard land-based adventure? And if you have given a merfolk PC a chance to shine, how did it go? Did it turn out life was better down where it’s wetter? Or did you relish the chance to be part of that world? Tell us all about your little mermaid adventures down in the comments!
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I only like aquatic races that can actually function on land. In 3.5, for example, I’m a fan of sea kin, darfellan, water halflings, and shoal halflings. They all do nice things outside of just being able to swim good. Sea kin have bonus skill points and free net proficiency; darfellan have a Strength bonus and a bite attack; and water/shoal halflings are straight-up just better versions of regular halflings most of the time.
But what about THE CHALLENGE!?
I guess the campaign took place before Advanced Classes:
Strongfin & Bloodrager gives you 25ft land speed up front for the price of „fins to feet“ 3 levels later than Bard. That’s almost as fast as a Dwarf Barbarian.
This plays out all the strengths: +2 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Cha, +2 nat Armor, can’t be tripped.
I‘ also add the Darkvision alternate racial trait.
Downside: I‘d be hard pressed to find a backstory for this.
Plus fins to feet isn’t even that great at low level. You just know your GM is going to invoke that 1-3 hour limit at the exact wrong moment.
with the elemental bloodline you don’t even need a stupid spell:
8th level gives you either +30ft base speed or 60ft fly speed.
I guess almost everything from that “What’s the highest movement speed we can get?” Bloodrager build would apply here.
Person: “How is your merfolk running around so fast?”
Player: “He’s REALLY angry.”
At that point you’re basically moving like a naga, slithering around on the ground.
I think a Mermaid PC on land would be best suited to either a class with polymorph or a class capable of fighting from a wheelchair.
Oh hey, an excuse to use the combat wheelchair which my gaming group wouldn’t roll their eyes at!
I suppose one solution to playing a mermaid is not being a mermaid.
Or that has the Ride skill. I don’t think there’s anything in the rulebook that explicitly says a mermaid can’t ride a horse (although the “guide with knees” skill use would be unavailable)
If I were going to run a mermaid in 5e, I’d want a campaign that it naturally fit into. For me, when you have somebody walking about on a tail suspension of disbelief goes out of the window a bit. However, I could absolutely see it working in the following settings:
A political/military campaign where the merperson was an influential figure who could spend most of their time in a giant fish-tank or a chair, and having to flop around the floor would be a one-or-two-time problem when something dire happened to the place where you were staying, making your weakness meaningful but not crippling and allowing you to explore just how terrible it was when it did come up.
A high-level game, if they were a caster. Clearly, one of the great advantages of powerful magic is that it allows you to explore environments you couldn’t usually; fly spells, flying cloaks or Greater Steeds could all be useful.
An intrigue game set in a canal city, a Saltmarsh game… anything where the above-water and below-water worlds meet would give a mer-person a role something like a hacker in Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. Admittedly, that has its issues, but if your group is fine with different people having specialized roles which take them away from the party at large then this could be a lot of fun. If the opportunity to play in such a game ever comes up, this is definitely the sort of character that I would make.
I’ve always been intrigued by this idea of “the halflings” half of the party vs. the “Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas” half of the party. This is a version of that.
You’d have to set up encounters such that there is compelling stuff to do for both halves. It might be a one-shot rather than a campaign, but the premise is intriguing.
I mean, I’ve discussed to death in various Handbook comments sections the unusual setup of my campaign, but that sort of divided-party thing is exactly what I’ve been doing for four out of the five years I’ve been running it. As long as the players have clear senses of purpose and you’re alright at improv, you can easily do this for eight people in different corners of a continent, let alone a main group and another person in a different part of a city.
For mobility issues, the “ride” skill + a mount are your friends. If you’re worried about fitting someplace, take the “Undersized Mount” feat and use a mount of the same size you are.
You could also be a flying fish, and become an Air Kineticist: at 3rd level you have a constant-effect of “fly” via the “Wings of Air” utility wild talent.
for bonus comedy, make sure your mount has a slow base movement speed. was debating on building a merfolk cavalier on an ankalysaurus mount…
What would a merfolk “marine” even ride? Do they storm the beaches on giant lobsters?
