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D&D 4E Updating Tomb of Horrors to 4e...and 4e seems to wussy.
- Thread starter pascale
- Start date
Flipguarder
First Post
Hey, if you want me to come in, guest DM for you, and kill your party, I could do that.
"Ok let's get started, You are all in a field and you immediately see 26 Prismatic Dire Ancient Tarrasque-Dragons hybrids.... And Tiamat."
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
I think the real question is, why bother following the rules if you want to do so? If you're a good enough DM to make the scenario fun, you're good enough to break the rules when they need breaking.
Actually, I think it would be quite possible to do a good Tomb of Horrors in 4e, because of the high hit points, healing surges, and absence of "save or die" mechanics.
High hit points mean that you can easily create traps with damaging auras, ongoing damage, easily triggered attacks, etc. Those things can damage a party, and whittle down hit points each round, without the use of high damage attacks.
The healing surges mean that each trap/encounter can be really nasty, with a genuine potential for character death, but still allow a surviving character the chance to "heal back up" before the next room, so each room can be a real challenge in itself.
The 4e mechanism of after-effects and disease/poison progression means that you can have really cool and dangerous traps which gradually reveal themselves to be deadlier and deadlier, rather than "It hits you and you die".
Some quick ideas:
A room with a trapped floor (and ceiling). No tile in the floor activates until there is no weight on the floor in the previous room. The far door cannot be opened (normally, of course) until the floor tiles have been activated.
Every tile is electrified, and sends an arc of electricity to the tile on the opposite surface when it is stepped on (and again at the start of each player's turn, if it is still stepped on). The attack targets Reflex, and does, let's say, d8+1 damage. It has a secondary attack on a hit, which targets Fortitude, and this, on a hit, slides the target one square (involuntary muscle contractions).
Now, the lightning arcs also KEEP another trap from triggering. If any tile activates and does NOT conduct an arc of lightning to its opposite tile (because you've disabled it with force, a thievery check, or because you resist the lightning and do not conduct it, the two tiles are quickly slid towards each other. This attack is vs. Reflex and does, say, 3d10+7 damage. On a hit, you are also restrained (by being crushed by the two columns) and take ongoing 10 damage until you escape. On a miss, you shift one square (because you are dodging the two columns). If you cannot shift, the trap automatically critically hits you.
This means that those two columns are now joined, and form a 5' impassable column from floor to ceiling.
See? That is a really rough sketch of an absurdly dangerous trap. There are certainly ways past it (One person enters on foot, while the others enter using flying. When the trap triggers, the one person on foot also begins to fly. The rogue, using flight with Hover, hovers over the door and picks the lock. That's one way off the top of my head. Maybe the entire party can spider climb on the walls!). There are also ways to just survive it. Take the lightning damage, run through the damn room, and break down the opposite door on your way through. Perhaps the next room will be better?
I think you can easily come up with good, really insanely dangerous rooms in 4e. In fact, it's kind of awesome, because any traps this deadly will be worth TONS of xp, so any party who can make it through the Tomb will emerge as grizzled survivors with lots of levels!
High hit points mean that you can easily create traps with damaging auras, ongoing damage, easily triggered attacks, etc. Those things can damage a party, and whittle down hit points each round, without the use of high damage attacks.
The healing surges mean that each trap/encounter can be really nasty, with a genuine potential for character death, but still allow a surviving character the chance to "heal back up" before the next room, so each room can be a real challenge in itself.
The 4e mechanism of after-effects and disease/poison progression means that you can have really cool and dangerous traps which gradually reveal themselves to be deadlier and deadlier, rather than "It hits you and you die".
Some quick ideas:
A room with a trapped floor (and ceiling). No tile in the floor activates until there is no weight on the floor in the previous room. The far door cannot be opened (normally, of course) until the floor tiles have been activated.
Every tile is electrified, and sends an arc of electricity to the tile on the opposite surface when it is stepped on (and again at the start of each player's turn, if it is still stepped on). The attack targets Reflex, and does, let's say, d8+1 damage. It has a secondary attack on a hit, which targets Fortitude, and this, on a hit, slides the target one square (involuntary muscle contractions).
Now, the lightning arcs also KEEP another trap from triggering. If any tile activates and does NOT conduct an arc of lightning to its opposite tile (because you've disabled it with force, a thievery check, or because you resist the lightning and do not conduct it, the two tiles are quickly slid towards each other. This attack is vs. Reflex and does, say, 3d10+7 damage. On a hit, you are also restrained (by being crushed by the two columns) and take ongoing 10 damage until you escape. On a miss, you shift one square (because you are dodging the two columns). If you cannot shift, the trap automatically critically hits you.
This means that those two columns are now joined, and form a 5' impassable column from floor to ceiling.
