Hi all,
As the title says, we will most likely be starting this adventure at level 4. I'd like to keep as much of the circus parts and scenes as possible. For experienced GMs, What dungeons / encounters would you want to cut if you ran this a second time?
You should be good to run books after the first as written, but book 1 could be fairly abridged.
Keeping chapter 1 seems like a good idea if you want to emphasize the circus, though the villain could probably use a bit of an upgrade in level and/or many more rats. Dropping most/all of chapter 2-3 and just sending the party off to the tower seems like the best bet after that, probably after a meeting with the leader of the hermitage who can explain his theories as a backdrop.
At the tower, you could make strengthen the final boss to make it a bit more of a challenge depending on their level. Maybe just leave the rest of the encounters there alone and let the party shine a fair bit, or try organically combining encounters if your party is being a bit too successful.
Thanks for the advice! They'll be coming off of Plaguestone so I think an easy mode tower with a tough boss might be the right difficulty.