I take it that the marching order will be Samduc, Gruul, Vebannter and then Mithven? For combat, I will roll initiative, saves and also passive Perception checks when you are near things like secret doors. You may make an active Perception check at any time if you wish.
For posting, thoughts in italics, "speech in bold" and rolls in spoilers to keep things tidy.
As I post I have a question. I envision Verbanter being a fairly normal dwarf, raised with the normal dwarven prejudices. Since there is a half-orc in the group would there be any objections to some minor in-character tension as long as it does not negatively affect party goals. I don't want any player conflict, but some amount of in character tension seems reasonable. I wanted to get other opinions though, before I started anything.
As a rule, I'm okay with it as long as it's kept IC. Bear in mind that I intend to run the later levels as well so I expect it to come to some form of resolution.
Feel sorry for the Paladin though - most of the enemies in the first level are mites who have a Hatred rule against halflings and gnomes!
Changes to combat
I'm making a change to the games that I DM in a bid to make combat move a bit slicker. Basically, instead of rolling initiative for each character and groups of monsters, there will be two rolls: one for the party at the highest initiative modifier and one for the monsters at the highest modifier.
It won't make much difference for the monsters, but initiative for the players will then be first-come, first-serve. This means that a) posts won't need to be retconned if an action won't work due to a later post that comes earlier in the initiative and b) it should make things flow better.