My favorite solution is to adjust the level you run it at, as that tends to save a lot of math and paperwork.
I think that's for L1-6ish, so if so maybe find something to run first (perhaps make up some encounters on the way there?) that gets them to L2 (at which point hopefully they'll be high enough level to offset the missing person) and then start the module proper?
Check out the PRD on Challenge Rating and Average Party level:
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There are a couple things you can do here. There are a couple actual problems when you have a smaller then normal party. Each of those needs to be addressed.
1. Versatility. All things being equal, 4 characters can do a larger variety of things then 3 characters. The 4 basic roles are guy who hits things and gets hit (fighter), guy with lots of skills and sort of fights (rogue), guy who casts divine spells and sort of fights (cleric) and guy who casts arcane spells (wizard). Theres lots of variety in those roles, but those are the basics.
With 4 characters its easy to cover those roles. With 3 your party needs to make good choices. Many classes cover more then one of those roles. The best examples are the summoner, and the druid. These 2 classes are among the most overall powerful in the game, and thus are good choices for small parties. In particular (this will be brought up again later) the eidolon and animal companion are really helpful to small parties. They can provide the 'guy who fights' role rather well if you make the right choices in each (choose combat evolutions for the eidolon and choose the better combatant animal companions).
Other classes are also good at filling more then one role, the paladin (fighter, divine caster), bard (skilled character, and some arcane spellcasting and some fighting), inquisitor (skilled character, some fighting, some divine casting), alchemists (skilled character, some fighting, some arcane casting, some divine casting), magus (fighter/arcane caster)
Encourage your players to choose some of these classes to improve their coverage of abilities that might be helpful in the adventure.
2. Action economy: In the game, each character only gets so many actions. Even if he can do 20 things, he can only do one of them each turn. A cleric is a great divine caster, and can fight with the right character choices, but he is only doing one of them each turn. This reduces the overall output of the party in encounters when you have less then 4 characters.
In addition, if one of the party members goes down, that is a greater portion of your party's capabilities that is eliminated. In a party of 4, if the rogue is knocked out, 1/4 of the party's resources are out. If the rogue and wizard are down, its 1/2 their resources. In a party of 3, its 1/3 and 2/3 of their resources respectively. So every time a party member is incapacitated (which can be from lots of things besides hit point damage), it means alot more in a 3 person party.
However there are classes that circumvent this limitation. First among these are the 2 big ones i mentioned. The druid and the summoner. Those powerful pets bring up the action economy of the party. The druid gets to act AND the animal companion gets to act. If the druid gets knocked unconcious, the animal companion can (and likely will) keep fighting to defend them. The eidolon goes away if the summoner is knocked out, but not the other way around (and usually the eidolon is the one taking hits not hte summoner).
There are a few other classes that help with action economy. The magus can cast arcane spells and attack in the same turn. The paladin can heal himself with lay on hands as a swift action, and thus still take a full turn. The cavalier has his mount, which gets its own set of actions. These are all helpful choices in a small party.
3. Overall power. All things being equal, 3 characters are not as powerful as 4. And thus the adventure is harder then its supposed to be. But remember that the adventure is designed with 15 point buy, unoptimized characters in mind. You could do a couple things to even this out:
A. Give the players a higher then 15 point buy.
B. Help them or encourage them to optimize their characters to make them more effective then the baseline of the game (fairly easy to do if you ask some questions on the boards).
C. Start them 1 level higher then the adventure assumes and then give them expected XP amounts which divided among 3 people will keep them above the expected level of the adventure, increase their overall power.
D. Give them extra magical equipment that makes them more effective (beyond whats already in the adventure).
E some combination of A-D.
Thanks for all the suggestions all. After reading all this looks like I will see if i can try to get a 4th, if not then I will implement some of these ideas and see how it goes. Change things during the adventure if I find it getting too hard and whatnot. What about the idea of having a character that they take turns controlling? One player controls him for a bit then then next for 5 turns or so on? thoughts?
I would advise against new players controlling more then one character. Even at low levels that can get complicated and confusing, even if its a relatively simple character, especially if they dont control it all the time.