It's time to reveal the False False Hydra, which is just a serial killing wizard who dedicated most of his spell slots to Modify Memory and is relying on obscure legends to blame his murders on a mythical monster
Genuinely this is a better idea than a straight False Hydra. Players still can feel good about figuring something out, the wizard appears as smart as they are stats wise, and you can run a mystery.
Things to note are the specific limits of MM when csst at level 5. 1 event, up to 10 mins long, up to 24 hrs ago.
As your players get close they ciuld find someone who has a memory gap, not a empty day. This might help then realise its something more perhaps than a false hydra.
If they get frustrated at a lack of progress, the wizard could be have accidentally been ariund someone for 30 mins (in a group) and only wiped 10 mins. So a victim would know there was a strange man staring at them before their evening gets a bit fuzzy.
This can be elevated so much. Now imagine that the wizard is only the first part of the encounter and there IS an actual false hydra as well. That'd throw the players in for a loop
I’d stay the course if I were you. Your goal as GM isn’t “create a twist ending that nobody predicted.” The Game of Thrones writers tried that and it didn’t go well (or so I hear, as someone who doesn’t watch Game of Thrones). I bet your players will feel great once they discover they were right, and in the meantime, rooting out a False Hydra is no easy task anyway.
I mostly agree, but would make an exception if they start using that knowledge to meta game. Let them work on assumption they are right and do the investigation. But if they immediately dive into the sewers or an old well with no reason then it's time to change it to Plan B
I'm not sure I'd even want to play with people who can't separate player knowledge from character knowledge. In both of my current games we all know more than our characters and it runs so much smoother.
It wasn’t that the Game of Thrones writers wrote a twist ending that no one predicted, the ending wasn’t really a twist, it was just that the writing made no sense and was really bad. One of the worst offenses, without spoiling anything, was a character says something like “We can’t forget about faction’s strategic advantage!” And then almost immediately afterward, they fall prey to that strategic advantage with no preparation at all.
And then there were so many minor things that showed everything was phoned in like characters saying “fire” instead of “loose” or “volley” for commands of siege weapons and arrows, which is something that used to be done in the earlier and more well written seasons.
What I heard was that the writers changed the last season because the fans were correctly predicting what would happen; that's what I'm saying OP should avoid. I'm really not that well versed in GoT so I could very well be wrong.
I absolutely agree with your point about OP. Subversion for the sake of subversion is bad.
I’m sure they did that with a few things, but given where the books left off plus the writers using a very rough outline from the author on the series ending, I think the ending not making sense was mostly because the book content they cut gives a lot of context and explanation for the ending and partly because the things they added didn’t fit the ending so they had to make things up and they aren’t great writers.
A lot of minor changes and flourishes were well written and well received, but just about every time they made a major change to the books (and this goes for the earlier seasons as well), it was not well written at all. It just so happens that they started making more big changes in season 4 and after that they basically threw out 80% of the next two books and made their own stuff up to compensate and try to over streamline a lot of major events. It’s honestly just more disappointing than anything else, because while A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons did need streamlining for TV, they threw the baby out with the bath water and cut or significantly degraded some of the best moments in the books
>They have heard of the false hydra and already strongly suspect that thats what is happening in our current campaign.
How? What are you doing that made them suspect?
The last time I tried to do a false hydra, when I was describing the oddness of the afflicted town I made an off-hand comment about spooked sheep.... and my players being who they were decided to HYPER FOCUS ON WHAT WAS THE DEAL WITH THE SHEEP. This caused me to pivot from a false-hydra to a convoluted plot wherein animals who were awakened by a druid, learned to awaken other animals by casting the spell themselves, and now my campaign world has talking animals like OZ.
...
Anyway, the next time I think I'm just going to run the game with the understanding that they are adventuring with an NPC whom I never mention nor reference, but hint at when it comes to stuff like how treasure gets divided, or enemies killed. That way when the moment of the reveal of a false hydra happens, I can point backwards to the lost friend that they all forgot.
I think they would not care too hard, but I will feel like a god amoung men for pulling off that twist.
They got to town and heard about homes that are appearing out of nowhere and encountered a deaf beggar who was looking past them in horror and confusion. 2 of my players gasped and said theyve heard of something similar. I asked one of them privately and can confirm he knows about the false hydra and its ability to alter memories
Ah. Yeah.
