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I am doing the same exact thing, running Jade Regent soon with 3 players. I have given them 25 point buy. That combined with the fact that they are all seasoned players should offset any difficulties. The APs are designed with 4 PCs around 15 buy and most likely average gaming skill. It all depends on the skill of your players and the coordination of character creation. Every character should have some survivability. They would all need some ranged ability to butter up the enemy before the melee ensues, then should should be tough enough to take a few hits and dish some out.
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You could also think about adapting the old 3.5 Gestalt rules. It basically lets the PCs advance in two classes at the same time, taking the best features from each wrt attack bonus, saves, hit points, skill points, etc. and letting them get all the special stuff as well.
I had a fighter-cleric in our old Age of Worms campaign who was pretty awesome. Other good combos are druid-sorcerer, rogue-wizard, and monk-cleric.
Ha, Monk-Cleric with new Ultimate Combat feats would be silly.
One of the things I often recommend for smaller party games (2-3 pcs) is to give the pcs a free archetype from the super genius games archetypes. It gives a good boost in power/versatility of a given character without running into some of the problems gestalt rules do (like individual saves being higher then possible in the normal game).
Edit: fixed my link
I have been running RotRl with 3 players (though I recently did just get a 4th player).
I think it's easier at lower levels, but the higher the level the more you'll have to adjust. I've added some NPC help here and there, knocked off a mook or two here and there, etc. One of the players is a druid, which has helped with the extra body. I would deinitely make sure the 3 players have all the main bases covered (front line fighter, healer, caster). A druid or summoner is nice too, as I mentioned, the extra body helps.
I thought about using 25 pt buy or letting them use more powerful races, but I figured at some point one or two more people would eventually start playing in the game (seems to happen a lot to me, YMMV) so I decided keep baseline at 20 pt. I did give everyone an extra feat (but I chose it).
Bottom line, 3 people is definitely something that isn't impossible.
In my group there are just 4 of us so it's always 3 player games. Running an AP with 3 player isn't a problem. From my experience I think 3-5 players works best. Any less or more then you have to modify the game. 3 players does make it a little more difficult so I go with higher stats. 25 pt build instead of 20 pt works.
We will be starting the Jade Regent AP soon, but will only have three PCs. How can I adjust the power level of the PCs to make the AP work with fewer than optimal PCs? Should I give them an extra level at start, allow a larger than normal point buy?
I would give them better-than-otherwise point buy and hit points, and that should be enough if they are a competent three players. Say, 25 point buy and 3/4 max hit points after first level is a decent way of doing it.
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I've run RotRL with three players and adjusted everything on the fly. We used PF rules, and I kept the AP mostly as written. I thought the more powerful PF-characters would bridge the gap. Worked fine!
Gestalt characters are powerful but you should never forget that, as APs are written for 4 PCs, and with three PCs (even if gestalt) you'll still muss one action per round of combat!
I did/am doing Serpent's Skull with 3 PCs. I started them at level 2, had them do a short adventure before volume one. The 4 PCs-worth of treasure split between 3 PCs helps a bit. Having intelligent, tactical PCs also helps much.