Adapting book one of an AP for 4th level PCs

[Kiesman]

I need some advice. A while back, I created an adventure play-order for my first attempt at DMing, HERE, and it has been going well. I've changed up some of the modules, but now the PCs are getting close to finishing 3rd level and I've realized... Shattered Star book 1 starts at 1st level.

How do you go about adapting an AP book that starts at 1st level, for 4th level PCs? Should I skim over the first parts and just have them start near the part where the book assumes they would be 4th level?

I'd planned to make the Shattered Star shards a key plot point in the story I'd fabricated and I'm not sure what to do now.

[LordKailas]

how are you handling leveling? story progression or straight xp?

If you're doing straight xp then I would suggest just running it as normal. If some of the encounters seem too easy you could increase the number of creatures to make it harder. In either case, just award xp as normal. The characters will be slightly a head of the curve for a bit but it will even it's self out pretty quickly. You can see this looking at the xp chart. Assuming medium progression, by the time you hit 5th level or higher, having an extra 5k xp is barely going to be noticeable.

If you are doing story progression, then just have the characters level at half the normal rate until they are the level they are supposed to be. Again, if some of the early encounters feel too easy, the simplest way to up the challenge is to increase the number of enemies they'll face.

[Kiesman]

It's been story progression, and I've been running a rather difficult campaign, most encounters have been APL +2 at least. The party has a TON of damage dealing capability so I'm having to do this to make sure they can't just one-shot their way to victory.

After reading through some things, I kinda like the idea of having most encounters in the beginning rather trivial - they're already hardened adventurers and are being underestimated. I'll boost the difficulty by increasing enemies just a little bit until they reach a further part of the AP book. Thanks!

[Duiker]

One idea is to run it as is, but have the dungeon all spring at once so everything's moving towards them relentlessly.

[Brother Fen]

The first adventure starts at level one. If you're letting characters start at 4th instead (or they've already leveled to that point), then all you have to do is add +3 CR to every encounter to match the APL.

[Selvaxri]

Why not add some monsters with the Advanced template? A straight up +2 to everything, and a modest HP bump should make some creatures more of a challenge.

[Kiesman]

Advanced template + 25% HP seems like it might help make the first parts of the campaign less of a breeze, good idea! I had forgotten about templates like that.

@ Duiker, it's likely that will happen most of the time anyway - the party has recently come into the possession of a Double Hackbut and have loved to make use of it, effectively ending all stealth efforts.