I watched the Last Voyage of the Demeter recently.... it's a movie featuring Dracula during his trip from his castle in Transylvania to London and how he butchers the crew. What I found fascinating is that they made Dracula a full on bat-like monster hunting down his prey, but they added that he had some ability to baffle the mind a bit... to confuse you into not quite seeing what you think you are seeing.
I liked this idea about vampires.
Instead of them being pretty, they are in fact monstrous in appearance always, but they hypnotise you to not see them for what they are unless they want you to (and when that happens, it's because they want you to feel free as it makes the blood taste better). So basically you're terrorized when you see them, or you're feeling uneasy and vaguely violated when you don't.
If your players know about the false hydra you definitely need to pivot again. Make it cranium rats, and make it so they are messing with people to help stock pile cheese. Make that person who was horrified, phobic about rats.
this reminds me of the echimoras and kikimoras from the witcher 3. those huge bat like creatures are how vampires are. Cannot put my finger on it, but part of their lore was they altered what the target was seeing for them to look more humanoid, but i could never see that in game myself. they were quite stealthy with invisibility
It might be too late, but when running a False Hydra, you should keep a straight face and never admit that you've ever heard of a False Hydra in your life. They can explain it if they want and you're like "Oh, I don't think that's from a book; that's really weird." And then do it anyway.
Some famous monsters are like this, it's tough to separate what the players know from what the characters know. I compare them to Medusas, seeing lifelike stone statues is an alarm bell to a player to expect a petrifying creature like a Medusa or Gorgon.
If this is a small part of a larger campaign, I'd consider playing it straight and letting them use their knowledge. If this is the whole story, then switching it up or adding complicating details might be more rewarding.
I ran a false hydra once and right as my players started to figure out that it was a false hydra, I went with a false false hydra.
CANNOT recommend.
It was majorly frustrating to my players, who essentially felt like it was a rude bait & switch, though none ever said it in those words.
It was the frustrating and demoralizing parts of "your princess is in another castle, Mario!" without any of the later payoff.
If you're gonna do false false hydra, you have to approach that second false like you're starting the mystery from scratch. The players have pulled off the monster's mask, Scooby-style, but now they don't know who the guy underneath is, yet. You need that interim payoff.
I've never run a false hydra before, but I have had scenarios where players think they know what's going on. Often I'll then subtly change some element of the situation to throw them off. Would that be possible here?
Two thoughts: first, it's not always the end of the world to have players "in on" the plot, especially if they are the sort to play along and make the story run better. It can in some cases make it easier for the story to have an exciting dramatic conclusion rather than the players just being confused about what's happening the whole time. After all, remember, the fun part of a mystery is _figuring it out_..just because your players did that doesn't mean they aren't having fun. And it can also feel kind of bad to think you have it figured out and then have it changed at the last minute because you were too clever (although sometimes that can be fun)
That said, of course this is a situation where everyone will automatically be thinking about ways to do double-twists.
For example, the false hydra is all about making people forget the disappearance of real people. What if you switch it around and what is happening is that something is making people forget about the _appearance_ of people. For example, the homes appearing are actually new and inhabited, but nobody can notice the inhabitants. Similarly, there is no one hydra, but a bunch of individual beings. Maybe it's a scouting force for some invasion or something. You could even do the "missing and unremembered party member" thing, but actually it's an unnoticed spy following along with the party.
That said, I'd probably stick with your original plan unless you have a specific reason not to.
So, my players had run into a False Hydra in a previous campaign, and I missed out on playing it. So I wanted to do something like it in my campaign but was unable to due to that.
I found a creature stat block called a [Kikimora](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDHomebrew/comments/l5tb4i/the_kikimora_a_territorial_fey_sowing_mistrust/). And I had fun with this.
Basically the town the Kikimora was in had due to the droning noise from the creature had started to become a lot more aggressive. During this time, i was having the players roll a con save and not explaining why. As things progressed I had several levels of madness that they would go through as the droning was causing everyone in town to go crazy. It was fun watching them deal with very upset and paranoid townsfolk, as well as making it seem like they were going crazy themselves.
my players ended up really enjoying my take on the false hydra because they didn't see it coming even though more or less the idea was the same.
