Hussar
Legend
The whole time pressure thing is so much bokum. It really doesn't work.
Take a standard 3e adventure with enough encounters to advance the group 1 level. You're looking at about 10-15 encounters. Note, several of these encounters will be non-combat, so, the actual number of combat encounters is likely closer to 8-10.
Now, a standard speed group should be doing 4 combat encounters (or so) per day. Meaning they should finish off the adventure in about 3 game days. Ok, fine. That's the fastest.
An especially slow group, with only one combat encounter per day, still finishes the adventure in 10 days. That means there's only seven days between the absolute fastest and absolute slowest groups. The vast majority of groups will fall somewhere in between. After all, the fast group could get held up after a bit of bad luck and only do two encounters one day. It's very unlikely they'll do more than 5 or 6 in a given day unless the encounters are very, very easy.
So, over the course of 20 levels, you're still only talking a difference of about 150 days, tops. Five months over TWENTY levels. It's a pretty rare campaign where that's going to make that much of a difference. Travel time will likely be far more than a few months over twenty levels. Never minding down time which is pretty reasonable.
I mean, is it really unreasonable to have a week or two of down time per level? Really? Because that's all it takes for the casters to get their mojo going - about one week of down time per level. They can either craft or buy their way out of Vancian limitations.
Unless people play the D&D version of 24, you are going to have down time.
Take a standard 3e adventure with enough encounters to advance the group 1 level. You're looking at about 10-15 encounters. Note, several of these encounters will be non-combat, so, the actual number of combat encounters is likely closer to 8-10.
Now, a standard speed group should be doing 4 combat encounters (or so) per day. Meaning they should finish off the adventure in about 3 game days. Ok, fine. That's the fastest.
An especially slow group, with only one combat encounter per day, still finishes the adventure in 10 days. That means there's only seven days between the absolute fastest and absolute slowest groups. The vast majority of groups will fall somewhere in between. After all, the fast group could get held up after a bit of bad luck and only do two encounters one day. It's very unlikely they'll do more than 5 or 6 in a given day unless the encounters are very, very easy.
So, over the course of 20 levels, you're still only talking a difference of about 150 days, tops. Five months over TWENTY levels. It's a pretty rare campaign where that's going to make that much of a difference. Travel time will likely be far more than a few months over twenty levels. Never minding down time which is pretty reasonable.
I mean, is it really unreasonable to have a week or two of down time per level? Really? Because that's all it takes for the casters to get their mojo going - about one week of down time per level. They can either craft or buy their way out of Vancian limitations.
Unless people play the D&D version of 24, you are going to have down time.