D&D 4E Updating Tomb of Horrors to 4e...and 4e seems to wussy.

[pascale]

So as the tittle sugests I'm updating Tome of hoorors to 4e. (No I don't really want to wait for WotC to do it for me.) And while the DCs for the checks remian about as difficult. The damage comes out in 4e a bit underwleming. I'm using the 3.5 update as a rough guide for what I should be going for. (Not that familiar with 1e rules, and can't find my orginal copy of it )

The 3.5 update calls for adventurers of about 9th level, so I figured I'd design this for 15th level adventures in 4. Anyways the first trap the falling cieling trap in door 1 deals 16d6 damage which should take about 1/2 of the tanks HP. In 4e the high limited damage expression for a trap is 4d10+6. This averages about 28 points and would only take about 1/4 for the defenders HP. Heck the 6th level sorcer I'm playing in a friends game could take that max to the face and live to tell about it.

Now I am aiming for an accurate translation, but I also want the gritty brutalish feel the orginal ToH had. You know, that thinking persons unfair nintendo like hard feel of ToH. Maybe I should just double the damage expressions? What you oh gorus of 4e?

 

[LamilLerran]

4e deliberately reduced the potential for killing players without them having a chance to react. With changes like more of a hitpoint buffer at level 1, the elimination of save-or-die effects, or the ever-increasing (decreasing?) negative bloodied value rather than -10 for death, WotC made it rather hard to kill characters fast in 4e.

Therefore, if making death just one mistake away (or even two or three mistakes away) is an important part of "the gritty brutalish feel" for you, then you will have to stray from the DMG guidelines.

 

[abyssaldeath]

ToH is suppose to be almost impossible to get through. It is not suppose to be part of a normal campaign, it's more of a "Hey, lets see if we can survive this" adventure. Given that, you should convert the adventure with original intent of the adventure in mind. Even the original didn't completely follow the game mechanics used at the time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I agree. ToH isn't one of those adventures you design using the DMG guidelines. Remember, they are only guidelines. The mechanics of 4e are perfectly adequate to model insta-kill type situations, the guidelines are simply not written with that sort of adventure design in mind.

So I would go to town. Make things as deadly as you want. Another related option is to redesign some of the tricks and traps a bit so they do a lot of damage but spread it out a bit more around the party. That will provide plenty of tension as the characters slowly get their surges chewed away at every opportunity without the unfortunate tendency of ToH to obliterate half the PCs in the middle of the adventure and leave players sitting on the sidelines.

 

[Turtlejay]

I'm not too familiar with Tomb of Horrors, but you could certainly make things grittier by lowering the level. If you are going to need to re-do everything already, then there is no reason to even consider the level guidelines of the original. Paragon level characters have quite a lot of survivablity, so maybe try 8th or so level, high enough that they have a few options, but no paragon path and less staying power.

Just my uninformed opinion, anyhow.

Jay

 

[Orcus Porkus]

Tomb of Horrors is the Antithesis of 4E.
Here is the conversion someone else did recently:
Tomb of Horrors.7z

 

[keterys]

Coming in July 2010:
'July sees the Demonomicon as well as the next super-adventure following Against the Giants: 4th Edition's Tomb of Horrors!'

According to WotC's site.

Take that as you will, of course.

 

[Falstyr]

i wonder what WoTC will do about this ToH. Traps and poisons in 4e are done pathetically. They are hardly a threat. Just jump in, take the damage, yawn and move on. It is a shame when you look at how good the rest of 4e is.

 

[pascale]

I'm not too familiar with Tomb of Horrors, but you could certainly make things grittier by lowering the level. If you are going to need to re-do everything already, then there is no reason to even consider the level guidelines of the original. Paragon level characters have quite a lot of survivablity, so maybe try 8th or so level, high enough that they have a few options, but no paragon path and less staying power.

Just my uninformed opinion, anyhow.

Jay

I thought about doing this, but then it wouldn't make much sense for a heroic tier party to be going after a demi lich...although that would be in Tohs spirit....

 

[UltimaGabe]

A 4e Tomb of Horrors will be (not might be, WILL be) terrible. The 3.5 version was terrible as well, and 4e's will be worse for the same reasons.

The entire reason the Tomb of Horrors is anything but a mediocre dungeon is because when it was made, it was almost un-survivable. Nobody made it through on their first character, and most people didn't make it through at all. This was possible because, in the earlier editions, death was VERY easy. With each successive edition, PC death became harder and harder to accomplish (at least, the same methods didn't work as quickly), and therefore a dungeon like the Tomb of Horrors (whose entire schtick was one-hit-kills) became less of a Tomb of Horrors and more a Tomb of Inconveniences.

Adding in a "suggested party level" doomed the ToH even more. In 3.5, the dungeon was level 9- meaning a level 9 party could reasonably get through it. That, in and of itself, meant the Tomb of Horrors just failed. A party of ANY level isn't supposed to be able to reasonably get through it- that was the whole point. I ran it in 3.5e once, the party got halfway through the dungeon, and we all lost interest because nobody had died.

The only way I found to make it even worth playing in 3.5 was to make everyone 2nd level- and the entire adventure re-booted (players, dungeon, everything) once the last party member had died or run away. Nothing was considered metagame for this scenario. It proved to be a lot of fun in the end.

I imagine a 4e Tomb of Horrors will be nothing like the original whatsoever. How do you recreate a dungeon composed entirely of one-hit-kill traps in a system with no one-hit-kills?