I was just thinking, and (forgive me if this has been said) wouldn't it be cool if your athletics level determined how long you could hold your breath under-water? I know that if it's not in now they aren't going put it it now, so that's not what I was saying. Anyways, what do you guys (and like 2 or 3 girls) think?

Athletics, in Morrowind at least, was mostly used for the speed of running and swimming, I'm not sure if I could see that related to the ability to hold your breath or not.

What I'm saying is, someone who is in good shape and exercises alot usualy can hold their breath longer than some one who has been is prison for the last however many year. It just struck me as odd that right once you get off the prison ship in MW you can hold your breath for just as long as when you've been playing for however many hundred hours, and you can swim like the wind but can't hold your breath any longer.

well I think the primary reasons they have not linked it to athletics is that even if you are extremely fit ythere is a limit on how long you can hold your breath. if it's linked to athletics then it would be abused and you would end up with an extremely high atheltics score and limitless breath, not realistic. and also there are water breathing potions and magic so you can overcome the breathing limitations.

and if you smoke skooma it would make sense your ability to hold your breath would decrease. O.o

I think it'd make a great perk for a very athletics heavy class you get to hold their breath longer maybe once they reached journeyman or something.

I can see it working. If your athletics is high, you both hold your breath longer and swim faster. So, your maximum range underwater increases as the square of your athletics, rather than linearly. No problems with that - you just fudge the numbers so it's not ridiculous at the extremes, and let the middle take care of itself.

I mean, it's not unbalancing or anything... there are always water breathing and swift-swim potions, and I usually made a water-breathing-plus-swift-swim constant-effect "water amulet" later on in my games of Morrowind, so if someone wants to take the non-magical route and just be really fit, why not let them?

Edit: I wonder if wearing armour in Oblivion will cause you problems when swimming, like it does with your spellcasting? If so, then an obvious perk for having high Athletics is to remove this penalty, allowing you to swim freely in full armour...

I'd say it would make most sense for holding your breath to be linked to fatigue - that way high physical attributes would affect it (like athletics would) but you could also get bonuses from willpower, which makes sense.

attributes would be a much better link than athletics, because athletics is something people can just increased by running into a wall for like 8 hours, it'd be sort of cheap to make water no long an issue for people. Attirbutes only increase with levels though, so that'd be good.

yeah, it seems like breath would be more connected to endurance or willpower. i had a dream about this topic last night....wierd.

Yeah, attributes would be alot better.

Oh yeah, RobRendall, I've been thinking about the swimming in armor thing, too. And I think that it will slow you down indirectly. The armor increases your weight thereby making you slower, so it will probably just be based on you encumberance.