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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7334174" data-attributes="member: 6779196">After my current campaign is over, I’m planning to run my group through Tomb of Annihilation. We’ll probably be making new characters for it, since the current ones will be over-leveled for Tomb by then. But, I like the idea of the PCs being affected by the Death Curse themselves. I will probably make “how did your character die?” and “how were they brought back?” part of character creation.But the Death Curse is damn harsh, so I want to look for ways to make it more manageable, so the PCs aren’t trying to work their way through the Tomb of the Nine Gods with HP totals barely above the single digits. Obviously I’ll scrap the initial -20 max HP, but the -1 max HP per day is still pretty harsh. I guess I could slow it down a bit, maybe 1 every week or something, but that doesn’t seem like it would create the same sense of urgency. I really like the 80 day ticking clock that the initial hook represents, I just want that clock to be on the PCs themselves instead of an NPC Patron. Makes it more immediate and visceral because it’s their lives on the line be rather than the reward.I’m thinking I should start the PCs off at maybe 3rd or 5th level, but still start them off in Port Nyanzaru for some easy XP early on, since leveling up will increase their max HP and help combat the drain from the Curse. I’m also thinking of not having the Curse actually start immediately. Having the game start out as a pure hex crawl, and introduce the Death Curse and the hook to stop the Soulmonfer only after the PCs have a good HP buffer built up. But I’m not sure at what point I should introduce that element. Maybe once they reach a certain level, or a certain point in the story, but I’m not sure where or when would leave them with enough of a buffer to stand a decent chance of surviving the rest of the adventure.One thing that Chris Perkins is doing in Dice, Camera, Action that I really like (mild spoilers for any who might want to watch that and aren’t caught up,) is that his party has two magic rings that hold off the effects of the Death Curse when worn. So each day, his PCs can decide which two won’t lose a point of max HP each day. I love that idea, although I’d probably want to give them just one such artifact.Has anyone run or is anyone running  ToA for groups with one or more raised characters? How did it go, or how is it going? Is there anything you wish you’d done differently or are thinking or changing? If you haven’t, what level do you think you’d want your PCs to be before throwing the Death Curse at them? Any suggestions for clever ways to combat the max HP tax,</blockquote>

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