Interestingly, arctic water is pretty warm relative to the surrounding climate. Saltwater can’t be any colder than around 28 degrees Farenheit, but the air can get way colder than that.
The paladins’ magical items can handle those temperatures with no problems whatosever. The 1st level *endure elements *spell protects in a range of -50 to 140 degrees.
You just need to make sure you exhale before removing the ring. Sure, it’s a bit harder to hold your breath with your lungs empty, but a seasoned adventurer ought to be able to handle if for 30 seconds at a time.
Yup. But I guess technically, two players could still share one ring : the one not drowning uses their turn to remove the ring and give it to the other, then starts drowning but only at the beginning of their next turn, at which time the ring has already been passed back. And on, and on. In fact, as long as they don’t need to actually do anything, I suppose one ring could keep an infinity of characters nice and underwater-breathing 
While this may be true, your body reacts very differently to cold water than to cold air. First, because clothing provides an insulating barrier to the air that isn’t present when you jump in the water with a winter coat on. Also, because in the water, you’re fighting against your body trying to create a temperature equilibrium with the surrounding water. That doesn’t happen nearly as fast on land. It’s why you can freeze to death even in tropical waters. 80 is a lovely temperature for the water…but not so much for your body.
Of course, all that information is wonderfully pertinent in the real world, which is not where the OOTS is located. So I have no clue what protection from cold actually does when put on sporadically in the water.
Damn, O-Chul is the best person in this whole thing.
L: Trust me.
O: Always
I did, however, find this:
Drowning
Any character can hold her breath for a number of rounds equal to twice her Constitution score. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check every round in order to continue holding her breath. Each round, the DC increases by 1
It’s also estimated here that O’Chul’s constitution is in the mid 20s.
This means he could potentially hold his breath for up to 50 rounds without a Constitution check.
It would make more sense to me if they’d actually trade items, so that O-Chul’s magical cloak could still do its thing when O-Chul has the ring and doesn’t need it. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the intent, even if we don’t see it happen.
Also, nice Chekhov’s Gun there. This idea honestly did not occur to me, but was set up perfectly with that whole “Paladin-off.”
And 50 rounds * 6 seconds per round = 300 seconds or 5 minutes.
For O-Chul, this is probably a refreshing change from acid baths with spikes and sharks.
Pretty sure, though, that if I were passing a ring back and forth in arctic waters, I’d fumble the thing and lose it to the murky depths. Although when magically creating water-breathing rings, I imagine they say a couple of don’t-lose-me cantrips over it, for just this kind of situation.
Yep, I know all that. I’m only talking about the water in the context of magical items which protect against a specific range of temperatures.
I thought for sure Lien was luring the random encounter bad guy close to the water, so she could summon her Celestial Shark and let the bad guy get eaten from the water’s edge.
I suppose this is a more clever solution.
That was Plan B, in case he jumped in after them 
Yeah, they had also already established that they had no need to actually fight this guy, if they could avoid it.
The consensus on the OOTS forum is, it’s a lady.
Huh. So it is. The OOTS forum spends more time looking for a hint of boob curve than I do 
In a SCUBA context, our hero and heroine are engaging in buddy breathing: it’s a standard part of scuba certification and something that I would trust Lien has at least practiced before.
Also, water drains heat 4 times faster than air (on Earth Prime at least): [INDENT][INDENT] Thus, whereas radiation and sweat evaporation are the primary mechanisms for heat loss in air, conduction allows the greatest heat transfer during immersion in water. Water has a thermal conductivity about 30 times greater than air, which means that heat loss by conduction is about 30 times faster in water than it is in air. When all factors are considered (conduction, convection, radiation, and evaporation), the body generally loses heat four times faster in water than it does in air of the same temperature. [/INDENT][/INDENT]
Huh. I didn’t realize that yrthaks even have boob curve.
So, some Arctic bugbears? Frostblood Orcs? something else?
dun dun DUNNNN!