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Tomb of Horrors - example of many, or one of a kind?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5578897" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>ToH is fair with Acererak being predictable and clues for the right decision being available. ToH is also a meat grinder and extremely deadly. There is nothing contridictory about those statements.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>To a certain extent yes. Equally so, only the very experienced and creative players are able to adjust their mindset to the tomb and play it accordingly. In most cases, "We move cautiously down the hall checking for traps." is a reasonable approach within a dungeon. As I indicated, in ToH it leads to the most automatic TPK in any dungeon I'm aware of. Literally the whole party dies no save. However, hopefully the much less lethal entrance corridor and surrounding zone will have by this point convinced the party that the normal approach won't cut it. Simply put, if you leave things up to chance, if your idea of checking for traps is saying, "I check for traps" and hoping the DM rolls well for you, then you will die.</p><p></p><p>A more typical approach that does work and which does avoid the trap (and most in the dungeon) would be: </p><p></p><p>[SPOILER]We tie a rope around the Thief and cast Fly on him. He'll scout ahead on the end of the length of rope looking for traps and secret doors, and if he gets in trouble, we will try to pull him to safety.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>And of course, there are lots of variations on that theme, some of which have already been mentioned in the thread. The important point is most of the traps are easily bypassed if you don't have the whole party blunder into them, and you either can sacrifice your scout or you put the whole parties effort into protecting the scout.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's why I said that its unlikely a 1st level party could survive without reading the text. The entrance corridor with its [SPOILER]lethal but survivable pit traps[/SPOILER] and the similar lethal but not completely lethal traps in the surrounding zone is something of a warm up for the real challenges of the tomb. A high level party can survive making some mistakes here (we did), although there is one notorious death trap in the entrance corridor that's probably responcible for more TPK's than any other trap even though its far from the most lethal thing in the dungeon. It's just the first example of a player proposition that leads to death without a save, and often a party will encounter this trap while still thinking of the tomb as a normal dungeon where if they get into trouble they can always find a way to get out again. However, even this trap is very avoidable and once its gotten you, you tend to realize just how dumb you were for falling for it. Or not. Some people never get over the fact that they were punished for doing something obviously stupid and blame the module designer. The proper responce to a TPK in the entrance corridor is to grin and try again. People who do that tend to be the ones that end up really enjoying the module.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5578897, member: 4937"] ToH is fair with Acererak being predictable and clues for the right decision being available. ToH is also a meat grinder and extremely deadly. There is nothing contridictory about those statements. To a certain extent yes. Equally so, only the very experienced and creative players are able to adjust their mindset to the tomb and play it accordingly. In most cases, "We move cautiously down the hall checking for traps." is a reasonable approach within a dungeon. As I indicated, in ToH it leads to the most automatic TPK in any dungeon I'm aware of. Literally the whole party dies no save. However, hopefully the much less lethal entrance corridor and surrounding zone will have by this point convinced the party that the normal approach won't cut it. Simply put, if you leave things up to chance, if your idea of checking for traps is saying, "I check for traps" and hoping the DM rolls well for you, then you will die. A more typical approach that does work and which does avoid the trap (and most in the dungeon) would be: [SPOILER]We tie a rope around the Thief and cast Fly on him. He'll scout ahead on the end of the length of rope looking for traps and secret doors, and if he gets in trouble, we will try to pull him to safety.[/SPOILER] And of course, there are lots of variations on that theme, some of which have already been mentioned in the thread. The important point is most of the traps are easily bypassed if you don't have the whole party blunder into them, and you either can sacrifice your scout or you put the whole parties effort into protecting the scout. That's why I said that its unlikely a 1st level party could survive without reading the text. The entrance corridor with its [SPOILER]lethal but survivable pit traps[/SPOILER] and the similar lethal but not completely lethal traps in the surrounding zone is something of a warm up for the real challenges of the tomb. A high level party can survive making some mistakes here (we did), although there is one notorious death trap in the entrance corridor that's probably responcible for more TPK's than any other trap even though its far from the most lethal thing in the dungeon. It's just the first example of a player proposition that leads to death without a save, and often a party will encounter this trap while still thinking of the tomb as a normal dungeon where if they get into trouble they can always find a way to get out again. However, even this trap is very avoidable and once its gotten you, you tend to realize just how dumb you were for falling for it. Or not. Some people never get over the fact that they were punished for doing something obviously stupid and blame the module designer. The proper responce to a TPK in the entrance corridor is to grin and try again. People who do that tend to be the ones that end up really enjoying the module. [/QUOTE]
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