I'm a fairly new DM and my players wanted to start at level 3 after a couple of failed attempts in a different pathfinder group (they wanted to carry over their characters). At what point in the campaign should I start my level 3 players and which events should have already occurred?
not a good idea at all. the characters really should get invested in Sandpoint and ist inhabitants for this AP to work and most of the stuff that helps you with that is in the beginning. by the time they reach lvl 3 they already should have bonded with several NPCs to have a motivation for everything that comes next.
I have to agree, if you wanted, you could try to stat up the encounters for the first few levels to match, but that would take some serious work.
to answer your question tho, My group hit level 3 right after the thistle tunnels, having already done the catacombs
I'd start 'em at the start of the AP, having arrived in town for the Festival.
Add a few more goblins to the mix for a while (and only give out 75% xps), and optimize Naulia and her crew a little more.
It'll work out OK.
Mine began at level 2. It wasn't a big deal. Apart from a teensy amount of grumbling about slow xp progression, they're on track: 4th level now when they should be 4th level, so no more extra work for me to make the combat more challenging.
I wouldn't jump in to the middle of the story, skipping parts. I'd have them start at the beginning at 3rd level. Ultimately, it's more work for you- as far as story goes, it won't matter what level they are. The Local Heroes section might feel more fitting, in fact.
hmmm... Wanya, you said you are a fairly new GM. Do you need help with the optimizing of the characters? Sometimes it just works to change their strategy. A simple trick with Nualia is making use of her channel energy ability. it almost killed three of my PCs. Give Tsuto more room to fight. Simple way to make the encounters a little bit harder
After reading through the entire burnt offerings and Skinsaw murders booklet, I was thinking of starting the players off at level 3 just after the goblin attack. I'd start them off by saying they have newly arrived in the town and had just protected it from the goblin attack yesterday. Then we'd commence with local heroes. I feel that the events in local heroes is particularly important as it allows the players to become well acquainted with the NPCs that become very important in Skinsaw murders. I'm not too worried about their levels, as I think that instead of rewarding xp I'll adjust their levels according to their plot progression, taking them to forth level just before the boss fight at Thistletop.
thoughts?
I think that would work, I always use level progression by plot rather than xp .
Depending om how little experience you and the players have running the fights against the goblins may be good for practice, particularly if you add a couple of goblins as they will be fairly safe encounters were a death is unlikely to be caused by a mistake
After reading through the entire burnt offerings and Skinsaw murders booklet, I was thinking of starting the players off at level 3 just after the goblin attack. I'd start them off by saying they have newly arrived in the town and had just protected it from the goblin attack yesterday. Then we'd commence with local heroes. I feel that the events in local heroes is particularly important as it allows the players to become well acquainted with the NPCs that become very important in Skinsaw murders. I'm not too worried about their levels, as I think that instead of rewarding xp I'll adjust their levels according to their plot progression, taking them to forth level just before the boss fight at Thistletop.
thoughts?
one thought: Aldern Foxglove.
make sure to introduce him early. skipping the goblin attack means he has no motivation to go boar hunting with the group. so come up with another
For the encounters to be balanced to the party's level (assuming you have a standard four-character party), you would want to start at the exploration of Thistletop. However, in terms of the story, I agree with what you (and the others here) have said - you should start with Local Heroes at the latest (making sure to introduce Aldern Foxglove, perhaps as someone who heard of - or saw - the PCs' brave defence of Sandpoint during the goblin attack). I then wouldn't actually award any XP through the course of Burnt Offerings, instead simply getting them to go up to 4th level either right at the end of the chapter, or just as they start to explore level 2 of the Thistletop dungeons (depending on how they've been getting on up to that point).
If you want to make the combat encounters before Thisletop more of an appropriate challenge for a 3rd-level party, you can add one or two of the "ordinary" creatures to each encounter. Alternatively, you can just let them breeze through these encounters - they'll get hard enough later on!
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If you were sure about level 3 start, I would be tempted to run it from the start with level 3 characters and not give any xp until thistletop.
Many people have gone in kind of the opposite direction and added extra low level exposition stuff before the swallowtail festival, some festival games used to introduce some lesser known npc's, dabbling in the murderers that came before, that kind of thing.
