I started mine at 5th and they stomped all over the first encounter, which I thought would be tough. But they have Action Points, more Feats than standard characters, items from the Magic Item Compendium (i.e. they actually
do something useful), and a few other changes from the standard rules, most of which work in their favour. For the second session, I started powering up the bad guys using the same rules minus action points, and they still blew them away. Throw in a method for generating ability scores which is, while not producing all 18s or anything stupid like that, nevertheless much more generous than 25-point buy, and they are probably at a power level more comparable to the standard 6th level playtest characters, maybe even 7th.
The group is going to fail at least chapter one disastrously, but not for reasons that have anything to do with the power level of the characters. They've basically dithered around and spied on the Keep for days on end; it's now day six and they're on the way back to Verge (my Mystaran stand-in for Drellin's Ferry) having accomplished essentially nothing, so they've in effect
already lost the battle for the Skull Gorge Bridge by the simple fact that there's no possible way they can show up for it! I warned them over and over that the module is on a timeline, but did they listen? Apparently not...
So they'll go into chapter two well short of 6th level. We'll see how that goes - from a balance standpoint it may be a blessing in disguise.
