Howdy! 👋 I’ve been DMing for about a year after running a Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign for a group of friends. My book will be here Wednesday to begin prep. But before it shows up I was curious what level the campaign starts at and if it’s level 1 how breaking would it be to start at level 3?
I started Hoard of the dragon queen with 3 players at level 3. Two reasons:
1- Level 1 is boring
2- The encounters are beyond deadly to level 1 characters.
So for me, no issue with starting the campaign at a higher level. In fact I would recommend it.
Thank you! There’s 5 PCs in this group, so the action economy will be a little lopsided at times, but I agree with both of those points. I think the 4 goblins at the beginning of LMoP have the highest kill count of any 5e adventure.
Since you mentioned Lost Mines of Phandelver, I thought I’d point to a notable rework of the campaign which incorporates LMoP.
A fellow from the ToD subreddit did a rework of Tyranny of Dragons, with Lost Mines of Phandelver as an introductory scenario leading into starting ToD from level 5. He released 2 DMs Guild products for a Hoard of the Dragon Queen rework and a Rise of Tiamat rework. They may be worth checking out if you don’t mind spending another $10
