Can an adventurer live on only water?

Mild spoilers for Under the House of the Three Squires!

I DM:d my first session ever (yay!). The party delved into the caverns Under the House of the Three Squires, and we had a blast, but I ran into one issue. The party found the inns water source (Room 19) quite early, as expected. From that on, the Hungry and Thirsty condition simply meant that they went back to the water source, drank themselves back to normal and refilled the water skins. This negated much of the effect of the grind, which seems unintentional. Is the adventure supposed to work this way? I should maybe have required a survivalist/dungeoneer check to see if the water is drinkable, but that doesn’t seem to solve the problem. I’m thinking about adding a house rule to the effect that water doesn’t recover Hungry and Thirsty in environments where water is plentiful, which solves the problem but goes against the RAW (p.76). Right now, the adventurers have been captured by kobolds, and it might be a long time until they see any fresh water again, so the issue is temporarily solved.

I think an easy answer is: Sure!

From what I recall, as long as they eat or drink anything, the condition is cleared up, so give them that bit.

Of course, waterskins can be lost/cut during twists, so it may not be that easy to transport. Not to mention the Grind isn’t the only thing granting conditions, so if they are limping back to go get water and they’re Exausted, Injured and Afraid, put a large Spider in the way. Suddenly that drink isn’t so easy to get to.

I don’t think you need to add a house rule. Go back to the Give Them Rope rule. There’s nothing wrong with making something “easy” on the players. They’ll manage to make it hard on themselves…like getting captured by kobolds, for instance.

Good idea to make them lose the waterskins, I didn’t think about that! Can I just introduce obstacles on them when they are returning for water (or otherwise just walking through the dungeon)? Isn’t that a twist that requires a failed roll?

Think of it like a living dungeon. Maybe a crafty kobold/spider/whatever has been watching the adventurers and realizes they go back to the watering hole pretty regularly. Seems like the perfect place for an ambush to me.

Note that even if they’ve successfully mapped out that part of the dungeon that doesn’t keep parts of the dungeon from changing. If it’s a good map it’ll keep them from getting lost, it won’t prevent bad guys from trying to ambush them or moving in to defend the water source as their own.

This is a great answer. If the party rests/camps, that would give plenty of time for wary monsters to set up an ambush. If they leave for Town in the middle of the dungeon, then the monsters can make the party’s return very painful. Those things don’t require a Twist. It’s the party’s choice to rest. Monsters aren’t going to just stand around and wait to be killed or driven off.

Not in the winter. Cuz it’s frozen.