There will be exactly 0 properly balanced encounters this campaign won't there.

Balance?! have you seen the type of powergames they play with? you cant balance encounters to those kinds of people

balance, swim and climb checks tend to balance or screw that kind of powergamers pretty good though...

none of those are trained skills, and everyone puts 5 ranks in balance (to avoid being flat footed) so their insane base stats will probably make them pretty good at it. except luffy and swim because devil fruit.

I say if the players win, then it was properly balanced.

Fuck balance. Reminds me of one of the first "dungeons"of Shattered star campaign in pathfinder, hatefully remembered in my group as the shithouse of horror... fuck being forced to do dc 20-25 balance and climb checks as a warrior/cleric during lv 1-2

not really much we could do about it, since GMs and city guards tend to frown upon the "torch the building from the outside" approach...

Anyway, Balance is only important if your group thinks so.
here, not so much. ^^

Even with a fantastic swim skill, any projectile weapon is going to be so unbelievably weak underwater as to render it useless. His range will drop to about five feet, for starters.

Plus Luffy can't help with the underwater stuff. Not sure if Zoro could either... I don't know underwater combat rules too well (not even for systems I enjoy XD) but I thought in real life, the suggestion is to focus on thrusting attacks because swinging your arms/weapons is just too energy intensive underwater.

Sanji, who is physically weaker than zoro, has broken concrete underwater.

at this point in the comic/show those rules of physics are invalidated.

Zoro is part fishman.

Oh, thanks Missfinefeather; I forgot that in this version he's part Fishman. XD

I was under the impression that so long as you're not a devil fruit user and are sufficiently badass, you didn't suffer any penalties for aquatic combat in the One Piece universe.

Freedom of movement allows melee attacks underwater, so assuming they have a cleric to cast it... or some other way to get similar effects, they're good. Otherwise, they get stuck with 1/2 damage. Which, you know, is still a lot.

This is infact how my party usualy does it's fishing. just use life bubble, freedom of movement and tie a rope around the monk, then tos him overbord, and only houl him up once he has grappled a seamonster.

caught a kraken once, and made a killing selling fried octopus

Sanji will get some way to pull it.
in is fight against kuroobi, he was "disadvantaged" because he was underwater, but by the time of fishman island, he is faster than a fishman underwater and can GRILL a Kraken tentacle underwater

you'd need some kind of projectile adapted for the circumstance. like some kind of harpoon.

You know, I just realized something. Nami getting the Clima-Tact is probably because she starts taking caster levels so she can be more useful in direct combat.