Tuesday, 1st February 2011, 18:34 by dtsund
As it currently stands (at least this is how I understand it), if you're carrying less than 50% of your capacity, and you're next to land, you'll be guaranteed to live.
Proposal: If you're currently at less than 50% weight burden, landing in water will let you swim. While swimming, if you're not a merfolk, you may take no actions except movement (at a 100% speed malus; possibly malii to EV and SH as well), reading scrolls, drinking potions, and invoking god powers. If you have more than 50% burden, your character desperately and instantly throws stuff out of his pack at random(?) until he's light enough to swim. Items that can get you out of the swimming state (scrolls of blinking and teleportation, potions of levitation, etc.) don't get dropped unless absolutely necessary.
Lava would be like water, but you take heavy fire damage every turn.
Still very harsh, but not instant death.
Potential issue: letting players swim like this might break a few vaults. I'm also not sure how the situation of having more than 50% encumbrance from cursed gear alone should be dealt with...
Just a well-spoken spambot.