It is too late to ask for opinions on how to buff it up as my players rolled through it in one evening. They are not all skilled players or too specialized but all of the fights were too easy. And after Irabeth was reunited with her sword all they had to do was watch her fight.
I guess my question is: have other people seen this? Or were all the easy fights built that way by design?
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In a nutshell, yes, it's entirely too easy.
Caveats:
1) The demons have been handing down the guard duty to their underlings, until it's just a handful of demons and mostly human(ish) cultists who don't have anyone lower to drop the duties onto.
2) Irabeth had the surviving crusaders run distractions in Old Kenabres. Without them, there would be double all enemies in there. (Even if that many people doesn't make sense by building size.)
3) Irabeth is a little goddess in there with her sword. However, she should have, at a minimum, blown her smite on the minotaur and LoH/channels earlier. She also doesn't get her dailys reset by the wardstone's explosion or the bonuses. The babau fight is supposed to be about the PCs, not letting Irabeth tank everything.
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And as for myself, my players are going through it now and even with enemy upgrades they're still pushing pretty well through it to the point they're not going to take a break when they level. Irabeth is the breaking point, there.
Don't forget: Irabeth is unconscious during the Mythic Curbstomp at the end. It will let the PCs shine.
I think the game is designed so that if your group screwed up absolutely everything, let all the NPCs die, and had just about no backup, that they'd still have a fighting chance. By saving people and the like, this improves their chances significantly. So it's not "too easy" so much as the party did the right thing and as such end up with a less difficult fight because of that.
Yep, after they cleared half of it after I already buffed everything by 50% in a three hour session, I substantially buffed everything by another 150%. They had to retreat after the next two fights, so there is enough left for another day of exploration now.
I had buffed things slightly, and added a few extra rogues and cultists (its nice that the garrison limits a tieflings most powerful ability. By the time I could change things more dramatically I was ready for it to be over with and finish the AP.
The PCs did have a fun time with the last fight. It ended up being tougher than I expected, so it wasn't all bad.
Although I have my doubts of mythic PCs being too tough for the encounters in the next AP but time will tell.
Buffed things a bit for mine and they did flash raid it. But they diid have 2 deaths and about 4 other close calls. This is with a 6 player party 25 point buy.
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I made it harder by soon as they got in, one tiefling ran and started warning the others. It didn't take long before they were fighting almost everything in the building except for some of the bosses who let them handle it (and didn't want to bother).
The tiefling alchemist in there particular ticked them off and when he got weak lead them on a wild goose chase for awhile before moving up to join the top floor. Him in the fight alongside her made it quite a bit more challenging.
I only made one adjustment to the place and that was to give the Minotaur at the end the Half Fiend template instead of the Fiendish template.
I had the Schir Demon in the library summon two more Schir's when it heard all of the monkey business going on in the next room which lead to a pretty brutal combat that saw half of them unconscious. With a few minor cuts and scrapes here and there added to the mix, the party ended up needing some healing before they got to the third floor.
They still pushed through it in one session with no retreats, but the Half Fiend Minotaur killed the Ninja. He hit it with a Slaying Arrow that took out the majority of its HP, so it full attacked and dropped him in one round. They managed to kill it in another few rounds but it got a couple of swings in and battered them a bit.
Jeslyn was no challenge at all because the Wizard in the party used his Shift ability to teleport directly next to the Wardstone and hit it with the Rod of Cancellation. She took 20D6 damage from the explosion after a hit from a front liner and was basically shredded by divine energy. This also revived the Ninja laying dead in the next room.
The fight against the Demons at the end was predictably easy. It took a while due to the number of combatants in the room and the fact that they had actually HP pools. It was satisfying enough for our group even if it was not the "series of surgical strikes" the module claimed. My players have been playing for years though and almost all of them have a solid understanding of the rules and know how to build effective characters even when they are not going for min/maxing. I routinely need to bump up encounter difficulty to challenge them, but sometimes I just let them blaze through sections of enemies that pose little to no risk and just save the fun for the bigger fights.
I recommend picking "sticking points" within dungeons/encounter areas and planning on making them a challenge while letting the rest feel like "minion" fights. It leads to a more cinematic feel and makes the characters feel epic, and when something actually steps up to the challenge the party takes it seriously. It has worked well enough for me so far.
I found it to be extremely easy for my party, and I was even having the enemies use tactics, rather than just sitting around waiting for the party to walk into the room.
There's a gunslinger in the party, so in the fight outside the front door, when his gun went off, I had the Tieflings position themselves inside the door with bows readied. Soon as that door got opened, they almost outright killed one of the Paladins (with a crit or two), and the one runner had already run off to alert others in the building. For the most part, a lot of the garrison turned into one long ongoing combat because noise kept pulling everyone to the party. But even with that, it was pretty easy, since it was a very cramped area.
When I ran it with my self-campaign of 4 players, it wasn't all that hard - until the minotaur. That minotaur killed two players (Well, one player and a redeemed NPC) outright.
That.. was the only thing difficult about that place.
Now here's the question: Did your self-campaign have the PCs have lost all of the NPCs, not gained support of the Mongrelmen, and basically wander in there with just no backup and have to do everything themselves? And was it still a cakewalk in that situation?
Calling this a "cakewalk" when the PCs planned and did the hard work to save people is ignoring the rewards to the players for effective roleplay.
But players shouldn't be punished with a no-win situation because of bad die rolls that resulted in the loss of NPCs (say rolling a couple 1s on Diplomacy checks early on, causing the NCPs to leave and die on their own).
Or to put it another way, if the players have created an effective strategy and have drawn off support for the Grey Garrison, why should it be as hard of a fight as if they just came in off the street having wandered there by accident with no idea of what they're doing?
