Nebulous
Legend
Thanks. I actually bought Fantasy Grounds a couple months ago but I haven't dug into how to use it yet.
D&D 5E Tomb of Annihilation campaign recaps
Thanks. I actually bought Fantasy Grounds a couple months ago but I haven't dug into how to use it yet.
Rabbitbait
Adventurer
Session 39, Day 118 - Too many devils.
app.roll20.net
This was pretty tough. I think if they had not detected the block trap in the ceiling they would probably be toast by now. Good fun though.
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This was pretty tough. I think if they had not detected the block trap in the ceiling they would probably be toast by now. Good fun though.
Nebulous
Legend
Our game was cancelled again last minute. Unfortunately, the guy's house we play at cancels a lot, which screws everyone else up. We would just play without him, but we don't have a venue. So we haven't played Tomb since August. Anyway, here is one of the next sessions.
Tomb Session #37 - A Shrine of Jaculi & Gate of the Fane
Box
Tomb Session #37 - A Shrine of Jaculi & Gate of the Fane
Box
Nebulous
Legend
Session 39, Day 118 - Too many devils.
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This was pretty tough. I think if they had not detected the block trap in the ceiling they would probably be toast by now. Good fun though.
I agree. That sounds like a deathtrap. What's the CR for that many devils all at once??
Thanks for posting these recaps and the comments. I haven't read through them all but the little pieces in the summaries are cool just by themselves.
I played through this last year and enjoyed it quite a bit (took about a year and a half ~36 sessions (4-5 hours each) once every 2 weeks). One difference I noted between your play-throughs and mine is the time limit. We were under constant time pressure since we knew we only had about 70+ days to cure the death curse. As a result, our playing did not include a lot of ToA content that was spread around the edges of the continent and would take too long to get to. However, the DM did include some of the Guild Adept content like Return of the Lizard King to give more destinations that could be added to our path.
The Fane of the Night Serpent can be deadly. We snuck in through the back door, had a few encounters and killed a few yuan-ti and came up with a plan to ambush Ras Nsi. Unfortunately, by that point, he had become aware of our presence, the ambush became a trap and it would have been a TPK except that before they finished us off we had a little discussion about our purpose. When he found out that we were trying to retrieve the last cube to enter the tomb to fix the death curse (which he is suffering from), he decided that putting us into the tomb to fix it would be a suitable punishment since he wins either way. He also converted some of the humans in the group to yuan-ti in an effort to make us more malleable.
The tomb itself is loaded with deadly traps. Our party was relatively lucky since we had a rogue/warlock with the observant feat and devils sight with a passive perception of 24 which made finding the traps and secret doors much easier though several of them were still dangerous to deal with or bypass. The challenges of the individual tombs of the nine gods kept it interesting ... however, we learned that any room that wasn't a resting place for a god was likely just a trap containing nothing of real interest. Any magic items we found except those inhabited by the gods appeared to be cursed.
We had also acquired Nolzur's Marvellous Pigments (I think they are in the grung village in ToA or in the Return of the Lizard King module). These allow the character to paint doors/pits/mundane items that then become real. With some imagination, these made it possible to further disable/deal with or avoid some of the traps in the tomb.
There were parts of the tomb we didn't visit after we dealt with the tombs of the gods (due to the learning curve). If it didn't lead downward we didn't go that way so we never encountered the devil trap or some of the other encounters on the level before the hags.
We lost two characters in the tomb. We set off the trap on level 2 that filled the room with wine and a couple of characters tried to teleport into the room to help the others escape which dropped them in the garbage room. One of the clues in the tomb for level 2 said something about "Into Darkness Descend". When the darkness of the mouth in the garbage room tried to draw them in they decided to jump in. Unfortunately, the Sphere of Annihilation left nothing behind. They brought in new characters for the next session.
For the final battle, the DM threw in all the remaining tomb dwarves, some undead, the stone juggernaut (from the other part of the dungeon that we didn't do) running along the ledge, along with the soul monger and atropal. Defeating the soul monger and the Atropal were a challenge with all the minions and the battle rolls right on over to Acerak as soon as the Atropal goes down. Acerak himself turned out to be a bit easier than expected though it could easily be a TPK if Acerak had gotten loose. In our case, the moon druid took a flying form and grappled Acerak (he is VERY bad at grappling) dragging him over to the platform where the party (including a paladin with divine smite and a warlock with eldritch smite) were able to hit him for very large amounts of damage. A crit from a maxed level eldritch smite did sufficient damage to kill him before he could flee.
