I've been running a little loose with the XP so far in my campaign. We are currently about to start Broken Moon at lvl 7. I know they should be level 9 by the end, plan on hitting level 8 right before the Stairs of the Moon.
As I don't like breaking action to tally XP, I was wondering at what future points I should be thinking of leveling up the party?
Or at least anecdotes as to when your party leveled up throughout the entire Adventure Path.
I would move out the level up until after Stairs of the Moon. (Fight's not that hard anyways.) It is more natural to level up after meeting with Desna anyways.
Leveling up after Feldgrau is natural. (putting you at 9)
Leveling up as the crazy inventor assembles the submarine for you makes sense (putting you at 10).
Leveling up on the road to Caliphas feels right (now 11).
Similarly, level up as you leave Caliphas to head to the abbey (now 12).
Level up as you set out for Virlych (level 13).
Level up after you have finished the ground floor of Renchurch, but before you go underground (level 14). This one's a little weird, I admit.
And do your final level up (to 15) before you head out to Gallowspire.
If the weirdness of gaining 3 levels in book 6 bothers you, just have one level up (right before Gallowspire) and just give the major enemies 1 negative level. Running high-level PF is hard anyways, and you didn't want to deal with PCs throwing around 7th level spells, did you?
that was pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks so much.
Yeah, the advancement guide has it pretty spot on. We track xp exactly, and all my players still hit the levels exactly where the book said they should. At each of those points, just pause and have the party level, and you'll be good to go.
I cannot believe that I missed that... I think I'm losing my mind.