Do you think your group can finish Pale Mountain in 2 weeks. I'm doubting my group can. We play Thursday nights for 4 hours. We dealt with all the setup and Lady Vord stuff online and started with Hyena encounter. We made it through Manticore encounter and avoided the Antkeg with good checks. So 3 encounters and some exploration. Feel like we're going to need 2.5 to 3 weeks. How are other people feeling?
I think you're on pace. My group took two sessions, about 6.5 hours total. The players defeated the manticore at the end of session 1 and finished the dungeon at the end of session 2.
My group is half through, after 1 session of about 4 hours. They finished all you noted, and we left off right as they defeated the electric trap and opened the secret door to the Tomb. I figure that, if they don't screw around too long with the elemental nodes and finish the mummies quickly enough, they will have time for the ultimate fight.
However, at this rate, they made it through to the Tomb in 5 days, and have 4 days left before the Night Heralds come through. They might actually get out with the prize, with enough time to leave the Heralds in the dust! Because that fight is going to be MURDEROUS if they fight it. If they mess around for the whole session and wait too long, I will have to handle that on a third day.
We only get two sessions because that's when we can meet.. and we have between 3 and 3.5 hours to play. We've definitely picked up our pace (we're usually pretty casual in our pacing) but I still have doubts about finishing on time.
My kids and I are kind of blazing through it. Creating characters back to back like this has left us all feeling a little detached from our characters, though, so I think I'm going to slow it down at an overnight camping spot and really get to know each other.
We typically play for about an hour at a time, but right now we're crushing about two encounters per session.
So my party didn't make it. Started the day with the B5 Gnoll encounter. Party had faced the manticore already that day so decided to rest.
Next day they got in the tomb and dealt with both elemental fights (figured they needed the gems after the first elemental died.)
So far 2 four hour sessions averaging 3 encounters per session or 1 hour 20 minutes per encounter. Probably closer to 1 hour per encounter with some exploration and other bit mixed in between.
We also probably did a good hours worth of table time online over the course of the week.
Still need to do the device, mabar room and possibly final encounter (PCs are currently on Day 6. Also day 6 was totaly a 15 minute work day. Elementals 1, heal, Elementals 2, heal, rest. Ugh.
I'm bummed because I figure I need at least another half a session to finish this but that puts us behind on adventure 3. I'm also not looking forward t trying to cram in adventure 4 in 2 weeks!
|
You are not really falling behind until December when they officially close all the surveys. Paizo has made it clear they are collecting all the survey data up into sometime in December. So just keep plugging along at the pace you can.
As the weeks go by I'm sure the number of people not keeping pace with the survey release dates will just keep growing.
I've also got 5 players so that's skewing things longer. My problem is that at Thanksgiving one of my players is leaving the area permanently and if we kept pace with the playtest dates we'd finish just in time!
We did it in 6 hours but by the end started cutting corners on checks and such. We also skipped one encounter entirely and solved two more socially via roleplaying and skill checks instead of combat (and we didn't have to fight the Night Heralds at all as we got there fast).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the playtest is moving at WAAY too fast a clip.
I'm in 3 groups for Pale Mountain; GMing 1 and playing 2 others. The one I'm GMing hasn't even had a chance to meet yet due to scheduling issues. Both of the groups I'm playing in (1 4-player, 1 5-player) only got to the entrance by the end of their first sessions (both about 4 hours long). The 4-player group met again today, short a member, and made it through one pair of elementals before nearly TPKing on the water/earth team and calling the session for time.
I understand that the scheduling is based on when the book needs to go to print, but I'm honestly expecting that more and more groups will fall behind and the last few scenarios will have significantly fewer testers than the first ones.
|
I understand that the scheduling is based on when the book needs to go to print, but I'm honestly expecting that more and more groups will fall behind and the last few scenarios will have significantly fewer testers than the first ones.
Its an interesting thought experiment to consider what kind of groups will keep up with the playtesting. I'm pretty sure that groups who manage the entire set of adventures in the time allocated will be abnormal in several respects.
I'm planning on keeping what pace I can and, if needs must, skipping one of the intermediate missions and go to the high level ones. Curious what high level play is like :-)
|
|
On the bright side - the staggered pace will allow for groups that are not keeping up to be able to report using all the tweaks and changes being implemented. This play test goes up in level every Chapter, so I think it will be a good thing that some groups might be reporting on the early chapters using the accumulation of changes on the horizon.
In fact, I might argue that could be more important that every group keeping the same pace.