Now that we're on the hardest of the fights...

Me too, this starts to remiond me of Living Greyhawk.... it was an arms race in the end.
The problem is you can make totally broken characters if you choose the right combination of feats. Others want to play with good but not totally min/maxed customized characters. Probably hard to draw the line...

Yeah.. the people who build the ridiculous characters want a harder challenge, which screws out the 'weak' characters. Of course, if they weren't building twinks to begin with..

This is a new tier for many of us so it might be that as well. Compared to fighting giant spiders (one per scenario it seems), creatures with flight, huge area of effect abilities and third level spells are going to seem pretty tough.

If I don't get any objections, I think I'll do PPP next because it's the most different from this scenario. It has some potential plot problems but I have workarounds in my mind that preserves the required encounters while allowing things to flow based on PC decisions.

Just as long as we can run it at Tier 1-2 with our brand new first level characters... 8-D

You guys and your pessimism...

The "take" from this adventure is 1309gp, a really cool unique magic item that can be partially purchased with PP that could help Kronk and/or Talil and a couple of generically useful magic items.

But yeah, I can run all three of those as Tier 1-2 if need be. :-)

Heck no, tier 3-4 all the way!