We ended about level 11 or 12. We entered the tomb at level 9. We were playing the end of the adventure using season 8 AL rules so leveling was a bit faster than expected towards the end of the tomb. However, if you are using XP as the basis for leveling the tomb itself is really badly designed. There is very little actual XP unless the DM awards it for completing the puzzles and defeating traps.
The Fane of the Night Serpent can be deadly. We snuck in through the back door, had a few encounters and killed a few yuan-ti and came up with a plan to ambush Ras Nsi. Unfortunately, by that point, he had become aware of our presence, the ambush became a trap and it would have been a TPK except that before they finished us off we had a little discussion about our purpose. When he found out that we were trying to retrieve the last cube to enter the tomb to fix the death curse (which he is suffering from), he decided that putting us into the tomb to fix it would be a suitable punishment since he wins either way. He also converted some of the humans in the group to yuan-ti in an effort to make us more malleable.
The tomb itself is loaded with deadly traps. Our party was relatively lucky since we had a rogue/warlock with the observant feat and devils sight with a passive perception of 24 which made finding the traps and secret doors much easier though several of them were still dangerous to deal with or bypass. The challenges of the individual tombs of the nine gods kept it interesting ... however, we learned that any room that wasn't a resting place for a god was likely just a trap containing nothing of real interest. Any magic items we found except those inhabited by the gods appeared to be cursed.
We had also acquired Nolzur's Marvellous Pigments (I think they are in the grung village in ToA or in the Return of the Lizard King module). These allow the character to paint doors/pits/mundane items that then become real. With some imagination, these made it possible to further disable/deal with or avoid some of the traps in the tomb.
There were parts of the tomb we didn't visit after we dealt with the tombs of the gods (due to the learning curve). If it didn't lead downward we didn't go that way so we never encountered the devil trap or some of the other encounters on the level before the hags.
We lost two characters in the tomb. We set off the trap on level 2 that filled the room with wine and a couple of characters tried to teleport into the room to help the others escape which dropped them in the garbage room. One of the clues in the tomb for level 2 said something about "Into Darkness Descend". When the darkness of the mouth in the garbage room tried to draw them in they decided to jump in. Unfortunately, the Sphere of Annihilation left nothing behind. They brought in new characters for the next session.
For the final battle, the DM threw in all the remaining tomb dwarves, some undead, the stone juggernaut (from the other part of the dungeon that we didn't do) running along the ledge, along with the soul monger and atropal. Defeating the soul monger and the Atropal were a challenge with all the minions and the battle rolls right on over to Acerak as soon as the Atropal goes down. Acerak himself turned out to be a bit easier than expected though it could easily be a TPK if Acerak had gotten loose. In our case, the moon druid took a flying form and grappled Acerak (he is VERY bad at grappling) dragging him over to the platform where the party (including a paladin with divine smite and a warlock with eldritch smite) were able to hit him for very large amounts of damage. A crit from a maxed level eldritch smite did sufficient damage to kill him before he could flee.
We ended about level 11 or 12. We entered the tomb at level 9. We were playing the end of the adventure using season 8 AL rules so leveling was a bit faster than expected towards the end of the tomb. However, if you are using XP as the basis for leveling the tomb itself is really badly designed. There is very little actual XP unless the DM awards it for completing the puzzles and defeating traps.
Rabbitbait
Adventurer
No idea. I never worry too much about that sort of stuff. My players long ago realised that sometimes they will face overwhelming odds and just need to run away.
Rabbitbait
Adventurer
That's an excellent recap. My group knew there was a time limit before their patron died, but that didn't really speed them up at all. It didn't help that they got lost in the jungle a couple of times and one of those times they were lost for a couple of weeks.
One of the characters in my game has just levelled up to level 10 and the rest are level 9. I expect that they will all be level 10 by the time they face Acererak. Only half of them have taken on trickster gods though, which may make the battle a lot harder.
We've been on pause for a couple of weeks due to too much real life going on for lots of us, but hopefully we'll get back into it soon. It feels so close to the end.
Nebulous
Legend
My group entered at 7th level, and i doubt they'll pass 9th by the end. I don't use XP at all, I just level them up when it feels right. I kept them at 6th level through all of Omu.
I ended the last session right after one of the PCs broke the Mirror of Life Trapping on level 4 of the Tomb of Nine Gods. Everything within spilled out, into a 15' square room (which I can't even build with Dwarven Forge because it's too small. Having all these creature crammed into that space seems really absurd.
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