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If I were to run one of the stand alone adventures (e.g. Rusthenge) for only three characters, how screwed would they be if I were to not rebalance all of the encounters?
Is there anything that could be done to the characters to make it more balanced? (Free Archetype is a start, but wont help with the action economy or the reduction in targets when it come to sharing out the damage.)
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The fights will probably shift up a notch, from Low to Moderate or Moderate to Severe, according to GM Core (Encounter Design, p75) so you should be aware of that. Dropping one creature or adding the Weak template to single creatures might be a simple way to reduce the imbalance.
It also calls out that smaller parties may well have capability gaps and suggests NPCs, free archetype, extra treasure, and/or extra trained skills to cover that gap (Unusual Group Sizes, p21), so your initial thoughts were on the right lines,
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Increase the level of the players, 1 level higher than the reccomended might be enough to not need to rebalance the encounters.
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Agree, shift the level of the PCs up 1 level higher than the adventure expects. If you do the math on encounter budgets, you'll realize it comes out almost exactly right.
And I strongly recommend Free Archetype so they have a wider array of abilities across the 3 PCs.
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I agree too. A 3 PCs party doesn't only lack in 'power', but also in versatility; being one level higher than expected covers the power gap and can also give back some breadth of options; free archetype does the rest.
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I've done this a lot. My IRL group is three people.
I have, sometimes, especially at low levels, adjusted encounters slightly. At high levels, it's been less needed, but it is a feel thing.
I have never had them a level over. In fact, they did AoA about a level under, as we were still using XP - I had not changed to milestone yet - and they felt they were leveling too fast to learn things so we slowed it down.
FA can be good, but it can also lead to a lot more complexity, so YMMV on that, especially with new players. I actually think FA is overused.