How should you handle water?

[Ghsdkgb]

There's an Aquatic power, which basically says you're at home in the water, without any other rules as to how to deal with players who DON'T have the aquatic power. Drowning could be modeled similarly to the Orbius spell, but what about movement? Attack, dodging, movement speed, swimming just to keep your head above water. How would you stat this?

[Mr. Death]

It'd probably be added difficulties to all of those, so a roll to do anything would have to be 2 or 4 steps higher than if you were doing it on land.

[sinker]

The game gives you the tools and allows you to decide which works best for you. Compelled scene aspects, environmental attacks, increased difficulties, athletics checks to move. All of those (and more that I'm sure I forgot) are appropriate and will work better or worse depending on the situation/Table.

[Harboe]

A storm capsizing their ship might have skills like "Treacherous Undercurrents (Grapple)," "Black Depths (Attack, Weapon: X)" and "Violent Waves (Maneuver)" which would each have a rating and function as an aspect. The players can take it out by making successful rolls against its defense, dealing stress. Consequences would be stuff that makes it easier to deal with whatever else I'm throwing at them at the time.

Meanwhile, jumping into the ocean to battle and capture a Fomor they've been chasing might simply be an environmental aspect to tag, invoke or compel.

It depends completely on the context and whether I've had time to prepare

[Haru]

Well, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
In a conflict, the water zones can be given a high border value, making it harder for people to move along, while aquatic characters can ignore that.

I guess for drowning a good rule of thumb could be endurance. You can hold your breath for endurance exchanges, after that you get 1 shift of damage per exchange, that can't be resisted.

For fighting in water, you could add a flat armor:2 for everyone, that aquatic characters can ignore, to model the increased difficulty to move and fight.

Sometimes, it might be a flat out compel or a way to refuse a compel without paying a fate point. "No, you can not walk to the ground of the sea to get the artefact. Oh, you have the aquatic power? My bad, go ahead."

As Harboe said, it really depends on the situation, and if it warrants complex rules or if you can handwave or solve things with a single roll.

[admiralducksauce]

If it helps, I ran a PbP game that happened to include a fist fight inside a broken waterlock filled with freezing water.  Here's what I did (Jaws is the bad guy, Diablo's the less-bad guy):

Jaws rolls a Might maneuver to block the waterlock from closing: 4df+5+3 = 6 (Inhuman Strength has a +3 bonus for lifting or wrecking inanimate objects). He places the Aspect DAMAGED HATCH SEAL on the waterlock, DC 6 to remove.

That was his action, by the way, so Diablo’s free to do stuff. There are some scene Aspects:
LIKE THE BACK OF A VOLKSWAGEN
GLUG GLUG GLUG (this aspect is NOT free-taggable)

Furthermore, you’ve gotta hold your breath. Endurance will restrict all skills. If Endurance is less than the skill you want to use, that skill is at a -1. Additionally, if you stay underwater longer than you have Endurance ranks, you’ll start rolling Endurance vs. DC 1, then DC 2, then DC 3, etc, as if you were defending against an attack. Failure deals the margin in stress / inflicts consequences as normal. If the water Takes you Out, you drown.