I wold say its very difficult to gauge that without a bit more information
Some of it completely depends on your style of campaign and pace of play. Perhas a bit more info about the following will help give a better estimate
- Milestone or XP? (Millestone might give you better control for hitting a particular level in a certain amount of time)
- The commonality of magic and enchanted items? E.g. if you are showering them in powerful gear, they might not need to be as high level.
- How do you envision the invasion - I assume they are not fighting 16-18 dragons all at the same time. What is the sequence - do they have rests in between.
- What's the composition of dragons - e.g. types of dragons, whether they are all your/adult/ancient?
Generally speaking, the idea of 3 characters going up against that many dragons sounds like they will need reinforcements and allies. But again, it depends on the style of the campaign - e.g. do they each have a troop of 100 soldiers with them, or are they more like demi-gods taking on this fight on their own?
Level 1 is always a good place to start. But it might take some significant time to make it to a level that might be equivalent to responding to a dragon's threat, let alone 16-18. Starting at Level 5 might put you in the area of being able to respond to Wyrmlings, maybe a Young after a fashion. If your players are inexperienced, or unfamiliar with the characters they are playing, there well be a learning curve to overcome. Level 10-12, the party will be able to withstand even more threat, but will also have more of a learning curve to overcome with their PCs. Higher the level, the more they can withstand/do, less the players might know about how their PC operates.
This concept isn't exclusive to this campaign.
Assess how comfortable and experienced your players are in what Tier you want to play in, set the starting character level accordingly, balance encounters based on party level. Start slow/easy, work up to more difficult encounters as they, and you get more comfortable with how the gameplay works.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
If the party are all experienced players, then skipping to start at 3rd level allows them to start with their class specialisation already chosen - and avoids accidental TPKs due to bad dice rolls at levels 1 and 2.
How do you envision this campaign going? Do you want a high heroism campaign where the brave and powerful adventurers start by killing off wyrmlings, then move onto bigger fish as they level up? Or do you want them to be challenged by the tasks, finding that even a wyrmling is a challenge and having to find & use artefacts to defeat them? Will the players be able to undertake a quest to re-empower the magical seal keeping the dragons back?
One of the key points here is "killing the dragons one by one". I would say that I would want the players to have quite high level characters for this sort of thing. As dragons scale up in power very quickly, you might want the players to be level 17+ when they get to the culmination of your campaign (slaying the wyrms).
I would look to start with a lone adult dragon for your first fight, and make the players appropriate level to make that fair. Then you need to put serious thought into how this will not become a grind for the players - Will each of the dragons have their own dungeon? Will they have to unravel clues to find them? Will some dragons be polymorphed into humanoid form, hiding in plain sight? Is the person giving this quest actually a metallic dragon who is kept from invading their land by this seal, and the party is doing their dirty work?
If you make this a string of fights with dragons, then expect the party to develop the same tactics for each of them. I would focus on making sure that each lair is different, so that the dragon uses different tactics. I would make each dragon a combination quest, being to first discover the dragons location, then the dragons type, then something to affect it (EG some cold magic artefact when facing a red dragon), then the fight. First you find them, then you find their weakness, then you use it. In fact, for this to work I might even suggest making the characters too weak to just fight the dragon head-on. Make it clear to them that a dragon is too powerful for them, and they need to find a way to defeat them.
I'm aiming to write a campaign where the 3pcs have about a year or two to stop a chromatic dragon invasion from about 16 to 18 dragons.
What would be a good player level to start at for a campaign like this?
I wold say its very difficult to gauge that without a bit more information
Some of it completely depends on your style of campaign and pace of play. Perhas a bit more info about the following will help give a better estimate
- Milestone or XP? (Millestone might give you better control for hitting a particular level in a certain amount of time)
- The commonality of magic and enchanted items? E.g. if you are showering them in powerful gear, they might not need to be as high level.
- How do you envision the invasion - I assume they are not fighting 16-18 dragons all at the same time. What is the sequence - do they have rests in between.
- What's the composition of dragons - e.g. types of dragons, whether they are all your/adult/ancient?
Generally speaking, the idea of 3 characters going up against that many dragons sounds like they will need reinforcements and allies. But again, it depends on the style of the campaign - e.g. do they each have a troop of 100 soldiers with them, or are they more like demi-gods taking on this fight on their own?
Level 1 is always a good place to start. But it might take some significant time to make it to a level that might be equivalent to responding to a dragon's threat, let alone 16-18. Starting at Level 5 might put you in the area of being able to respond to Wyrmlings, maybe a Young after a fashion. If your players are inexperienced, or unfamiliar with the characters they are playing, there well be a learning curve to overcome. Level 10-12, the party will be able to withstand even more threat, but will also have more of a learning curve to overcome with their PCs. Higher the level, the more they can withstand/do, less the players might know about how their PC operates.
This concept isn't exclusive to this campaign.
Assess how comfortable and experienced your players are in what Tier you want to play in, set the starting character level accordingly, balance encounters based on party level. Start slow/easy, work up to more difficult encounters as they, and you get more comfortable with how the gameplay works.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Thank you this'll help a lot
They are 3 normal people
The dragons have been held back for almost 10000 year by a seal made by behamut
But it's weaking and soon the dragon will invade
The party have to cross into the sealed land and kill the dragons one by one
There's 5 ancients 2 wormlings 2 young and between 7 and 9 normal dragons
If the party are all experienced players, then skipping to start at 3rd level allows them to start with their class specialisation already chosen - and avoids accidental TPKs due to bad dice rolls at levels 1 and 2.
How do you envision this campaign going? Do you want a high heroism campaign where the brave and powerful adventurers start by killing off wyrmlings, then move onto bigger fish as they level up? Or do you want them to be challenged by the tasks, finding that even a wyrmling is a challenge and having to find & use artefacts to defeat them? Will the players be able to undertake a quest to re-empower the magical seal keeping the dragons back?
One of the key points here is "killing the dragons one by one". I would say that I would want the players to have quite high level characters for this sort of thing. As dragons scale up in power very quickly, you might want the players to be level 17+ when they get to the culmination of your campaign (slaying the wyrms).
I would look to start with a lone adult dragon for your first fight, and make the players appropriate level to make that fair. Then you need to put serious thought into how this will not become a grind for the players - Will each of the dragons have their own dungeon? Will they have to unravel clues to find them? Will some dragons be polymorphed into humanoid form, hiding in plain sight? Is the person giving this quest actually a metallic dragon who is kept from invading their land by this seal, and the party is doing their dirty work?
If you make this a string of fights with dragons, then expect the party to develop the same tactics for each of them. I would focus on making sure that each lair is different, so that the dragon uses different tactics. I would make each dragon a combination quest, being to first discover the dragons location, then the dragons type, then something to affect it (EG some cold magic artefact when facing a red dragon), then the fight. First you find them, then you find their weakness, then you use it. In fact, for this to work I might even suggest making the characters too weak to just fight the dragon head-on. Make it clear to them that a dragon is too powerful for them, and they need to find a way to defeat them.
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