My first thought was giant crab (charge sideways?).
That would be fine for a “marine” who is going to battle against coastal locations.
However I have second thoughts when I try to apply this to an adventurer. An adventurer will want to go inland for long period of time and a quick Google tells me that crabs can live for about 24 hours out of water if kept moist.
Perhaps a mammal? Giant otter cavalier? Amusingly adorable but believably fearsome. Sadly a quick search of the PFsrd has Dire Otters as being Small size.
Was the slow move speed ever a problem during travel / mobility-based encounters?
It would have been an issue during travel had the party not also included a cohort that could carry them without complaining (due to being Mindless)
during fights, they more or less played as an immobile weapon platform, waiting for an enemy to be in a good position to shoot before firing. The one time this really came into an issue was VS a monk miniboss- if you have a 5 foot land speed, you can’t 5-foot step, so they could never prevent him from AOOing them when they tried to move out of his reach.
aquatic Gunslinger?
How‘d that work (out) under water.
I guess an affinity for fire is a good reason to stay on land.
or did you do the air rifle version?
https://youtu.be/sCoUWJHhDZ0
https://youtu.be/2dZLeEUE940
while I don’t like (and allow as DM) gun powder in D&D, I‘m game for these.
Dragon’s Demand has no underwater content, so it never came up. How they functioned before coming to the campaign is a mystery for the ages.
We’re playing the Saltmarsh campaigns in 5e at the moment, and we’ve ended up with three out of five PCs having a swim speed… the sea-elf and triton being fully amphibious, and the lizard man merely having good lungs. It’s not in any way a requirement or expectation of the adventures, but it’s proven handy on several occasions…
As to the reverse, I’ve never really encountered it in a game. Sure, the short-legged halfling or excessively-plated paladin can be a bit of an impediment, but not on the scale of your fish out of water. Though I do remember a monstrous campaign some years ago where we had several large and unusually-fast characters, who spent a bit of time carrying those limited to a mere 30 feet speed. “Grab the werewolf, and run” isn’t something you hear every day…
lol. I really do love the cavalcade of weirdoes that is the typical dnd party.
Like I said, this was an actual monsters campaign — as I recall, our cast included my giant lizardman, a werewolf, a pixie, and an earth-elemental (played as a Discworld troll). To describe things as weird is an understatement.
However the lizard did have a base speed to rival a horse, along with a ridiculously high strength and constitution… so if the party needed speed, carrying the slower party members was always an option. And getting to use a werewolf as a ranged weapon (the old fastball special) still remains a highlight of that campaign many years later.
5E limited aquatic races to stuff that can handle land. This is one of those problems that only happens if you make it a problem. (The Grung are the exception since they need to be regularly moistened, which makes long inland trips not viable, but they were made for a gimmick fundraiser that is intentionally unbalanced.)
A few 5E subclasses do have the “Triton problem” though. Things like the Storm Herald Barbarian, Lurker Warlock, etc. have class features that grant swim speed and water breathing. These subs make great thematic sense for a Triton, but if you do you’re basically down a feature since you already get those from your race.
Yeah, that irks me a bit too. Swim speed is great, but I’d like the option to sub it out when my race gives it to me. Maybe for an class feature that you can otherwise learn at the level you would normally get swim speed? It would work for Warlock at least.
I’d just have it increase existing swim-speeds.
I ‘ve definitely been there; I played an Undine who took the amphibious quality and the option for blindsense limited to bodies of water (who was an aquaphobe due to an incident where she was stuck on the ocean floor for some time; 60 ft darkvision sounds like a lot if you’re not familiar with the kinds of horrors that lurk down there, and slowly crawling her way back to land left a mark on her).
By the time we got to an aquatic adventure, the party had access to an item that gave always-on water breathing and a swim speed far faster than her racial swim speed (which itself would’ve let any aquatic enemy swim circles around her)- which admittedly is an obvious requirement, given you never split the party, but it’s a little saddening to have those racial features and then have them made completely irrelevant in most situations they’d come up.
