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So last night I gave this scenario to some GMs to lead. Having only skimmed this scenario and having gotten to play it, let me give you a piece of advice:
DO NOT SEND ALL THE ENEMIES AGAINST THE PARTY AT ONCE
It can be incredibly tempting, especially for new GMs, to see baddies losing, and just decide to skip to the next wave of baddies and not give the players time to rest.
Our group had the added fun of no DPR charcter (except a Rogue I guess), and so we had to just slog through enemies painfully. We ended up coup-de-graceing the Owlbear while trying to fend off the final boss at the same time. And despite getting 16 Defense Points we still fought more enemies than we should have...
Overall, just be careful with this scenario, and understand that the point of Wave Encounters is more for the thematic elements it creates, rather than trying to overwhelm the party with the final boss plus the midboss plus random enemies from the last three encounters all still attacking.
In the end the GM just called the scenario for us when it was just the final boss and 2 henchmen (he should have had none, but whatever), and none of us had gone to even half our HP, but we had to basically spend about 10 rounds to kill the boss with no real damage output.
I blame this on the poor structuring of the scenario, which doesn't make it clear enough to GMs that mushing all the encounters together is a bad idea.
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It's clearly spelled out in the scenario at which round each wave is supposed to arrive on the scene. I've run it twice, and determining timing was never an issue. If the GM chose not to follow the guideline in the scenario, it's not the scenario's fault.
That said, if you are taking a long time to take care of one wave, yes you may start to get overrun, as the waves do not "wait" for you to finish off the previous wave and reset. So, the GM in your case may have actually followed the scenario's guidelines, and you were just killing the waves slower than that.
However, it's impossible to tell from the sidelines here with the description given which situation is actually the case.
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I blame this on the poor structuring of the scenario, which doesn't make it clear enough to GMs that mushing all the encounters together is a bad idea.
So let me get this straight. Your GM ran this cold, and sent several encounters worth of enemies at a party at the same time, despite the scenario explicitly giving timing in rounds between each wave; despite this, you think it's the scenario's fault you guys had a bad time?
The scenario shouldn't have to make it clear that changing the encounters is a bad idea. Changing the encounters is always a bad idea.
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What I'm saying is that it's an easy mistake to make. While it is true the scenario says there is time to rest between the 3 first waves, then the Owlbear, then the final boss, it's easy, due to the structuring of the scenario, for a GM to see that the players are near the tail-end of one encounter, and start the next one, especially if the players have taken no damage.
I'm just trying to point out that yes, sometimes you gotta be more explicit in saying that the timing is important. It's an easy mistake to make given the scenario's structure (I mean, why WOULDN'T the army just send all its bad guys at once to take down the town?), and I think that there could have been a nice little box that points out how much stupidly harder it gets when fighting an Owlbear and Level 7 Cavalier and 4 Rogues all at the same time.
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This is under the Creature's section. It tells you exactly what the party is facing.
Wave 2: Appearing on round 6 and reaching the barricade on round 8, this group consists of another four bandits, plus two lieutenants, called speakers of murder, trained in directing troops in combat.
Wave 3: The third wave begins on round 11 and arrives at the PCs’ position on round 13. This group is composed of four tengu bandits.
After this is mention of deducting enemies based on Defence Points.
I don't know how this could be more explicit. Your GM made a mistake. It's not the end of the world, but it certainly is not the scenario's fault that your GM didn't read the part that says the timing of the waves explicitly.
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Once again, it is not the scenario's fault that your GM didn't read the scenario.
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This one is hard to judge as a DM. Run the wave too close and it can kill the party and too far apart, or with too many players, and it is no fun at all.
My group had a hard time with wave 2, but had no trouble with the later waves.
There are also contradictions in the mod, as it tells you when the waves come in objective time, and also says to give the players several rounds to recover....which is more time than normal groups will take to dispatch the waves.
