Hi, I'm sorry to hear that, hopefully it will provide some good vibes.
For the challenge mechanic we actually had the stream situation come up while play-testing. In that situation we had the cellar master assist the person and use their woodworking skill to quickly fashion a stick as a tool to grab on to. In this scenario they rolled 3 dice and succeeded. Since the game is set-up to encourage that players almost never do actions on their own.
I can understand how the examples are a little confusing here as this seems to be related to the Challenging (Pulling someone from a stream) example and not the Moderate (getting yourself out of a stream) one. However, my intentions with it were whether the character within a stream was conscious (so a failure in the writing to communicate clearly here).
Alternative you could always reduce all the difficulties by one if you'd a game with more successes (i.e. Moderate becomes 1, Challenging 2, Improbable 3).
I hope this clears up some of the differences in play vs intentions and that you still have a good time with the game!