Comparitive length of the 5E AP


4th Edition

Liberty's Edge

I've run and played in a lot of the Pathfinder APs and am now curious about some of the 5E Adventures. In particular I'm curious if people found they took as long to get through the 2 part Tyranny of Dragons, and other ones as an average PF AP.

Thanks in advance.


I haven't played the dragon one yet, but I've played the other two.

Out of the Abyss is on par with any given AP. It runs from level 1 to 15 (whereas most APs run from 1 to 16, plus or minus few).

Curse of Strahd is a little quicker, only going from 1 - 10.

Both are excellent adventures, and I'd highly recommend ether one.

Liberty's Edge

So there really isn't much of a difference in real time spend running these vs the Pathfinder APs. Interesting. I was hoping for shorter campaigns.


It depends on your play style.

When we played PF APs, it often took us months to get through one book. Game was slow, combat was slow, we often paused to look up rules. The best we ever did was completing book 3 in just over a year. We have never finished a single AP.

In Out of the Abyss, we're half way through the book in 6 months. Combat is quick and easy, and extremely minimal rules referencing means we can focus more on the game. Looking back, if it wasn't for all the missed weekends in the past six months, we'd probably be about 3/4 of the way through.

The length is the same. The gameplay is much faster. And we play about 5-6 hours per session, averaging 3 sessions a month


J-Bone wrote:
So there really isn't much of a difference in real time spend running these vs the Pathfinder APs. Interesting. I was hoping for shorter campaigns.

What bookrat said. Specifically, "gameplay is much faster".

3.PF combat is so slow that I've quit games*.

5E doesn't have this problem, like at all, so games are typically much faster (or it gives you more time for RP, if that's your thing).

*not rage-quit but just gave notice for a game where the GM insisted every nuance of battle play out even when it was clear that is would be boring/pointless to continue.


J-Bone wrote:

So there really isn't much of a difference in real time spend running these vs the Pathfinder APs. Interesting. I was hoping for shorter campaigns.

I've not played a 5E "AP" yet, but I've heard they take much, much less time in real life. One of the reasons I've steered clear, in fact but it sounds like it might appeal to you.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

We just finished a conversion of RotRL to 5th Edition. It took about a year and a half, averaging almost 1 session per month.

Liberty's Edge

My experience with the PF Adventure paths, to which I am an unabashed fan, is that they take between 8-20 months with a high RP group meeting every week and playing for 4-5 hours. I enjoy that a lot but on the longer end of the AP play I have found the game to have overstayed their welcome. Running for close to 2 years is just too much. So the idea that the 5E APs could be completed faster does indeed appeal to me.

I wonder how long it might take to get through a 5E conversion with my group. One of the appeals of 5E to me are stuff that you guys have mentioned already in speed of battle and less rules checking. I may have to give this a try as I love the PF stories but want a more streamlined experience.

Sovereign Court

I wonder how often people convert from 5e to PF.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

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I guess it's pretty common. Paizo has a huge fan base, and 5th Edition is such an elegant system, they go pretty much hand in hand.


J-Bone wrote:

My experience with the PF Adventure paths, to which I am an unabashed fan, is that they take between 8-20 months with a high RP group meeting every week and playing for 4-5 hours. I enjoy that a lot but on the longer end of the AP play I have found the game to have overstayed their welcome. Running for close to 2 years is just too much. So the idea that the 5E APs could be completed faster does indeed appeal to me.

I wonder how long it might take to get through a 5E conversion with my group. One of the appeals of 5E to me are stuff that you guys have mentioned already in speed of battle and less rules checking. I may have to give this a try as I love the PF stories but want a more streamlined experience.

Curse of the Crimson Throne took my group about thirty three-four hour sessions. We raced through books four and six though. I'd estimate it would have been another six to eight sessions if they hadn't cut corners.

Sovereign Court

The writers or the players?


The players.

