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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dexamalion" data-source="post: 6011083" data-attributes="member: 90981">Sounds like you had a good time, and it pretty much mirrors my experience I had in running the adventure today.My team decided on heading straight for the Center House (how much of a boring name is that!) and clean that out thoroughly. The Wizard fell to 0 hit points fighting the wight, but otherwise they managed to get through it OK. They brought the crown back to town and were treated to a feast in their honor. They were keen to progress and try to get the Speaking Stones active again, so the fact that they had finished one part of the adventure did not mean they wanted to stop playing, which I took as a good sign. We had a lot more roleplaying and started on the search for the gems to activate the Speaking Stones.The team was really enjoying it (1 mage, 1 cleric and 1 fighter) and the battles seemed fairly good on the balance scale. With 4 characters I can see it being a little easier.One of the criticisms I had was that the characters did not have a lot to do other than their base attacks, and by the end of the session they were just saying "I do shocking grasp"  and "I attack with my short sword" over and over again each round. I think next session they will have a better idea of some of the other ways they can use the expertise dice and such.As I DM I had some fun with the advantage and disadvantage rules, the fighter was incensed when the Dragonshield Kobold was able to disrupt him and cause his attacks to be at disadvantage! The Wizard also chose to do some research about the history of Blingdenstone and the Gods the Svirfneblin worship before they went down there, which I gave him bonuses for when dealing with people down there.I also as a DM struggled with the source material, there is a lot to keep in your head. I had read through the adventure the night before, but as it's non-linear and things can pop up all the time I found myself flicking through the chapters a LOT trying to keep up with the strands that the players were following up on. I don't think the players noticed my frantic fact-checking, but I was still feeling on the back foot with it all. Perhaps the next session with another read through will be better.There was one rule I followed from the first playtest session into this one: if your ability score is 5 points higher than the DC that the skilltest is based upon, you win the test automatically. Is anyone else using this rule?I did not like the use of feet as a system of measurement. The rest of the world has moved to metric, and the use of this really rankled me. As a system that's supposed to be inclusive this is a big red stamp that this system is American and it annoyed me. As I was using the Dungeon Mapp app for the iPad I was still able to use squares to represent the battles in the Centre House, but in the caverns outside I was forced my the map to use feet. I don't really have a good idea in my mind how far 100 feet is, and so it was difficult to translate from the map to our imagination.In short: 1) I'd like more options for players in battle. 2) I'd like to move away from feet as a system of measurement. 3) I'd like to use more ability checks in combat to see what that looks like.</blockquote>

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