Just add in an Obelex, they steel memories and also make you forget. Just keep tossing random monsters with similar powers at them and then they will be thrown off.... maybe.
Part of the point of the false hydra is that it takes advantage of the fact that you as the DM dictate PC knowledge. Even if your *players* figure it out, their *characters* don’t.
I'd combine ten_dead_dogs, hedgewiz0 and dragons_scorn answers and give some clues that it could be a wizard only to find out it was a false hydra all along!
You could let your players keep assuming you are running a False Hydra encounter, so they are caught off guard when they encounter different kinds of memory manipulating monsters...
*TlDr: Use the memory manipulating monsters and plot points from SCP's [Antimemetic Division](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub) main storyline as inspiration for a DnD adventure similar to the False Hydra premise.*
**Potential Adventure Plot Premise:** A deafened hero saved a town from a False Hydra years ago. Unable to hear its song, the hero was able to remember the False Hydra and combat it. Before the killing blow was struck, the hero realized that no one in the town would remember the battle between the hero and the hydra, and that they would return to a life of poverty.
That's when they had a great and terrible idea.
The False Hero chained the False Hydra at the bottom of a dungeon, binding its heads and removing all but one of its tongues. They began experimenting on the imprisoned False Hydra, distilling its blood into Perception-enhancing Mnestic drugs, which they sold to mercenaries and soldiers from their stall in the town market.
Returning customers informed The False Hero of encountering strange creatures that could only be perceived and remembered by people under the influence of The False Hero's Perception-enhancing Mnestic drugs. The False Hero was interested in creatures with abilities similar to the False Hydra, so they contracted the mercenary customers to capture the imperceptible creatures and bring them to his dungeon for experimentation.
Years passed, and False Hero's business profited greatly from the sale of Mnestic drugs, which now came in different potencies from experimenting on the captured imperceptible creatures. Then, one day, The False Hero created their newest and most potent Mnestic drug, looked up at the sky, and saw the face of god.
An information-eating [Elder Evil](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_evil), a BBEG from [The Far Realm](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Far_Realm) is slowly plane-shifting itself into the Material Plane, passively feeding on everyone's memories of its appearance, ensuring that noone is aware of it until it fully enters the Material Plane and begins breaking everything down into pure information for it to consume like a black hole.
The Elder Evil became aware that The False Hero had perceived it, and liquified the minds of almost everyone in the town with its ideatic bulk in response. The new drug had protected The False Hero from the deadly psionic attack, but knowing it would wear off eventually, The False Hero retreated to the depths of their experimenting dungeon, hoping to find a way to defeat the Elder Evil and become a True Hero.
That's when the players come in.
They go to the town, encounter the mercenaries, the mercenaries share their drugs, the party helps capture or kill escaped creatures, the party finds stronger drugs, the party perceives stronger creatures, the party enters the dungeon, the party fights monsters that broke free from their cells, the party finds The False Hero hiding inside the False Hydra's cell, The False Hero explains the above situation, and the party have to find a way to kill a god that will kill them if they percieve it.
why not use an actual sentient hydra gentleman and scholar. a sophisticated BBEG with multiple heads but one singular style and ambition. the use of a hydra as a false hydra is unprecedented.
Two options: keep it the same or switch it
The same option. Pros: players get to feel option for solving the mystery, you don’t have to weave new plot threads and clues. Cons: players solve it partially through metagaming, and you never get to really build up the horror aspect.
Switch it option. Pros: your players will prepare for the wrong monster, and you don’t get your evil creature defeated instantly. Cons: you’ll need to weave new plot threads, and your players may feel like you switched it only because they figured it out.
It's time to reveal the False False Hydra, which is just a serial killing wizard who dedicated most of his spell slots to Modify Memory and is relying on obscure legends to blame his murders on a mythical monster
This is actually really smart. They know that wizards have been fleeing to the area and experimenting on people.
Genuinely this is a better idea than a straight False Hydra. Players still can feel good about figuring something out, the wizard appears as smart as they are stats wise, and you can run a mystery. Things to note are the specific limits of MM when csst at level 5. 1 event, up to 10 mins long, up to 24 hrs ago. As your players get close they ciuld find someone who has a memory gap, not a empty day. This might help then realise its something more perhaps than a false hydra. If they get frustrated at a lack of progress, the wizard could be have accidentally been ariund someone for 30 mins (in a group) and only wiped 10 mins. So a victim would know there was a strange man staring at them before their evening gets a bit fuzzy.
