Starting Edge of Anarchy at 3rd level?

[Douglas Muir 406]

I have a couple of players who just don't like playing fragile low level characters. I think I can still make EoA work -- throw out a couple of early encounters, adjust others to be harder. The main concern here is Lamm and the fishery. Running through the creatures there, I see:

Bloo the dog -- two dogs, Bloo and Booger. Otherwise no change.
Yargin -- Yargin is a speed bump. Add another level of expert? If that.
Hookshanks the gnome -- He's a Rogue 2. Make him a Rogue 4, I guess? Or give him one level of illusionist, which he uses to terrorize the orphans.
Giggles the half-orc -- Ftr 2 becomes Ftr 4, easy enough.
Spiders -- Not sure what to do here. I could just use more / bigger spiders, but... eh, they'll encounter a bunch of spiders with the ettercap later. What sort of CR 3 creature might Lamm keep penned up in here?
Jigsaw shark -- just give it a couple more HD, no problem there
Alligator -- Advanced template
Lamm -- Lamm is tricky, but I think we can make him a straight Rogue 6. Keep the slowed movement, we don't want him getting away...

Thoughts, comments?

Doug M.

[AwesomenessDog]

One of the main problems with the fishery is the rather cramped quarters and the children being inducted into fighting the PCs unless they can get the children on their side. Normally this is fairly easy and the enemies aren't too big of a threat to the children (because they are evil enough to take a swing at one), but making a rogue 4 and fighter 4 would be strong enough to likely go from downing a kid short of a critical hit to outright killing a kid short of a minimum damage roll.

Perhaps you could take the kids out of the equation by rewriting Lamm's "child slaves" beat entirely and just making him otherwise objectively evil. You might even just lean super heavily in to a connection has Zellara has with the party either above and beyond gathering them together against Lamm as a mutual antagonist, or simply through this vendetta to lead into her core role afterwards with the riots.

Otherwise I think this is mostly fine, if you really need something for the spiders, you can maybe allude to some of the were-rat stuff from the vaults below Korvosa by simply giving Lamm a dire rat or two in the ship, but on the higher floor than the spiders below (and move the fifth spider normally above down below).