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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2911602" data-attributes="member: 30001">I should realize that answering a dude with a screen name of "ruleslawyer" is a chancy thing on this subject, but I'll try  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I think it depends what you mean by "arbitrary" which seems subjective.  I'm not sure how a gem that can't be found with see invisible is "breaking" some rule.  There's no rule that says that see invisibility actually sees everything with an invisibility spell on it.  Non-detection, for instance will mask it.  Granted, the actual spell used in this case was not specified, but if you bought "Arms and Equipment Guide II" and it had an entry for the "Camougem:  a gem that is immune to divination" would you be complaining?  Aren't ALL rules at some level campaign-related?  I wouldn't go out of my way to tell players about Camougems.  I wouldn't tell them about how any spell works that they can't cast (most of the ones used to build the Tomb).  I don't tell PCs about how a spell affects a monster, and I wouldn't tell them if I changed to rules in the Monster Manual (although they'd get the normal Knowledge checks).  In 3E days, a Knowledge (Arcana) check might be in order for an anti-magic area that behaves strangley, but there were no such skill checks in 1E.AFAIK the rules of any edition don't rule out camougems.  A DM, IMO, who just combines random elements from the PHB in order to create a dungeon is missing some of the point of being a DM.  Also, don't you think a demi-lich would try to confound the normal actions of an adventurer?  He's not really trying to protect himself from commoners, is he?Take the Wand of Wonder for instance (or Rod now is it?)  I suppose that if it were responsible for the deaths of countless PCs that people would starting writing WotC to demand an explanation for why the Wand works the way it does.  But they don't and I suspect that somehow they're able to imagine that there's some logic behind it's operation (even the "logic of Chaos").  It seems strange to me to expect an explanation from ToH.Explanation can be overrated (see camougems-above).  In a campaign where there is more to magic than what's covered in the PHB, putting too much trust in a See Invisibility spell is not a "sensible tactic" IMO.  Your post (and others along this line) continues, IMO, the somewhat circular logic of assuming that the players are entitled to a dungeon built only on the core rules.  Assumptions like this cause the frustration with the module.Is there a section in the rules that says which tactics are ridiculous and which ones aren't?  Isn't building a huge wooden horse and hiding inside of it in order to conquer a city ridiculous?  No problem there - dungeon crawls in this vein aren't for everyone, but that's not the same thing as bad design.  All of Dragonlance would be a bad design IMO if not liking it were the same thing.I'm not one of the people saying "ToH requires skill and people that don't get it are n00bs".  It's a killer dungeon, almost certainly (by admission of the author too IIRC).</blockquote>

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