This can be elevated so much. Now imagine that the wizard is only the first part of the encounter and there IS an actual false hydra as well. That'd throw the players in for a loop
Cue spider man meme as the wizard panics
Im pretty sure this is half the plot of dorohedoro
I’d stay the course if I were you. Your goal as GM isn’t “create a twist ending that nobody predicted.” The Game of Thrones writers tried that and it didn’t go well (or so I hear, as someone who doesn’t watch Game of Thrones). I bet your players will feel great once they discover they were right, and in the meantime, rooting out a False Hydra is no easy task anyway.
I mostly agree, but would make an exception if they start using that knowledge to meta game. Let them work on assumption they are right and do the investigation. But if they immediately dive into the sewers or an old well with no reason then it's time to change it to Plan B
I'm not sure I'd even want to play with people who can't separate player knowledge from character knowledge. In both of my current games we all know more than our characters and it runs so much smoother.
New players often find it quite difficult to separate the two
That's not been my experience, but perhaps I've just been lucky with groups.
Or perhaps I’ve been unlucky.
It wasn’t that the Game of Thrones writers wrote a twist ending that no one predicted, the ending wasn’t really a twist, it was just that the writing made no sense and was really bad. One of the worst offenses, without spoiling anything, was a character says something like “We can’t forget about faction’s strategic advantage!” And then almost immediately afterward, they fall prey to that strategic advantage with no preparation at all. And then there were so many minor things that showed everything was phoned in like characters saying “fire” instead of “loose” or “volley” for commands of siege weapons and arrows, which is something that used to be done in the earlier and more well written seasons.
What I heard was that the writers changed the last season because the fans were correctly predicting what would happen; that's what I'm saying OP should avoid. I'm really not that well versed in GoT so I could very well be wrong.
I absolutely agree with your point about OP. Subversion for the sake of subversion is bad. I’m sure they did that with a few things, but given where the books left off plus the writers using a very rough outline from the author on the series ending, I think the ending not making sense was mostly because the book content they cut gives a lot of context and explanation for the ending and partly because the things they added didn’t fit the ending so they had to make things up and they aren’t great writers. A lot of minor changes and flourishes were well written and well received, but just about every time they made a major change to the books (and this goes for the earlier seasons as well), it was not well written at all. It just so happens that they started making more big changes in season 4 and after that they basically threw out 80% of the next two books and made their own stuff up to compensate and try to over streamline a lot of major events. It’s honestly just more disappointing than anything else, because while A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons did need streamlining for TV, they threw the baby out with the bath water and cut or significantly degraded some of the best moments in the books
Yeah this was my thought. A well-made plot everyone can see coming, is still good. If no one possibly can see it coming, that's just Deus-Ex-Machina.
>They have heard of the false hydra and already strongly suspect that thats what is happening in our current campaign. How? What are you doing that made them suspect? The last time I tried to do a false hydra, when I was describing the oddness of the afflicted town I made an off-hand comment about spooked sheep.... and my players being who they were decided to HYPER FOCUS ON WHAT WAS THE DEAL WITH THE SHEEP. This caused me to pivot from a false-hydra to a convoluted plot wherein animals who were awakened by a druid, learned to awaken other animals by casting the spell themselves, and now my campaign world has talking animals like OZ. ... Anyway, the next time I think I'm just going to run the game with the understanding that they are adventuring with an NPC whom I never mention nor reference, but hint at when it comes to stuff like how treasure gets divided, or enemies killed. That way when the moment of the reveal of a false hydra happens, I can point backwards to the lost friend that they all forgot. I think they would not care too hard, but I will feel like a god amoung men for pulling off that twist.
