Drowning and Suffocation

Most characters have to breathe. A character that botches a swimming roll begins to drown. Characters can also be held underwater by hostile actions. Water elementals will drown an opponent they grapple with for instance. Certain magical attacks also can remove breathable air from an air and cause suffocation which has the same effect even if the person is nowhere near water.
A character can hold their breath for a period of time based on their Stamina rating. A character that is holding their breath while fighting or doing other extremely exerting effort can have the time shortened at the storyteller’s discretion. After the period of time elapses the character takes a level of non-soakable bashing damage each turn. This damage cannot be healed with magic, only rest.
Once reaching incapacitated, the character is drowning and will die within their rating in Stamina minutes.
Stamina Rating/Maximum Time Holding Breath
● 30 seconds
●● One minutes
●●● Two minutes
●●●● Four minutes
●●●●● Eight minutes
●●●●● ● 15 minutes
●●●●● ●● 20 minutes
●●●●● ●●● 30 minutes
●●●●● ●●●● 40 minutes
●●●●● ●●●●● 60 minutes
The maximum time for holding one's breath assumes the character is undergoing fairly non-strenous activity. If a character is holding his/her breath while fighting or doing something similarly taxing, their maximum ability to hold their breath is much shorter.
Most humans and demi humans cannot get a Stamina above five without magic. Some aquatic creatures such as whales can treat their Stamina as being higher for the purposes of holding their breath.
This chart is mainly for characters who are drowning but this chart can apply any situation where one cannot breathe. Characters holding their breath running through a cloud of poisonous gas, a vacuum elemental removing all breathable air from a room, or even an aquatic creature forced onto land.