I've used the purify food and water spell on urine before. I even drank my own purified urine, all while making uncomfortable eye-contact with enemies I was trying to dissuade from attacking my party.
Actually pee is mostly water. Long story short your body use however much water you need and then use the rest to wash out all the waste we don't want in our bodies but unless you are seriously dehydrated it is still mostly water. That is why you can easily use one of those amazing osmose straws or whatever they are called that have a membrane that filters on the water from everything else on a bucket of piss and drink most of it easily. Yes I actually went and researched this I would love to hear where you got your numbers from because they seem really flawed.
if a 1 liter bucket would have 5 spoons of water in it, and rest was other elements like salt, it would be fucking crystal. 5x15ml(1 spoon)=75 ml of water/75 g and 1l=1000g it's 7,5% of water... Standard NaCl has solubility of 40g per 100g of water,so in case of 75g of water it would be 30g of salt in 75g of water =105 g, Where the fuck is 895g?
Yes, that's only one of the plot holes. Ships have cargo space for a lot of food. Any ship would have at least enough food for the voyage, and then probably extra. So, that means that airship must have crashed in the trees some time ago. Enough time for the crew to eat all the food and drink all the water and then be starving to death. So, why didn't undead gorillas climb over the side and kill the crew members a long time ago? They just happen to wait until the heroes arrive? Seems convenient, but maybe the module has a logical explanation besides "because plot device".
By his description it wouldn't surprise me if the NPCs ate the rope ladder and proceeded to throw the food overboard in hopes of creating a jumping zone.
The food fell off during the crash, and they've only been there several days. The ship is broken into 3 pieces, book doesn't mention a latter, it's probably messed up anyways. They have level 4 exhaustion anyways
MY GOD I had something strangely similar happen in one of my games (also a dwarf’s idea). Party was stuck in a cave with a huge boulder blocking the entrance. Dwarf has the idea ala Hannibal to shatter the stone by superheating it with fire magic and then explosively cooling it by... pissing on it. In our frantic drive to get out of the cave we didn’t consider any other options. We didn’t even piss in a bucket. Just four adventurers screaming and peeing on a fiery stone. It got the job done.
I'm curious, you had enough fire spells to head rock to the point of it going red hot but didn't have a single cold damaging spell? I like to imagine a lonely wizard humbly going "guys Ray of Frost is one of my cantrips" and the group shouting over "CAN'T HEAR YOU, PISSING TOO LOUD!", it just cements the image for me =p
I've played as a magic user with a dwarf player. My group was battling a rather large something with a gaping maw (DM never specified the monster so I assumed it's homebrewed) that had skin that was invulnerable to sharpened weapons. As a magic user, I didn't have any weapons and the beast was resistant to my mage's offensive spells and the rest of the party sported swords and axes. So naturally we were pretty screwed. BUT the dwarf knew I could cast a grow/shrink spell, the elf player had two strength potions, and the Goliath player had a high strength value. The dwarf wanted my mage to cast grow/shrink on him, have the elf forcefeed the potions into both the dwarf AND the Goliath, and have the Goliath *THROW* him into the maw and the dwarf will just swing his weapon around, full force, from INSIDE the beast. The Goliath passed the strength save roll, failed another one that wound up hurting the dwarf, but the dwarf made his rolls. Natural 20 on the attack. DM says the beast was eviscerated from within and, apparently, swallowed a very important looking object with this miffed tone as they described the object. Our DM was about to bring in an NPC that would have made it easier to kill, but our witty dwarf figured "well if we can't cut it from the outside..." Long story short, always have a witty dwarf player in your party.
Ah, the "kill it on the inside" plans... Once I had a sorcerer just tell the barbarian "don't attack that bullete anymore, just stick on of your torches in it's lower teeth. Well the barbarian got pretty hurt doing that, but nobody cared because the sorcerer had this crazy look about her and we were all excited to see her plan. Then she tells the wizard "just use Enlarge on the torch". When the torch grew, forcing the poor creature's mouth open, the DM had about 30 seconds of horrible realization of what was to come when the sorcerer used Quickened Spell to throw 2 fireballs inside of the Bulette's gaping mouth. Legends say bulette meat rains in that dungeon to this very day.
Mordirit it's always good having "creative" players in a group. Because regardless of failure or success there will always be something to talk about in the aftermath 😂
Barry Bend but none of the party members died, just their escort mission NPCs... Unless those are considered party members? Seems odd, but I suppose could be possible... Never actually played :D
I know Purify Food and Drink may change piss into clear water but get this, the description doesn't say water. It simply makes it harmless. The NPC's were drinking yellow, yet harmless piss.
