D&D 5E Advice for running Tomb of Horrors with a twist (+)

[Charlaquin]

What if it was all just a nightmare, and all the dead PC's wake up fine but their memories of the dungeon still give them XP's? Then it's an easy way to give "free" XP's.

Well XP won’t be relevant cause it’s a one-shot. But that could be cool if using it in an ongoing campaign!

 

[Li Shenron]

I’m going to be running Tomb of Horrors as a stand-alone New Years Eve one-shot. I pitched it to the players as a lighthearted romp through D&D’s most infamous killer dungeon, with optional drinking game element: the suggested rule is to enjoy a drink of your choice at your own pace while playing, but if your character dies, you can finish your drink to resurrect them (but also I don’t want anyone to feel pressured to drink more than they want to, so it’s really just “infinite resurrections, and drink if you want to.”)

Now, I know to some, the idea of running a dungeon like Tomb of Horrors with the ability to freely resurrect your character may seem blasphemous, and to others the idea of running a dungeon like Tomb of Horrors at all may seem unfun, which is why I included the (+) in the thread title. This is the game I’m running, my players have all enthusiastically agreed, so if your advice is to not run this adventure or to not run it in this way, thank you for your input, but this is how it’s going to go. I am, however, willing to entertain revising the rules of the drinking game. Maybe instead of drinking when you die, you can drink to get a hint on a puzzle? I dunno, just spitballing there.

Now, with that out of the way, I’m seeking advice on how to make the most out of this premise. A big part of that will be hitting the sweet spot of just enough character deaths that people want to keep up the drinking game element, so what would be a good character level to facilitate that (assuming a party of 5)? I was thinking in the 11-16 range, but not sure exactly what level to go with. Also, starting equipment? I was figuring 2 permanent Uncommon magic items with the option to swap one or both for 4 Uncommon consumables each, plus whatever non-magical equipment people want.

Folks who have read more than a few of my posts probably know I’m big on a source of time pressure, and typically use wandering monsters to fill that role in dungeons. But wandering monsters definitely doesn’t seem appropriate for the Tomb of Horrors, so what might be a more fitting source of that pressure?

Something I’m not sure about is entering the dungeon. I don’t think poking around a hill with 10-foot polls to even get into the dungeon is going to start a party like this one off on the right note. But I also don’t want to skip over the possibility of finding one of the false entrances. Any ideas on how to handle that?

And of course, any general advice people might have on running Tomb of Horrors would be appreciated.

I think it's been done before with the resurrection-loop idea, and there's probably still an old thread around

I considered running ToH like that, with the idea being that the PC party gets magically trapped inside the tomb entrance so they can't get back but only move forward, and every time they die they are teleported back to the entrance. However, this would kind of work fine if it was always a TPK but not so well if individual PCs die. "Let's wait until Bob makes it back here" didn't sound nice to me. So I would have probably changed traps a bit and make them so that if triggered, everybody dies, or otherwise let the others continue but resurrection would only happen when the last one dies, forcing the group to consider whether it is riskier to continue ("will Bob ever resurrect if we get out without him?") than to let the rest of the party be killed in order to regroup.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, as I've been preparing for this session, another question came up. In the true entrance hall, there is a pit trap right in front of the "tormentor" door. Finding this door requires breaking the plaster covering it. How are the PCs meant to be able to accomplish this? From the other side of the pit with 10-foot poles? After using shims to wedge the door of the pit trap closed? I know that in B/X, traps usually had only a 2-in-6 chance of triggering, is that what's going on here?

 

[Charlaquin]

Also, RE: Infinite resurrections, I've decided on an alternative. Going with the @jdrakeh 's suggestion of the PCs having been hired by a famous archeologist to clear out the tomb, I'm going to have this character offering a sizable payment for finding Acererak's sarcophagus and clearing a safe route to it, as well as offering to pay above market value for any grave goods the adventurers manage to recover. This character will also arrange for the characters to be raised from the dead or reincarnated if need be, with the cost of casting being deducted from their pay. So, instead of infinite resurrections, it's about 4 resurrections each (fewer if you die in a way that necessitates Reincarnate, such as being annihilated by the green-faced demon), with recovered treasure buying additional resurrections. The challenge will be to clear the dungeon before running out of these functional extra lives. Instead of the "finish your drink to resurrect yourself" rule, players will be encouraged to drink if they fall for a trap. Twice if it kills them. Three times if their death doesn't leave enough intact to cast Raise Dead on. Considering having a hidden rule that you also drink if you get teleported naked to the entrance. Twice if your sex also gets changed.

 

[Zardnaar]

For special occasions a few drinks with D&D is a great idea.

Just don't expect to finish the session after a few hours gets a bit messy.

I like your idea anyway.

 

[pemerton]

So, as I've been preparing for this session, another question came up. In the true entrance hall, there is a pit trap right in front of the "tormentor" door. Finding this door requires breaking the plaster covering it. How are the PCs meant to be able to accomplish this? From the other side of the pit with 10-foot poles? After using shims to wedge the door of the pit trap closed? I know that in B/X, traps usually had only a 2-in-6 chance of triggering, is that what's going on here?

I just had a look at Book 3 of OD&D, and it has the same 2-in-6 rule. But ToH has its own rule here, which I think would supersede the normal one.

I think that players have to think of something like jamming the pit trap (as you suggest), or laying a plank across it, or levitating, or using ropes and pitons on the wall itself, etc etc.

