Hi, is anyone still here...?
I am finally getting to work on the preparation for our second part of Shackled City (chapters 5 to about 8 I something).
I have just gotten to the second part of the Test of the Smoking Eye; i.e., the Pcs have to follow the path of the lantern of Guidence. It is an 80-mile journey, (so that would be about 4-5 day's typical travel), but the lantern-holding PC has to move at least 15 per round or they get teleported back.
How the *heck* are they supposed to do that?
Occipitus does not have any effect, as far as I can see, on nutritional or sleeping requirements.
The implication is they can't stop to rest (or go to the loo or eat etc) and there are several encounters.
Is the intention to make the PC have to Forced March?
They aren't going to have mounts, since they got to the plain via an NPC using Plane Shift, and even with the assumed default 6 PCs the adventure path was written for, bringing mounts with them is a LOT of extra scrolls (since y'know, you can't get horses to hold hands...)
Assuming a party speed of 20' round (dwarves and people in heavy armour); 16 miles/ day - eight hours - which is 2/ hour. So that's a 40-hour march. Given the DC per hour after 8 hours goes up by +2, so after about ten hours of forced marching (so 18/40 hours), the PCs are onto DC 30 Fort save, so the lower Fort characters are pretty much on nat 20 success. Which means they are going to be taking 22D6 nonlethal damage. Another five hours after that, at DC 40, and that's going to be pretty much true of any character at this level. The final hour's Fort save is DC 74 (!)
30' speed is little better, since that's 27 hours (and for most parties is going to require Splitting The Party), (19 hour's forced march).
It's unreasonable to be able to assume there will be sufficient spellcasting capability to be able to mitigate this.
Teleportation is not possible because of the nature of the test. You can't stop to replenish any spells.
E.g. Longstrider, which at 9-10th level - IF you have enough druids and rangers to cast it on everyone, including Kaurophon - isn't going to last long enough to do much.
Overland Flight might JUST be possible (if they are 10th level, not 9, it would last just long enough to get the wizard - on his own) with only two checks. IF you have a wizard and IF they happen to have learned that particular spell.
It's been an 18-month gap over lock-down when I'd didn't play, so maybe I'm missing something; but this part seems very poorly though out, like the wrote the 80 miles and then forgot about the logistics.
How did other people handle this?
If I recall correctly, the teleportation system on the Test of Resolve involves only returning to the start of the Plain of Cysts map, as thewamp points out, or so I did understood.
Once the players figured out how it worked, they went through without much problem.
This is when we begun the Test of Resolve.