D&D 5E Let's Talk About Yawning Portal

[jasper]

I am thinking about adding story awards / curses to some adventures. How about you?
Sunless - Call me Twiggy. Or Branch of the family. Twig Blights know you tried to kill their family tree. Twig blights always roll with advantage on pc.
Hidden Shrine. Curses. Until room 7 curse is remove. All non good clerics roll with advantage. I doing this since I don't think the pcs will hang around the dungeon for a month or two.

 

[jimmytheccomic]

[MENTION=6875326]jimmytheccomic[/MENTION]: sounds like it was a great game! Glad to hear your players are so invested in it, especially the riddle and their dislike for Acererak. The riddle is likely to trip them up at some point (its incredible ambiguous and cryptic), which will only add fuel the fire.

Just trying to follow your party's progress...the tapestry room? I'm guessing by the three crawlspaces you described, you're referring to area 10 Great Hall of Spheres? Just curious.

Our second session went down last night! Players are still crushing it- so far no deaths, or damage. Mage Hand continues to be the MVP. In addition to that, the party has made the decision to always take the secret door when they find it, and not bother with a full exploration of the tomb- this policy has gotten them to easily avoid all the most horrific stuff.

-In the chapel, they were able to find and disarm the tomb trap. This is the room where the skeleton is pointing at the archway that does the gender/alignment flip...this screamed "Trap" to the players, because they hadn't seen any other skeletons or corpses in the Tomb, so they noped away from that, found the wall slot, and ditched a magic ring.

-The "fortuitous fall" clue sent them into the pit, they found that secret door and went through, meaning they dodged the lava ramp trap. They then found the secret door on the stairwell down- I'm proud of my players overall, but I'm really bummed that they didn't make their way down to the false lich/false ending room, I was looking forward to trying to sell that!

-In the room with the three cauldrons, they easily killed the Ochre jelly. For the acid vat, they used a combination of "Detect Magic" (since the key is magical) and mage hand to fish it out. It's really clear this dungeon didn't expect you to be able to use mage hand in every room when it was designed!

-The pit to climb down and walk across screamed "Trap" so loud they almost turned back around! They climbed down, found and disarmed the pressure plate, and went on their way.

-The way they handled the Agitated Chamber was hilarious. So, they've got a rope tied around the halfling rogue, so if he falls down a pit they can fish him out. When he steps into the room, everything starts shaking and bouncing around, they instantly pull him out. Then they use mage hand to loop their rope around the legs of the couch, and they pull furniture out of the room until the halflings weight is counterbalanced, so he can go back in and explore at his leisure. Through the secret door!

-Following along secret doors they find keep them away from the knockout gas trap, and the intelligence draining gas. They stick their swords into the adamantine door, then hang out and watch it to see if it closes again. Once they realize they'll likely be stuck on the other side when it closes, they have a lengthy conversation where they debate on going back and clearing unexplored areas- they decide against it, and soldier on.

-In the pillared room, they make it a point to not touch any pillars, and they couldn't have been less interested in the glowing rock surrounded by corpses- they give that a huge berth, focus on the throne, and work their way through that. They figure out "silver to silver, gold to gold" and make their way down. When they realize the crown blinds the wearer after the first room, they love the idea of putting it on an enemy to blind them- it's a mixed blessing that they don't know what happens if you touch the silver to it!

-At the vault of mithril, the Monk character places the silver end of the scepter against the door, and is thrown naked back to the start! He beelines his way back to the adamantine door, where he realizes he doesn't have any swords to open it. He uses his monk ability to teleport through- I rule that teleportation through closed doors invokes demonic attention, and roll the d20- the di is on my side, and rolls a 20, so a nalfeshnee appears! We call the session there, to likely finish up next week.

 

[Luz]

Our second session went down last night! Players are still crushing it- so far no deaths, or damage. Mage Hand continues to be the MVP. In addition to that, the party has made the decision to always take the secret door when they find it, and not bother with a full exploration of the tomb- this policy has gotten them to easily avoid all the most horrific stuff.

Your game sounds awesome! Kudos to your players for making that decision with the secret doors as it is clearly the right way to navigate the tomb. A good rule of thumb is "touch nothing unless you absolutely have to" and it sounds like that's exactly what your players are doing.

-In the room with the three cauldrons, they easily killed the Ochre jelly. For the acid vat, they used a combination of "Detect Magic" (since the key is magical) and mage hand to fish it out. It's really clear this dungeon didn't expect you to be able to use mage hand in every room when it was designed!

No it definitely was not originally designed with mage hand in mind. The arcane trickster and, to a lesser extent, the Dungeon Delver feat take a lot of the bite out of this module.That said, Gygax encourages players to think - not hack - their way through this module. So PCs who use their utilities like mage hand should win the day.

-The way they handled the Agitated Chamber was hilarious. So, they've got a rope tied around the halfling rogue, so if he falls down a pit they can fish him out. When he steps into the room, everything starts shaking and bouncing around, they instantly pull him out. Then they use mage hand to loop their rope around the legs of the couch, and they pull furniture out of the room until the halflings weight is counterbalanced, so he can go back in and explore at his leisure. Through the secret door!

