How do you guys handle water combat?

[stealth]

I've gotten to a point where my players are about to start sailing around a small ocean. I see there's plenty of ocean/aquatic monsters. My current assumption is that I'll run the encounters with having those monsters attack whatever ships my players are using.

My question is what do you guys suggest doing if one of my players decides he wants to dive off into the water to fight a creature? Or worse, if the ship ends up being sunk, and my players are stuck swimming, or fighting underwater?

Digging around the internet for suggestions currently.. My default is to steal rules from other similar systems(usually 1 e ADND, but I'd really rather not in this case... ), but I'm interested in hearing what you guys have come up with for use in BFRPG.


EDIT:Actually, the rules for characters swimming are fairly simple, according to my version of the ADnD 1e DMG. I'll paraphrase: Swimming in metal armor is pretty much impossible, which guarantees a chance of drowning unless that character is rescued by allies. Swimming in leather armor is possible, and a player swims at whatever their dungeon movement rate is. Swimming while carrying more than 20lbs(+str) is impossible. Characters carrying more than 20lbs can theoretically walk along the bottom of a body of water... This covers the part I was concerned about, though I'm still interested to hear further suggestions from you all.

[Dimirag]

Long time ago I though on something similar to this:

Swimming.png (9.42 KiB) Viewed 2020 times

But never fully created, much less tested it.