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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4621880" data-attributes="member: 4937">I know what I'm talking about.  I played 'back in the day'.  I'm one of those old school DM's that newer players think is an unforgiving rat bastard DM who creates dungeons of death, but they only think that because they've been peddled soft cozy little dungeons where survival is the expected result for a team of unskilled novices and have never actually met a true rat bastard DM that will chew up 30 or 40 PC's in a single dungeon.Balance isn't the issue.  'Tomb of Horrors' is a well balanced module, IMO.  I've plenty of times pitted low level characters against monsters that they had no chance against, if only to teach my players that sometimes they have to run.  I have no problems with the balance issues involved in ballistic flagons of flaming oil, or anything else of the sort.  I have no problem with abusing the rules or coming up with nasty situations.  I'm the kind of guy that would force you to fight a troll wearing a ring of fire resistance in a driving rainstorm.  I'm generally ok conceptually with 'save or die' or even 'no save and die'.  But I draw the line at 'unfair'.  I treat NPC's with the same skepticism I treat the PC's.  Their plans don't always work out either.  They suffer from confusion and failures of morale and supply shortages and the rest.  I don't treat NPC's as some sort of favored pet that the PC's aren't allowed to defeat.  I don't vest my ego in my ability to counter any plan that the PC's come up with.  I don't give NPC's any edges that I wouldn't give to PC's in the same circumstance.That's the real issue behind 'Tucker's Kobolds'. The way I see it, any DM worth his pizza can _always_ produce a TPK if he wants one.  The DM can do anything he wants, so of course he can always stack the die in the NPC's favor.  Of course I can TPK a 12th level party with just a kobold, if by 'just a kobold' you mean 'a kobold plus a level that activates a massive death trap' or something like that.  But its worse than that, because with the 'Tucker's Kobold' syndome, the problem isn't that the characters are being put in a situation that is grossly unfair, but that the players are.  The players aren't being presented with a puzzle to solve so much as an oppurtunity for the DM to treat the players as puppets for his own amusement.  In order for 'Tucker's Kobolds' to work against a high level party, the DM has to practice not only 'saying no', but treat all of the NPC's actions in the most favorable terms and all of the PCs in the least favorable terms.  In order for the kobolds to really have a chance against a decent party, the DM has to set up the situation so that nothing the PC's can do actually has a chance of working.That's completely unfair to Tomb of Horrors as a module.  As you point out, the challenges in ToH are for the most part far more reasonable.</blockquote>

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