Well, the reason why you can't drink piss over prolonged periods is because piss = water + contaminants/waste purposefully disposed off by your body. If you remove the waste(which is the cause of the color), you'll end up with a clear liquid = aka water.
Elf-lord's Friar of the Meadowlands the reason it's yellow is your bodies wastes if you have little waste but have drank a lot of water your iron turns clear
To clarify for people, in that module, everyone who has been resurrected has the Death Curse. It's the main hook of the story to find out the cause of the death Curse.
Congratulations, you're alive again! Now let's look at your fabulous bonuses: Second Chance at Life, all your gold and loot, full health and spells, and THE DEATH CURSE. Enjoy your revival 👼
My PCs just failed one miserably today. Group of Orcs riding Hippogrifs start attacking the caravan they'd been hired to protect from too far for them to reach, what do the PCs do? Hide under the carts! Because that'll solve everything! I gave them a *six turn workup* of the orcs splitting up, an older orc with mystic tattoos and a staff arriving, raising his hands to the sky, slowly starting a storm above, starting to channel the lightning around them before the druid thought "Hey, maybe it isn't a good idea for us to be hiding under these carts and doing nothing about them orcs!" By then the Orc Shaaman had already Called Lightning the first cart into oblivion, 3 NPCs were dead, the caravan leader was slowly dying and it dawns on the PCs that they couldn't just wait it out until the orcs got bored of killing their horses and exploding their carts.
Not so convenient for the PCs without Devil's Sight, though. For them, you've just made their job way harder. There's a reason why gaming groups don't always appreciate the Darkness + Devil's Sight combo.
I... actually applaud that bucket idea. That was resourceful. Plant matter's edible if purified, too! On an unrelated note: whoo, boy, GMing for the first time ever in two weeks. If anybody feels they have advice... Apart from not taking the adventure to sewers, of course.
Reward creativity in their problem solving. The best way to make their actions feel valuable is to reward them for outthinking your scenario. And try to find out what type of players your players are. Do they enjoy socializing with the world, problem solving, dungeon crawling, combat, exploration or all of the above? Also, remember the following 2 sentences: The rules serve you, no the other way around. Ditch or alter the rules when you feel like it will make the campaign better. As the GM it is your task to entertain everyone. When debating whether or not to allow something, ask yourself if it will make things more fun. If the answer is yes and the action does not derail the plot, let them go for it.
- Don't overprepare. You'll hate yourself for doing it after the fact. If you feel like you *need* to prepare. - At the beginning, generating Loot and Encounters by the book with the CR tables is wonderful; you'll eventually grow out of it, but it's a very good way to make some certified balanced characters. - *Start at low levels* . 1 might be too much but 2 or 3 are great starting points, the PCs and enemies won't have too many crazy powers making your job of mediating the rules easier; if you start at that point, by the time things are going crazy and people are asking to use spells as propellants to throw the Paladin with a halberd against the flying dragon's chest (yes, it's happened) you'll be experienced enough to know how to handle it. - If you are too nervous, look for a pre-made adventure on the internet and make that your first session. The annotations will help you know what you need to prepare when you are making your own plots in the future and having a nice guideline to follow on the start can be a nice morale boost for you. - Don't say no. Player wants to try to steal the sleeping guard's necklace because he likes it? Sure, go ahead; player wants to break into the mob's house at night and smoke their weed stash? Why not! Player wants to use his fishing rod as a precision weapon to gouge out the sharpshooting goblin's eye? Hey, if you roll a 20 and oooh fuck, you rolled a 20... - If it's your group's first time as well, read all their classes features they've got at your starting level. Players tend to missread the fine print in the most favorable way for them (I once had a monk who believed that the Unarmored Movement bonus stacked *every level*, so +10 feet at 2, then +20 at 3, +30 at 4 and by level 5 that mofo could outrun Wally West), and it's your job to mediate that. - You can never have enough d6 - Get a DM screen. It's importance is not stated enough, having a barrier to keep the players from knowing when you're confidently reading from previously well thought out annotations and when you're just looking at the shambles of your work and desperately trying to mend the shattered pieces of a plot line on the fly can make a huge difference in how they perceive your style and how the table's atmosphere will be. - Have a name generator website always open on a tab, or have a decently long random names list. You may *think* you have given everyone important a name, but that'll go up in flames the second they decide they need to ask the little runt who puts back the tavern's stools on top of the tables at the end of the night, because how dare you not have his life story ready? - In addition to that, have a list of random character traits. Just write down shit like "has a flemmy voice", "looks around nervously all the time", "constantly rubs his eyes", "likes the word 'moist' too much for a normal person", "tiptoes", "hums while he pees", and then just tack one of those to the random NPCs you never expected them to talk with, it'll make your players really feel like the whole world around them is alive. - Have music. RU-vid can be a god in that situation, whatever the hell you need is here, just type "eerie RPG music", "rpg forest sounds", "rpg battle music", "rpg tavern band", "rpg epic music" or literally whatever you may think, I guarantee you there'll be at least an hour long version of what you're looking for.