Nicely done. In the original ToH, this room is one of the more dangerous (and contentious) rooms as the green slime is an insta-kill (no save) if triggered. While I don't try to arbitrarily kill my players' characters, this is one of the few rooms I left intact when I ran it (i.e. I didn't use the toned down version from TftYP) because I feel it can be bypassed with smart play - as your players demonstrated. One of my players was not so lucky...

-In the pillared room, they make it a point to not touch any pillars, and they couldn't have been less interested in the glowing rock surrounded by corpses- they give that a huge berth, focus on the throne, and work their way through that. They figure out "silver to silver, gold to gold" and make their way down. When they realize the crown blinds the wearer after the first room, they love the idea of putting it on an enemy to blind them- it's a mixed blessing that they don't know what happens if you touch the silver to it!

I'm interested to hear how this develops. In Return to the Tomb of Horrors preface, Gygax mentions a group of players who used the silver end of the scepter to the crown on Acererak during a tournament play. He had not anticipated anyone doing this, but rewarded that team first place for ingenuity!

-At the vault of mithril, the Monk character places the silver end of the scepter against the door, and is thrown naked back to the start! He beelines his way back to the adamantine door, where he realizes he doesn't have any swords to open it. He uses his monk ability to teleport through- I rule that teleportation through closed doors invokes demonic attention, and roll the d20- the di is on my side, and rolls a 20, so a nalfeshnee appears! We call the session there, to likely finish up next week.

Lol the idea of a naked monk running through the tomb and fighting a nalfeshnee is awesome!

After reading your experiences, as well as my own and those expressed on another recent thread, I wonder if its more prudent to not inform players that they are going into the tomb. The problem is that ToH has such a notorious reputation that players will naturally optimize their characters and adjust their play style for this specific dungeon. Not that I have any issues with that, but with the abilities at their disposal in 5e it can make a lot of the traps redundant. It would be interesting to play this through without letting on and see how players adapt without the foreknowledge that they are going into the ToH.

 

[jimmytheccomic]

After reading your experiences, as well as my own and those expressed on another recent thread, I wonder if its more prudent to not inform players that they are going into the tomb. The problem is that ToH has such a notorious reputation that players will naturally optimize their characters and adjust their play style for this specific dungeon. Not that I have any issues with that, but with the abilities at their disposal in 5e it can make a lot of the traps redundant. It would be interesting to play this through without letting on and see how players adapt without the foreknowledge that they are going into the ToH.

Yeah- I certainly think the traps will work better if the players don't go in knowing what to expect- I'm certain the rock fall trap would have socked someone in the false entrance. And my party normally tries to fully explore every corner of the dungeon, so someone would have crawled through that devil mouth. I'd imagine after the devil mouth kill, they'd start to adjust, though, so it really only affects playstyle in the very beginning.

In terms of character choices, though- they do come in optimized for the dungeon, but my concern is, if they come in with a character that doesn't fit they won't have as much fun. I think Tomb of Horrors is one of those dungeons that's on the edge between being hilariously frustrating, frustrating in an annoying way, slow paced and dull, or slow paced and fun. Letting players know in advance what they're in for is one of the things that can help thread the needle, I think. (Like, I've heard from a ton of people that they hate this dungeon, didn't think it was fun, etc...I've heard that often enough that, I had a backup session ready in case the players were deciding this was a drag first session, luckily they're having a ball.)

 

[Luz]

Yeah- I certainly think the traps will work better if the players don't go in knowing what to expect- I'm certain the rock fall trap would have socked someone in the false entrance. And my party normally tries to fully explore every corner of the dungeon, so someone would have crawled through that devil mouth. I'd imagine after the devil mouth kill, they'd start to adjust, though, so it really only affects playstyle in the very beginning.

In terms of character choices, though- they do come in optimized for the dungeon, but my concern is, if they come in with a character that doesn't fit they won't have as much fun. I think Tomb of Horrors is one of those dungeons that's on the edge between being hilariously frustrating, frustrating in an annoying way, slow paced and dull, or slow paced and fun. Letting players know in advance what they're in for is one of the things that can help thread the needle, I think. (Like, I've heard from a ton of people that they hate this dungeon, didn't think it was fun, etc...I've heard that often enough that, I had a backup session ready in case the players were deciding this was a drag first session, luckily they're having a ball.)

True enough, and with Tomb of Horrors you're either in the Love It or Hate It camp. So maybe just ramping up the lethality is the happy middle ground, like have some of the traps inflict more damage or (as per the original) poisoned spikes are save or die. Because 5e PCs have more tools to work with and are harder to kill, the traps should reflect that. I really enjoyed the 5e update of ToH, but I did beef up a few areas or traps to keep it deadlier. It doesn't require a lot as most of the damage dealing traps are meant to be more nuisance than anything else, but one or two that make the players say "Whoah! Where did that come from?!" should suffice. Plus, to be honest, I think most DMs want the party to make it to Acererak so there can be the final fight at the end, and he's no pushover in any edition of the game.