...

What?

You might be confused on what he did. The unofficial World record is somewhere around 13 minutes, a claim held by an Italian free diver. I am pretty sure it is impossible for your brain to go without oxygen for more than about 15 minutes, after that you die.

So this guy did not hold his breath for 90 minutes. A quick google search will reveal a handful of websites with amateurs trying to set records. About a minute an a half is the average.

I think the current rule on breathholding is fine.

I think what needs to be added is a new rule for a "breath holding" skill. Say each level gives you another 30 seconds, so at level 6 (well-trained professional) you can hold your breath an extra 3 minutes. Extended volume would add 10 seconds per skill point per extended volume level. Howzzat?

True, but holding your breath is something you can train for - in the sense of both physical conditioning, but also of acquiring the skills to make the most of your body's abilities (free-divers and pearl divers are a good example)

Okay, you broke the proposed home rule. You fix it.

What's your suggestion to smoothly model real world, trained breath holding?

But you can roll your Athletics skill to increase the speed at which you move, or to increase the distance you can jump iirc, which is a fair parallell to what Cray proposed, I think.

Scientists don't ignore things because they're "impossible" by today's scientific standards... good ones don't, at least. That's how advances in science work, in fact. Some scientist says "hey, this should be impossible, but I'm seeing it happen. Clearly, we need to change our definition of possible." They do, however, ignore things because they're "completely unproved, even when there should be evidence."

And the media absolutely loves to prove people wrong... if someone caught this guy on tape doing this, they'd absolutely love showing it. More likely some guy said "I can do this!" and the reporter said "show me!" and the guy said "no, you're not enough of a believer, I can only do it among believers" or some such bull.

JaronK

*ding ding ding*

You roll it.

I'm sure even the best breath-holder ninja olympians in the world have bad days and good days. I'm sure the guy with the world record doesn't hold his breath that exact length of time every time he pokes his head under water. I'm sure sometimes even the "trained" breath-holders can hold their breath longer than some other times, I'm sure they occasionally get dunked under in the YMCA pool and have to come up fairly quickly (just like everyone else), I'm sure sometimes everything works just right, the planets are aligned, and they stay under there for just freakin' days without noticing they're supposed to be breathing.

If trained Shadowrun sprinters need to roll it, so do trained Shadowrun breath-holders. Just make it something easy like (canon breath-holding rules) + (15 seconds per success on Athletics/Hold Your Breath test) + (applicable Water Sprite edge, which I'm sure anyone out to be the best in the world has).

I mean, work out the math so that the world champion fella has, say, a 10 skill, the max Edge, and a max Body, and that he'd hit his world title with all successes (to represent that it was very likely a karma-burning once in a lifetime achievement). Figure out what sort of "per success" time is necessary to work that up, and voila. Done.

Great. And the next time you have a ready answer to a problem, please share it up front rather than just torpedoing the first suggestion and leaving the matter hanging.