When I GMed I would always overprepare, thinking I knew how the sessions would turn out. They rarely did. I'd still recommend a decent amount of prep, but rather than planning out the villain's speech (when your PCs are actually going to sneak past him), or a complex genealogy of your nation's nobility, complete with heraldry (your PC's probably don't actually care), just have a solid idea of what should be happening, prepare enough generic stuff to add flavour (a few generic peasants, shopkeepers, aristocrats and monsters) that you can throw in when needed, and improvise when they inevitably go off the rails. All that being said, don't be afraid of a bit of railroading either, especially for your first time. If you have a great dungeon prepared you'll obviously want your PCs to visit it. -You can try to make it seem like a free choice for them by "the illusion of choice" ("Do you go left or right?" [actually they both lead to the dungeon ]) but it relies on obfuscation so don't overuse it or they'll start to feel they can't make informed choices (because they can't). -You can prepare a bunch of plot hooks to motivate them, but I've seen a whole party ignore the most juicily crafted plot hooks for random things I didn't realise would look important to them. -Or, perhaps, just tell them honestly, and out of character, that the quest you have prepared will likely be the most fun option, and could they please arrive to the session with their own motivation for taking that path. It might not sound ideal, but I've seen that last one work to great effect (at least for the start of a campaign). The last campaign I attended had a great improviser GM, with very little actual combat or even skill checks, and we went 100% off the rails and we all (GM included) had an absolute blast. So it's possible to make anything work. Work with your players, get a feel for the game, and try to go with the flow.
So when you say this Ball of Flame is a ball of flame... do you mean it’s... an ice attack? I’m sorry, I’m not really understanding this D&D jargon. Also how did the ship catch on fire?
the reason it was set on fire was because the Gorillas were attacked by a gay sphere, in other words a flaming one, so the ship became flaming, and therfore was set on fire...your welcome ^_^
George Sears who knows it could be like chill touch. My group and i were confused when we discovered that it was a spell called chill touch that was neither a touch spell or did cold damage. Instead it has 30ft or range and does necrotic.
something kinda similar happened to my group last campaign hshddh we were employed by a dhampir noble, named lady valcenia [technically we were also employed by a pseudo dragon familiar looking for his master]. recently, there had been trouble with vampires and paladins in the area. she hated vampires, and was fearful of the paladins. so she asked our group of murder hobos to kill the vampires, and /peacefully/ get the paladins to leave. we found the paladins in a tavern, upon which they got in a fight with our CN necromantic witch. they settled it, but only at the cost of her destroying her poppit doll. we worked with them to kill a few of the vampires. however, the paladins tried to tell us that they would do the rest themselves, without paying us or even healing us. mageleine [the witch], and elliot [my character, an abberant bloodrager], decided that this was bullshit and that we would kill the paladins. arra, the tengu bard, and grognac the vegetarian, the half-orc fighter, didn't really give a shit, and was just going to help us kill the paladins. but our human werewolf barbarian, valkran, didn't want to kill the paladins. so she attacked us. grognac quickly killed her, with a swing of his great sword. the paladins were killed, mostly by mageleine and arra. all that was left of valkran was a smear of blood on the wall. saddest part was that it was the first session valkrans player had done with us.
I see nothing wrong with the pee bucket solution. There's literally machines in the real world made for purifying liquids like urine when you can't find any other source of water.