Curse of the Crimson Throne Spoiler:
We has a TPK in book four and the PCs were quite taken with The Zon Kuthon NPCs, so wanted to take up book five as Kuthite fanatics. We missed out on the tail end of book four and they had no interest in the rebellion of book six at all - so just made a beeline for the throneroom, discovered the fake queen and the evidence trail pretty quickly, then skipped to the finale. Granted the crown is now safely ensconced in Nidal with it's rightful owners, so not the traditional finish to that AP....


Now that people mention it, the APs I have run do seem to go about 30 sessions (take or give a few). Probably around 5 or 6 sessions per volume.

I can't imagine a 5e adventure hardcover (at least the ones I've seen thus far) would take close to that long, but I haven't played one to completion, and most of our 5e games have not been playing on of the 5e adventures, but either PF adaptations, or in our own gameworld.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Our DM's RotRL hardcover looks to be about 1 inch thick, and the 5e adventure hardcovers look a lot thinner.

Liberty's Edge

Steve Geddes wrote:
J-Bone wrote:

My experience with the PF Adventure paths, to which I am an unabashed fan, is that they take between 8-20 months with a high RP group meeting every week and playing for 4-5 hours. I enjoy that a lot but on the longer end of the AP play I have found the game to have overstayed their welcome. Running for close to 2 years is just too much. So the idea that the 5E APs could be completed faster does indeed appeal to me.

I wonder how long it might take to get through a 5E conversion with my group. One of the appeals of 5E to me are stuff that you guys have mentioned already in speed of battle and less rules checking. I may have to give this a try as I love the PF stories but want a more streamlined experience.

Curse of the Crimson Throne took my group about thirty three-four hour sessions. We raced through books four and six though. I'd estimate it would have been another six to eight sessions if they hadn't cut corners.

That seems pretty close to what it takes my group to get through a PF AP when we are skipping filler encounters. But I agree with Smilodan that with the thinness of the 5E APs they can't run as long as the 300-400 pages worth of content most PF APs have.


We spent 12 sessions on Lost Mines of Phandelver, gave up on PotA after four sessions, and are now about 8-12 (maybe a little over that) sessions into Curse of Strahd. We play several times a week. It could pretty much go on indefinitely because the players start new shenanigans.

CoS and LMoP (and PotA too for the most parts) are pretty much big sandboxes for them where they do their weird ventures.

LMoP spoiler:
At one point they were pretty much running a zombie horde in a personal vendetta against all of ogre-kind but it went south as the necromancer NPC they had enthralled went down and the zombies went haywire

CoS spoiler:
In CoS, they want to replace Strahd as dark lords of Barovia and they oscillate between wanting to involve Escher, conspire against Escher, kill Escher, become Escher, become involved with Escher, trick Escher or I don't know but it's a lot of Escher.

Funnily enough, they're like "Is this a railroad, or...? Because everything is so dramatic and appropriate"
They don't realize that it's them doing all the dramatic stuff.
Like, the very first thing that happened in LMoP?

LMoP spoiler:
They refused to go into the goblin mine, went to Phandalin, refused to take any action against the redbrands, interrogated everyone to find out the direction to Cragmaw Castle, went in there at level one, snuck around in the back door, sneaked around until they discovered a door with large claw marks and a big bar over it and hearing roaring and hooting inside, opened the door and got TPK:d by an owlbear and then immediately rolled up new characters.

I'm not so sure that we would take to an adventure path style set up.
PS we play several times a week and we love our game


CoS can pretty much go on for all time since it recommends doing away with experience points. You get levels "when appropriate". We're sticking with it for CoS but for the next campaign (if CoS ever ends?) will have normal xp (or at least some sort of mechanical xp system, if it be xp for gold, Shadow of Yesterday like keys, or something else).

I've said to them CoS is over when

CoS spoiler:
Strahd dies, or they don't want to play the campaign anymore. However long it takes for one of those two things to happen. They then said "No, our goal is to get through the mists. We believe either Strahd or the Dark Powers can let us out through the mist. An alternative goal for us that we are very much pursuing is to instead replace Strahd as the dark lords of Barovia."

