Warlord Ralts said:
Well, not exactly an endless supply of NPC's.
See, we had preperation. At roughly 11th level, we each put on the ring of regeneration, severed our pinky fingers, and gave it to a trusted (but retired) henchman. We also connected our souls to a gem, that would shine if we died, allowing the henchman to raise us from the dead.
Woah, we have found the Yakuza of D&D parties! Brutal. I don't think you had to do that even to literally be a Yakuza in Oriental Adventures.
So the original body was lost and you were reborn from the finger? I hope the henchman was given a good retirement plan to ensure loyalty. I thought the resurrection limit was like inescapable.
I guess cunning, massive, pro-active-player preparation like that makes it a completely different story from a group just following the DM's adventures, or worse, a group playing TOH as a one-off with pregens.
Certainly I think people are talking about different things when they say "beat TOH" if they mean with one mortal party vs effectively multiple successive parties.
Your preparations are really impressive. But its in the preparations that you are being clever and displaying skill, not in actions in the Tomb itself. There you seem to be dying just as much as anyone; its just that because of your cunning preparations death is irrelevant. Under those conditions, who wouldn't win eventually?
Yup. Clone Clone Soul Copy Soul Copy Life Guage Life Guage COntinency Ressurection is always a great code.
You need to take this stuff on the road.
I'm almost positive that there are pits with secret doors in them, but that is a kind of staple in our campaign, and most modules (with a few exceptions, like ToS, EtBP, and a few others) were modified to expand them and adjust them to our campaign style.
Keep on the Borderlands is HUGE! Multiple dungeons, blood cults in the caverns below the keep, the illithid who drove the hermit mad cooking up trouble in the lightless depths of the forest, etc etc etc.
...
Oh man, he wasn't defenseless. As a master of time and space, Acererak was able to draw forth minions from all over the cosmos to protect his physical form.
We once fought a mutant in Inertia Armor, armed with a Mark VII blaster rifle and chemical grenades, that he pulled from the future.
Cool, imaginitive stuff. Much more creative than I ever was with modules. Heavy modifications like that might make comparison difficult though. It sounds like your Tomb was much much tougher than as written, but so was your number of lives and pre-Tomb preparation.
And Mark VII blaster was over the line for your DM. Mark V sure, MAYBE Mark VI, but Mark VII is too much. Besides, if Acererak can pull in stuff, why bother with opponents? I'd warp in acid fog, pieces of the sun, or ye olde 100,000 tons of solid stone on top of you. But that'd be arbitrary, which is no fun.
BUT, we didn't do it in one sitting. We took on ToH repeatedly over the years. It took us FIVE YEARS to finally beat it.
Wow, thats really different. Five years for one module. With that and your other descriptions, you guys played some epic games. On that scale I would expect maybe a little base camp set up outside of the Tomb for your excursions. And, if Acererak was the cool class-act we all want to believe, he would set up little personalized "Welcome Back Yakuza Party" signs in the entry hall and stuff. At least he'd set up the sofa bed for you. Something.
In my head, my TOH solution was always to bring in a good size mining company of dwarves. We'd set up camp outside the Tomb and then just clear away the little hill clean from one side to the other. The party would come check out anything uncovered, but most of it could just be worked around and avoided. Then its mostly a logistics problem of feeding and supplying the workers in a desolate swamp.
Oh no, I wanted to hear your laughter and amazement that people played it through.
Unfortunately its one of the ones I just plain don't know. I know theres a spaceship and thats about it.
That GODDAMN CRAB! In the bubble! I HATE THAT CRAB! I've had to ressurect so many boiled PC's!
I always felt sorry for the crab! He never asked to be put in a bubble. My plan was always to Dismissal him back to the Plane of Water or something.
WPM is a module I love in contrast to TOH. The big reason: the problems are open ended. You can creatively come up with your own solution, based on your own cleverness and the various capabilities of your party.
In TOH, you MUST touch the silver end of the scepter, not the gold, and thats the ONLY way. You MUST have 3 swords or 1 magic ring in the slot, and thats the ONLY way. You MUST turn the second key, not the first, 3 times to the right in succession, and thats the ONLY way. You MUST kill Acerarak with a small, specific list of attacks, and thats the ONLY way. And so on and so on. And most repetively, you MUST find 20 different secret doors to continue, and thats the ONLY way.
In WPM, any way I use my party's abilities to overcome the various obstacles will work. I feel that set up has much more room for creativity and skill than the TOH style. In fact I'm certain of it.
Just think: a WPM discussion would be much more interesting and varied than a TOH discussion because we could all have come up with different, unique, equally valid solutions. Thats creativity and skill!