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I've been pretty happy with the encounters in EfOK. Particularly the Garden Guardians. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
The first "big" encounter for my group was the Emperor. They finished off the Red Mantis' early in the chapter without too much trouble. (I had a player post on our game forum that they were wusses. I told him, "Yep, so far. But they'll be back with a vengeance!") The Emperor encounter was tough because they couldn't easily get their armored tank of a paladin up to the third floor of the building, so the rogue had to deal with the cloakers by himself for a few rounds. The cloakers' 10-foot reach and ability to stay in the rafters and still attack meant the use of ranged weapons was required and this group doesn't stock up on those.
The dock captains were pushovers, however. The same rogue had the sorceror cast greater invisibility on him and each arrow attack with sneak damage was enough to drop one of those guys! They went down quick.
Ditto with the Emperor and Jabbyr. I expected that of the Emperor -- his spell list was useless in combat -- but I thought the gnome barbarian would do better. Yet a smite attack from the pally and one more bow attack from the rogue and he was down. :(
They had met the Laori earlier and knew she was after paintings by S.S. When they first opened the door to area 10, she came out and fled away from them down the corridor with the three paintings she wanted. The rogue later wanted to track her but didn't have the right skills for it.
Now... The point of this post was to say that the garden guardians (three creatures of CR7) just about wiped out the party! They turned invisible as the party opened the stairway shaft, then enlarged and squeezed up against the wall in strategic places. Once all of the party members were between them, they let lose with their spore clouds (I'm grateful for the duration trackers in MapTool; however, I didn't convert the spores to PF poison rules as I don't yet have a good feel for what an appropriate results would be). There were two failed saves and those PCs spent their time running away. One decided to go down to the next level via the bridges and was SHOCKED when one of the fungus creatures came FLYING after him!! Giving them scimitars and Impr Crit was deadly as my PCs were constantly being crit'd. And as much as I tried, I couldn't shield bash anyone off the ledge and into the water. (That may have been a feat I added to bring them up to the PF Beta rules, IIRC.)
A note to other GMs: the stat block for those creatures mentions "elemental endurance" in the Special Qualities but it's not defined anywhere. Since they have fire resistance 10, I assumed that's what was being referred to. They did finally manage to destroy two of them and use charm monster on the third. (Note to self: new house rule that charm person/monster gives another save if any of the target's allies are attacked, not just the target itself.)
Well, I've been rambling. But I wanted the other users here to know what I liked about this chapter so far and perhaps give them some ideas for what's coming up.
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I've been pretty happy with the encounters in EfOK. Particularly the Garden Guardians. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
** spoiler omitted **...
Glad you enjoyed it. My 1st party found that module mostly irritating. The Sorcerer was frustrated by...hmm Spoiler time.
As for Jabyr, I think the part you may have missed is, I believe he has improved Uncanny dodge and I don't think the party is 5 levels higher than him, so (and I may be misremembering as the module is a floor a way) I believe he wasn't supposed to be sneak attackable by the rogue. No biggie if that is the case. Makes the rogue feel better and it sounds like the paladin would have wiped the floor with him anyway.
As for the fungus guys, I have to admit something here. I failed to remember they had invisibility until after the party engaged them, and by then it was pretty much to late. My party (in the first campaign at any rate) is a very high damage dealing party and the things didn't last that long. It was a good fight, probably not as good as it was written to be however.
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Glad you enjoyed it. My 1st party found that module mostly irritating. The Sorcerer was frustrated by...hmm Spoiler time.
** spoiler omitted **
I think you're right about the gnome. :( I believe I kept the chat log so I should go back to see if I took that into account, but I don't remember doing so. Darn. Well, so they got some easy loot out of that encounter, but they're still missing some small side plots in the story. The elf chick with the spiked chain, for example.