My group will most probably begin carrion crown as soon as our exams are over.
How time restraining is carrion crown? Does it give the players enough time for crafting? I am asking this because our party will really need the crafting.
The reason is that we are going to run this AP with 5 players instead of 4 and because we want to make our DM's life easier we will try to play the AP as it is with no modification for the 5th player and the way we thought of doing this is that each player is going to take 1/4 of each encounter's exp (even though we are 5) and to solve the problem of rewards we though of taking a lot of crafting feats.
Thank you.
Carrion Crown is "slightly rushed." There is some downtime, but not much. If I had to rate it on a scale of 1-5:
1 - super rushed - Legacy of Fire
2 - slightly rushed - Carrion Crown
3 - moderate pace - Rise of the Runelords
4 - slightly relaxed - a GM running a series of unrelated modules
5 - super relaxed - Kingmaker
That being said, it's pretty easy to throw some houserules on crafting in order to make it work faster to fit your group's needs.
Thank you Erik, what rating would curse of the crimson throne get? I have heard it's very little time in that AP.
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Something to consider though is that while a lot of the individual adventures do have fairly strict time limits, the AP takes you all over Ustalav so there is a great deal of travel time, especially between books.
From what I have seen of the third and fourth book(only half-way through the fourth book) each have you set in places where higher end gear is going to be harder to get, right when you are likely to want it most, so the crafting feats are going to be very helpful at that section at the very least.
Even the traveling is on a time limit.
It's nothing like Runelord's fairly casual pace, where you can take off a couple months between each book (and sometimes a few weeks within a book).
@OP: haven't played CotCT, sorry. But I definately rate CC as "more rushed than the average mod" and in my personal opinion adequate crafting time (particularly at mid/high levels) requires "more relaxed than the average mod."
Even the traveling is on a time limit. ** spoiler omitted **
It's nothing like Runelord's fairly casual pace, where you can take off a couple months between each book (and sometimes a few weeks within a book).
@OP: haven't played CotCT, sorry. But I definately rate CC as "more rushed than the average mod" and in my personal opinion adequate crafting time (particularly at mid/high levels) requires "more relaxed than the average mod."
Even with taking +5 to the DC for doubling time?
Well, here's how I look at it: once you get to the second half of an AP, you're at such a level that WBL guidelines says you should have around 50k of stuff. From there, every time you go up in level, you're getting 20k GP more gear (the delta is around 60k once you near the end of the AP). That's a month of crafting (per PC needing custom gear). Now, you can halve that number with the +5 DC trick, but then you're still looking at 2 weeks (again, per PC). You can split that among multiple party members (which requires not just feats, but specializing in Spellcraft), but then you're having multiple weakened casters.
So I guess I overspoke when I said that you needed "more relaxed than average." You can pull it off on an "average" mod, just barely.
It's not an issue at all for low level though. I guess you have to ask yourself: what are the realistic chances of your group finishing the AP? Most groups start, then don't finish (for OOG reasons). If your group is likely to do that, then there's no issue. If you are going to play to the end, then yea, the crafting rules times will eventually eclipse the time available to you.
Well, here's how I look at it: once you get to the second half of an AP, you're at such a level that WBL guidelines says you should have around 50k of stuff. From there, every time you go up in level, you're getting 20k GP more gear (the delta is around 60k once you near the end of the AP). That's a month of crafting (per PC needing custom gear). Now, you can halve that number with the +5 DC trick, but then you're still looking at 2 weeks (again, per PC). You can split that among multiple party members (which requires not just feats, but specializing in Spellcraft), but then you're having multiple weakened casters.
So I guess I overspoke when I said that you needed "more relaxed than average." You can pull it off on an "average" mod, just barely.
It's not an issue at all for low level though. I guess you have to ask yourself: what are the realistic chances of your group finishing the AP? Most groups start, then don't finish (for OOG reasons). If your group is likely to do that, then there's no issue. If you are going to play to the end, then yea, the crafting rules times will eventually eclipse the time available to you.
Of course there is always the chance of us starting an andventure and then stoping it but i like to think that we aren't going to do that. After all we managed to end Kingmaker (or rather be a session away from ending)
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I'm afraid I'm still going to disagree with Erik above. He is correct that even most of your travel time has some degree of hurry to it, however there are still days of travel that allow for crafting and the pathfinder rules are very friendly for item creation even while adventuring. Devote full days when you can, half days when you can't, and just enough time at camp to keep the project alive when you are really hurrying.
There isn't likely to be time to craft really high end goods, but a +1 suit or armor is about a day without rushing, you can put out a few scrolls, potions or a low level wand in a day if you want. Even just a week long trip is almost a +2 magic weapon. I can see a lot of benefit of this, especially in an adventure that doesn't scrimp on rewards but doesn't always have very rich towns.
Time...hmmm
In Harrowstone the PC’s have only so much times as Gibs gives them spelling. 10 Characters times 1d4+2 days between each -> between 30 and 60 days in total.
There is no real hurry to get from Ravengro to Lepidstadt and people can take their time. However in Lepidstadt the trial and then the foray to the chateau is rather hectic. After concluding the second adventure, PC’s could find them self rushed to go to the Lodge, but really there is no time limit really. But there is deftly no time between the Lodge and Feldengrau, I think that should be played as a hunt like in Lord of the Rings, when they race after the captured Hobbits.
The conclusion of the 3rd Module says that 2 riders took off with the stuff. Now in my opinion (if I was a player) I would take after them real fast, hoping to catch up with them or at least shorten the gap. However Carrion Hill could be injected between 3 and 4 easily (as it is on the way, levelling CarrionHill to the appropriate level), but that loses time...so I’m not so sure what I as a DM or a player would prefer.
In the 4th module there isn’t much time constrains and no real hast needed.