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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5927621" data-attributes="member: 386">And here are some of my observations.  I'm not really going to go into what happened; the PCs went into the first cave and triggered an orc swarm (by setting their banquet room on fire and plugging the chimney.)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Coming to this from my heavily-modified 4E game was very strange.  In my game it's pretty simple: say what you're doing and roll to see if you succeed.  There's no initiative, everyone goes at once.  It makes "can your character do this?" an important question, though one that almost never needs to be asked; except, I guess, internally, when you're deciding what to do. Using stop-motion initiative without attacks of opportunity blew my mind.  I quickly realized that I had to run the orcs as pieces on a grid instead of characters in the game-world; nothing that was going on made any sense to me, so I had no way to judge if an action was reasonable in the game world or not.  This caused some conflict for the way I like to DM - run the NPCs as characters in the game world.  How to do that if the choices I'm making aren't related to what's happening in the game world?  In the end I tried to have the orcs doing what made sense in the game world, which probably led to the PC's victory.  (Or rather the orc's pyrrhic victory.) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Combat took a long time, much longer than I was expecting. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I gave the orcs light-sensitivity because I felt like it.  They were disadvantaged a lot, which probably saved the PCs.  In retrospect I probably shouldn't have done that since it's not in the rules - though it does say that they hate the light, so...  Anyway, I didn't do that to save the PCs, I did that because I wanted orcs to be like that. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I had the orcs make "morale checks" a couple of times - a Saving Throw against DC 10 + party level.  Which they made.  I did that because I wasn't sure if the orcs would retreat or not.  When I was sure, they did. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I used facing and things of that nature - a couple of times I asked the dwarf priest of Moradin which flank his shield was on.  Anyone attacking from the rear got advantage.  The dwarf priest was surrounded a couple times, so the guy on his weapon-arm flank got advantage. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The orcs were finding it difficult to hit with disadvantage from the light, so I had them try to tackle the PCs.  I figured that it wasn't an Attack, it wasn't a Contest (since the PCs weren't doing anything back), so I went with a Saving Throw.  DC was 10 + stat mod. I miss attacking Fort.  I guess I could have had the orcs Check against Strength or something... either way. One specific time I had an orc do a flying tackle - since he was charging I actually made an attack roll and had the halfling thief make a Save; the attack hit, dealing the bonus 1d6 damage only, and the thief made his Save, dodging to the side.  (Leaving the orc on the ground for a dagger to the back of the head, i.e. Sneak Attack.) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I got confused with Advantage/Disadvantage a few times - on the above Saving Throws I gave the PC's Advantage because the orcs had Disadvantage. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">To start the adventure I asked the players if they wanted their PCs to gather rumours or to Check if they knew anything about the Caves.  DC 13; on success, they'd get a true rumour.  Hazard was that they'd get a false rumour.  Only two PCs attempted, one succeeded, no Hazard was rolled. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At the end I asked the players how they wanted to gain XP.  They decided to go with monster kills.</li> </ul>All in all... eh.  It was okay.</blockquote>

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