They got to town and heard about homes that are appearing out of nowhere and encountered a deaf beggar who was looking past them in horror and confusion. 2 of my players gasped and said theyve heard of something similar. I asked one of them privately and can confirm he knows about the false hydra and its ability to alter memories
Ah. Yeah. I watched the Last Voyage of the Demeter recently.... it's a movie featuring Dracula during his trip from his castle in Transylvania to London and how he butchers the crew. What I found fascinating is that they made Dracula a full on bat-like monster hunting down his prey, but they added that he had some ability to baffle the mind a bit... to confuse you into not quite seeing what you think you are seeing. I liked this idea about vampires. Instead of them being pretty, they are in fact monstrous in appearance always, but they hypnotise you to not see them for what they are unless they want you to (and when that happens, it's because they want you to feel free as it makes the blood taste better). So basically you're terrorized when you see them, or you're feeling uneasy and vaguely violated when you don't. If your players know about the false hydra you definitely need to pivot again. Make it cranium rats, and make it so they are messing with people to help stock pile cheese. Make that person who was horrified, phobic about rats.
this reminds me of the echimoras and kikimoras from the witcher 3. those huge bat like creatures are how vampires are. Cannot put my finger on it, but part of their lore was they altered what the target was seeing for them to look more humanoid, but i could never see that in game myself. they were quite stealthy with invisibility
It might be too late, but when running a False Hydra, you should keep a straight face and never admit that you've ever heard of a False Hydra in your life. They can explain it if they want and you're like "Oh, I don't think that's from a book; that's really weird." And then do it anyway.
When in doubt, gaslight your players
Some famous monsters are like this, it's tough to separate what the players know from what the characters know. I compare them to Medusas, seeing lifelike stone statues is an alarm bell to a player to expect a petrifying creature like a Medusa or Gorgon. If this is a small part of a larger campaign, I'd consider playing it straight and letting them use their knowledge. If this is the whole story, then switching it up or adding complicating details might be more rewarding.
I ran a false hydra once and right as my players started to figure out that it was a false hydra, I went with a false false hydra. CANNOT recommend. It was majorly frustrating to my players, who essentially felt like it was a rude bait & switch, though none ever said it in those words. It was the frustrating and demoralizing parts of "your princess is in another castle, Mario!" without any of the later payoff. If you're gonna do false false hydra, you have to approach that second false like you're starting the mystery from scratch. The players have pulled off the monster's mask, Scooby-style, but now they don't know who the guy underneath is, yet. You need that interim payoff.
Live and learn, big reason why I stay away from meme modules and monsters
I've never run a false hydra before, but I have had scenarios where players think they know what's going on. Often I'll then subtly change some element of the situation to throw them off. Would that be possible here?
Two thoughts: first, it's not always the end of the world to have players "in on" the plot, especially if they are the sort to play along and make the story run better. It can in some cases make it easier for the story to have an exciting dramatic conclusion rather than the players just being confused about what's happening the whole time. After all, remember, the fun part of a mystery is _figuring it out_..just because your players did that doesn't mean they aren't having fun. And it can also feel kind of bad to think you have it figured out and then have it changed at the last minute because you were too clever (although sometimes that can be fun) That said, of course this is a situation where everyone will automatically be thinking about ways to do double-twists. For example, the false hydra is all about making people forget the disappearance of real people. What if you switch it around and what is happening is that something is making people forget about the _appearance_ of people. For example, the homes appearing are actually new and inhabited, but nobody can notice the inhabitants. Similarly, there is no one hydra, but a bunch of individual beings. Maybe it's a scouting force for some invasion or something. You could even do the "missing and unremembered party member" thing, but actually it's an unnoticed spy following along with the party. That said, I'd probably stick with your original plan unless you have a specific reason not to.
So, my players had run into a False Hydra in a previous campaign, and I missed out on playing it. So I wanted to do something like it in my campaign but was unable to due to that. I found a creature stat block called a [Kikimora](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDHomebrew/comments/l5tb4i/the_kikimora_a_territorial_fey_sowing_mistrust/). And I had fun with this. Basically the town the Kikimora was in had due to the droning noise from the creature had started to become a lot more aggressive. During this time, i was having the players roll a con save and not explaining why. As things progressed I had several levels of madness that they would go through as the droning was causing everyone in town to go crazy. It was fun watching them deal with very upset and paranoid townsfolk, as well as making it seem like they were going crazy themselves. my players ended up really enjoying my take on the false hydra because they didn't see it coming even though more or less the idea was the same.
