In which we get swarmed by bees

 Yup.  Bees.  Party of 6.  Average of 5th level.  And a dozen swarms of bees.  Two each in fact.  Theater of

the mind.  Lot's of dropping below 0 and MED checks and heal spells and bad rulings and stuff.  But as is the case with many sessions we did a lot that we'd never done before so the virgin territory provided most of the problems.

First the new "hits not HP" system.  Most users recommend rounding down.  But nooooo.  I couldn't do THAT.  I rounded up.  "It's only 1 more hit" I thought.  Yes.  But one extra hit over a dozen beasties with an AC of 14 has quite an impact.  So rounding DOWN from now on.  Otherwise the system worked quite well.  Next - the tactical adjustments.  Party had been complaining that since everything was attacking from a distance they could usually pick it apart with the expert marksman ranger and a smattering of spells.  So this time they stumbled on a honey thief being absolutely DESTROYED by angry bees.  And the clouds of apian hell descended upon them with great fury.  Those little buggers went earlier in the initiative order than the plodding ogre's and giant spiders had been.  Throw in the fact that they have damage resistance to most weapons and this thing became a SLOG.  Glass cannon forgot he had a magic wand.  That didn't help.  When he DID go down (quite early) I noted that the bees were no longer attacking him.  But nobody in the party acknowledge this.  And nobody tried to run!  'Cause they're heroes, dontcha know.  This was attributed to the fact that they couldn't really SEE what was going on.  So retreating wasn't an option?  Well, OK.  No more TotM.  Haven't run one of those in months anyway.  

A few other mistakes. Too many swarms.  Nine or ten woulda been better than 12.  One to the "low" characters, two to the high ones.  Mike Mearls recently recommended managing the action economy by avoiding using monsters that have move total actions per round greater than three times the number of players.  That number would by 18 for this encounter.  The bees can move and attack.  So nine swarms woulda worked better.  Lesson learned.

The LAST mistake (?) I made was in my treatment of Temporary HP.  I was treating it as healing.  It isn't.  So we'll avoid the yo-yo effect that we saw last night.  

So I gave the party what they wanted.  And then they didn't want it any more.  The fighter was barely touched but had trouble dealing damage.  The cleric did some healing and utility work and had a BALL trying to figure out what the optimum action was every round.  Druid took a beating and did OK but her spores were less than effective.  Two wizards took too much damage early to be as effective as they'd like.  And the ranger?  Without his +11 archery ability he was more or less worthless and NOT happy about it.  Party worked well as a unit, found a few holes in their procedures, and now know what they need to add/improve.  Which will lead to meaningful decisions.  

Not bad for a two-hour slugfest that didn't HAVE to happen.