Is there anything stopping me from just starting chapter 5-8 runs at level 99? There aren't any runs for those chapters posted here yet nothing in the rules says otherwise so I was curious.

You're free to do whatever kind of run you'd like, but it won't fit in with the existing categories. Rules state it starts after naming characters and ends on pressing A for pulling the final needle.

I mean these runs that start after loading an end of chapter game file https://www.speedrun.com/mother_3/Chapter_Runs#Chapter_2

Yeah I asked this question a while ago and would love an answer on it. Is there something stopping us from starting Chapter X at Lv99? Is there something stopping us from starting a chapter at Lv01?

@IronInvoker yeah it should be fine but it just wouldn’t be used for stuff like human TASes

Sorry for being late, but, if your level at the start of an early chapter run is very high, do you need to make a video of the grinding to show proof? ( I don't think you can't get a lot of levels that way, but still...)

Don't be overpowered I guess, but what is considered op in some chapters. How about a range of levels you can be at the start of every chapter.

My suggestion would be go ahead and submit a run. Since the ruling on this is kinda up in the air, it would be better to have someone try it out and see what works.

Personally, I think being decently leveled would be fine, but I’d also treat chapter runs as single segment runs. So.. if you’re doing a chapter run, you’d start with the same file you started with for Chapter 1 and so forth.

That would be my take on it, but then you could argue someone would purposely get a bad time in say.. Chapter 4 by grinding to get a better time in Chapter 5.

It’s hard to make a ruling on this, so I’d treat it as a single segment with no grinding if possible is what I think would be allowed. But as many have said already… until there’s an actual rule no one is stopping you for grinding in a chapter and starting a chapter overleveled as hell.