Most adventure paths I've read have extra time built into them somewhere for crafting purposes, et cetera. It would be pretty easy in most cases to add side adventures or maybe even an ongoing subplot in between chapters.
In Council of Thieves, for example, each chapter has the potential for long breaks in between where something else can happen. In Jade Regent, the caravan journey can be paused for a sidequest.
I think I'd prefer that approach to a campaign a bit more, since it provides the feeling that there's a lot more going on at the time than just stuff which is relevant to the adventure path.
This.
Honestly I LIKE playing on slow track, but our DM keeps adding more and more subplots and extra modules to it.
I think that's the virtue of Slow. The Dm can add and adjust things and make the campaign his own without the characters getting too high a level too fast.
Would I be interested in a campaign just designed to keep us low level? Not really. Would I be willing to get less XP to get more action and story in the plot we're running?
Absolutely.
I would prefer a level 2-12 AP rather than 1-15; 3e & PF level 1 is too squishy and incompetent for most of the plots to work right, while the game tends to break down above level 12. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne now in PF having started it at level 2 with max hp and planning it to go to around level 11-12. I'm using Medium Track - as far as rate of advancement goes, medium track seems to give about 1 level per 3-4 sessions and that feels right to me. A really Sandboxy game like Kingmaker is probably best on Slow Track.
One thing I plan on doing with my next AP is to start players out with double-maximum first level hit points. So they start at 1st level but have the survivability of 2nd.
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One thing I plan on doing with my next AP is to start players out with double-maximum first level hit points. So they start at 1st level but have the survivability of 2nd.
I, on the other hand, think that it's ok for the players to go through a single level of being the slightest bit afraid of taking a warhammer to the face.
Just sayin', they can handle it.
People tend not to have as much investment in 1st level characters, so if they die they can be replaced quite easily without upsetting the player, the plot or even the WBL.
Besides, they don't really die that much. They might go negative quite easily, but a goblin with a 1d4 dogslicer isn't going to be dropping anyone to -Con any time soon. A CR 9 frost giant with an axe doing 70 on a crit is different.
As has been said a six adventure AP ending at 10th level would be supper slow, however, I would enjoy it. Maybe ending at 12th level. It would remind me of the old days of 1st ed where I played AD&D for years and ended at about 13th or 14th level. I wouldn't want to do that all of the time, but it would allow for a lot more play in the "bread and butter zone" of D&D/pathfinder which I have always found to be about 6th to 11th level.
Honestly for me the best would be some kind of epic campaign going up to level 20 in slow xp track, and enjoy the ride all they way there.
Of course a campaign like that would probably take like 10 modules or something and like a year to DM by playing every week, but that would be nice!
Funny you should say that. I've been putting together an epic campaign made up of books 1-6 of Rise of the Runelords, books 2, 5 & 6 from Shattered Star and book 2 from Curse of the Crimson Throne. I'm basically telling the Shattered Star story but I'm using Rise of the Runelords to do it and thus far its amazing. In figuring out the level plateaus, I'm going to be using what would equate to a VERY slow advancement track (though I level at established points rather than using XP at all) and it will still take you from 1st level all the way to 20th.
It'll be the best campaign I've run in over 30 years of gaming, drawing from the best of what Paizo has down and replete with my own additions, alterations and re-writes.
If you know anyone who would be interested in running such a thing, drop me a line, I'd love to discuss it.
Although I doubt we'd ever do it... a slow progression track would probably allow us to do an AP that reaches 15th level with ease. Slow isn't THAT much slower than Medium.I'm curious, how did Council of Thieves manage to end at lvl 13? Same number of modules and page count as every other, yet it lags 2-4 levels behind every other AP. What happened there and why?It ended at level 13 because we were still unfamiliar with the way the Pathfinder RPG's XP system differed from 3.5. The bulk of the AP was written before the Pathfinder rules were in print and solidified, and while the rules for things like character classes and monsters and all that were pretty solid, the much more nebulous matter of actual adventure design was something that really wasn't playtested at all.
{. . .}
So, does this mean we might be getting a Council of Thieves Anniversary Edition in the next few years?
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When I do homebrew stuff I always keep it at current level x 11 in EL to level up. So 11 CR 1 encounters for level 1-2 (or 5 EL 2s and an EL 1). I always add a ton of stuff to the APs and modify them so I can fill out the levels a bit but when APs are run straight (like my one friend is doing with Iron Gods) it definitely feels to be going way too fast to me.
You know, what we did in Jade Regent and Kingmaker and some homebrewes campaign was not to award xp, but tell players when to level up.
Then add in sidequests, modules, etc as you see fit.
To keep them on track, make it part of getting there or happen on he way or be a prerequisite somehow.
The difference between standard and slow progression is typically about 10 APL+0 encounters per level for a party of 4, which isn't actually very much content, especially when you consider that APL+1 is 150% of the xp of an APL+0 encounter, APL+2 is about the same as 2 APL+0 encounters, and APL+3 is about three APL+0 encounters worth... so you could fit in an APL+3 boss, an APL+2 lieutenant, two APL+1 elites, and 2 APL+0 encounters, which comes to a grand total of six encounters, or about one small mini-dungeon per level. Judging by the Kingmaker AP, which is the one I have handy, that's about 4-6 pages worth.
Here's the thing though: simply running one extra module per book would yield enough xp to make up the deficit if you run an AP on the slow progression chart. Or just take what's already there and add some appropriate encounters. At any rate, the difference between level 18 (1,800,000 XP) and level 16 (1,350,000 XP) isn't especially harsh for experienced players, who might actually enjoy the epic challenge of taking on the final boss of an AP when they're only level 16. (Level 17 requires 1,900,000 XP, so slow progression lags less than a level and a half behind standard even at high levels.)
Depends on the DM.
With my groups current DM a slow crawl might take on up to six or seven years to play, as at medium progression I think Rise of the Runelords is going on its third year... So depressing. Finally on the last book though but... so depressing...