I feel like this is a spot where min-n-match homebrew has to come into play. In the same way that you can build your own background, it would make sense to borrow an appropriate feature from another subclass in these scenarios.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that. There are some cool aquatic-themed subclasses, but they all assume that your character isn’t naturally aquatic and need to be given the ability to function underwater… even though aquatic races are the most thematically likely to choose those classes.
My only #mermay-ish character was a cecaelia witch (originally a mesmerist, specifically the Eyebiter archetype) in Skulls & Shackles. She’s all loopy from encountering a weird eldritch thing that metaphysically lodged itself in her eye, which made her a lot of fun to play. But she’s in a pirate campaign, so obviously there’s plenty of swimming, and in any case cecaelia have ordinary movement speed and can breathe air so it’s not like I had to give up much.
I think the reason I don’t pick up aquatic races for other campaigns is that it just doesn’t occur to me. If I’m playing a standard dungeon crawl or a fantasy Western or whatever, I’m not going to think of a fish-man archer or whatever. Maybe I should, though.
Mermaid gunslinger who left the oceans so that her black powder wouldn’t get wet for once. IT WRITES ITSELF!
Might I offer a mermaid gunslinger who uses live pistol shrimps?
https://youtu.be/KkY_mSwboMQ
Need… more… info…
Charcter concept is too amazing to be left alone 🙂
How about this: the merfolk singlehandedly invented air rifles. And better aquatic enchantments. Using some underwater material to propel bullets using thermal vent energy.
I had a Mermaid Samurai, back when I played Pathfinder.
On land: A Mount helps you get around. In water, you’re a mermaid, so all is good.
Of course horses are big and clunky, and don’t like going into dungeons, so I had an alternate mount: A Mule!
Fortunately none of our extremely-early dungeons presented serious elevation hazards. At level 4, one of our spellcasters picked up the Levitate spell to move my mule to hard to reach heights, if need be.
It really does seem like there are enough low-level options to make the mer-person problem an interesting challenge without making it impossibly obnoxious.
A friend of mine played a Merfolk Monk during a short-lived game; the growing land speed increase removed a lot of the issues. If you want to go a step further, pick up Zen Archer to use the ranged focus option you recommended and rain down death from a range.
Druid I feel would be another option; aside from there being some fun sea-flavored options for the class, Longstrider is an hours/level spell that boosts your land speed by 10 ft, and by extension Hunter can help a great deal (having either a Mount or an all-day buff built in with some Druid/Ranger spell goodness).
If those don’t tickle your fancy, the Magic Trick (Floating Disk) feat lets you ride your Floating Disk, giving you a 30 ft fly speed (average maneuverability) with the limit of sticking close to the ground, and eventually extends to either letting you fly around with only starting and ending near the ground being requirements, or giving a full on 50 ft fly speed by reducing the remaining duration to rounds/level. Not a bad deal for a level 1 spell slot, one feat, and 6 skill ranks! Wizard can pick this up, and Conjuration (Teleportation) school grants a per-day swift action teleport for little burst movement situations where you’re cornered.
Magic in general is an easy solution to many problems; at 3rd level, you can get Spider Climb for a 20 ft climb speed, making you faster than you were, and giving you a third dimension of movement over most land-lubbers in their own home! Fly and eventually Overland Flight eliminate your issues in combat entirely, by 5th and 9th level respectively as a pure caster.
Mounts are good as mentioned; Druid, Hunter, some Barbarian and Ranger archetypes, and Cavalier give you one at 1st level, and Rangers and Paladins that start at 4th/5th can pick one up from the beginning as well. Wizards and some other casters can again help you here, getting Mount for 2 hours/level per casting (in fact, a wand of it in the hands of someone with UMD or a spell list can a polite ‘please and thank you’ can cover this problem- teamwork!).
Barbarian and Bloodrager get +10 ft as mentioned in comments above, coming out to a respectable 25 ft with the Strong Tail trait for Merfolk. A 50 ft charge to wreck people’s days is pretty functional, especially in games where most combat is in enclosed spaces anyhow.
