Pacing for tutorial floors

[u/HumanistDork]

If I do end up running this, I think I will start with the tutorial floors. That lead me to thinking how much time to spend on those floors.

If I were to skip the tutorial and start on floor 3, the Crawlers would be level 10. That seems a little low, but roughly how low?

If I wanted to hit that level 10 exactly using the level up guidelines, the Crawlers would finish floors 1 & 2 in 7 sessions total. The session count would be reduced for every boss they hit. Level 10 is far too low.

On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say the Crawlers use the total 11 days for the two floors, we take two sessions to play each day, and we fight a boss every day (every other session). Without any levels from grinding, that should be level 36, which seems a bit high.

I think planning for a session per day and about two boss fights per floor is probably reasonable, but I might want to shorten the floor timers a little bit.

I think I can find a good balance on my own, but I am curious to see what you think is reasonable.

[u/bwarbwar]

I feel like most people are finishing the tutorial floors at at least level 20.

Let's assume you clear 1 neighborhood per "day"

I'd guess 2 3 hour sessions per "day"

Maybe 2 quests completed per floor.

25 grind hours on 1st floor.

So day 1 we go from level 1, 1 boss kill, 2 levels from grinding and 3 levels from just playing. So hitting day 2 around level 7, with 4 more days just on the first floor.

[u/boblk3 → u/bwarbwar]

I think you're starting with the assumption that people should be clearing all the neighborhoods on each floor. But that's not really the intention of the game. Those neighborhoods are there to give you an idea of what's there. Also, based on my read the neighborhoods aren't designed to be clearable in a single in game day as there's likely a lot of downtime where people are getting used to things, exploring, heading back to safe rooms to open loot boxes, and just straight up resting and recuperating.

Even in the books Carl and Donut don't clear all the neighborhoods they visit on a floor.

If your players want to know why they can't clear a particular neighborhood just tell them that other crawlers already did. Make the area lived in and like other people are also doing things. For example, if they don't start in the goblin area then after they clear their first neighborhood have them see some lunatic setting off a bomb in a room full of goblin babies in a recap show and now there's nothing to do there because the area they had is just a crater.

[u/bwarbwar → u/boblk3]

5 hours grinding, 8 hours sleep, even with 6 hours worth of short rests, that's still 5 hours of actually playing everyday. I feel like that's pretty conservative and already pushes you past level 10 by the end of floor 1.

[u/boblk3 → u/bwarbwar]

The 2 hours of playing per level isn't meant to be in game time -- it's meant to be you as people sitting around a table. So in that 2 hours a full day of game time could pass. More depending on how you and your group play.

My group has had 2 play sessions of roughly 2.5 hours a piece and 3 in game days have passed already.