NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack99" data-source="post: 5246365" data-attributes="member: 53135">ToH is the newest mega-adventure, spanning level 10-22 - or not quite. Instead, the plot is divided into four parts, which should be run at different levels (10,14, 18 and 22). In the first part, the heroes find themselves in the Feywild, where Acererak has one of his magical machines that will help him absorb the essence of dead gods. The heroes destroy the machine, and return home without knowing what it was for or who was in control of it. In the second part, they find themselves in the Shadowfell and end up finding a similar machine. There they  learn that Acererak is behind whatever is going on. In part 3, the heroes continue their search for Acererak, and end up visiting Skull City and the original Tomb of Horrors that is now almost empty. In the last part, the by now epic heroes travel to the destroyed dominion of Pluton, former home of Nerull, where they twart the demi-lich’s plan once and for all, before swooping back to the original Tomb (once again) and facing one very pissed off demilich and his new toy, the Eye of Vecna.Being a big fan of all that Marmell writes, to say that I had fairly high expectations for this product is not an exaggeration. However the newest version of ToH does disappoint me - at least to some degree.I really like the concept of dividing the adventure up into 4 parts and spread the ongoing conflict with the demilich over more levels. But unfortunately, the hooks, the connections between the different parts feel a bit... weak to me - On the other hand, since ToH would be part of an ongoing campaign, more fitting hooks would probably come naturally.Another thing I like, are the encounters. There are lots of varied and interesting encounters with a twist. Not so much terrain as such, but more a combination of skill challenges, traps ((while 18d10 will probably not kill someone at level 18, it could still hurt) and monsters found in this book will make for some awesome fights/encounter. Problem is, there are lots of encounters. Now, this is a problem with all of WotC's adventures, so I am not blaming the authors. It's just that it creates (among other things) some issues with resting. Fighting 10-11 encounters without an extended rest is going to be a problem for most parties, especially at the lower levels. I do not think it is too much to ask, that if writers expect the players to rest in a dungeon of death, that they add a few lines about what happens if the players hide and sleep. What happens if they leave and rest elsewhere, etc., etc. You know, action and reaction.Regarding encounters, Part 1 suffers from very tight spaces as well, and several of the fights will most likely be very static.I also like the many nods to the original and to Return. Lots of real puzzles, just like in the good old days. Also, there are a couple of encounters that the players are supposed to run from (like a level 20 solo against a level 14 party - which has already been through 3 encounters) - I like stuff like that a lot. Mostly because they won't expect it from a published adventure <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Another thing that I like a lot, rat bastard DM that I am, are the increased penalties to dying in certain areas. And that's even before using some of the presented suggestions about players dieing after 1 or 2 failed death saves.. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />So what does this mean? Well, I like the newest ToH - there is no doubt in my mind, that if I decide to run this adventure, incorporating it into my ongoing campaign, it would end up being a great experience for my players (and myself), at least after I remove about 1/4-1/5 of all the encounters and fix a couple of other small issues mentioned earlier.Cheers</blockquote>

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