I've been running a group through the published adventures and in Keep on the Shadowfell there is a goblin, with a kobold tribe at his back, named Irontooth who quite frankly seems to be a TPK in waiting. he has multiple attacks, insane hit points, great defenses, and allies. The guy was so tough I turned the fight into a Skill Challenge to get the kobolds (who I described as being afraid of the goblin) to betray Irontooth and aid the pcs.

What I'm wondering is, if anyone has played this module, what did you do when you got to Irontooth? Was it easier for you guys than it was for my group?

My group ran like hell and went back to town and hired a few extra bodies. They got 4 grunt fighters and was able to survive. Unfortunately, the grunts did not make it back.

Moondog

Seems to be the case with the entire adventure. Did your group play through that room with the traps? I had one player get stuck inside the stupid whirlpool trap, and the other players tried to dispatch the Dragon Statues and the outside Cherub ones. Within four turns everyone was down in the ones for hp except for the fighter and everyone had used their second wind. The whirlpool was tossing the Shadarkai ranger around like a ragdoll, the wizard was afraid to deactivate the traps for fear of his life (he was at 5 hp), and their was no one with Thievery.

If I hadn't intersected with some story aid it would have been another tpk. And there are only so many times you can say that "A convenient group of adventures have arrived at the backwoods town of Winterhaven, roll their stats guys." These encounters appear, just, off somehow.

I was one of the lucky people who got to start running 4th ed demo sessions back in March '08. Even then the adventures I had were killer. I mean 6 L1 characters go up against:
ENC1 - 5 L1
ENC2 - Skill encounter (escape/chase)
ENC3 - 5 L3
ENC4 - 5+ mix of L3s and L5s
ENC 5 (last) - Same as encounter 4

Now some groups got lucky with good party cooperation, great dice rolls on their part, and my dice sucking.

Now Keep on the Shadowfell... that encounter under the waterfall is a nightmare. Even if the players get super lucky so that they come in one of the side caves and no one got to warn and such... if the GM doesn't hold back it's going to be a nightmare (as it was for me, eventually I gave them a chance to surrender with the idea of Irontooth using them to overthrow the big priest and let him gain control of it all).

All I can suggest for a GM is to really go over the module ahead of time and make adjustments.

I just started running a 4E homebrew campaign a couple of months ago for two reasons:

1) I am new to 4E (last DnD I played was 2e) and wanted to make myself get immersed in the new rules and figured some good old fashioned world building and module making was the best way to do that (works for me, but your mileage may vary)

2) I heard things about the published modules, ahem, excuse me... adventures, that are just as you describe. I figured that if I was going to have to put so much effort into a published mod just to avoid a TPK, I might as well just write my own.

All this to say, no I haven't run into that with Keep, but I have heard several people say similar things to your post.

Sam