D&D 5E TFTYP: Modifying The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan for Higher-Level Players

The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a perfect drop-in adventure to the part of my home-brew world that the party is currently adventuring in and there is a lot about the flavor and design of the dungeon I like.

I will make some fluff/story additions to make it better fit the campaign, but my players are now at 12th level, so I also want to increase the challenge rating without ruining the flavor of the game. Also, some of the players are long-time gamers and there is a good chance that one or more of them will be familiar with the original adventure.

I would appreciate any ideas you can share to:

1. Increase the challenge to make this adventure challenging for a group of six 12th level characters.

2. Make some changes to throw off any players that may be familiar with the dungeon.

Resources I have access to include the core 5e books (PHB, DMG, MM), Volo's Guide to Monsters, and Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts.

Use the white plume or a giant map.
Room 7 2 vampires with full hp and some class levels.
Room 22 use 2 15level monks.
Room 28 choose your beholder

Thematically, it fits high level play.

The simplest thing to do is use the DMG and amp up the challenges, either by XP budget, or, given the number of custom creatures, using the guidance on default stats for monsters. I find using the numbers in the DMG (with MM descriptions) can be very effective.

Similarly, make sure all the DCs are higher and increase trap damage. Review each of the traps and tricks and make sure they are harsh enough.

Be careful with any spells that boost mobility (not sure with your players). In ToH turning ethereal summons a demon...

Finally, there is the poison gas. I would look to get most challenges up to 9th level range or so in the lower levels, but make that poison significant. Go back to 1d6 per "turn" (every 10 minutes). Require saves to avoid being poisoned every hour, with the condition lasting for the hour.

TerraDave said:

Finally, there is the poison gas. I would look to get most challenges up to 9th level range or so in the lower levels, but make that poison significant. Go back to 1d6 per "turn" (every 10 minutes). Require saves to avoid being poisoned every hour, with the condition lasting for the hour.

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I am running this for my group at the moment, a party of six 6th level characters. While I'm not looking to beef up the challenges like the OP is, I am finding the module is a little too easy for them. The poison gas is one of the hazards I've considered making more dangerous. As per the module, it takes just over three hours exposure to sustain about 10 hp of damage. One alternative I thought of is granting one level of exhaustion per 10 hp/damage from the poison gas (to a maximum of four levels of exhaustion after 40 hp or 12 hours), but if the PCs keep healing themselves after one hour of damage then the exhaustion effects will never happen. So a second option is PCs cannot heal the poison damage from the gas while exposed to it. That is, as long as they're in the gas cloud (rooms 1-38), unless they use means to temporarily disperse the gas first (such as from a gust of wind spell).

Thoughts?

Luz said:

I am running this for my group at the moment, a party of six 6th level characters. While I'm not looking to beef up the challenges like the OP is, I am finding the module is a little too easy for them. The poison gas is one of the hazards I've considered making more dangerous. As per the module, it takes just over three hours exposure to sustain about 10 hp of damage. One alternative I thought of is granting one level of exhaustion per 10 hp/damage from the poison gas (to a maximum of four levels of exhaustion after 40 hp or 12 hours), but if the PCs keep healing themselves after one hour of damage then the exhaustion effects will never happen. So a second option is PCs cannot heal the poison damage from the gas while exposed to it. That is, as long as they're in the gas cloud (rooms 1-38), unless they use means to temporarily disperse the gas first (such as from a gust of wind spell).

Thoughts?

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I would just have a save vs exhaustion each hour, and keep it separate from damage. A few levels of exhaustion would certainly get their attention.

Good suggestion! I wanted to include exhaustion somehow but knew my idea wasn't quite right. Yours is simple and effective.

Thanks!

