Are you aware of the major drawbacks having that sword also includes? The concept of ever surprising anything is out the door. Stealth requires notable distances from the wielder to enact. Half of enemies in the Underdark? Exaggerate much? The blessing happens eventually... not a big deal (also not stackable). The spell gem is "meh", decent but hardly equal to many other items you could roll randomly.
sun blade "you can use a bonus action to cause a blade of pure radiance to spring into existence, or make the blade disappear." the balde don't like be sent alway, but with Int 12, I bet she can understand in some situations . Blessing of protection stack with anything. Yeah, no big deal with spell gem, lvl 5 character casting a lvl 8 fireball, spirit guardians, hold person is definitly "meh", ok.
Yep, random encounters are random, you should tailor them appropriately for your party (which the book suggests directly). I think you might just run your games on easy mode.
No, I change every encounter. And that's is what I'm talking about, if I need to change all random encounters (and the number/day or rest system), those tables aren't really useful after some lvl.
Well, I think here, you are just running it on easy mode or theory crafting. I had cultists retreating to warn others, setting up amushes, diverting the party through the spiders, etc. They didn't get short rests in here either, because the bad guys knew they were here (and have access to minor demons). Again, the game doesn't play out like described unless you as the DM want it to.
Again we're talking about the same thing, you changed te dungeon because as written, would be too easy.
The fight with the pudding king is ridiculously hard, and if you don't clean out everything around him, just pulls tons of adds from others areas. The fight could easily TPK a party if the DM wanted to. Again, are you theory crafting or actually running it?
I runned it, and it was really hard, just because I did a real upgrade in him and royal court, because to me, this is a BBEG fight, not a hard encounter because I put tons of ooze to weak the players before the fight. 49hp in his form, without lucky or fudge, he can die before get a chance to act.
LOL. I would happily run Orcus or Demogorgon against a level 11 party. Graz'zt would just annihilate them, so that wouldn't be fair. Heck, make the most tweaked out 11th level party you want and the Demon lord would handily wipe them if run intelligently. Additionally, why are you running fights in big vast open caverns? NPC's are all just bags of hit points with no tactical ability at all?
So, you talking about the 3 hardest demon lords, against lvl 11 players? a 90k xp that should be 50% more than deadly to 5 lvl 20 to prove your point? I'm talking about defeat Juiblex (maybe even Zuggtmoy), those are 45k xp, deadly to 5 lvl 18 players, but 5 lvl 11 with the itens they got until here can handle with really low chance to be defeated. It's ok a demon lord be easily defeated because he moves 30ft and don't even have a legendary action movement? You really think we don't need to change nothing about that?
I've run the entire module, I've changed some, but not even close to half. The random tables are the most glaring part of the module and yes, need to be changed/customized, no question... but that is your job when running this thing. Just be aware of it and run it right, don't expect paint by the numbers adventuring because that isn't this adventure.
I'm not complaining that I need to change so many things, I'm only stating how many thing you need to change, so many that really don't care the level you'll start the advanture, this is good in fact, make you think in your adventure not just another adventure. Will only be a problem if you're a lazy DM while your players like real challenge, some really boring parts will show up.