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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6575510" data-attributes="member: 9789">I honestly don't remember; at least 30 minutes?  I'm not sure.Now we've have had a chance now to run your other one-shot Seahorse Run and I wanted to tell you about that, too!  I have to admit the write-up was fun, although I probably should have given them a chance to gather more info on their own rather than hand them everything and skip straight to the action - but that's just my group.  This one also went very quickly - probably less than 30 minutes again.  The funniest thing was that they were all expecting to fight a grell, but then when it turned out to be just seahorses that was the biggest punchline.Our group ended up being extremely straightforward.  They immediately rolled to investigate and lacking any other obvious courses of action they decided to go with the skill check route.  Since we had a bard and the statue was all about singing that also seemed to play to their strengths.  They easily passed the first two checks in the first round, but getting a DC 20 is hard for anyone, even though they were assisting each other.  Ultimately they got the DC 20 on the third or fourth round (whichever one it was before the 2nd wave escaped with eggs), and saved the day.I ended up ruling that they could cast underwater with a concentration check (DC 10 + spell level, although I could have just used DC 10) and I also allowed a very high check to enable them to do non-lethal damage with spells, which normally would be pretty questionable since knocking something unconscious is supposed to be melee-only, but I figured since the spell in question was Thuderwave effectively the character was just causing a huge sound burst, and could forgo the damage portion - which basically knocked them out.  It seemed like a reasonable use of the spell and the player came up with it themselves so I went with it.  They ended up Thunderwaving about 10 of the seahorses (they were mercifully rather clumped), and also used Druidcraft to make a horrid smell to drive some of them away (pretty clever, I thought).  Technically they also succeeded by stopping the seahorses from being able to steal more than 10 eggs (10 knocked out, 2 driven away) but they got the skill checks the same round so it all sort of worked out.  Even if I hadn't allowed the spellcasting, they would have succeeded on the skill checks alone, so all that really did was give them something else to do while the bard was working on checks.Overall this one-shot was seen as a bit sillier (the write-up was already headed in that direction so I went with it) and fun, but I don't think it was as tense or as puzzle-y as Quiet Please.  This one just came down to getting some skill checks in time, and there wasn't a sense of how close to doom you were.  Maybe I could have given them more information about losing 10 eggs being the end, but because I was generous with the spell casting they didn't end up losing any (the whole first wave was stunned or ran off, and the second wave didn't escape before they won).  So it just ended up being a fun little diversion.As for rewards, I ended up giving them each one healing potion (plus the XP).  Anyway, thanks for the adventure!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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