Can Plaguestone and Age of Ashes be combined?

[Belisar]

As I actually play with only two players (wive and son, me as GM), I wonder if I could level them up to 4th level with the Plagestone adventure and then start the Age of Ashes AP with those 2 4th level chars instead of 4 new 1st level chars?

Any advice on that? Is it doable? Can Age of Ashes be easily scaled with starting chars higher than 1st level if the party is that small?

[Deadmanwalking]

Levels matter a lot more in PF2, so while I lack either adventure as of yet I'm a bit skeptical you could run it from the book with 4th level PCs, even if there are only two of them.

Maybe 2nd or 3rd level ones...

[Stone Dog]

I think it could be absolutely doable. Just be prepared for more critical rolls than normal and let the PCs have some moments of glory until things catch up to them.

[Malckuss76]

It does appear from some of the material in the free Age of Ashes Players Guide that, at least story-wise, the two could dovetail. I had a similar thought myself. Maybe someone going to Gen Con could kindly ask the devs for some advice about doing that...

[MaxAstro]

Level 4 will make most of the first book of Age of Ashes trivial.

However, if you cut a bunch of material out of the first book, the two should dovetail nicely. Just keep enough encounters to get the PCs from 4th level to 5th level and then you should be able to run the second book from there.

[RicoTheBold]

First book of Age of Ashes (Hellknight Hill) is intended to cover levels 1-4, and at 5 to kick off the 2nd book. Remember that APs are going to be designed to go from 1-20 for PF2.

Soo.......depends on how much you want to slow things down a little to pace stuff out on the ol' XP track (or just use milestones). Without adjusting encounters, they would likely breeze through the early HH stuff (I've only read about half the adventure so far, so MaxAstro's advice may be more pertinent).

I've kinda been convinced that with enough effort, you can adjust just about anything, but when I run published stuff it's to reduce the amount of prep work I do, so they're kinda contrary goals for me. It does seem like the levels come kinda quick just reading through it, but across an entire AP that's probably okay.

[vagabond_666]

You'd probably be better off just giving them each a sidekick and having them run 2 PCs during combat, and having them as more background characters outside of combat.

[NielsenE]

I was also considering running both and using the module as a prequel, however after reading both, I'm not loving that plan. So I'll probably just schedule them separately, partially because I'm a Dwarven Forge fan, and want to wait to run Plaguestone until the new DF stuff ships... at least for my primary group. I suspect I'll run it at least once before that if it gets PFS2 sanctioning in the near future.

I didn't see as many encounters in Hellknight that felt like they were there to make an exp budget as in past APs, which makes me very happy, in spite of the fact that you level more in it than most APs. This bodes very well IMO for 2e. However both Plaguestone and Hellnights hill feel longer in terms of game session time to run than previous modules/chapter 1s. Definitely a lot of story in both. Will need to see how the pacing feels in practice.

[Shisumo]

I think we are still, as a player community, still too early in the PF2 life cycle to truly grasp how wildly large or small play groups will impact the play experience. You may have to be one of our trailblazers in that regard.