How to gauge an adventure's starting level?

[Andre Roy]

I've done a quick search and read over the GMing section of the core book and can't seem to find my answer...or I need more coffee.

I've got a few third party adventures that unfortunately doesn't offer guidelines for the party's starting level...which is a bit of a bummer and I would like a bit of help to make sure I have it right.

For exemple:
let's say I have an adventure with mostly CR 6 to CR 8 encounters, a couple CR 4/5 encounters and the BBEG is roughly CR10.

I figure here that the idea is to average everything (maybe ignoring the 2 extremes) and figure out the "Medium" CR of the adventure - Let's say for our exeample that it is CR7.

This is where I need clarification/help.

Most adventure gives you a range of 2-3 levels so are published adventure meant to be "Average" (CR) or are they meant to be "Challenging" (CR+1)? And consequently, in my above exemple, Would my Party recommanded starting level be 7th level or would it be 6th level?

Thank you for your help.

How about using DCs? Can that also be used to help determing the level?

[Chess Pwn]

is this a premade adventure or one you're making up?
A premade adventure should tell you what level to start at.
A custom game you're supposed to pick a starting level and then make encounters that are CR for the party.

[Dave Justus]

Regardless of what the publishing company wants, It looks to me like you are correct in your analysis of starting at 6th level if you want it to be challenging, and starting at 7th if you want it to be average.

I will note though that if adventure is large enough that they will gain a level during it, you might need to reduce those numbers by one each. If it is a sole BBEG at the end, CR10 won't be much of a fight for most 8th level parties (possibly not an 'easy' fight, but probably not much of a climatic final encounter).

[Andre Roy]

Chess Pwn wrote:

is this a premade adventure or one you're making up?

A premade adventure should tell you what level to start at.
A custom game you're supposed to pick a starting level and then make encounters that are CR for the party.

Premade.

I realize that they should tell us what level to start and most do, but in a few cases they don't.

Dave Justus wrote:

Regardless of what the publishing company wants, It looks to me like you are correct in your analysis of starting at 6th level if you want it to be challenging, and starting at 7th if you want it to be average.

I will note though that if adventure is large enough that they will gain a level during it, you might need to reduce those numbers by one each. If it is a sole BBEG at the end, CR10 won't be much of a fight for most 8th level parties (possibly not an 'easy' fight, but probably not much of a climatic final encounter).

Wonderful. I'm fairly new to PF (mostly play older RPGs systems from the 70s and 80s) so I wanted to make sure I do it right.

[Dave Justus]

Andre Roy wrote:

Wonderful. I'm fairly new to PF (mostly play older RPGs systems from the 70s and 80s) so I wanted to make sure I do it right.

I'm of the opinion that doing it at all is pretty much 'doing it right' in that even screwing up in something like this shouldn't ruin the fun.

That said though, if you want to be cautious about getting the 'right balance' start them at the lower level and if they are having a really tough time have a plan to get them out, give them a side quest of some type and use that to give them another level before returning to the module. It is a lot easier to give players more than they had when starting then it is to take something away.

Another option, if it is proving tough for the characters, is to add more consumables to the dungeon to replenish their resources. A few healing potions and maybe even some attack type scrolls can go a long way toward making things easier.

[Andre Roy]

Those are good advices, thank you.

And nothing prevents me to amend the starting level afterward if I realize that it's too easy or too hard (I've created an Excel sheet with all of my adventures and their starting level for quick reference).