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

[Solarious]

Personally, if the dungeon was part of a plot thread, into which the BBEG has fled into and dared the PCs to follow him/her into, I would say dive in. Damn the stories, we have a villian to exterminate!

If the dungeon is just a random something the DM is tossing their way in order to gleefully butcher characters with, as the description suggests, the player is justified in refusing to go in, IMO. I read parts of the Tomb of Horrors and the Return to the Tomb of Horrors back in the day, and yeah, nasty.

 

[Steel_Wind]

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.

I can see where the player is coming from. If your goal is to stay alive, then by all means avoid RttToH and RttToEE.

Now there I would have to disagree and it's not a small point.

Return to the Tomb of Horrors is just a plainly unfair module in which is is a near absolute certainty you will die. It is, therefore, entirely reasonsable for the player to say "screw that noise" as far as bringing in a long time nurtured character.

It is the plain certainty of death which is the distinguishing factor.

Now, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is nasty I'll grant you - but it's not RttToH. One is a certainty of death; the other is a nasty module but at least survivable.

I don't think the danger level is comparable; or perhaps what I mean to say is that RttToEE is not plainly unfair.

I think the point of many posters supporting the metagaming here is that the proposed module is blatantly unfair. It's that one distinguishing factor which is earning the guy some empathy.

There is a difference between HARD and Blatantly Unfair. One gets you off the hook = the other does not (with me).

 

[Hypersmurf]

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.

... oh.

We're playing Ravenloft right now. With 6th level characters. And now I'm feeling uneasy.

Although I made the DM blanch a little the other day, after our cleric turned a Vampire Spawn using some Greater Holy Symbol we found. "Let's hope he rolls that well when we run into Strahd."

"Dude," the DM said, "making Strahd run away ain't gonna help much."

"No," I explained. "But when he goes to turn Strahd, he'll burn two turn attempts on his Greater Turning feat... destroys any undead you'd normally turn."

"... he what?" the DM choked, and dived into Complete Divine to check it out...

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything

-Hyp.

 

[mattcolville]

Hi Everyone,

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

There are 6 members in the party of levels 13, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15. We finished the previous adventure and low and behold the DM waggles Return to the Tomb of Horrors (2nd ed. AD&D) at us. There were several directions we could have gone in but this was the most obvious (and to most of the characters the "easiest" too).

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.

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.

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

Most of the players have heard how "difficult" the module is but we've all got the feeling that Paul the DM has been working up to this module for a while. He's crafted his own 3.5 ed. conversions for it and so has gone to a lot of work. None of us want to lose our characters but its kind of rude to just back out because everyone says its a killer. So are we stupid? Is this one guy brave by putting his foot down?
Have you ever had one player holding all the other characters to ransom?

General information is OK but please try not to provide any specific spoilers for the module.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

PS: This is the group involving Lucifus Cray so for those of you enjoying the Story Hour - look forward to the Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

I cannot speak to RETURN, but the Original is not something you should ever use in Campaign play. It's from a different age. Then, people took their characters from one campaign to another, from one GM to another, brought them to conventions on purpose to "pit" them againt whatever the GMs at Cons could dish out, and would then brag it about it to all and sundry. Gygax, sick of hearing people brag about their invincible munchkin characters, created Tomb of Horrors specifically to teach them a lesson. Unless you feel this is a lesson your players need to learn, I do not recommend it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

"Dude," the DM said, "making Strahd run away ain't gonna help much."

"No," I explained. "But when he goes to turn Strahd, he'll burn two turn attempts on his Greater Turning feat... destroys any undead you'd normally turn."

"... he what?" the DM choked, and dived into Complete Divine to check it out...

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything

-Hyp.

Let's hope he doesn't know about the Rule in Ravenloft 3e that undead are only destroyed by turning when they cannot run away. It's in the Ravenloft Campaign setting (the 3.0 book, I don't know whether they have kept it in the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Handbook)

 

[Imperialus]

RttToH is an amazingly fun one off adventure when the DM goes to the group and says; "Ok, everyone create 2 level 14 PC's with heroic point buy and twink em out for next session. I need a break from the regular campaign so I'm runing the Return to the Tomb of Horrors" At this point players being salavating with glee and running off to see what they can come up with that will "survive" the death trap. It's a nasty adventure though and I have players run to characters at a time so that if (when) one dies they can keep playing. Dispite a couple of attempts my group has yet to finish it and belive me they're no slouches when it comes to thinking outside the box and coming up with creative ways to powergame to the hilt when they want to. I'd never ask them to risk a character they've invested time and backstory in though.

 

[Celebrim]

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

There is only one Celebrim, and I am he of whom you speak.

 

[Gentlegamer]

[KoDT-smack talk] Ask the player in question if he would prefer to play a game more suitable to his comfort level such as Candyland or Shoots & Ladders . . . [/KoDT-smack talk]

 

[Kae'Yoss]

[KotD-smack talk] Ask the player in question if he would prefer to play a game more suitable to his comfort level such as Candyland or Shoots & Ladders . . . [/KotD-smack talk]

You know, I begin to think - after all those comments of yours, all with about the same message and one as "funny" as the other - that you not agree with the guy we're talking about.

I bet your characters play russian roulette several times a day and eat steel nails as a snack, real tough customers.

 

[Roman]

There is only one Celebrim, and I am he of whom you speak.

Nice to meet you here! I am the same Roman who posts there too.