Raven Crowking
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WIR S1 Tomb of Horrors [SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!!]
Despite your claims to the contrary, danger can be mitigated in myriad ways without surety. Sometimes you'll take a precaution and it won't be necessary. Sometimes it will.
Basically, you're saying that wearing a seat belt requires you to some know that you're going to be in an accident. That's not the way seat belts work.
The proof here is in the pudding: You're taking examples of successful mitigation from actual play and claiming it can't happen.
If the same team also carefully checked out the levers to see if they were coated in contact poison or even wiped them down just to be sure, that would also be danger mitigation. Not meaningful in this case, but a reasonable precaution.
IME, successful players tend to triage the likely routes of danger from the current scenario and figure out the way they want to mitigate it using the resources they have on hand. They don't drive pitons into the wall before walking through a misty arch because the odds of walking through a misty arch triggering a pity trap are pretty low. But in a room with no visible exits and levers serving an unclear purpose? Yeah. Time to mitigate against unexpected exits suddenly appearing in inconvenient locations.
Area 9. Complex of Secret Doors
This is a complex of small, square rooms connected to each other by secret doors. The module provides no description of the rooms, and it does not mention any furniture or decoration in the complex. Every round that the PC's spend here, a number of bolts will be fired into the area "from hidden devices in the walls and ceilings." One PC must save vs. magic or take 1d6 points of damage.
Each of the 7 secret doors opens a different way. One pulls down. One pivots cenrally. On slides up. Etc. Etc. The players have to negotiate all of the doors to get to Area 10.
IMO: Meh. This area reminds me of the Bard's Tale (and I mean the original from 1985). A bunch of tiny, empty rooms full of random damage. There are no hints or clues to figure out. The random damage is trivial for PC's at this level. Plus, the module doesn't provide any flavor text or description to flesh out the secret doors.
I've got every sympathy for the folks who just busted through the walls.
This is a complex of small, square rooms connected to each other by secret doors. The module provides no description of the rooms, and it does not mention any furniture or decoration in the complex. Every round that the PC's spend here, a number of bolts will be fired into the area "from hidden devices in the walls and ceilings." One PC must save vs. magic or take 1d6 points of damage.
Each of the 7 secret doors opens a different way. One pulls down. One pivots cenrally. On slides up. Etc. Etc. The players have to negotiate all of the doors to get to Area 10.
IMO: Meh. This area reminds me of the Bard's Tale (and I mean the original from 1985). A bunch of tiny, empty rooms full of random damage. There are no hints or clues to figure out. The random damage is trivial for PC's at this level. Plus, the module doesn't provide any flavor text or description to flesh out the secret doors.
I've got every sympathy for the folks who just busted through the walls.
Bullgrit
Adventurer
When have I made a claim contrary to this?Beginning of the End said:
Not at all. The only successful mitigation presented from actual play – the pitons – I said was clever. And I haven’t said any mitigation can’t happen.
You’re quoting one line from me, and then arguing against something else, that I’ve never said or implied. Are you sure you’re connecting your argument to the right person?
My only argument against what some folks are putting forward as easy trap avoidance/solutions is that it’s easy to say, “oh, just do this” when you know that “this” is the solution for the particular situation. I’m asking for how would a party know to make such specific safety precautions at that time? It’s been said that Acererak gives fair clues for surviving the Tomb. I’m asking what are the clues? I’m not saying fair clues do not exist, but I’m not taking someone’s word for it – I’m expecting to be shown, not just told to believe.
Yes. But is this how to best explore the Tomb? To approach each and every thing with a long list of mitigating actions? From what some people are saying, it would seem that going through the Tomb is just a matter of paying attention to clues and thinking. Please explain these clues. But from what I’m reading, it would seem that going through the Tomb is a matter of approaching everything like a CSI team or bomb squad.
The CSI/bomb squad approach is a legitimate method and game play style, and some people really enjoy that.
