D&D 5E I Ran the Yawning Portal's Tomb of Horrors

[machineelf]

That doesn't appear to be in the update. Just going ethereal and astral. I vaguely remembered something about teleportation, so when I was rereading for play I looked, but didn't see anything about it being blocked.
Likely because so many portals teleport you, so the area can't be dimensionally locked.

I thought I saw it in there, in TFtYP. Maybe I am just projecting?

 

[flametitan]

That doesn't appear to be in the update. Just going ethereal and astral. I vaguely remembered something about teleportation, so when I was rereading for play I looked, but didn't see anything about it being blocked.
Likely because so many portals teleport you, so the area can't be dimensionally locked.

I was reading the Demilich entry in the MM, as its regional effects are probably the closest to something like this. You can't teleport with the intention of leaving the tomb, but you can teleport around within it. (It also has the ability to arbitrarily throw necrotic damage at creatures entering the tomb, so the 5e Tomb of horrors is warded against the classical solution Robilar used to solve the tomb)

I can't see anything about teleportation limits in the 1977 edition of S1.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I thought I saw it in there, in TFtYP. Maybe I am just projecting?

It does just say "astral or ethereal". Technically, however, teleporting in D&D utilizes the Astral for the purposes of that instantaneous travel, so that could be used as a loophole.

 

[tglassy]

I played through it last weekend. Level 8 rogue. A quarter of the way through two of our players had to leave, so it was just me and my brother, a level 8 Warlock. We got all the way through, and beat the whole thing. Took two days of real time.

Of course, we got all the way through because my Rogue had acquired a Shield Guardian on our last adventure. His name was Hermon. Hermon did most of the heavy lifting, seeing as he could heal after a few rounds of resting. He triggered all the traps, carried me over spiked floors, and generally took a wallup of a beating throughout the tomb. He was squished by the last trap in the game, just before the vault. Managed to beat the Demilich because we'd had the Siren use Greater Invisibility on me, so the Demilich couldn't see me, and then she ran off so she wouldn't get knocked out and lose concentration. Sneak attack for the win. And since the Lich couldn't see me, it couldn't do it's instadeath spells. It knocked me below 0 HP once, but I rolled a 20 on my death save and popped back up for the kill. It was glorious. I had a blast, and had to beg our DM not to just kill Hermon for no reason other than he was covered in cheese. Technically, we used him legitimately, and the DM let us take him in. Thankfully, my brother's warlock is a Kenku who studied the Shield Guardian, so he can remake him (DM ruled it was ok). Took 75,000 gp to do, but it's worth it to have Hermon back.

Oh yeah, Hermon has my Hat of Disguise, and it makes him look like a Half Orc bouncer wearing a suit and shades.

But yeah, I'm going to run it here on Enworld, and I'm going to change some of the rules around. Like going for longer rest times (8 hour short rest, 7 day long rest) and keep track of rations, only allow one perception check per day if they fail a perception check, really force them to dungeon crawl it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Reading this makes me wish WotC had taken more poetic license with Tomb of Horrors. Made it something that grognards would recognize, but with better design.

 

[Blue]

Reading this makes me wish WotC had taken more poetic license with Tomb of Horrors. Made it something that grognards would recognize, but with better design.

I think that was a design choice to stay as close as possible instead of re-imagining. But yeah, all of them being reboots instead of updates would also have made compelling dungeons.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I got Tales... last night and the first thing I looked at was ToH. Meh, 5e just isn't for a module like this IMO. Sure you can have fun with it but I just don't think it fits the style of the game these days. 5e is a bit safe and "nerfed" compared to 1e and it just didn't seem very threatening. The Sphere of Annihilation is more tingly than annihilating these days. And the lack of the handouts that the original had blows.

 

[machineelf]

I got Tales... last night and the first thing I looked at was ToH. Meh, 5e just isn't for a module like this IMO. Sure you can have fun with it but I just don't think it fits the style of the game these days. 5e is a bit safe and "nerfed" compared to 1e and it just didn't seem very threatening. The Sphere of Annihilation is more tingly than annihilating these days. And the lack of the handouts that the original had blows.

I don't think 5e deserved the blame. There was nothing keeping the designers from making the traps Insta-kill or asst least very high damage.

5e can be very deadly at high levels if the DM sets things up right and runs the monsters well.

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

 

[jimmytheccomic]

I don't think 5e deserved the blame. There was nothing keeping the designers from making the traps Insta-kill or asst least very high damage.

5e can be very deadly at high levels if the DM sets things up right and runs the monsters well.

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

To be fair, there are insta-kill traps in the Tomb. I counted ten spots where a character can be instantly killed, or become trapped/unplayable.

 

[Luz]

Managed to beat the Demilich because we'd had the Siren use Greater Invisibility on me, so the Demilich couldn't see me, and then she ran off so she wouldn't get knocked out and lose concentration. Sneak attack for the win. And since the Lich couldn't see me, it couldn't do it's instadeath spells.

The demilich has truesight out to 120 ft., so either your DM was feeling generous or he missed a pretty important ability.