Okay, so I'm adapting this to run this as a PbP game.
Due to the time involved, I want to handwave the XP, level them up at the appropriate points in the story, and cut down on the number of individual encounters. With the group I have, we seem to manage about a round every 2-3 days, which puts each encounter at ~2 weeks worth of posting.
Which do you feel are the most thematic and interesting encounters, that shouldn't be skipped? Obviously the Scorched Hand stuff is important, and the water trap, the beheaded, and the swarm of undead cats are too nifty to pass up.
I'd like to scale it down to 5 or 6 encounters per level. Are there some that can be combined? (Maybe have the mining beetles show up in a room with something else?)
I have a group of 6...an alchemist, barbarian, bard, cleric, gunslinger, and summoner.
I'm not necessarily concerned about adjusting up the difficulty of each individual encounter in order to compensate. In this case, we are playing to enjoy a fun and thematic story over strict adherence to encounter planning.
Thanks for the advice.