Underwater Spellcasting (SofS)

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﻿Using magic underwater presents many adjustments for adventurers from the world above. Speaking from the rules perspective, more drawbacks than benefits exist when casting spells underwater, which helps explain the lack of adventurers' interest in exploring Serbs for many years.
DMs and their players must decide just how they wish to play magic-use underwater, as it affects the scope and difficulty of a Seròs campaign. If you choose to strictly adhere to the full AD&D rules of material and verbal components, use the rules established in Of Ships and the Sea for checking against the deterioration of spell components. Many spells are altered just by the watery medium in which they are now cast; they likewise can be referenced in that AD&D rules guide. Thanks to water pressure and resistance, the initiative penalty below is unavoidable (save by free action).
 Table 8: Underwater Spellcasting Penalties
Initiative:	+4 initiative penalty when casting a spell; noncumulative with combat penalty (only a +2 penalty if a spellcasting priest of a water deity)
Spells: 	Consult Of Ships and the Sea for all changes and adjustments to spells for underwater casting
The other option is to simply continue playing your AD&D game as always, and use the campaign base of Myth Nantar to make this campaign as simple an adventure as a stroll through the Haunted Halls of ﻿Eveningstar. Myth Nantar provides many allowances for DMs to easily integrate Serôs into their greater Realms campaigns, as a place of learning more than willing to teach newcomers how to breathe, speak, fight, and cast magic underwater.
==Underwater Spellcasting Proficiency==
The verbal component of spells cannot be done away with (if you use them in your campaign), and spellcasters need to earn how speak and thus cast spells, effectively underwater. Characters can become proficient in underwater speech and spellcasting in a marine environment. Through training, proficient PCs relearn how to vocalize the words for their spells and also learn how to better communicate in an undersea environment. They also learn how to cast spells with less broad movements for the spells' somatic components.
Surface-born characters with the Underwater Spellcasting proficiency gain the ability to cast spells underwater and negate the initiative penalty for spellcasting mentioned above. They further benefit by learning to speak underwater as well (consider this to be the equivalent of the Underwater Communication proficiency). This proficiency, which is available under the Priest and Wizard groups, costs two slots and its relevant ability is Intelligence.