True, science is neat. I think the main problem I notice is that alternatively they could of cast the spell create water or goodberry which are easier solutions in my opinion
Amazing. As a DM in this kind of a session do you ever say to the warlock's player something like, "Your character knows that Flaming Sphere will set flammables, such as the material this ship is made from, to catch fire. Your character also knows that the sphere cannot be rolled through a wall or closed door. Are you sure that your character wants to cast this spell now, in this ship, in this room with doors barricaded against the enemy?" Or perhaps when they start to climb the vines, "Your characters quickly realize they do not have the skill to safely climb these vines. They can still try, but there's a good chance they'll fall and be badly hurt?"
Something along those lines, yes. I'd probably say something like "I mean, you're on a wooden boat in an enclosed room, and you barricaded the only way out, but if you really want a big ball of fire to start rolling around, go right ahead." Basically, the three words I as a DM find myself saying most frequently are "Are you sure?" Sometimes it works. More often than not it goes hilariously wrong, but the players somehow manage to survive. (NPCs, not so much.)
Both are ridiculous. This party has an 18-day journey home, right? How can they be resorting to pee water at this stage and still survive the return trip? They had to have had rations, forage, and so on to support themselves. I find it upsetting that new players get an introduction to the game such as this. The DM here has failed to help them immerse themselves in the situation from their characters' points of view.
Let me clarify: These guys had been stuck in the airship on top of the trees for *days.* Hence the dehydration. Even after the heroes arrived and slayed the undead that might have convinced them not to move, they still sat around for a good 6-12 hours before they were attacked by undead. The Crew had literally nothing better to do than tie knots and wait for rescue. *So why didn't you ever think to make something that could facilitate a rescue?*
I had a mage in a party who was terrified of spiders. Found giant spiders in a forest middle of a draught. (I am dm.) The mage is like I cast fireball. I look at them. "You are in the middle of a dry forest." Ya I cast fireball. "Ok. Yall are going to die."
I had a situation like that in a game this past Saturday. A shadow creature hid in a hollow fallen tree trunk in the forest. Despite the fact that the DM described it as a California type forest, I confirmed my rogue set the trunk on fire. With the explanation "I know I can out run it."
Admittedly, if a player is willing to argue the fact that Fireball functions as an explosion and is inherently designed not to leave residual flames by its arcane nature, I'd rule that doesn't cause trouble with all the burnables not vaporized by the blast beyond fallen branches and upper trunks of the trees crashing down in the area. Still, Flaming Sphere is literally a persistent ball of spreadable fire, so that does light things up in a jiffy, no avoiding it. (Of course, if that ruling comes about, they can't turn around later on and lay down an oil slick and expect a Fireball to light it either.)
Frankly I'd ask, What it is with Dms and thinking wood is the same thing as carldboard ? I've been in wooden houses, here's the thing, they don't automaticaly catch on fire unconrolably at the nearest flamme. I mean i takes either a very very hot flamme, some combustible or the wood being very dried (which if the ship spent time on the top of jungle trees, it's likely not) to catch fire instanty, I feel as long as he kept his fire sphere away from the walls and moving, there should have been a little while beore fires started.
Yeah that sounds awful. I can imagine people thinking they're hilarious at first and then just getting slow and distracted as they got drunker. hey I'm new too... did my third session on Thursday. I started my RU-vid channel in part to document the new D&D players experience. Glad to meet another new person.
Our last session almost "started" with a TPK, one of our members got robbed by a Tiefling thief and as he escaped through the sewage, we eventually found him dead hanging in the air, close near the sewage entrance... then we suddenly got ambushed by the gelatinous cube and most of the party (3 or our 4 members) decide to stay near the gelatinous cube as it then tried to engulfed them and they all failed their saving throw and they nearly got dissolved if I hadn't manage to finish it off with a Magic Missile barrage and quickly heal the Paladin with a healing potion I just recently bought so he could heal the others... a good lesson about not being too obsessive with your gold if it means going through unexplored dangerous areas... such a good start of a session, I'd say... :-P
Guus van Voorst me and my brother played star wars session where we were escaping from 7 tie fighters, my brother escaped through hyper space to alderan. I tried that too but failed so I had to fight them, I died (this repeated until I managed to hit the hyper drive, I used credits to come back to life)
Reminds me of a time with my friends. We were inside a pub and got ambushed. Two of our mages immediately cast fire spells of mass destruction. They didn't think it through, so the building caught on fire, and the two of us who didn't fall during battle or fainted because of the smoke, had to tear down the wall and drag everyone else outside.
First session with this group... The party starts a tavern brawl no big deal... Until the Sorcerer decides along with the bard to cast burning hands at the kegs of beer. Alcohol plus fire equals explosions. (At least according to this dm.)
