[Youneko]

I'm currently making a sea drake character and I met with many problems. Sea drake doesn't give character a swimming rate, which is weird since, well, someone told me that drakes are actually mini dragons. Then I turned to swimming rules in SR5:

Swimming is a Complex Action. A swimming character can move a number of meters in a Combat Turn equal to the average of their Agility and Strength. You can take a Simple Action to “sprint” with a Swimming + Strength [Physical] Test, adding 1 meter per hit, or 2 meters per hit if you’re an elf or a troll. Swimming on the surface of water or under it does not affect this rate of speed. As with the Running skill, swimmers suffer from fatigue after an extended time (Fatigue Damage, p. 172).

Since swiming is a complex action, all actions would be occupied as long as you stay in the water, then what's the meaning of sprint?
Or is the complex action required once per combat turn, like vehicle test?

[Jayde Moon]

Errata is discussing how to fix the wording and make swimming make sense.

The change would be:

Swimming is a Simple Action. A swimming character can move a number of meters in a Combat Turn equal to the average of their Agility and Strength. You can take a Simple Action to “sprint” with a Swimming + Strength [Physical] Test, adding 1 meter per hit, or 2 meters per hit if you’re an elf or a troll. Swimming on the surface of water or under it does not affect this rate of speed. As with the Running skill, swimmers suffer from fatigue after an extended time (Fatigue Damage, p. 172).

[Youneko]

Errata is discussing how to fix the wording and make swimming make sense.

The change would be:

Swimming is a Simple Action. A swimming character can move a number of meters in a Combat Turn equal to the average of their Agility and Strength. You can take a Simple Action to “sprint” with a Swimming + Strength [Physical] Test, adding 1 meter per hit, or 2 meters per hit if you’re an elf or a troll. Swimming on the surface of water or under it does not affect this rate of speed. As with the Running skill, swimmers suffer from fatigue after an extended time (Fatigue Damage, p. 172).

I'm still confused. Let's say my character has 2 initiative passes, then should I spend one Swimming Action to move in water, or should I spend two actions in this turn (once per pass)?

[Jayde Moon]

If you have a strength of 4 and an agility of 6, you can swim 5 meters without have to roll as a Simple Action.

If you had two passes, you could swim once each pass for a total of 10 meters that Combat Turn.

So you could swim and also perform a second simple action (not swimming) that pass, such as fire a weapon or recklessly cast a spell.

If you needed to swim faster, you could spend a Simple Action to swim 5 meters, then spend another simple action to 'sprint', rolling Swimming + Strength and adding the amount of hits in meters to your distance.

Mind you, this isn't decided yet, they may decide something different, bit at least this makes more sense.

[Youneko]

That's much more clear. I will talk to my GM to see if this would work. Thank you Jayde.