Celebrim
Legend
I don’t think that’s gonna work for me, since that leaves open the possibility of making the tomb impossible to complete.
I am not sure what you mean by that, but if I take that sentence at face value then, with respect, if you are not leaving open the possibility of the tomb being impossible to complete then you aren't running S1 Tomb of Horrors. That the Tomb is not completed is in fact the most likely result and the result you should be planning for and mentally prepared for when you sit down to run the session. The most likely result is a TPK. The second most likely result is sufficiently close to a TPK that the survivors just decide they've had enough and are fleeing with what they can if they can. And the third most likely result is that the dungeon is otherwise not completed for some reason because the party can't get past a puzzle or just as likely is tricked into thinking that they completed the dungeon before they actually did so. I mean the dungeon has one encounter early on deliberately intended to achieve that result. You should be going into this mentally resolved to the fact that there is a better than 50% chance your players will never see most of the dungeon. You should be running this with the realization beforehand that there is a good chance the game will be over 20 minutes after you begin it.
If that idea leaves you dissatisfied, I strongly suggest a backup plan for post TPK, probably by preparing more than 3 entrance corridors and having multiple variations of both fake and real entrances so that post TPK, you can run the module again with a new party and new terrors. Extra points if you have multiple variations of any of the other choices or puzzles, such as rooms with 4 chests rather than 3 or different variations of the corridor of frescos, different orderings to the solutions in the secret door passage, different prepared outcomes in the nymph grotto, etc.. Happy to help you brainstorm that if you think it would be helpful.
If your intention is to not leave open the possibility that the dungeon isn't completed, then I'm not sure what to say or how to help you. The dungeon isn't designed like a typical adventure with completion being the most likely result. That's the point.
There are different interpretations of what to do about retries in 5e. But regardless, I don’t call for checks unless there’s a consequence for failure, and in Dungeon contexts, time wasted is a pretty common consequence.
Time wasted is in some sense pretty meaningless in S1. The dungeon is not designed to kill you for bad dice rolls or bad luck. So as I said, no failed search for secret doors check should be the end of it, but neither do I think the way to run this is just let them roll 20 times until they get lucky. If they don't get lucky the first time, then they shouldn't be allowed to reroll until they think of some relevant plan. If you will, think of that as the consequence. My point is that the dungeon doesn't work right if you try to run it as a test of character skill alone.
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