I have three players playing Jade Regent. Two are reliable, one is a floater for the game. The reliable players are playing a Cad Fighter and a Bow Fighter. The floater is a Street Performer Bard.
So the Bard missed one game in the first book, which happened to be the game where the attack the castle. So far the two Fighters have cleared out almost everything on the ground and upper levels of the castle and we ended the session with them doing the Kikonu-Zaiobe fight. They are currently level four. They still have the dungeon to go through, and with only the two of them gaining experience, I'm moderately concerned that they'll upset the balance for the rest of the game's books.
Now, I could totally bump up the difficulty for the coming fights, or even cap them at level four, although I'm sure the latter will cause a bit of unrest with the players, but they're a fairly understanding lot. I've currently only read part-way through book two, and my question is pretty much: At the rate they're progressing, will they upset the balance of the game? They'll probably hit level 5 by the end of book one, so how badly will the game be upset, and are there any suggestions on how to fix this?
Considering you only have 3 players, this probably will not terribly upset the balance(and certainly not if they only have 2 most of the time). The group will fairly soon need some breathing room and some fights are just outright going to be bad for them.
If they are consistently bringing along the NPC's to help them when the other is away, I would count that NPC for exp division if they are consistently around.
If they are doing it all by themselves. More power to them. Some fights in the future are going to need them to have as much of an edge as possible.
I have three players playing Jade Regent. Two are reliable, one is a floater for the game. The reliable players are playing a Cad Fighter and a Bow Fighter. The floater is a Street Performer Bard.
So the Bard missed one game in the first book, which happened to be the game where the attack the castle. So far the two Fighters have cleared out almost everything on the ground and upper levels of the castle and we ended the session with them doing the Kikonu-Zaiobe fight. They are currently level four. They still have the dungeon to go through, and with only the two of them gaining experience, I'm moderately concerned that they'll upset the balance for the rest of the game's books.
Now, I could totally bump up the difficulty for the coming fights, or even cap them at level four, although I'm sure the latter will cause a bit of unrest with the players, but they're a fairly understanding lot. I've currently only read part-way through book two, and my question is pretty much: At the rate they're progressing, will they upset the balance of the game? They'll probably hit level 5 by the end of book one, so how badly will the game be upset, and are there any suggestions on how to fix this?
The APs are generally designed for a minimum of 4 players. So having them level up faster is not really an issue. Also remember - you can always make combat harder without upping the CR by improving your NPC/monster tacticals. The other thing that you could do is slow down the experience level progression - if you're using Fast, go Fast-Medium (slower than fast, faster than medium) instead.