Just add in an Obelex, they steel memories and also make you forget. Just keep tossing random monsters with similar powers at them and then they will be thrown off.... maybe.
Part of the point of the false hydra is that it takes advantage of the fact that you as the DM dictate PC knowledge. Even if your *players* figure it out, their *characters* don’t.
I'd combine ten_dead_dogs, hedgewiz0 and dragons_scorn answers and give some clues that it could be a wizard only to find out it was a false hydra all along!
You could let your players keep assuming you are running a False Hydra encounter, so they are caught off guard when they encounter different kinds of memory manipulating monsters... *TlDr: Use the memory manipulating monsters and plot points from SCP's [Antimemetic Division](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub) main storyline as inspiration for a DnD adventure similar to the False Hydra premise.* **Potential Adventure Plot Premise:** A deafened hero saved a town from a False Hydra years ago. Unable to hear its song, the hero was able to remember the False Hydra and combat it. Before the killing blow was struck, the hero realized that no one in the town would remember the battle between the hero and the hydra, and that they would return to a life of poverty. That's when they had a great and terrible idea. The False Hero chained the False Hydra at the bottom of a dungeon, binding its heads and removing all but one of its tongues. They began experimenting on the imprisoned False Hydra, distilling its blood into Perception-enhancing Mnestic drugs, which they sold to mercenaries and soldiers from their stall in the town market. Returning customers informed The False Hero of encountering strange creatures that could only be perceived and remembered by people under the influence of The False Hero's Perception-enhancing Mnestic drugs. The False Hero was interested in creatures with abilities similar to the False Hydra, so they contracted the mercenary customers to capture the imperceptible creatures and bring them to his dungeon for experimentation. Years passed, and False Hero's business profited greatly from the sale of Mnestic drugs, which now came in different potencies from experimenting on the captured imperceptible creatures. Then, one day, The False Hero created their newest and most potent Mnestic drug, looked up at the sky, and saw the face of god. An information-eating [Elder Evil](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_evil), a BBEG from [The Far Realm](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Far_Realm) is slowly plane-shifting itself into the Material Plane, passively feeding on everyone's memories of its appearance, ensuring that noone is aware of it until it fully enters the Material Plane and begins breaking everything down into pure information for it to consume like a black hole. The Elder Evil became aware that The False Hero had perceived it, and liquified the minds of almost everyone in the town with its ideatic bulk in response. The new drug had protected The False Hero from the deadly psionic attack, but knowing it would wear off eventually, The False Hero retreated to the depths of their experimenting dungeon, hoping to find a way to defeat the Elder Evil and become a True Hero. That's when the players come in. They go to the town, encounter the mercenaries, the mercenaries share their drugs, the party helps capture or kill escaped creatures, the party finds stronger drugs, the party perceives stronger creatures, the party enters the dungeon, the party fights monsters that broke free from their cells, the party finds The False Hero hiding inside the False Hydra's cell, The False Hero explains the above situation, and the party have to find a way to kill a god that will kill them if they percieve it.
Is there any way you can make it a real hydra?
why not use an actual sentient hydra gentleman and scholar. a sophisticated BBEG with multiple heads but one singular style and ambition. the use of a hydra as a false hydra is unprecedented.
Two options: keep it the same or switch it The same option. Pros: players get to feel option for solving the mystery, you don’t have to weave new plot threads and clues. Cons: players solve it partially through metagaming, and you never get to really build up the horror aspect. Switch it option. Pros: your players will prepare for the wrong monster, and you don’t get your evil creature defeated instantly. Cons: you’ll need to weave new plot threads, and your players may feel like you switched it only because they figured it out.
An Oblex who pretends to be a False Hydra to scare the PCs off
If ypu do a bait and switch, make it the new monster was deliberatelly trying to trick them into thinking it was a False Hydra.
Boom flip it. Use the Meta knowledge they have on a false hydra, let them believe that’s what it is…then boom! Make it something else more fucked
I would just let them figure it out if I were you. They know what it is, no point dragging it out or pretending your not doing the meme monster.
Wat u mean!!
So they already know about the false hydra. 2 of 4 of my players know all the gimmicks of the encounter.
Pull them into the conspiracy to ultimately fuck minds of the other 2!
Duuuuude THIS is exactly what you need to do.