It's a fantasy role-playing game.

DM: You are Keyleth, a half-elf druid . You are the member of the famous group of adventurers. Previously, A couple of hours later, the ship comes upon an unnatural-looking fog bank in the ocean. Adella tries to veer around it.
DM: You see one, it's a little ways up from where the ship is actually hitting the water. You would have to probably swim close enough to get there. I'm going to say, make an athletics check to see how quickly you can try and swim against the ocean just for this brief moment. You're going to have to roll pretty high.
Player: Well, that's not great. Just straight athletics?
DM: Yeah.
Player: Athletics is pretty good! 15!
DM: 15?
Player: Yeah!
DM: I'll say you don't fall too far behind the ship, it's still going faster than you and the water is kind of up and down. Using your Alter Self gills, you can dive below the surface to try and avoid the choppiness of the ocean, and you come back up. What's the range on your Thorn Whip?
Player: 30-foot range.
DM: 30-foot range, and it pulls whatever is there ten feet towards you. We can say it'll pull you ten feet towards it. So it gives you a slight arc, but not enough to actually reach the ship, you can just cruise past the grasping range of Taryon. So, Taryon, as you're there on the side and you glance over and you watch as Keyleth suddenly produces a large thorny whip, a druidic vine that wraps around the small cleat on the side of the ship.
