Ultimatedm.com: Tomb of Horrors Questions

[theodudek]

Hi everybody,

I was wondering: has anyone here run the actual original Tomb of Horrors module without softening it in any way? I have played it and ran it but I've never done it in the full bloodsoaked Gygax style, I've always made it a little easier than it was supposed to be...

Anyway, I wrote up my thoughts about it here:

Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master » Unearthed: Tomb of Horrors

I would like to play/run it someday. It's such a famous module, everyone knows the name of it. But like a lot of people on the internet, I can't imagine how it could be converted to 4e... since 4e eliminates most of the rules for insta-death features which are so major in Tomb of Horrors, since there is so much less weird magic in 4e (except for rituals), and since there is less 'attrition' in 4e. (Of course, attrition of hit points/equipment is not as big a deal in Tomb as in other old modules, because people are usually killed instantly rather than losing hit points ^_^ )

Thanks for reading!

 

[jbear]

I can't be much help.

Maybe you could make the death effects like Sleep.

The first failed SThrow inflicts a nasty condition.
The second causes the 'Dying condition': 3 strikes and you're out

Meanwhile you are Helpless.

You'd have to think how the other PC's could counter these effects... via Healing Skill or Powers, becuase this would increase lethality quite alot... considering its three death strikes per day (right?)

Anyway good luck

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I can't be much help.

Maybe you could make the death effects like Sleep.

Or something like:

Failed Save 1: Slowed
Failed Save 2: Immobilized (aftereffect: Slowed)
Failed Save 3: Dead

 

[Dykstrav]

I did actually run Tomb of Horrors as the kick-off adventure for the paragon tier in my last 4E game. There were several reasons: 1) Most of my group has been playing for around 5-8 years, so none of them have ever gotten to play it but were intrigued; 2) I wanted to see how 4E would treat it as an almost literal translation from 1E to 4E. I'd heard how 4E was much "softer" on PCs, and I wanted to see how it'd turn out to try to make it as close to 4E's guidelines as possible.

I left all the instant-death stuff in (especially that sweet sphere of annihilation), but I tuned the Perception and Thievery checks to be in line with the guidelines on page 42 of the DMG (and the subsequent errata). Of seven party members, we had two elves and five characters trained in Perception. Their passive Perceptions let them detect a great majority of the traps. Phrasing some of the traps as skill challenges worked in some cases and didn't work in others.

In a sense, I didn't soften anything, because I ported over the traps and so forth and picked them out directly from 4E sources where possible. In another sense, I did soften it a bit because 4E is far more generous and less dependent on player ingenuity that 1E is.

I can certainly say, however, that this is the first time in sixteen years where I had no character deaths within the Tomb of Horrors. I'm still feeling a bit inadequate about that.

 

[the Jester]

I ran the entirety of Return to the Tomb of Horrors except for the very first part (before the party reaches Skull City), which includes the original but takes things waaay to the next level, in my regular 3.5 nigh-epic to epic campaign. Not only did I not soften the adventure at all, I hardened it considerably, intertwining the events of RttToH with the war against Felenga, Angel of the Apocalypse, which was completely campaign-specific.

One of these days I am sure that I will take a crack at converting it to 4e for kicks, but who knows when...

Edit: the story hour of the RttToH part of the campaign starts about [urll=http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/52739-war-against-felenga-final-update-posted-8.html#post1247227]here.[/url]

 

[Mark Hope]

Yeah, I've run it under early AD&D2e and under 3.5, both times without diluting it (although the 3.5 version was the recent WotC remake, which is something of a dilution in that it allows saving throws for some things, lol.)

Under AD&D, the players begged for the session to be declared a dream so that they could get their characters back. One had been killed, another had lost an arm, another had lost all his gear and been changed into a woman. I agreed - it was the last session of the campaign anyway and I was moving away.

Under 3.5, it was a TPK. I posted reports of those sessions a while ago, here and here. That whole thread is a good discussion of the ToH as a whole.

 

[Jack99]

My players are otw to a ancient temple of Vecna, searching for half a ritual that will allow them to access memories of a god that even the god has forgotten.

All this talk of ToH made me think. ToH is kinda perfect as a place built to protect a ritual too powerful to have laying around.

Time to convert!

 

[Quantarum]

I ran the original back in 1985 with four people using fleshed out versions of the characters in the back of the module. Each player ran two characters and thanks to pure guile four survived to make it all the way to the crypt. Then to my great amusement they couldn't leave the demi-liches skull alone. When only the single class thief was left, he took as much as he could carry and fled the tomb, leaving the skull where it sat.

-Q.

 

[Grazzt]

I ran the original back in 1985 with four people using fleshed out versions of the characters in the back of the module. Each player ran two characters and thanks to pure guile four survived to make it all the way to the crypt. Then to my great amusement they couldn't leave the demi-liches skull alone. When only the single class thief was left, he took as much as he could carry and fled the tomb, leaving the skull where it sat.

-Q.

Pretty much the same for my group when I ran it way back (84 or 85), except they used their own characters, only the cleric and and one fighter survived.

 

[defendi]

I did it for my group's "halloween" game and I also did it for my main Echoes of Heaven playtest, but as a dream sequence. I didn't soften it at all, an I didn't do much with perception . . . the module is about people thinking their way through it, not about relying on rolls to get through. The playtest group had TPK in the first room. We went back and did it again (as another dream) and they only lost a couple people. For the Halloween game, I had them make two characters each, and I think most people were down to one by the end. This was before Accerack's stats came out in Open Grave, so I had to fake that.