Originally Posted by
Wizard1406
you can ENTER a quest underleveled (just did thrall of the necromancer lvl 8 with a lvl 4 in the party), but you wont get the quest credit just the xp and someone higher had to open it first
the level change is both good and bad.. so lower levels can not "leech" in parties with higher lvls for quest rewards (but there's a hefty xp penalty anyway), but on the other hand i rather have a slightly underleveled cleric than none at all for my quest ;-)
but -3 seems reasonable, you wouldn't let a lvl 4 party do a CR 8 adventure either in PnP