Originally Posted by
Zenako
For sure. however noobs today have access to a number of things noobs of yesteryear lacked, like the Korthos Isle to hit twinkage, many new Enhancements, and clearly some new gear that has shown up, not to mention changes in game mechanics.
I recall having my Weapon Finesse guy even take the Precision Feat (for another +4 to hit) to make it so I could fairly reliably land my Destruction attacks to drop those blackguards AC by 4 points so most full BAB melees had a reasonable chance to hit more than miss. And some fighters speced in Sunder to drop AC as well in there. Almost no other quest had those kind of demands back then. It was THE quest, and still is one of the most fun quests to undertake with a group.
You can probably tell the mettle of the group 98% of the time by how well they do in the Fire/Ice encounter. If that goes well, then you are likely to have a more or less smooth time. If it goes poorly, then the nature of the players in the group will almost certainly show.