OK. Got to the Gith Fight using Tabletop. Here are my observations:
1. Kith'rak Voss and Qudenos need a better reason to leave than, "I need to report to the others about our success." Nope. Don't buy it. He'd kill them first and claim the weapon for himself so he'd get more honor. Then he'd leave and tell the others. In the Afflicted story, I made it so that Shadowheart was not with the party meeting up with the Githyanki. Since she has the weapon, that gave him a reason to leave. Voss learned that Shadowheart had the weapon and she was elsewhere. So he left to go find her.
2. As soon as Voss finds out that Lae'zel is infected, why would he even believe a word she says? She was on the Nautiloid, and unless you got to the Gith on Day 1, most Gith would believe that her conscious mind was already gone. After all, standard Mind Flayer parasite procedure is to consume the host's brain within hours of infection. So he'd like believe she was a Ghaik (Mind Flayer) deception just trying to trick them.
3. The battle is too hard for level 4 characters and a party of 4. With this combination and standard Gith stats with a few tweaks (aka one was a cleric and one was a ranger - I was trying real hard to stay true to BG3's four Gith), the battle was End Game level of difficulty. If RNG goes south even remotely, it'll be very frustrating for players. A party of 6 might have a bit less of an epic, climactic battle and have it feel more like a tough battle that is challenging but not too much so, but a party of 4... no way. It's too much. The party had to use a bunch of potions of speed and healing potions, and they barely survived. (Again, without height advantage and such, which turns the game even more on end with RNG.) The party barely won the fight, and this only because I had to flub a few rolls and throw in a few things to assist them. (For example, when Gale fell, I made it so that he began to emit his toxic energy around him. This hurt the Githyanki near him for a few HP lost. I explained this as Gale not having his fix for a few days now, and when he was taken down, his internal issue became unstable.)
I like this fight, I do. I just think it's too much for 4 party members at level 4. Either the Gith need to be majorly nerfed, as if they got into some huge fight before they battle your party, or there needs to be fewer Githyanki OR better yet, give us a party of 6. It's the only way to keep this from being one of the worst fights in the game.
This said, don't get me wrong, the party of 4 could have succeeded without me flubbing a few rolls if RNG had been more in their favor. However, it was not, but it was not against them either. So, you never want to base a fight on whether RNG is going to go your way or not unless it is possibly the last epic fight of the entire campaign. For RPG fights to be fun, the DM should set the difficulty for fights like this one at more like Medium or maybe hard so that they feel like the fight is challenging if RNG goes poorly and just plain fun if the RNG goes well for them.
