We're Going To Do Return to the Tomb of Horrors and One Player has Freaked Out!

[Son_of_Thunder]

My group started this on Saturday!

Hello all,

My group started this on saturday. I told them it was going to be a one shot over multiple sessions. Make three or four 13th level 3rd revised characters and pick two.

This was a really interesting session to run. One of my players brought in a psion and a ninja, both single classed. He wanted his psion's intelligence to be as high as he could get it. So he wasted all of his money on a book and a headband. He had a 30 int on a 28 point buy. Yep he was throwing some serious high DC powers but he neglected his own saves.

So when the party first entered the academy guns a blazing he had only 40 hit points and a crappy reflex save. Four seven hit die fireballs later the psion was D-E-D dead. His ninja just wanted to be a Zaknafain wanna be and thusly his saves sucked. One disintegration from a thirteen level wizard later and nothing but motes of disintegrating matter.

The other player was a lot more smart. A paladin and a monk, great saves and good hit points and not wasting money on focused items.

I, as the DM, was npcing Gruther and got charmed in this encounter. The paladin and monk retreated with Grunther's stabalized body and we'll have some hopefully smarter characters from the powergamer next session.

[snarky] Yes, the bad guys use actual tactics[/snarky]

 

[radferth]

This seems to boil down to: do you trust the DM or do you not. If your DM wants to kill you, he or she can. If you fear the DM will not scale his 3.5 conversion correctly and end up killing everyone when he doesn't fix it on the fly, you have a legitimate concern. On the other hand, its not like investigating the undead thing suddenly obligates you to plow through the Tomb on the way to a TPK. If you are acting the least bit in character, the Sorcerer would at least start the thing, maybe to back out when the going gets tough. If the Sorcerer is just suffering from extreme character atachment issues, let him retire that character for now and come in with a new one. In character, if I perceived that a companion had "lost his nerve" and seems overly concerned with self preservation, I would not want to rely on him in life or death situations.

 

[Steel_Wind]

And it is my rule of thumb that if everything you have heard about an adventure says that its only purpose is to kill characters in new ways and the DM insists on running it anyway then it is time to retire the DM.

It is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. Risk is needed, but you don't run your arm through a bandsaw just to see what it feels like.

The Auld Grump

I'm with you on this one.

Guy worked it up from 1st to 15th and he's freaked out at RT Tomb of Horrors? I don't blame him.

The rest of the players should give this some sobre second thought. Go for Maure Castle or something. There are plenty of decent dungeon crawls out there that won't flat out kill you unfairly as RtToH will.

I don't think the player is freaking out over fear his beloved character will die; rather upset that he is certain he will die and he doesn't want that to happen. I don't blame him.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Well, I would probably dive in...but, I probably would whine a little. If I remember correctly it states right in the manual not to take in characters that the PCs are attached to and recomends making up new high level characters. Or was that Labyrinth of Madness? Either way one of those adventures recomends that tactic...wait which one started off with the halberd weilding trolls with black puddings attached to the weapons...with potions of acid and fire resitance? Crap. Don't get old...your memory goes. Either way if a player had serious objections I'd let him/her make a new character...with more than a little jibbing.

Henry, the more I read your posts the more I want to game with you.

 

[PrinceZane]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have this camp anywhere? I'd like to read through it, having never heard of it before. Perferably a 3.5 conversion if possible.

 

[BlackMoria]

...wait which one started off with the halberd weilding trolls with black puddings attached to the weapons...with potions of acid and fire resitance?

Labyrinth of Madness. Another fun chestnut .....

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hi Everyone,

A little bit of disappointment from our group when one of the players freaked out last weekend.

However, one player freaked out not wanting to lose his 15th level Sorcerer (built up like most of the characters from 1st level). He then started trying to find every excuse possible to avoid the adventure - trying to co-erce other characters into going after the "red dragon" and threatening to take the character out using semi-plausible excuses. When confronted with it, he said that RttToH was a ridiculous PC killer that he wanted to have nothing to do with.

OK, the metagaming was wrong.

For the rest of us, we were cool with it because our characters would not know any different - and some of the players were really annoyed that he was making in campaign decisions on out of campaign knowledge and hearsay.

While neither of your characters should use this metagame knowledge, you certainly should. The answer "I said yes because my character doesn't know" is the same as saying "My wizard won't use lightning bolt on the demon because I know that he's immune). You mix up you and your characters.

The question is, should our characters bully him into going through with it or should we just let him go?

Let me gather the facts: A lot of people here have told you that while death is only one possible outcome for your character, the alternatives are far worse. You have told us that the DM is the "let them fall as they may" type of DM.

I say you shouldn't let your characters act upon any player knowledge. But the players should. At the least, ask the DM if he has remade the module so that the chance that your characters die isn't ridiculously high as in the original work. If he says "yes, I have remade it so it isn't like playing russion roulette with one empty chamber instead of one full one", then trust your DM. If he says that it "kept the spirit of the original", you should debate - among the players and the DM, whether you want to lose those PC's you have played from level one.

And it is my rule of thumb that if everything you have heard about an adventure says that its only purpose is to kill characters in new ways and the DM insists on running it anyway then it is time to retire the DM.

It is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. Risk is needed, but you don't run your arm through a bandsaw just to see what it feels like.

The Auld Grump

Amen to that.