Did I mention that one PC is a necromancer himself (they learned their lesson on relying on NPCs for animating bones) and the other is a commited Belial worshipping fiendlock who has struck a deal with his patron to make Strahd love Belial? This after their good and righteous paladins got TPK:d by 3d6 wolves and they rolled up new characters with a different approach to Barovia.

Dark Archive

As long as it takes you to. There is no real difference only player and GM.


RotRL took roughly 15 months to run cover to cover in 5E (the game Smilodan played in), though I think we played only 3 sessions in the last 6 months, so technically it was more like a year. I definitely learned a lot about the difference in game designs (5E v. PFRPG). The AP gets more and more based around fitting in a certain number of combat encounters to basically feed the PCs enough XP to get to the next volume; I ended up cutting a lot of the incidental combats out. I'd say about 20% in book 4, 30% in book 5, and 40-50% ( not even exaggerating!!!) of the last installment, as the obvious "xp grinding" became more and more obnoxious.
With RotRL under my belt, I'll be doing much less combat encounter conversions in the future and substituting way more fun stuff like exploration, intrigue and political RP (you can't even know how often I wanted to just park the PCs in Magnimar or something to focus on all the RP based hooks available), and stuff that lets the party exploit 5Es very versatile skill and ability check set up.
I enjoyed running the campaign, but I often towards the end got the feeling that it had run on for SO long that the players were forgetting why the hell they were hunting down this Runelord in the first place. I won't say the ending was anticlimactic by any means, but maybe "watered down" a bit?
I've got some cool ideas percolating for these now 14th level adventurers to tackle in the future, and feel like I'll be able to execute them far mor effectively now that I have a campaigns worth of experience with the system.
Looking forward to Level 20 :)

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

I still want to know the Secret History of that horse!

ROTRL Finale:

You could tell the finale was based on the PF paradigm of being superbuffed. Like everyone should have had multiple resist energies and fly up at the minimum. Which goes right against the new D&D paradigm of Concentration spells and attunement magic items.


I ran a level 1-11 5e campaign, and it took us 1 year. We played on roll20 weekly, our session were about 2.5 hours each. I ran them through Lost Mines of Phandelver, a bunch of content from Princes of the Apocalypse and a lot of home brew content. I think the 5e campaigns could play a little faster than a full pathfinder AP, but they are still pretty major commitments. I wouldn't say they are just long adventurers or mini campaigns; they are full campaigns.

Sovereign Court

I do wonder how you would make an archmage a real cr 20 (or whatever Karzoug was) threat without being too cheesy. Maybe just a bunch of abilities that make him tougher and deadlier, but not necessarily related to specific spell buffs.


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Lorathorn wrote:
I do wonder how you would make an archmage a real cr 20 (or whatever Karzoug was) threat without being too cheesy. Maybe just a bunch of abilities that make him tougher and deadlier, but not necessarily related to specific spell buffs.

My immediate thoughts:

Start with the Archcmage NPC from the MM. Give him an ability that lets him act twice per round (on different initiatives), such as a lair action. Maybe one that allows him to cast an at-will spell that's decently powerful, another one that does straight damage, and a third that lets him teleport one of his minions. Use spells, a magic item, or give him a lair action that changes the terrain every other round so things keep changing.

Give him minions as well, of varying power levels. The weakest ones keep spawning every round (continuously adding up so the PCs have to constantly deal wth them or they will get overwhelmed), while the more powerful minions use terrain and tactics and keep moving (such as two flyers firing arrows hiding behind trees or buildings, or a handful of cultist spellcasters throwing out cantrips and minor spells).

Different terrains could even benefit different minions (and weaken others) to give the PCs some tactical advantage of their own.

Basically, the idea is that you don't want to make a CR 20 creature, you want to make a CR 20 encounter.

Sovereign Court

True enough.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

I think in our RotRL finale, whenever a minion died, Special K got spell slots back.

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