Starting PCs at 3rd Level

[ckdragons]

Going to start this AP for a group of experienced players after running the Hell's Rebels campaign. To those that have already started running this campaign, am I going to experience any difficulties starting the players at 3rd level, aside from the having to increase the CRs of the fights?

[Yakman]

ckdragons wrote:

Going to start this AP for a group of experienced players after running the Hell's Rebels campaign. To those that have already started running this campaign, am I going to experience any difficulties starting the players at 3rd level, aside from the having to increase the CRs of the fights?

i haven't played, it, but i've read it.

you'll have to revise the whole first book, and everything from there on out, depending on how you assign experience.

why would you want to do that?

[dbauers]

Personally, I'd rather just start off with the fort / court section (where they are actually supposed to be level 3) and go forward from there. Do a quick narrative about how dissent has been building in town, etc etc. Do it as a quick recap prologue, etc.

If you don't do that, it will be a LOT of extra work. And then what? By the raid on the rebels, will they now be level 5 instead of 3? So you'll have to revamp all of them too? Just seems like a cascading problem with a lot of extra work to do.

[Yakman]

i concur. that's a solid idea.

[KujakuDM]

You will have to do a lot of extra work if you do this. I agree that you should just start the PCs in the module where they would be at level 3. Just do narrative stuff for the set up.

I would like to say however that my PCs very much enjoyed the whole subjugating the town part of the campaign.

[Serpentine Owl]

I've considered starting characters at 3rd level in the adventure path I'm choosing to run. They would have 0 experience points and limited funds though, and wouldn't advance until they earn enough experience to go to 4th level.

This is a great adventure path for that approach. They would start out as the town bullies and become accustomed to getting their way. But then the fights start getting tougher ...

[Dran_Draggore]

I was happy when my group reached level 3+, as this AP is full of potential TPKs.
My progress so far:
Book 1: Almost had 1 TPK
Book 2: 1 TPK
Book 3: Almost 1 dead char, and they dodged two of the most deadly fights so far

On the other hand, experienced players go through most fights in the AP like a hot knive through butter..

Starting at Lvl 3 sounds reasonable if the players have the patience to wait till book 2 for the first time levelling up.

Daniel

[YourNewShoe]

(I'm aware that this thread is old enough that this will hardly be relevant to the OP, but I think it's an interesting bit of discussion I'd like to comment on.)

Assuming that the PCs aren't starting with level 3 WBL (which doesn't change much, honestly), XP scaling will mean that, unless you pump fights, the long-term consequences will melt away by book 3 or 4; they can even just be entirely removed by book 3, simply by removing or downgrading a random encounter or two. Even if you don't, though - at level 10, the PCs have 105,000 XP; to get to level 11 they need 50,000. Having started at level 3 means they only need 45,000; but at level 10, 20k XP (enough for the whole party to get that 5k) isn't a huge deal. With 20k XP you can make a tough fight for a level 10 party.

By the time the PCs hit level 12, though? By that level, a single on-CR opponent gives 19,200 XP. So almost all of the XP they gained from starting at level 3 can be removed just by deleting a single easy fight. And by the time Book 5 rolls around, 5k XP per person is pocket change.

So after the start, you'll have one book where it's fairly relevant (book 2), one book where it makes a small difference (book 3), then one book where it's irrelevant (book 4) - and two books where it's a rounding error.

If you are cranking up fights, then you will need to adjust the entire rest of the AP, yes - so the effective effort cost would be highly variable, depending on just how many changes you would be making otherwise.