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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JediSoth" data-source="post: 2778370" data-attributes="member: 13882">My "reboot" went extraordinarily well. For the first time in 19 sessions, we had a truely balanced party. There was a pseudodragon rogue, a dwarven fighter/deep rift defender, a halfling warmage, and a gnome favored soul (a NPC to make up for an illness-related absence of the player who said she was making a cleric).I told everyone to either bump their existing character up to level 9 or make a new character at level 9 (if they'd died or were just tired of their old character). I started them off in Region G. I had them wake up with the hound archons in G1. Since the only surviving character there was last played during the session when Region I was totally immolated, it was an easy transition. His last memory was narrowly escaping a fiery death and now he woke up surrounded by intimidating celestials.The hound archons told them in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome here; they had too much to do to coddle a bunch of mortals. If they wanted to do something useful, they could take care of that pesky basilisk to the west. So, the PCs were reunited with the NPC they lost in Region A (he was knocked through the portal in Longtail's room by an Ogre) and they set off to kill the basilisk. Naturally, they didn't know it was an Abyssal Greater Basilisk, but that didn't stop them. They all took precautions to ensure they wouldn't be subject to its gaze attack and the fight ensued. It was shaping up to be an epic battle, but the pseudodragon stung the basilisk and I rolled a 1 on its save. The tiny character took out the huge monster and they coup de graced it to death.So, after two rounds of combat, they sauntered back to the hound archons with the head of the basilisk. The hound archons were so impressed they asked them to recover that Flame of Aranel thingie. So they headed east along the river of lava and encounter the Vrocks in the magical darkness. Technically, an easier encounter than the basilisk, but it took them the rest of the gaming session to kill the Vrocks because of all their immunities. The PCs used up approximately 80% of their resources before emerging victorious.It was the first session where I felt the PCs were actually challenged in the last dozen or so games. Sure, Madness was tough, but only one PC came close to death in that encounter, and they had no clue how to truely kill it. But since I've restructured the group to take out the disruptive power-gaming hack'n'slashers, the WLD is a challenge once again, rather than being just a huge depository of easy XP (and I was increasing the encounter difficulty prior to the reboot).Proof that a balanced party (or an unbalanced one) can make all the difference between a repository of fun and a suppository of anguish for both the DM and the players.JediSoth</blockquote>

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