Ifenan Legends [Abandoned]

Did everything go smoothly?

I couldn't GM a session while it was painful to look at a monitor without turning the brightness down so low I couldn't read anything, unfortunately. Serves me right for forgetting to close a window overnight when winter is getting it's groove on.

The Death has subsided for the most part now though, so perhaps a session this Sunday (20th, 9PM EST)?


Also, I know you wanted to skip the rest of the encounter, but I would much rather you participated. Your frustration with it is understandable and was largely my own fault; in particular my failure to explicitly inform you of all (good) options.

Tabletop RPG systems, as a general rule of thumb, allow players a lot of freedom. Many people new to them don't realize this and don't try to be creative with what they do (especially now with heavily restrictive - comparatively - videogames out in force), instead only using the most obvious and/or explicitly explained actions. I completely failed to keep that in mind.

Your worry about your character being useless in combat is in fact partially true if the only thing you do is stand in place and keep swinging (trying to do just that isn't your fault; a modern expectation of games is for everything you can do to be explicitly explained - and until they are, you can't do them - that isn't the case with tabletop RPGs like DnD).

A combat-specific option in particular I should have known to introduce is 'shield punching'; a move that characters with some skill in shields can perform to attempt to knock an opponent prone, with a Strength roll. The enemies you're facing are small creatures, which means they get a penalty to Strength checks... putting your odds of succeeding very high. And that being a half-action, you can also attack them while they're down, netting you (and everyone else who attacks them) a large bonus to your attack roll.

If I had explained this as I should have when the encounter got underway, it would have been over rather quickly despite those enemies having twice(!) the AC they should've had (again, my own fault).