I have to also agree with Callum. I wouldn't really beef up the early encounters. They seem to be easy (even for 1st level characters) and are more there to ease in the players and build the characters confidence than to provide a real threat. I would say there isn't a real threat in the game until they reach Koruvus.
By the way a really easy way to beef up encounters is to give each monsters a "positive level", the opposite of a negative level.
So every monster gets +1 attack, +1 on all saves and +5 HP.
It's not perfect but a good enough representation of a levelup and it'll stop the fights from getting boring. You'd have to stop the heroes from gaining any XP until Thistletop though.
Get them sold on starting at 2nd level, maybe? Honestly, 5k xp can mess up a lot of stuff, me and some friends ended up running Reign of Winter on Fast advancement track, and we ended up crushing it far too easily. 2000 xp isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things, so it should probably be okay.
Also, make sure you keep to 15 point buy if you're using the pathfinder ruleset, 28 if you're using 3.5e. PCs with high stats can really mess stuff up, especially in the beginning.
Optimize the first few levels, so the encounters can stand up to your 2nd level pcs. I'll do some of the work for you here:
-Ground Rules: Npcs are made from the assumption that the game only uses the npc stats they do because it's easy on the GM to remember - in reality, NPCs with only NPC class levels use a 3 point buy, while NPCs with heroic class levels use a 15 point buy, like the pcs. If you use higher values for players, you should up the values for NPCs and monsters as well, unless you want the difficulity of the game to decrease.
-I hand out traits to NPCs.
-They might end up being a bit consumable heavy. This is okay, because we trust paizo to have balanced the wealth in the AP, and while we might be adding some power, we don't want to supercharge pc wealth by adding too much permanent wealth to rank-and-file goblins.
Warrior
Goblin Warrior 1
Init +5
HP 8 (½d10+2con+1FCB)
AC 18, T 14, FF 15, CMD 15
Fort +4, Ref +3, Will -1
---------------
30ft speed
Battleaxe +6, 1d6+2
---------------
Str 12, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 7, Wis 8, Cha 5
Feats: Weapon Focus: Battleaxe
Traits: Goblin Foolhardiness, Reactionary
Gear: Battleaxe, Buckler, Studded Leather
Stats include Warchanter bonuses
Encounter 2 (1 fire adept, 2 warflamers & 1 Warchanter)
Fire Adept
Goblin Adept 1
Init +5
HP 5 (½D6+1con+1FCB)
AC 17 , T 14, FF 14, CMD 13
Fort +1, Ref +3, Will +3
---------------
30ft speed
Dogslicer +2, 1d4+1
Spells: 2*Burning hands DC 13, 2d4 fire damage, 1 target which fails a saving throw catches on fire, like from alchemist's fire.
---------------
Str 10, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 13, Cha 6
Feats: Extra Traits
Skills: Stealth +8
Traits: Outlander(+1CL & DC on Burning Hands), Armor Master, Goblin Foolhardiness, Reactionary
Racial Traits: Standard goblin minus Skilled, plus Weapon Familiarity
Gear: Studded Leather Armor, Crude Wooden Holy Symbol, Dogslicer, 2 alchemist's fire for use as material components.
Goblin Warflamer
Initiative +3
HP 8 (½d10+2con+1FCB)
AC 18, T 14, FF 15, CMD 15
Fort +4, Ref +3, Will -1
----------------
30ft speed
Torch +6/1d4+2 (+1d4+1 fire)
Dogslicer +4/1d4+2
Bite +4/1d4+2
Alchemist's Fire +6, 1d6+1d4, target catches on fire
Full attack: Torch 0, Dogslicer -2/1d4+2, Bite(secondary) -1/1d4+1
----------------
Str 12, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 7, Wis 8, Cha 5
Feats: Burn Burn Burn!
Traits: Rough & Ready, Surprise Weapon
Skills: Proffession(firetamer) +0, Stealth +6
Racial Traits: Standard Goblin minus skilled, plus Big Head; Big Teeth
Gear: Dogslicer, Torch, Buckler & Studded Leather Armor, 1 alchemist's fire
Warchanter
Goblin Bard 1
Init +6
HP 10 (d8+1con+1FCB)
AC 18, T 15, FF 14, CMD 14
Fort +1, Ref +6, Will +2
----------------
30ft.