Bullgrit
Bullgrit
Adventurer
Something to keep in mind, maybe, is that AD&D clerics could not swap out spells memorized for cure spells. So if the cleric went into the Tomb with a bunch of divination type stuff, or poison-proof stuff, or anything other than cure X wounds, this damage could add up over time with no healing. Though it would be a very foolish group to let damage add up so much that someone might die before backing up to a safe spot and resting a couple days.Stoat said:
Yeah, it kind of looks like it's just a race for the Players to explain multiple methods of opening the doors in less than one minute (round). It was claimed in another thread, that the Tomb isn't about attrition, but this area does seem to be all about only attrition of hit points.
Tomb of Horrors said:
Something just came to me, after writing all the above: does the party have to search and find the secret doors before they can try to open them? If they have to search, doesn't it take a turn (10 minutes) to search each wall? So that's at least 10d6 damage minimum for each secret door. And with a 1 in 6 chance of any one PC finding it, that damage can get pretty serious.
Now, the targeted character gets a save vs. Spells against each bolt, so that will cut down on the damage somewhat, but still. There is potentially a lot of damage to be taken in this area.
If the doors can be opened by just trying to push/pull/lift/etc. each wall without knowing there is a secret door, it just goes back to a race to describe vs. the 1 minute timer. And how many Players are going to blindly continue trying to push/pull/lift/etc. on a wall when they keep getting hit by magic bolts? Is this an example of the Players need to just have faith and continue doing something that hurts them until something good happens?
I wonder how many Players would figure the problem to be solved in this area is to mitigate the damage? I could imagine a lot of time trying to figure out and protect themselves from the bolts, only for that time to be wasted. The problem to be solved here isn't the trap, it's the door opening methods. They just kind of have to suck up the damage and move as fast as they can.
Bullgrit
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Thing is, there are no wandering monsters in the Tomb, so the PC's can stop and rest at any time. As far as I can tell, there is nothing keeping them from opening one secret door, retreating back outside, resting as long as they want, and then returning to find/open the next secret door.
I assume the players have to find the doors before they can try to open them. The module doesn't say, but that's how I've always run secret doors. I don't have any idea how long it takes to search for one in 1E. If it's as long as a turn then, yeah, that damage will add up.
It'll also be a pain in the ass for the DM, who has to randomly determine which PC each of the 10 bolts hits and then ask for and adjudicate 10 saves versus spell.
Bullgrit
Adventurer
Yeah, this kind of brings up the question of what exactly is the point of the damage, then?Stoat said:
Would the Players know there are no wandering monsters? Sure, it doesn't make sense to have monsters wandering about this kind of place, but there are other dungeons with wandering monsters in an environment where it wouldn't make sense things would be wandering about. The party is only a few areas into the Tomb, but depending on how long it has taken them to move through each previous area, maybe they've deduced that they aren't in a hurry?
How did/would a tournament situation handle taking a break and resting for a couple days? Maybe this area only works properly in a tournament-like time-limited game?
Bullgrit
Loincloth of Armour
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Speaking solely from my experience, we didn't know there were no wandering monsters. As such, we didn't have a whole alotment of divination spells, instead we were tricked out with the standard cure x/fireball type stuff, with a few utility/divination types.
After a few slogs, we traded out a number of our firepower-spells for more "is this a good idea, yes/no?" types, but we didn't completely go the divination path for a couple of reasons:
1) As stated, the cleric needed to memorize cure x type spells. No matter how good Agury might be, cure x was the cleric's job.
2) We didn't know what was behind the next door. It could be another trap, or it could be a monster. If a monster, not having lightning bolt memorized could hurt us (having it memorized could still hurt us if the bolt reflected unwisely!). For us it seemed jjuusstt enough monsters to reward us for keeping a pretty combat heavy spell list. (We were also looking forward to a good fight to bleed off some of the tension from dealing with the traps.)
Or: I could think/talk my way out of a trap situation, or perhaps leave it alone and come back later. But if you need that Fireball, you needed that Fireball, right then. For us, that was a pretty strong incentive to keep a strong combat roster up.
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Raven Crowking
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