The manual goes through the player dice pools when attacking, when we test played yesterday we had a hard time figuring out how the GM determines the dice pool. We expected it to be somewhat similar to the player pools but nothing was really clear in the manual.

Does the GM give himself a challenge die when rolling? If not doesn't this make it so the NPCs will decimate almost everything they get encountered with?

Lastly, I bought the adventure pack. Is it just me or maybe we are doing something wrong but the Ironbreaker's armor seems almost too good to give a starting character, he can sluff off almost anything.....

The GM makes his pools pretty much exactly as a player does and should fairly set himself the same difficulty and modifiers as he would a PC in the same situation.

Yeah, Gromril armour is very good. Some GMs, I think, make Ironbreakers second careers, not beginning ones. If you do use it as a beginning one, then you can charge the player 3 creation points for being Affluent to pay for it.

I found the rules for creating dice pools pretty clear cut; and I assumed that it applied to both characters and the GM (even though I think it is titled "player dice pool).