Finally, for an extreme measure, there’s the Fleet feat; +5 ft move speed every time it’s taken, can be taken any number of times. Not recommended for any but the least feat-hungry of builds, but if you’re THAT determined you can nab it once or twice and have what you need.
There’s a surprisingly long list of options for making a Merfolk land-worthy, if you’re willing to pay a small cost or take a dip. You DO have to do something about it, but Pathfinder 1e’s main strength is how flexible it is with all of its content.
The image of a monk merfolk furiously wriggling across the dungeon to tail-slap someone is almost worth the price of admission, lol.
Given that they’re a monk, I imagine they’d just be walking on their hands… so yeah, I can definitely picture them doing a handstand in order to smack someone in the face with their tail…
I always viewed it as them doing their best snake/naga/yuan-ti impression, but my goodness that’s a fantastic mental image.
Also! Forgot one trick: the Planar Focus feat and a 1 level dip in Hunter with the Forester archetype. Hunter gets a constant buff from a list for their animal companion they can switch during the day, and can apply it to themselves for 1 minute/class level per day. If you lose your companion or take an archetype like Forester, you can instead apply it to yourself.
Planar Focus gives you some planes-themed options for this ability for the cost of a feat slot and 5 ranks in Knowledge (Planes) one of the benefits gives you a burrow speed equal to your land speed! Get Strong Fin or something of that sort and you can tunnel around the battlefield; a 15 ft burrow speed is much more useful than a 15 ft land speed, and if you get Shot on the Run or Spring Attack with a reach weapon, you can play the world’s most dangerous game of whack-a-mole.
*you can instead apply the buff to yourself indefinitely. I need yl proofread better, sorry.
I’m guessing Swash (or is that Buckle?) was wholly committed to this date once she mentioned she was a big fan of man-meat.
As far as overcoming the Aquatic template goes, being a caster with access to Fly/Overland Flight tends to overcome your racial limitations.
Being a Witch is a great option as well – having access to the flight/levitation hex, and the ‘fins to feet’ spell as a spell you can share to any other PC (in case you want to build an Ursula).
You can also buy into an option with magic rugs, brooms or cauldrons, or a mount.
For someone relying on charisma for their class features, you’d think they’d exploit the fact they can carry their mer-date around ‘damsel in distress’ style without complaint.
https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/carried-3-4.jpg
I actually have run a mermaid in Pathfinder. Mermaid oracle with the Godclaw revelation (And dual-cursed). Campaign was fairly nautical in nature, so it worked pretty well, though I still went Strong Tail since the campaign was pretty split in location.
Honestly remains one of my favorite characters to this day, but I love characters with built in mechanical flaws – they make you come up with interesting solutions to overcome those flaws. Flaws add natural preferences to a character, and make it so that you can have very different ideas/suggestions/etc. to other characters that don’t feel contrived.
And that’s just sort of how I see being an aquatic race – you’re playing something with a big flaw but also yields an interesting benefit as a result, which is fun in my opinion. Which is why I love the Oracle class so much.
This strikes me as a version of the “why is this character travelling with the party” problem. Most legged adventurers don’t venture far from land, especially far underwater – but these vast wet domains are home to merfolk. Why would a merfolk choose to venture over dry land and deep into unflooded caverns, when there is so much questing to do back in their native oceans?
Bold of you to assume that something like movement speed stops me 🙂
Also should Swash consider he is basically taking his “girlfriend” to commit cannibalism? 😀
Putting this again just in case, delete it if duplicate comment 🙂
Bold of you to assume that something like movement speed stops me
Also should Swash consider he is basically taking his “girlfriend” to commit cannibalism?
Great, now I find myself wanting to make a mermaid. I have too many characters to finish in my ‘family party’ first.
Very clearly you’ve never seen the absolute terror of a Merfolk Monk or Merfolk Bloodrager.
Personally I’ve always flavored it as the Merfolk has an Eel like tail and sidewinders across the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3NbPUTD5qA
Like this but coming at you with a greatsword or magically enhanced fists to smash face.
The Balance skill says it allows you to move half your speed across a surface and doesn’t specify that it has to be your land speed. That could be useful.