Luz said:

I am running this for my group at the moment, a party of six 6th level characters. While I'm not looking to beef up the challenges like the OP is, I am finding the module is a little too easy for them. The poison gas is one of the hazards I've considered making more dangerous. As per the module, it takes just over three hours exposure to sustain about 10 hp of damage. One alternative I thought of is granting one level of exhaustion per 10 hp/damage from the poison gas (to a maximum of four levels of exhaustion after 40 hp or 12 hours), but if the PCs keep healing themselves after one hour of damage then the exhaustion effects will never happen. So a second option is PCs cannot heal the poison damage from the gas while exposed to it. That is, as long as they're in the gas cloud (rooms 1-38), unless they use means to temporarily disperse the gas first (such as from a gust of wind spell).

Thoughts?

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Yes, I think the poison air gives urgency to the adventure and is one of the things I like about he adventure.

My players are level 13.

I'm bumping the damage to 1d12 per hour.

I like the idea of adding an exhaustion mechanic to this this. Save v. exhaustion each hour as TerraDave mentions below is a great idea!

The one problem I have is how are you measuring time outside of combat in a dungeon crawl?

MNblockhead said:

Yes, I think the poison air gives urgency to the adventure and is one of the things I like about he adventure.

My players are level 13.

I'm bumping the damage to 1d12 per hour.

I like the idea of adding an exhaustion mechanic to this this. Save v. exhaustion each hour as TerraDave mentions below is a great idea!

The one problem I have is how are you measuring time outside of combat in a dungeon crawl?

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Measuring time is tricky, so I make an educated guess. If the party explores an area thoroughly for traps/secret doors, etc. I assume it takes at least 5-10 minutes to do so, longer if its a large room. Adding combat or roleplay to some of those areas will add time accordingly, although combat doesn't usually eat up too much game time. This seems to work out. After exploring 5 or 6 areas, I estimate about an hour has passed.

I also considered running this as per the original tournament rules, which gave the players two hours of real time to reach safety from the poison gas (room #39). If they didn't reach safety by then, they died. Its pretty severe but I love the urgency it creates. And no hassles of keeping track of hours in game time, damage per hour, and so on. This could be done, in effect, with a longer time limit of six real time hours and maybe add a level of exhaustion per hour (no save). The downside with this approach is that the players will be in such a panic to get to the exit that they will likely miss some of the more interesting rooms of the dungeon.

Something to take into account by increasing the deadliness of the poison gas is the fact that a long rest is almost assuredly not an option (unless they have access to spells like Leomund's Tiny Hut). Eight hours of rest in the poison gas is a lot of cumulative damage and /or exhaustion. Again, I like the urgency this creates but makes it tricky to balance and I understand now why a lot of the encounters are fairly weak. A party that doesn't stop for a long rest will quickly run out of resources, so keep that in mind.

It was a TWO HOUR game? Wow. I would have to make major changes to make it a two hour game. I actually ignored random monster rolls to keep the game moving and we spend a solid four hours before they made their way out of the lower levels.

I ran the game on Saturday and it went well. I used exhaustion, which turned out to be a great way to keep high-level players motivated to get out. I thought that was much more effective than trying to ramp up damage per hour (though I did increase from 1d6 to 1d12).

MNblockhead said:

It was a TWO HOUR game? Wow. I would have to make major changes to make it a two hour game. I actually ignored random monster rolls to keep the game moving and we spend a solid four hours before they made their way out of the lower levels.

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Yeah, the point of the tournament game was to see which group could accumulate the most points (they had some system of keeping "score") and get to safety before the allotted two-hour time limit, the group with the most points winning the tournament. Exploring each and every room was not a priority for this module. I've never run any module using tournament rules, but I'd love to give it a try one of these days as a one-shot adventure.

MNblockhead said:

I ran the game on Saturday and it went well. I used exhaustion, which turned out to be a great way to keep high-level players motivated to get out. I thought that was much more effective than trying to ramp up damage per hour (though I did increase from 1d6 to 1d12).

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Good to hear. I've used it on my group as well and seems to work well, theyve spent two hours in the poison gas and two characters have a level of exhaustion so far. It definitely adds more urgency to the adventure.