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So a group which I'm GMing is moving their characters over to LoF from a homebrew I don't have time to work on anymore. Now, obviously they can't start at the beginning that easily, but I'm wondering if anyone had experience/recommendations for where to start a party with two level 5 and two level 6s. I figured I'd start them around where the CR approaches their level, but I wanted to see if people had specific recommendations for starting points.

I have a character who survived a battle but lost his off-hand. My friends and I have looked around and can't seem to find any official rules as to who to treat this character with regard to skill checks, weight limits, etc. My hope is to keep this character going as a one-armed dude, so I'm wonderings is this is covered in any of the official Pathfinder materials or if this is something that is just table-ruled at all times?