Personally, I find a number of the trap encounters far too arbitrary to be interesting. You've got a 2 in three chance of dying at the entrance, and, outside of something like Contact other Plane or other "Please Mr. DM, can you give us a hint" type spells, there's no reason to try one over another. It's far too aribitrary for my tastes. I mean, good grief, you need to find what, some 11 secret doors, including one hidden inside a pit trap, in order to complete this module. Fail any one of those find secret doors checks, and you're SOL, you cannot actually find Acerak.
Certainly not to my tastes anymore.
So, while I am a big fan of the module and would list it in the top 5 best of all time, I have numerous complaints large and small against the module. Although I know where you are coming from, I would phrase them slightly differently than you do.
The modules biggest problem isn't the arbitrary nature of the traps, but the fact that the module as written tends to specify a list of arbitrary solutions to each problem the module presents and explicitly excludes all others.
So for example, you complain about the initial three entrances to the tomb, claiming that there is a 2 in 3 chance of dying. But I think this analysis is flawed. For one thing, the collapsing stone trap entrance 'only' does 5-50 damage. That's not enough to ensure a TPK given the levels of the PC's. Even the thief is likely to be 11th level or so, and therefore have enough hit points to survive an average roll. And a 9th or 10th level fighter is almost certain to survive even a harsh roll. And let's keep in mind, at this level you can have 9th level clerics, who can raise dead if they have a body on hand to raise. So if you did get hit by the collapsing stone trap, at most you'd expect it to be a set back that the party could deal with.
The really problematic entrance is the one with the sliding block trap, and that's only because the text lists a few arbitrary magical solutions and excludes all others. That might be reasonable for tournament play when you are trying to ensure all the refs rule the same on the main situations that come up, but it's not reasonable in general and even from a tournament play perspective many of the listed solutions are somewhat arbitrary as to why they work and others don't. Why not 'stone shape'? Would planeshift or teleport work? What about oil of etherealness? PC's have potentially lots of solutions at this level, many just as reasonable as the official ones the text lists. It's not the arbitrary nature of the problems that bother me, but the arbitrary nature of the solutions.
Nowhere is that more of a problem than in what I consider to be the modules one entirely unfair encounter, and that is with Acererak himself. Exactly what harms the demi-lich is one of the most arbitrary lists in history, and the module provides not only zero clues to the solution but the things you need to have a reasonable chance of beating the demi-lich are not to be found in the module. Indeed, a quick look at the pregenerated characters shows that basically none of them have what they need to take down the demilich before being destroyed. The spell resources they need are mostly above their level. The weapons they need they don't have. And the spells and weapons aren't to be found in the dungeon. By contrast, every single other problem in the dungeon has a solution which some area of the dungeon contains an answer to. Need a magic ring? There is a room containing one. Need 10 large gems? There is a room that contains them. Need true seeing to overcome a puzzle? There is an item in the tomb that provides that effect.
Now, on a metalevel this makes a bit of sense. Acererak wants heroes to overcome his traps, but doesn't want to be defeated. But as module design, giving players no real way to win is just bad. You could easily tweak the meta to have Acererak so confident he can't be defeated, that he's left the gear players need to defeat him hidden in different parts of the dungeon - a power word: kill scroll painted on plaster that can be carefully removed from the wall if recognized, 3 forget wizard scrolls in a trapped chest, a room containing a lethal trap which if somehow evaded allows the party to claim at the least +4 sword, and so forth. That would vastly improve the design of the module conceptually.
One of the best things about the module is Acererak's taunting of the players manages to make a static passive foe into a memorable reoccurring NPC - and one you come to hate. But I think that aspect though could be made even stronger.
Finally, the tomb is far to amendable to solutions that evade it. By far the best approach in my opinion is to go Bellock rather than Indiana Jones, thereby rendering looting the whole tomb into more of a business endeavor than a fabulous adventure. All that fantastic color in the tomb just becomes more loot, and indeed the tomb itself is in many cases worth more than the treasure that is in it. For example, the mithral vault and the adamantium doors are probably worth more than most kingdoms.
But these complaints don't detract completely from the many things the module does get right, or from how it usually plays for experienced players who don't start thinking out of the box until they get in the tomb and realize they need to.
These are the sorts of actions that an organization or city planning commission would undertake, not the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventuring group would follow!
