So I'm regretting starting the party at level 3... Help?
TL;DR at the bottom.
So, first time DM'ing CoS and relatively inexperienced DM (only ran 3 campaigns, only completed 1) here. My friend group recently found a schedule that works for all of us to get together and do DnD over Tabletop Sim every week. We conpleted a Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign with me as a player and my friend as DM, and I agreed to DM CoS for my first return to DM'ing in over 5 years afterwards.
Well, all the players kinda agreed that starting at level 1 in our Dragon campaign kinda really sucked and was slow. Ok, no problem! We'll start at level 3 in my CoS campaign and it'll be great!
Except I also wanted to run the Death House introduction to ease both myself and the others into the setting. Hey, no big deal, though! I adjusted a few encounters, added some puzzle-like elements to a few fights, drizzled some extra intrigue in some parts of the house, and it went great!
For 5 sessions!
In just the Death House...
By now, the problem I'm facing may be apparent. My players were much, *much* slower at progressing through the house than I anticipated, probably largely because I'm getting used to using TTS and until just recently having to manually roll and track a lot of things like initiatives and such, but also because at a few points the players just... struggled to accept there's nothing nefarious left in an area and being reluctant to move on.
They just beat the Shambling Mound in the last session and hilariously managed to stumble their way into making a sacrifice on the altar to appease the House (to keep a long story short, I added Pirannhas to the encounter, and one player decided to kill the last two by grabbing them and beating them to death against the altar) and made their way out of the House and into Barovia proper.
But because it's been 5 sessions, I decided to give the players a level to 4 upon leaving the House just before we ended last session. And now, I'm wondering how the hell I'm going to pace the rest of the campaign.
At first, I figured "ok, we just go past level 10 and I use an upgraded Strahd statblock at the end. There's tons of those, no big deal". But then I got to looking around and TONS of people seem to recommend not going beyond level 10 due to the intended scale of CoS without *major* adjustments to the campaign as a whole.
So, how would y'all pace things for the rest of the campaign, if you were in my shoes, so that players fight Strahd at level 10 at the end of the campaign?
TL;DR: Vastly misjudged the pacing of the campaign after starting players at level 3, and now 5 sessions in and only having completed Death House I leveled them up to 4. What do I do about the level pacing to end at level 10 Strahd fight???
EDIT: Looks like everyone's got generally similar advice, so I'm pretty confident about following it. Going to stick to the milestones starting after Vallaki and just let the players know character progression might feel a little slower because of my cock-up. Thanks yall!