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I need to get a confirmation of something, because there was some confusion on FreeRPG Day with respect to "Dawn of the Scarlet Sun." Dawn was an adventure for 5th level characters, and at my local shop we had many new Pathfinder players on FreeRPG day who wanted to play that adventure, and they were interested in running the scenario for PFS credit. I had them generate fifth level PFS legal characters. We played the scenario and, as they say, a good time was had by all.
Later, I listened to a podcast episode where the high-level adventure Scenario #46: Eyes of the Ten—Part I: Requiem for the Red Raven was discussed. The guest from Paizo said that the system does not allow for higher than 1st level characters to be generated for Pathfinder Society play. Is this correct? If it is, I just need to go back and give actual XP to my players and collect their Chronicle sheets. I just need to know if it is the case that new PFS characters always start at first level. I can't find it in the Guide to Society Play.
Thanks.
All regular PFS characters start at 1st level, no exceptions. The only way to play a higher level character than what you have is to use a pre-gen character. You do get chronicle sheets and xp and stuff when you play a pre-gen, but there are special rules for applying them, depending on whether it was in a scenario or a sanctioned module.
Edit:
From page 5 of the current Guide, beginning of Chapter 2:
All new Pathfinder Society characters begin play at 1st level.
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Characters in PFS do indeed all start at first level.
In your specific scenario: Dawn of the Scarlet sun is actually a module, to be played by 5th level characters (either using the pregenerated ones in the back or your own), and that happens to be PFS sanctioned. However, for PFS credit it needed to be played with either sanctioned characters level 4, 5 or 6 (i.e. leveled up from 1) or using the PFS legal Pre-generated characters. In this case, the pre-generated characters that are included in the module were allowed as an exception to the rule for credit as well.
But yes, characters that were built by players to be played on PFS need to start at level 1.
There are other options that could have been applied (like, after playing Dawn of the Scarlet Sun with the level 5 pregenerated characters you can choose to apply the credit to a brand new other level 1 character with reduced rewards), but that is beyond the scope of your question.
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Actually, this is covered in detail in the the Pathfinder Society Guide to Organized Play, version 4.1, Chapter 6 "Sanctioned Modules", page 23:
Applying Credit
All players receive a Chronicle sheet unless, at the GM’s discretion, they are replaying the module for no credit. If a player uses an existing Pathfinder Society character for the adventure, he must apply the Chronicle sheet to that character immediately. A player who uses a pregenerated character must apply the Chronicle sheet to a newly created 1st-level character.
You are not permitted to create new Pathfinder Society characters above 1st level. If you don't have a level appropriate character for the Sanctioned Module or the Scenario, you must play a pregenerated character.
From the Guide, page 4:
If you play a non-1st-level pregenerated character, you can apply the credit to your character as soon as she reaches the level of the pregenerated character played. You may also opt instead to apply the credit from the non-1st-level pregenerated character played to a newly created character with the GP gained reduced to 500 GP (or 250 for characters using the slow advancement track).
Please note that per the FAQ, you only get 1 XP, 1 PP and 500 gold if assigning the chronicle from one of the Free RPG Day modules to a 1st-level character.