I ran the 3.5E version as part of a campaign (this was a party of Evil characters, so as a DM I felt no remorse whatsoever about giving the unholy bastards what-for.
). I worked it into the game by having the Tomb itself be a mental construct of an NPC who was hiding treasure the PCs desperately needed; since the NPC was psionic and had access to many other psionic helpers, I postulated that the treasure was hidden inside his mind- specifically inside a Dreamscape (as in, Region of Dreams) built out of his fears. Or should I say- Horrors?
So, the NPC was a wood elf, and with the party Telepath using a Mind Probe they learned something of what was inside before they ever Plane Shifted to the swamp and hill. Being a wood elf, his fears were: underground, mechanical weapons and traps, undead, and (being as he was psionic and not a magic-user) magic.
This dream idea gave me the advantage, I figured, of not needing to explain the weirdness and rule-bending encounters inside.
The party made it out with only 3 (permanent) deaths out of 8 PCs, and my play experience matches that of Mark Hope and other posters in the thread- careful play saved their butts several times. I should mention that DMs who are planning to run this for psionic PCs should carefully watch how they handle the Touchsight power, since that power by its normal nature can ruin many of the surprises in the Tomb (particularly the locations of secret doors and pits). I rule in my games that Touchsight doesn't let you see past walls unless there are gaps to feel through, like doors, and even then only to the next door if the area beyond is small- in other words, you can at best "see" only one room ahead. Also, the manifester still must make Search and Spot checks to notice anything, though in a dungeon like ToH it's often easy for careful PCs to spend the time to take 20. Another possible problem power is Astral Construct, which (in its 1 PP version) lets a manifester at 9th level create tens of disposable scouts to send blundering into traps and keep the party safe.
My PCs certainly took advantage of taking 10 and taking 20 on Searches with Touchsight- the telepath in question has both maxed-out INT and Search, and some skill-boosting items to boot, so his modifier at the time was +20, thus allowing him to reliably find anything with a DC of 30 or less. However, this came back to bite the party on their behinds at the secret door leading into the green slime room, because the players got so used to the telepath sensing things right away by taking 10 that when he
didn't, they assumed they'd missed something earlier in the dungeon and actually backtracked to several other traps they'd bypassed before (including the lava pit)!
One PC death was the party Wilder, who was lost to the green devil face in the entry passage- but not, I emphasize, in the party's first trip down the corridor! He lost his gear to the teleport arch in the Chapel of Evil, and though he was still able to use his powers in the naked condition, he had lost some power (losing a Cloak of CHA when you're a CHA-based caster-type really hurts). So when the party was backtracking after the failure to find the secret door to the agitation room, he volunteered to explore the mysterious dark tunnel in the devil's mouth that (as far as the party was concerned) was the last unexplored passage in the dungeon. When he went in, and the party Mindlink with him broke, and he didn't come back out after waiting for a minute or two, they decided to leave the devil alone again and go back over the dungeon with a fine-toothed comb (i.e. take 20 on Searching this time).
They managed to avoid nastiness elsewhere in the dungeon, though I was amused to see them running from the sword-and-shield constructs in that room (they could have easily taken on those constructs and won if they'd tried), and still more amused to watch how much trouble they went to to avoid touching the malachite step in the antechamber before the mithril valves (they were convinced that the riddle had meant
anything green must be avoided like the plague).
Then, finally, they met the demilich skull, with only one weapon in the party able to bypass its DR- the +1 keen kukri the ranger kept "just in case" she ever got into melee (she's an archer specialist). How mystified they were when they realized that this weapon, which was notably less powerful than the party tank's ghost touch greatsword, was hurting the skull and the mighty greatsword was doing next to no damage! The thought that the skull might have some form of DR not mentioned in standard rules never seemed to occur to the players, and they didn't have Know Vulnerabilities handy so they never learned just how it was able to hurt the skull.
The skull took out the telepath to a Soul Suck on round one, and then proceeded to take down other party members one by one until only three were left- then, finally, the assassin-wannabe- the one without Power Attack (which the tank had used with the kukri before his own failed save to the Suck)- managed to deal a final blow.
They got lucky in the end, in other words- and luck is necessary in that fight! PCs at the recommended level for the converted adventure probably can't win otherwise. But the adventure is a highly memorable one, regardless, and the surviving party members (two of the Sucked victims failed the Will save to come back to life, thus making the party's tally of perma-deaths 3) learned some interesting new tactics.