See? That is a really rough sketch of an absurdly dangerous trap. There are certainly ways past it (One person enters on foot, while the others enter using flying. When the trap triggers, the one person on foot also begins to fly. The rogue, using flight with Hover, hovers over the door and picks the lock. That's one way off the top of my head. Maybe the entire party can spider climb on the walls!). There are also ways to just survive it. Take the lightning damage, run through the damn room, and break down the opposite door on your way through. Perhaps the next room will be better?
I think you can easily come up with good, really insanely dangerous rooms in 4e. In fact, it's kind of awesome, because any traps this deadly will be worth TONS of xp, so any party who can make it through the Tomb will emerge as grizzled survivors with lots of levels!
It would be nice if you actually put things in proper perspective.
Running through a ToH won't work because characters can hardly die in 4e. You get tons of health, a dozen healing surges and if you run out of that you simply take a rest and regain it all back. The players are nigh un-killable by the many traps. ToH is one big death trap by design and danger and threats lurk in every step you make. Now all danger and threats are removed and you can simple walk through it.
Whittling down HP and Surges...Sure you can make cool rooms with many traps to show of the many cool effects. But you still have the issue of taking a rest which basically resets the characters so that they re-gain all their resources and can walk through the Tomb without any real sense of danger. Where is the excitement in that?
Traps in 4e have been downgraded. There was always a chance you'd come across a trap once in a while with a chance to one-hit kill you. Now all the traps are simply...activate, take the hit, yawn at it and move to the next. Luckily with some homebrewing you can still make killer traps. When a ceiling with spikes is coming down I won't rule that my players will take 2d6+4 damage...they'll die instead if they don't get out in time.
If you want to make ToH have a true sense of threat and exitement you'll need to add a lot of active traps and hazards in 1 go and make a houserule to get rid of the resting as reboots.
Starfox
Hero
You can do that in 4E as well, Scale the dangers to 12 level (about equivalent to level 9 in 3.5) and then run it with level 3 characters.
In earlier editions, Tomb of Horror was an archtypical example of the 15-minute adventuring day. There was no reason whatsoever NOT to put your full assortment of spells against every hazard, every room. Once you knew what the adventure was about, you should cast 5-10 divination spells in every room. Because there is no time pressure at all, no proactive threats.
I don't see how this can really get much worse in 4E except for 1-hit-kills. If you do enjoy 1-hit-kills, see my advice to UltimaGabe above.
The DM has full control over weather the players can rest or not, even going by the rules you can only rest once every 24 hours.
If you are going to all the bother of converting an old edition deathtrap dungeon to 4th edition then the players resting should not be a problem.
From what I read from the gencon coverage the 4th ed Tomb will be slightly different. It is going to be a modular ongoing plotline that fits in around an existing campaign - you don't do it all in one go.
ObsidianCrane
First Post
That is what I would expect, a place that you need to go back to, that is tough as all get out to deal with, and each return trip would take you in further - probably via different planes. First trip via the "Middle World". Second via the Shadowfell, and the last via the Astral Sea.
Heck I can see some choices for each tier of play then...
As to making the Tomb tough its about the choices.
If you want it to be tackled by 15th level characters the main traps better be 20-21st level in rating. Not 15th.
Every encounter should be in there on the hard setting - nothing that isn't a minion should be 15th level, the XP budget should be 17th level and the basic creature/trap should be as well with "boss" encounters having things up to 21st level in them. Allowing that the adventure is going to then take about 8 encounters to level a party, if you aim at 8 encoutners per layer of the dungeon you then get to bump the challenges up each time you transition a layer.
Consider the following grouping just from the DMG:
Elite Altar of Zealotry
Field of Everflame
Kinetic Wave
Position the Wave to Push into the Everflame which should surround the Altar which is the key to passing through the room.
Then you have a Dominating/Dazing Trap, a Pushing Trap that Knocks Prone in Blast, and a Start of Turn/Move into Trap. If the whole party gets dominated and fails their save they are going to die. Remember that Dominated targets can be made to attack each other...
Not sure that qualifies as "fun" but its certainly brutal and likely to be lethal to 15th level characters, and is on the high end of the Hard Range for 15th level characters in terms of xp award.
I also wouldn't be shy about combining things like the Entropic Collapse with nasty Undead for a higher tier fight as well.
Consider this for 17th level PCs or as a real brutal encounter for 15th level ones...
1 Entropic Collapse (Level 23 Trap)
3 Bodak Reaver (Level 18 Soldier)
1 Lingerer Fell Incanter (Level 18 Elite Artillery)
You now have a trap that occupies 10 contiguous that is triggered only by PCs, and monsters who can move through the trap and use their powers at leisure. Particularly note that the Lingerer can set up the whole party for the Bodak's with some luck...
They are even logically the reanimated corpses of prior adventurers..
Insta kill - no, but tough fight that will likely kill a level 17 party - you bet.
In short it really isn't hard to threaten or kill PCs in 4E if you really want to, its just really hard to insta kill them, because the rules assume that for most players that isn't going to be fun.
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