I'm in the process of reading and preparing material for my group's next session. I was hoping to get a few time figures from others' experiences as far as how long it took their parties to explore the Catacombs of Wrath. We normally play for 4-5 hours, so I'm trying to gauge how much content to prepare for them past the Catacombs.
It's a group of 5 entirely new-to-rpg players, so they're pretty slow about handling encounters. Also, from the way they handled the Glassworks, they're fairly meticulous about exploring areas. Outside of dungeons, though, they don't give a crap about dealing with things in Sandpoint, so I'm pretty sure they'll head straight to Thistletop once they handle things in the Catacombs.
Also, if anyone has any tips about gauging the length of various sections of this adventure path, they would be greatly appreciated. Preparing content is pretty time consuming for me (as I'm sure it is for most people), so having an idea of how much content I should prepare for each session would be quite beneficial. Thanks!
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With six players, it took us two full sessions of about 6 hours.
In the first session, the group went through the room with all the debris, then passed the welcoming statue, fought some more sinspawn in the ancient prison, went on to finish Koruvus and discovered the levitation room.
In the second session, they backtracked and found the shrine to Lamashtu, then fought Erylium in the Cathedral of Wrath. This battle basically took the entire session, with the party flying in and out of the room due to fear and safety and so on. I actually ended the encounter a bit abruptly due to it growing very frustrating for all involved; Erylium can be kind of a drag if the players don't find a smart way to deal with her invisibility and flight.
Regarding preparation, I'm much the same as you. I take very much time rewriting a lot of the stuff in the AP to easier list the most obvious features of a room, instead of giving a long re-read description. I would advise you to save long descriptions and meticulous details for when players are extra interested about something, but it's probably different what works best for each group.
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Deleted my previous post because I realized that I was really wrong about what I said :'D I was thinking in terms of "Party I'm running this for has a fighter that has so far hit everything and killed everything in one shot", forgot to take account that that doesn't help agaisnt Erylium's hit and run stealth spam.(my party hasn't yet reached the catacombs, but I'm presuming they won't have hard time with sinspawns)
Anyway, yeah, it does depend on dice luck, but searching entire dungeon will probably take at least two sessions because of three encounters: Koruvus' zombie pit, vargoille room and Erylium's annoying tactics. Vargouille for example might with bad luck paralyze everyone so that might make early fight being "Let's see how long it takes for vargouille to succeed with kisses for everyone" with players doing nothing but throwing save throws. It really depends on which order to players go through the dungeon and how long they take in fights. With good luck, everyone succees save at vargouille and kill it quick and won't have much problems with Koruvus or sinspawns, but Erylium will probably take longer.
On Erylium though, I'd count it as player's win if they figure out how to disable runewell even if they don't kill her. After that she doesn't really have a reason to stay around(after she runs out of spells, what is she gonna do? Stab them with her tiny dagger? :P) so thats good reason to bring her back later when players know how to handle her better xD
Either way, no matter whether it takes single or two sessions, you still need to prep the whole dungeon since you won't know in advance what order players will search the rooms.
Took one session for my group of four players to cover Glassworks and Catacombs. But only because we like to play 7-9 hours per session usually (and they didn't gave a crap for zombies in the pits - "Why bother if we can kill them off-screen? They aren't going anywhere from pits!").
Thanks for all of the advice! I was planning on getting the whole of the Catacombs ready for the session, I was just trying to get a read on whether or not I needed to get much of Thistletop ready as well. The Catacombs just seems like such a short section when reading it in the book, being only 5 or 6 pages (I figured they might blow through it in 2 hours or so). Then again, our first session with the Swallowtail Festival lasted 5 hours, ending just as they rescued Foxglove (which is about 5 pages as well). Maybe page count isn't the best metric for content length!
It looks like I'll prepare the Catacombs, and maybe just the thistle tunnels in case they dominate the encounters. That should be plenty enough to keep them busy for 4 or 5 hours. Thanks for your help, everyone
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Ah, thats what you meant, I kinda misunderstood :'D
Yeah, I doubt they will explore whole Catacombs and make it to Thistletop in same session. Unless they get REALLY lucky with encounters. Still, can't hurt to prep start of Thistletop in case they don't explore the whole dungeon or something. If they explore the whole dungeon, no way it takes only two hours.
Either way, good luck with the session!
My group is preparing for their third delve into the Catacombs of Wrath. (2 x 5-hour sessions, but not all of it was in the Catacombs - they also did an abbreviated Glassworks as well, since I've changed a few plot bits.).) Party make-up is unusual: no full healer, no full caster, no ranged expert. Mostly melee-focused but also skill-based and versatile. (I *love* my players!)
With three of my six players it took one game session from like 4 till 10ish.
I think they went in like two times because of resting