Spells: 2*Hideous Laughter or Grease DC 14 Daze DC 13
Dogslicer +2, 1d4+1
Whip +6, 1d2+1
Shortbow +6, 1d4+1
----------------
Str 10, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 14
Feats: Lingering Performance
Traits: Outlander(+1 dc to Hideous Laughter, Grease & Daze), Reactionary
Gear: Dogslicer, whip, shortbow, 20 arrows, Studded Leather, 10gp. No potion to make up for the extra alchemist's fire elsewhere.
Tactics
Turn 1: Use Hideous Laughter on turn 1 to take out someone who carries a big weapon.
Turn 2: If there's two big threats with low will saves, Hideous Laughter the other one. Otherwise, Grease the tank, or a caster who's trying to 5'step away from a melee goblin.
Turn 3: Refresh Inspire Courage
Turn 4: Daze on every turn afterwards, except when you have to keep the buff running
Stats include warchanter bonuses.
Encounter 3 (2 Fire Adepts, 1 Warflamer, 1 Commando & 1 Goblin Dog)
Fire Adepts
Spells: 1 of the Adepts substitutes 1 Burning Hands for 1 Bless. The Goblin with Bless casts it as soon as it can.
Gear: The goblin with bless only needs 1 alchemist's fire for Burning Hands component, so it only has 1.
Goblin Dog
AC 15, FF 13
Gear: Wears leather barding.
Commando
Goblin Fighter 1
Init +6
HP 13 (d10+2con+1FCB)
AC 19, T 15, FF 15, CMD 17
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +1
----------------
20ft, 50ft mounted
Horsechopper +5, 1d8+3
Shortbow +6, 1d6
CMB +2, +3 with horsechopper.
----------------
str 14, dex 18, con 14, int 7, wis 12, cha 5
Feats: Combat Reflexes, Mounted Combat
Traits: Reactionary, Armor Expert
Skills: Ride +10, Stealth +10
Gear: Hide Armor, Masterwork Horsechopper, Shortbow & 20 arrows.
Tactics: Horsechoppers have reach, which he uses to get AoOs as the pcs approach. Can also use his reach to disarm or trip without fear of AoO, but he's not very good at it. Still might be worth the attempt on casters - if they try to get up they take an AoO, and if they lie still and cast they have a good chance to fail.
That's the first day's worth of encounters. The 'town events' likely don't need any changes, they're not combat events anyway.
If you like it i might make more for the rest of the adventure - you probably shouldn only use these until the PCs hit third level, the 2000 extra xp will become water under the bridge by then.
I agree with the assessment that skipping any of the story wouldn't work very well. Just start them at level 3 and add some extra baddies to the fights and (possibly) cut the normal XP rewards until they get to Thistletop.
Or don't do XP at all and stick with the milestones given in the AP. Just explain to your players that since they're starting at a higher level, they're not going to level up for awhile early on.
That works too, but in my experience pcs who aren't challenged get easily bored.
Also, my assumption is that those players have played up to lvl 3, and don't want to repeat the same events
After reading through the entire burnt offerings and Skinsaw murders booklet, I was thinking of starting the players off at level 3 just after the goblin attack. I'd start them off by saying they have newly arrived in the town and had just protected it from the goblin attack yesterday. Then we'd commence with local heroes. I feel that the events in local heroes is particularly important as it allows the players to become well acquainted with the NPCs that become very important in Skinsaw murders. I'm not too worried about their levels, as I think that instead of rewarding xp I'll adjust their levels according to their plot progression, taking them to forth level just before the boss fight at Thistletop.
thoughts?
one thought: Aldern Foxglove.
make sure to introduce him early. skipping the goblin attack means he has no motivation to go boar hunting with the group. so come up with another
I had my first season yesterday, allowing my players to explore the town and ended with Aldern's boar hunt. The motivation for the hunt was that the heroes saved Aldern the day before and wishes to reward them. The session went well and the boar hunt was a good tutorial for one of the players who was completely new to the game. At the end of the session, I think that the players are getting a good feel of the town and Aldern especially.