I just started getting into D&D. Lvl 4 Lore Bard. And I found your videos and immediately watched them all. Your animations are perfect and the way you tell your stories is so relatable. Love your videos! Keep up the good work!
ToA is a lot of fun, I am playing season 8 Tomb of Annihilation in Adventure League right now. We also went to the wreck of the star goddess ship, but we went up to the ship crew, gave them food and water (cause we have a cleric with create water and a druid with good berry and also he carries around extra rations - specifically a few pounds of dried corn) and then said, "we don't feel like taking you to the port, it's that way, go find it yourselves" I mean, they are shipmen, they have some combat training and maybe a dagger or two. I'm sure they made it back safely Just got to Omu....so so much fun
LOL That plan was great. A+. Just like my dad's plan to deal with a bunch of traps in a dungeon... He took my mother's halfling rogue corpse and BOWLED it down the hall, set off all the traps, and killed all the nasties ahead of the group. My mother's ghost (her, sitting there watching after her death) approves to this day. I have since inherited her Big Bag 'O Holding, which has, like, infinite dice (which all roll 1s). :)
YES! I did the pee bucket thing to a cleric in a Pathfinder 1 campaign! We were in the middle of a dessert and were running out of water, with no oasis in sight. Suddenly had an idea, pulled out our cooking pot, grabbed the cleric, and had them purify everyone's urine for a renewable clean water supply. DM later said that he'd been tempted to stick to the straight rules - only removes poison and disease, not taste or smell - but he was laughing so hard from my RPing convincing the cleric to do it that he let us just have it.
Omg, I had to keep pausing this so I could laugh my head off, then I would wipe my eyes... take a deep breath and play it for another 10 seconds before having to stop again to laugh my head off. ROFL ty Puffin, I gotta say the way you draw the expressions is such a huge part of what makes the humor hit home, keep up the great work!
I am on a spree watching your animated videos (just found your channel a day ago), thank you for making me laugh during a weird time for me, and also for educating me (and guessing a lot who view your vids) on various ttrpg's and much much more! further more "ur super kewwwl!"
Man, I'm so glad to have your animations to have a fantastic laugh and a good opportunity to see other DND stories. I'm in my first campaign (Pathfinder) and so I'm just soaking up everything I can.
This is why one should never leave home without 50 ft. of rope each -> one could tie them together, use a bow/magic to bring them up to the NPCs, and create a makeshift pulley system.
My rogues always carried it. Mostly, it was used to tie people up for interrogation (why waste time with CHA rolls to get information since most people in the party use that for a dump roll when instead you can just have the half-orc beat it out of them) and to help get Dwarves down from high ledges because they generally tend to tumble like boulders if you don't. :)
These videos bring me happiness and prosperity because it helps me think about creative facebook and instagram business posts when I can’t think of any new way to describe some products as i post almost daily lol
For those that don't know the DEATH CURSE is realllly bad. It has three parts. 1. If your maximum hit points are ever reduced (Like a life drain attack from certain undead) you never get them back. 2. All resurrections of any type will not work 3. If you have ever been rezzed in the past, your rez begins to wear off and you start re-dying... you lose one maximum hit point per day. These effect cover the whole world and last until some group finishes the adventure and stops the source of the soul drain.
that happened to me to in a way. I had to rescue fairies that were in a house were there was people we had to fight and I was a wizard. so i cast storm sphere but at some point a bad guy cast web and one of my allies got trapped so he light a torch to burn off the web. when he did that my sphere was still up which is a ball of wind pretty much so when he did that it caused a huge fire tornado and it killed the fairies that I was supposed to save.
I don't get why you would be freaked out by the bucket pee water. The water is now pure and I presume it is physically identical to natural pure fresh water and likely more pure due to the MaGiC. I see no problem here minus not having people drink their own waters instead of that of others.
It's not the cleanliness that has Puffin concerned. You're right, the water is clean and was a highly creative way to obtain that resource, but knowing the water's source and watching people drink it keeps a psychological taint with the water. He is freaked out because they're drinking the pee of ~5 party members he doesn't know, sloshed into a bucket and shipped off to them. There is a certain terror when watching someone drink your urine, even if it is clean.
3:59 Oh my god i lost it on that part xD The music, the look on the hero's face while he walks away, the warlock being happy that he casted something, so perfect
Me about a year ago- oh this youtuber is interesting. I heard about him [Watches video as this was the first one I saw] Me- Oh this is going to be fun bingeing this youtuber.