First of all, I want to say let's not go too far into bashing other people for what they want to or not want to do with their characters. I said what I would do, not what everyone should do.

Amen to that, too.


Don't turn this into a "holy war". "Your style of gaming differs from my own, therefore it is inferior". Some people don't have a problem when their character dies. They have plenty of concepts they want to test (I know what I'm talking about). Others (and sometimes the same) become attached to their characters. It may be because it was an experiment ("I wonder how that character cocept is") that turned out well, or because they really really wanted to play something like that, or they put a lot of work and thought into the character's personality, or the DM is just so great that he can incorporate the character into the story perfectly, so you wouldn't think of playing another character, that would be the same as starting a new campaign. I have a DM like that.


So if there's a guy who doesn't want to lose his character (which he played straight up from level one to level 15 no less) to what he knows is a module that kills (or worse), that's OK. We're not talking the usual calculated risk in adventuring. We're not talking about a player who's so afraid his character would die that he never does anything remotely dangerous. We're talking about the equivalent to walking up to Orcus and saying "Yo, Orcus, your momma wears combat boots, and here's a message from my goddess Kiaransalee: You suck, loser!"

Those calling him a wuss or worse for that only show their immaturity.

 

[Chiaroscuro23]

This is a Social Contract issue. That is, it's about the guys at the table and why they get together to game.

This module is a meatgrinder, full of metagamey wonkery designed to kill PCs, as I recall. I would be surprised if a DM decided to run it as part of a long, serious campaign. I would certainly not want to put my prized PC through it if my PC had some sort of story he was involved in. It's essentially a self-contained deathtrap, and my PC'd almost surely prefer to do follows his character-based plot hooks. Because, you see, I expect the DM to include these in a very serious, story oriented game.

If, on the other hand, the point is to play through the metagame meatgrinder, then I'd have no problem doing so, but I wouldn't bring a special PC I cared about with story concerns.

Essentially, what I'd want to know is why your friend doesn't want his PC to go in. If it's just because the purpose of the module is to kill PCs for no good reason (and I think it is) then I expect the best solution would be to simply substitute a different PC for that module. The sorcerer went on an off-screen adventure while the stand-in was dying, he rejoins the party later, if they survive.

Back in the day we used to have stables of PCs at various levels, and would simply go through our folders to find one of appropriate level when the DM announced the adventure. If you play this way, maybe he wants to save his sorcerer for later. If not, maybe he just wants him for later in this campaign. If the module is likely to be the end of the campaign (and TPK is certainly possible), then maybe it makes no difference if he dies in the Tomb.

In any case, the best way to solve the problem is by talking to the nervous player about his concerns and seeing if they can be addressed. Think of it this way: if you invited him to play football and he said no because he might get his leg broken, you could assuage his fears by telling him you'd intended flag football. If you'd intended tackle, everyone'd be happier if he stayed home. Either way, the problem is solved by talking to him like an intelligent human being.

Cheers, C.

 

[Celebrim]

Return to the Tomb of Horrors IS a ridiculous and unfair PC shredder which noone has a reasonable hope of surviving unless the DM is going to cake walk them through it. There are several cases in which as written the PC's have ZERO options but to take obscene ammounts of damage. RttToH is an absolutely unfair module as written.

This is very different from the original Tomb of Horrors which simply wastes anyone that goes charging in recklessly, but can actually be survive by a smart party of low levels because there are virtually no cases where you absolutely must take damage, and virtually no required combat anywhere in the module. Most the monsters that you have to fight in the Tomb are exceptionally weak for the level of character suggested for the module. It's not the monsters which kill you, but the failure to take an appropriate level of caution and heed the hints scattered throughout the module. The only encounter in the whole module that basically unwinnable for the PC's as written is with Acererak himself, and that encounter not withstanding, you could probably get a party of 1st levels through the module alive if you played well enough. The original Tomb is therefore not unfair, but it is very different and will absolutely waste twinks, munchkins, roll players, and such.

Actually, I don't think Tomb of Horrors is nearly as difficult of a dungeon for 10th-12th level characters (the original level suggested) as Ravenloft presents 6th-7th level characters. If a DM plays Strahd ruthlessly, Ravenloft is virtually unwinable at that level. For that matter, I don't think that Tomb of Horrors is nearly the player shredder that White Plume Mountain is. Again, ToH damage is completely avoidable. White Plume Mountain damage frequently isn't.

I can see where the player is coming from. If your goal is to stay alive, then by all means avoid RttToH and RttToEE. But, if your goal is to have fun, and your DM is not particularly sadistic, then I don't see any reason why you should not keep playing. After all, alot of homebrew stuff is every bit as deadly as RttToH and his character could die in any number of ways that don't involve the Tomb. I happen to know that someone on the boards has an ongoing RttToH campaign going, and his PC's seemed to enjoy it (though I think he did end up with a TPK at one point).

IF the player was completely insistant, I'd let him retire his character and offer to let him play an NPC of equivalent power who would join the adventuring group as the sorcerer's replacement. In this way, his sorcerer was sure to survive. But, shirk the risks and you lose the rewards. If the party does survive, his sorcerer will now be well behind them in ability, experience, and loot. His great character will then be a footnote in the history of the campaign. Those are the risks.

 

[Roman]

Hey Celebrim, are you by any chance the same Celebrim who posts on Strategypage message boards?