This is the sort of thing that risks making ToH a bit tedious as a play experience.

 

[Charlaquin]

I just had a look at Book 3 of OD&D, and it has the same 2-in-6 rule. But ToH has its own rule here, which I think would supersede the normal one.

I think that players have to think of something like jamming the pit trap (as you suggest), or laying a plank across it, or levitating, or using ropes and pitons on the wall itself, etc etc.

This is the sort of thing that risks making ToH a bit tedious as a play experience.

I wouldn’t think coming up with such a solution would be a problem if they knew they needed to access the wall next to the trap. But yeah, without that knowledge I could see the situation being pretty confounding. Though, fortunately there are two other ways to get to the hall of spheres.

EDIT: Oh, what is the original ToH’s specific rule for traps? Do they just always trigger?

 

[Lanefan]

Question: are you using the 1e version or the 5e version of the module? From what I gather, the 5e version has undergone some neutering; for the full experience I'd recommend the 1e version even if it means some conversion work for you to make it 5e-compatible (then again, traps are traps and probably don't need much if any conversion).

A couple of possible ideas, depending just how gonzo you want to take this (were it me, as it's a drinking game, I'd go full-on gonzo as that's what it'll likely turn into anyway):

For the auto-resurrections, get your Jumanji on - a few moments after a character dies, with a loud "bing!" its clone replacement drops from the sky/ceiling with full memories of its previous incarnations - and one less black stripe on its wrist (they each start with three). If someone runs out of black stripes then come up with some sort of crazy-gonzo alternative for the fourth revival e.g. the character comes back as its own talking skeleton or whatever (and has secretly gained a level; in a game like this, repeatedly dying has to have some reward!). The exception would be for a TPK, there ain't no coming back from that.

At the beginning, to save time I'd just plant them in front of a cliff with all the entrances exposed.

When we ran ToH as a quasi-gonzo, for a few weeks ahead of time the DM ran a betting pool among our friends where you had to guess which room number would be our farthest point of advance before we TPKed. Nobody won: we made it all the way through and nobody chose that for their bet. If you want to add to the hype - and scare your players! - maybe consider doing something similar.

Most important, a pre-expectation almost has to be that they won't make it all the way through even if they can keep reviving, either due to getting stuck on something, or a TPK.

 

[pemerton]

what is the original ToH’s specific rule for traps? Do they just always trigger?

From the area 3 description:

All pits (except where noted to the contrary) throughout the Tomb are 10' deep and concealed by a counter-weighted trap door which opens as soon as any person steps on it. Thrusting with force upon these traps with a pole will reveal them 4 in 6 (d6, 1-4). Those who step up a pit lid will have a base 100% chance of falling, modified downwards by 1$ per point of dexterity through 12, and 2% for each point above 12, i.e. dexterity of 13 = 14% chance of not falling into a pit, dexterity of 14= 16%, 15 = 18%, 17 = 22%, and 18 dexterity = 24% chance of not going in. At the bottom of each pit are 5 iron spikes coated with poison. Roll d6 to determine how many spikes wound the victim; 1, 2 and 3 meaning that number of spikes have wounded the victim, 4-6 equal NONE HAVE WOUNDED the character. Each spike causes 1-6 hit points of damage, and the victim must make a saving throw versus poison for each spike which wounds him or her. Any failure means the victim is killed by the poison.​

 

[Charlaquin]

Question: are you using the 1e version or the 5e version of the module? From what I gather, the 5e version has undergone some neutering; for the full experience I'd recommend the 1e version even if it means some conversion work for you to make it 5e-compatible (then again, traps are traps and probably don't need much if any conversion).

Well I’ll be running it in 5e, and I have the version in Tales from the Yawning Portal. But I’m probably going to grab a PDF of the original as well, if only for the handouts. So yeah, I will probably be converting things where it makes sense to do so.

A couple of possible ideas, depending just how gonzo you want to take this (were it me, as it's a drinking game, I'd go full-on gonzo as that's what it'll likely turn into anyway):

For the auto-resurrections, get your Jumanji on - a few moments after a character dies, with a loud "bing!" its clone replacement drops from the sky/ceiling with full memories of its previous incarnations - and one less black stripe on its wrist (they each start with three). If someone runs out of black stripes then come up with some sort of crazy-gonzo alternative for the fourth revival e.g. the character comes back as its own talking skeleton or whatever (and has secretly gained a level; in a game like this, repeatedly dying has to have some reward!). The exception would be for a TPK, there ain't no coming back from that.

At the beginning, to save time I'd just plant them in front of a cliff with all the entrances exposed.

A couple posts upthread I posted the premise I’ve decided to go with (resurrections are also no longer unlimited, so there’s a good chance the players will run out of lives before making it to the end. I’ve decided that’s fine, we can always keep the option open to revisit it at a later date if we want to.)

When we ran ToH as a quasi-gonzo, for a few weeks ahead of time the DM ran a betting pool among our friends where you had to guess which room number would be our farthest point of advance before we TPKed. Nobody won: we made it all the way through and nobody chose that for their bet. If you want to add to the hype - and scare your players! - maybe consider doing something similar.

Haha that’s awesome!

Most important, a pre-expectation almost has to be that they won't make it all the way through even if they can keep reviving, either due to getting stuck on something, or a TPK.

Yeah, I’ve made peace with that.