Hello all, I'm looking for some help picking an AP for my home group.
We have recently decided to move on from our old campaign and start something new. I am very interested in running an Adventure Path with them; I run one by PbP and am thinking of adding others, but my home group has never tried one. The issue comes in that my players have indicated that they dislike ultra-low level play, and would rather start out a little higher (4-6ish).
As all the AP's start at level 1, I am interested if there is anyone who has tried to adapt one to start at a slightly higher level, or if any of the AP's might work starting at the beginning of the second book as opposed to the first. I imagine that including a compressed adaptation of some of the events of the first book would be possible (and perhaps necessary) as well.
Most AP's run level 1-16 or so, but I am not interested in upping the challenge rating of every book throughout the whole story, as that just seems like an excessive amount of work.
1. Start at level 4 and let them breeze through the first book, and not leveling until after the start of book 2.
2. Start at level 4 and start at the beginning of the second book.
3. Start at level 4, up the difficulty of the first book, while using the 'Slow XP' track through book 1-2, then transition back to 'Medium' at book 3 (level 7-8ish).
4. Start at level 1 and use the 'Fast' experience track (might be a tough sell for my players).
5. Compress the events of the first book into an introductory Mini-adventure as opposed to a full book, and then move on to book 2 in full.
Regardless of the option I use, I am interested to know from those who have played or read multiple AP's which one('s) might work the best for this kind of idea? I'd be open to using modules as well, which might be easier, but I'd want a string of them I could weave into a coherent progressive storyline.
Any help is appreciated.
I would not hand out any XP for the fist book. By the time they get to the 2nd book their XP should be close to what a 4th level party would have anyway. From there you can use medium XP progress. If you think they will have too much XP then you can give them less XP so they stay on course with the AP.
Alternately you can dump XP altogether, and have them level up at certain points.
I would just up the difficulty of the first book, and then take a 2nd look at things once I got to the 2nd book. <--I would not redo every encounter though, just certain key events. If they are not pushed at all in the in the first book they might get bored.
In all honesty the first 3 levels pass by so fast in most APs that you barely notice them. In S&S we leveled after 1 session, leveled again on session 2. Earning level 4 and 5 took twice as long, and level 6 even longer. S&S is probably easily modded, as the first module has a bunch of NPCs that can just be leveled up.
LoF a motivate party can get up to mid levels rather quickly, as its originally build for old 3.5 xp, so fast track is appropriate. Its also plays a better high level game than most of the other modules. Due to the particular monsters in it, starting out higher ruins much of the fun of the first two sections of the first module. Even then the bosses in the first module can be VERY tough, and are meant to be faced by a 3-4 level party. End of first module gets you to level 5, so quickly into higher level play.
CoT on the other hand is meant to be a lower level game, it has some great combat challenges and environment later on, but the theme and tone of the campaign is established with the low level modules.
Kingmaker is probably the easiest to adjust to a higher start, since its not hard to add class levels or simple templates to the encounters there. Its also rather easy to abuse with certain concepts meant to be fighting outdoors that you normally don't see due logistics (flying mounts, long distance archery, big AoE spells ect). Watch the WBL, cause it has a tendency to get out of hand.
Rise of the Runelords is another one that might be playable with a higher start, the first couple of encounters aren't meant to be serious threats, but it quickly escalates things. Some encounters are very tough even for well build parties, with some rather infamous TPK encounters.
I don't know enough about the other campaigns to really give much more info, I played a tiny bit of Crimson throne (couldn't dedicate enough time to it), and looked into the outlines but not meat of the others.