Quite Pleased
As I mentioned, I'm quite pleased with how Sunday's session went. The group fit together well and I think everyone had a good time. The first session had a resolution, but it also set up a lot of future mysteries and goals.
Really, though, I'm very happy with my rules tweaks. The addition of more hit points to first level characters make them much more interesting in a way that simply starting at 2nd or 3rd level would not. There's a different dynamic as the ability to stand toe to toe with a typical monster increases but the ability to resist harmful effects (through saving throws) stays the same, as does the ability to land successful blows or use skills. Coupled with a greater access to healing, characters worry less about getting taken out in one blow and more about stuff that leads to more interesting situations: ability score damage, spell effects, and so on.
What I mean by that is this, most CR 3, 4 or even sometimes 5 monsters that have interesting abilities requiring saves peg those saves at around 13 or 14. It's going to be the rare, rather than the typical encounter with such a beast where PCs (probably level 3 or so) are going to experience the effects of that ability. It becomes a waste of a round to have, for example, for a fire mephit to use its heat metal ability, and its a forgone conclusion that its breath weapon will only inflict half damage.
But with these new characters, I could throw not one but two fire mephits at them at 1st level. The saves versus the breath weapon will be interesting moments, and someone is surely going to have their armor or weapon affected by heat metal. Even with the mephits' DR and fast healing, the PCs will be able to outlast the mephits, when normal 1st level characters almost certainly could not. (I should point out that there are five PCs in my group, not four, which also affects these estimations.) This is cool because fire mephits are creatures more interesting in small groups than singly, but at their CR, by the time PCs would encounter a group of them, the mephits' abilities are not very useful.
That one simple change has really improved things.
I'm also really happy with the spellcasters' use of disciplines in addition to a fewer number of spells, as I originally discussed way back here. In the one session we played in, I think the wizard character is seeing that he needn't bother preparing a lot of attack spells when he can launch an eldritch blast each round with impunity, and the cleric was able to freely run about healing the wounded without diminishing his own resources.
The cleric's discipline, Healing Touch, allows him to heal up to four (1 + level + Wis bonus) characters per day, 1d8+level at a time, as many times as needed. The catch is that no character can receive magical healing of any kind more than twice their level per day. The up side is that healing through rest is greatly enhanced (remember me talking about grace and health a while back? well, grace comes back at 1 hp per minute of rest--so it works a little like the Reserve hit point rule Jonathan Tweet came up with years ago). So in a way, magical healing is both de-emphasized and easier to come by at the same time. There's also a discipline that allows PCs to use their action to come and touch the cleric to get healing rather than the other way around, meaning that the cleric need spend no resources or even actions to help everyone else.
To be sure, the resulting characters from all of this are more powerful. They can take on greater challenges and many more challenges over the course of one day. The former advantage, however, will recede with time. The few extra hit points are going to matter less and less as time goes on. The better healing and the spellcasters' access to disciplines will continue to keep everyone "in the game" longer at all levels though. For now, it's clear that I can toss EL 4 and 5 encounters at my five 1st level characters and expect them to be challenged but not wiped out. I could probably send multiple such encounters at them in just one day. Using more taxing (rather than routine) encounters more often is something I've usually done anyway because I've typically designed adventures with fewer encounters in a given day (because I used to run an urban campaign) and I handed out a healthy supply of AE hero points to the characters.
I suspect that by 5th level or so, I'll still be routinely using EL 7 encounters, with major encounters at EL 8 or maybe even 9 (depending on the creatures involved). After that, I'm not sure. (And these are all approximations anyway--the CR system is a baseline, not a rule, and I've always used it as such. The campaign started out with an encounter with three mind flayers, after all--it just wasn't a "fight the mind flayers" encounter.)
