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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abraxas" data-source="post: 2909493" data-attributes="member: 1266">Tomb of Horrors - I voted No, but it has both good and bad design elements.How many people played through it tournament style vs campaign style? The style in which the ToH was used definitely influenced what the players could do. Everyone I know personally that played through it used it as a one shot - so the suggested idea of spending several sessions with this module was not an option. So as far as the resources available go - I think people are overestimating what was available. Because it often was a one shot there weren't unlimited augury, divination, commune and contact other plane spells. And even if there were, Augury was not 100% accurate and only gave weal or woe, Divination was less accurate than Augury and didn't give any information about traps and hazards, Commune was only to be used once per adventure, and Contact Other Plane was both possibly inaccurate and could drive the caster insane.  A 14th level 1E cleric (with 18 Wis) had up to 8 Augury spells, 6 Divintaion spells and 1 Commune spell (2 if the DM ignored the suggested limitations on the spell) available plus scrolls (which were much more difficult to make in 1E). A 14th level Magic User (with 18 Int) could have 5 SM I, 4 SM II, 4 SM III or Contact Other Plane, 2 SM IV or Legend Lore, and 1 SM V or Limited Wish available plus scrolls. And this assumes they didn't want any other spells for those levels.The tactic of throwing summoned creatures (or prisoners) at everything isn’t clever, its a brute force method (and in some cases evil) - and in general wasn’t available to characters in a one shot. If you were playing this as a campaign why not just summon earth elementals to burrow your way down to the mithral vault and bypass everything entirely.  In 1E the most useful spell for negotiating the ToH was Find the Path - and then it became a race to get through before you ran out of time on that.Often, surviving depended on the roll of the dice and the abilities of the DM to accurately communicate the environment to the players. In that respect ToH is just as much a test of the DM’s ability as the players - I have wondered how many TPKs were a result of “merely competent” DMs.I've played a character in the ToH twice. The first time through a character was killed when he touched the Sphere of Annihalation with his quarterstaff. The DM ruled he was pulled in with the quarterstaff instead of having the staff pulled out of his hands. Later, three more characters were killed in the agitated chamber because the DM didn't allow searching for secret doors at a distance so someone had to hold the tapestry aside while we looked for secret doors - a d6 and a % roll later and 3 characters die. That left the DM & 2 players and 4 of us sitting around doing nothing. The second time 4 of us made it to the key and 4 failed saves later the adventure is over.When it was written I would hazard a guess that the players it was written for knew their DM’s style well and took that into account when playing. Now days, the ToH reinforces player behavior that a number of posters around here seem to dislike - the take 20 and search everything style and the bring in a herd of animals (or group of prisoners) and throw them at everything style. I haven’t heard of any groups that still try the latter method any more.I think that part of the heated debate about the ToH is due to comments like "separates the wheat from the chaff" or "merely competent from the truly expert". For those saying such things along with statements of their character survived but 4 other player's characters didn't - do you really consider yourself the "wheat" and your gaming buddies "chaff"? And then there are comments made how gamers today aren’t up to a real challenge. Both comments are insulting and elitist, and really annoying when made by someone who has only DM’d ToH and never had to run through it.</blockquote>

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