My group took the time to figure out some of the politics happening in Kenabres and gained support from the 3 major NPCs along with the mongrelmen.
Because they had been having an easy time with a lot of the encounters I had Irabeth keep the mongrelmen ranger close at hand during the assault of the garrison and they didn't show up until the group was fighting against Jeslyn.
I felt that as the commander of the remaining crusaders Irabeth (and by proxy the other 3 major NPCs)would have more responsibility in leading the charge that allowed the group to get to the garrison and she was busy getting to the garrison the hard way.
This left the group of 4 to deal with the garrison and helped to balance the fights a bit.
Note that if your PCs are stronger than the baseline of "four only somewhat optimized 15-point buy" characters, then the entire CR scaling gets thrown off. Also, if your PCs are extremely efficient with teamwork and tactics, then they will do much better than a group that doesn't plan or work together as well. Also note that, as written, the PCs should only have at most Irabeth and the Neathholm rangers (archer support) to help out; the other NPCs will not take part.
Based on the "four equal CR encounters per day will use up 80% of the party's resources" rule of thumb, with Irabeth and the rangers bumping the 4th-level PCs up to about APL 5, the encounters on paper look about right. Reading through the encounters, it seems as if the Gray Garrison was designed to be handled in two or three "runs:" clear the first floor (other than the central stairs), clear the second floor (other than the scrying chamber), and then defeat the remaining inhabitants/destroy the wardstone fragments. Don't forget the escalations between repeated runs and the telepathic warnings that some of the inhabitants can make; if the GM plays the inhabitants in isolation, even when the adventure states that they work together if/when the alarm is raised, then the PCs will find it much easier to defeat them one at a time.
@Dragonchess: My players aren't the best at tactics or teamwork, hence my curiosity about others. Also, I only gave them two mongrelmen. (the actual AP of the suggested party would be over 7 if you count the mongrels as 2nd level) With very odd dice rolling the fight that caused the most damage were the zombies thanks to three confirmed crits. Which probably saved them from the minotaur.
But other than the last two rooms, they cleared out the garrison in one try without using all their resources. I should have added a fighter level to all of the fodder but I was ready for mythic play by the end.
I bumped the teiflings and cultists by 1 level each, and switch half the teifling rogues to fighters and my players had a difficult time at it. The minitaur almost killed 2 players and they were running seriously low on healing. Our barbarian ran in infront of the party and was dropped by the teiflings in the first room and they were seriously upset at the alchemists 27 AC. Jesalyn is a cake walk, especially with her sickened. I also dumped the flyes in the rookery b/c it was getting late and starting to drag. Only encounter that was really easy wasy the peryton in the dining room. It only lasted 1 round. Oh and the Zombies but they weren't really ever going to be a challenge to 4 level 4 PCs.
My GM threw entire floors at us at once; all of the encounters on the first floor mobbed us, then all of the encounters on the second floor mobbed us.
As you can imagine, it was NOT an easy curbstomp affair for us.
Ha...the zombies were the toughest fight against my PCs, thanks to very high dice by me. I wouldn't bother too much with them, there are only two encounters after them and that minotaur can hit very hard.
Depends on your group, there are a few obituaries from him and his ax. I believe that making him a half fiend makes him vulnerable to a slaying arrow the PCs may have. As for Jeslyn, she's just window dressing for the PCs becoming mythic. My group, and others, detonated the wardstone very early on likely killing her or bringing her very low.
My Ranger almost went down from the Minotaur, and would have if he hadn't fumble on his last attack.
My players breezed through the Grey Garison. They tackled the building in very tactical manner.
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My Players should be hitting there next weekend, we are just camping at Blackwing Ruins and since it doesn't seem like the interior part of the city takes to long to cover they should be finishing the AP that day too. They only have only had one player drop twice in the same encounter against the Cavalier in BWR. Is it adviseable to bump the difficulty of The Gray Garrison up? I like the idea of a commander of the plebs in there, also maybe giving them all 1 level fighter and making them more from Drezen like small troop.
My players made short work of the first floor denizens, but it turned into a running battle for the second floor starting at the stairs. One of the tieflings up there just went around opening all the doors to let out the peryton, schir and flies to play, while the templars helped hold the staircase for a couple of rounds. The only encounter the PCs got to deal with individually was the group of zombies before heading up the final flight of stairs...
I added a second Minotaur to the third floor. There wasn't much room to move around, but they frankly didn't need it with their reach - those two pinned the PCs down and hurt them handsomely while my (slightly modified) Jeslyn kept them healed (and made sure to animate the first one that died, for good measure).
Jeslyn didn't get neutralized until the PC with the rod managed to get into the final room and destroy the fragment. That was perfect timing for the party, as the cleric had just used up the last of his healing to get the group through the minotaurs, and they still hurting. Their 'ascension' and the final fight with the babaus gave them the perfect opportunity to showboat and end on a high note. ;)
It is worth noting that my group didn't have the additional mongrelmen with them (so just 4 characters, plus Irabeth), and they took to heart the idea that they had no time to waste in getting to the fragment and destroying it. They cleaned out rooms of hostiles, then just kept moving onward and upward - they didn't stop to search at all (so Irabeth's sword is still sitting in Othirubo's room, for example).
It felt like a race to the finish line for all of us, with just enough mook-stomping versus nail-biting boss fights to make it fun and exciting. We got lucky, I guess (^-^)
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My Players should be hitting there next weekend, we are just camping at Blackwing Ruins and since it doesn't seem like the interior part of the city takes to long to cover they should be finishing the AP that day too. They only have only had one player drop twice in the same encounter against the Cavalier in BWR. Is it adviseable to bump the difficulty of The Gray Garrison up? I like the idea of a commander of the plebs in there, also maybe giving them all 1 level fighter and making them more from Drezen like small troop.
I would refer you to my post above.