Even the best videos always get dislikes. Sometimes I think it's just jealousy. Other times it's because they disagree with you (but this is a story, so I don't quite get that for this one). I once had a guy go through every single one of my videos and dislike them because he disagreed with a point I was trying to make in just one of my videos. (I though it was pretty funny, to be honest.)
I gotta say, I love your videos. Your stories always make me laugh, and while your animation style is not the best that is out there, it certainly is 100 times better than anything I can do, and is unique and funny. I personally like it, and any D&D related video you do, very much. Keep up the good work. I very much look forward to the next one.
Adventurer's League is often people who haven't played at all or just played very little, so it might just be that he didn't know that it'd set stuff on fire. I mean, sure, we all understand that it will, but to him it's just "magic".
i mean if it's a veteran player then yes, for new players you'd rather have them have flashy experience so that they get to tell the interesting tabletop campfire story as soon as possible, so that they are engaged and keep coming back maybe even bringing more people, also it's a good way to exemplify that trpgs aren't videogames
I subscribed to you reticently, your videos for good insight as to how to be a better GM (Currently putting together a new campaign) but i also like your videos because they are funny as hell!
One quick question: when has Flaming Sphere EVER been useful? I can't think of one - not ONE - situation where casting that spell has ever made things better. Funnier perhaps, yes, but not better.
Oathblivion Frequently. Who doesn't want a 3x3 square AOE for somewhat reliable damage and the option to ram it into enemies for same. For a minute. Combine this with grease and a choke point and most low level enemies are hosed.
Anytime I have a mage of any kind, I get a LOT of mileage out of Flaming Sphere. It's second in the "power-cost to net results" ratio only to the ember-cantrip for lighting cigars and pipes (or dropping in other folks' boots)... It's an absolutely wonderful spell, as long as one remembers that it "puts you on a timer" whenever employed around flammables. :o)
That purified urine though. Best crazy plan. Also, I cannot imagine anyone thinking it's a good idea to cast a fire spell on a wooden boat trapped in a tree.
It depends on what spells the cleric had prepared. Would the NPCs be able to survive the minimum of 8 hours needed for the cleric to prepare the create water spell?
He might not have had that spell prepared. Alternatively, Purify Food and Drink can be cast as a ritual, unlike Create Water, so maybe he just didn't want to waste a spell slot on NPCs.
I played Tomb of Annihilation with my friends a while back and had a similar experience. We had to climb the steps to this ancient monastery and to do so we had to make 3 checks. Perception for noticing any week spots in the steps, acrobatics for avoiding those steps, and athletics for making to the top. Everyone in the group was bad with at least one of the skills so no one could make it up and we kept falling down until the GM just gave up and said we only had to succeed one of those checks to make it up.
But... urine is already sterile. So it wouldn't have any diseases or poison in it in the first place. So shouldn't that just mean that they're still drinking pee?
Mandrakos recent research has shown that urine is not as sterile as we once believed. Even in healthy, uninfected people there are non harmful bacteria in the urine and urinary tract.
Even if sterile you obviously can't survive drinking it as an only source of water because of the amount of waste in it (though it can keep you going for a while). I feel like any contaminants that can build up in your body and make you sick from drinking should be counted as "poison". That being said, "dose maketh the poison", so would casting purify food and water on a glass of coke (or beer) turn it into clear water?
Reminds me the time our DM decided to have us fight a dread spider. We spent more time falling out of the tree in which it was hanging than actually fighting it.
I asked Puffin about the pee bucket at a con, and his first response was to slam his head against the table in either anguish or embarrassment. Maybe a combination of the two, haha.
oh, that line "we had to make 2 athletic checks" reminds me of a very complicated quest in the online game Runescape 2 where you need to make TEN agility checks while climbing hand-over-hand! -it's part of the infamous "light maze", THE most complex quest in the game. you need to use a bunch of mirrors and prisms to hit a target with multiple beams of light in multiple colours, and GETTING to some of the places where you need to put them is REALLY difficult. AND the maze is full of constantly respawning monsters with low health but high attack, AND you have to WEAR A DISGUISE to get in (which means NO ARMOR), AND the mirrors take up inventory space (so very few healing items) and AFTER you FINALLY get past that a crazy Dwarf will demand a list of FIFTY items...AND you can NEVER carry more than 28, INCLUDING healing items... oh, i forgot to mention, GETTING THE DISGUISE is really complicated too!