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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cronuss" data-source="post: 5187108" data-attributes="member: 90168">I'm new to DMing and have only held 3 sessions so far, all improvised. I'm playing with friends whom are learning the game as well, so this hasn't been too much of an issue.The other day I had the PCs encounter 2 human mages (level 4 human mage from MM1). Part of my story is that these two were dominated or controlled by a higher being (a lich, mind-flayer, something yet to be decided... tips?) and were doing it's bidding. The male mage was giving away hints at this, and the PCs were trying to get information out of him. They kept trying to use insight, diplomacy, etc, on this guy, which I liked, but I didn't know how to set the DCs for it. The human mage "monster" doesn't have any perception, insight, or other skills listed in the monster manual... so am I to assume they have zero skill in those or should I make up my own DC?The PCs kept trying to bluff him and talk to him but I didn't really know how to handle it, so I think I went with a 15 or 20 DC, which they failed repeatedly and ended up trying to kill the mage cause they grew tired of it. So I had him run away and perhaps reappear later in the story.Also, while I'm here asking questions... can someone explain exactly how grabbing works? The PHB isn't very clear. Is it STR + d20 VS STR? Someone explain the grabbing system in terms of how to achieve and hold a grab? Thanks... (they wanted to grab him and keep him still while they talked to him). I also struggled with how to handle the encounter in general on this scene. They started talking to the mage without rolling initiative, so they were freely talking and attempting skill checks. Then the female mage stepped in and got aggressive so I had them roll init. When they wanted to try and run diplomacy with the male again, I was making them use a standard action... another frustrating thing for them. I was unsure how to handle this whole situation <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />Sorry for making this long-winded... I'm learning.:\</blockquote>

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