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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FoxWander" data-source="post: 5677665" data-attributes="member: 1356">I really don't like multi-quoted posts, but I can't see any other way to do this. I'll apologize now for the long-ish post.How hard the riddle is to discover depends on how the DM plays it.  If he takes the module text literally and says nothing to a player that is studying the mosaic until they reach the very end, then it is likely to go undiscovered. With all the traps and distractions along the path it's unlikely a player would stick with it until the end if the DM gives him no clue he might be onto something. This also seems like the least realistic way to handle it. It's not as though the path is enchanted to suddenly reveal the riddle in whole only to someone who has kept his eyes on the path throughout- but this is exactly how I've heard of some DMs playing it!  More realistically a player would announce they are studying the path (something very likely to happen when first presented with this colorful hallway) and the DM would give some hint that there seems to be a hidden pattern but it doesn't quite make sense.  That would certainly get the player to study the entire thing and find the riddle. While I'd love to analyze the riddle as it relates to every room/obstacle it may or may not point to.  That could only really be done by laying out the entire thing which would jump the gun quite a bit given the linear style of this thred. So I'll wait to get into the riddle until we're nearer the end.I'll lump these two together because they concern the same thing.  Also I don't agree with your "false" assessment in both... and I'm not really sure you do either. If every "trick and trap requires taking precautions and protections, and then just testing" how is that not figuring things out? And how does the same thing amount to "guesswork"? While it's true there is no pattern (in fact it seems downright random at points) it mostly doesn't take guesswork or luck to get thru. Note I said "mostly" there.  While some of the tricks themselves that we've covered don't make a bit of sense (Who would really let 10 gems get crushed? Why does the gate require a magic ring? Why does the secret door require magical detection?) They can still be figured out without resorting to complete randomness in return.This one depends on your view of "unmerciful and unforgiving."  I counted at least 18 save-or-die obstacles (mostly poison- either spikes or asps, but a few others) which isn't really deadly given the saves at this level. But there are at least three TPKs that simply require making the wrong choice or getting unlucky. That's a lot of near certain death for one dungeon.Again, both of these depend on how you view the riddle, which, also again, I'm not sure we want to get into right now.Completely agree with you here.  There's all kinds of attrition in the Tomb.  It's only saving grace in that respect is that you could camp out pretty much anywhere and take as long as needed to recover.  And we've covered at least three arbitrarily (and bizarrely) difficult to detect doors that prove the 'no high rolls needed' bit false.And completely disagree with you here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  It's VERY possible to go thru the entire Tomb with hardly a scratch (my party did it in Return). And there are at least three TPKs down the line that any party can quite easily fall for- and two that we've already passed. The green mouth and the lava trap. While both aren't certain death- they could be. The first just requires a series of bad decisions (one pc crawls in and others are likely to follow just in the interest of not splitting the party- happened on my very first encounter with the Tomb many years ago. I was the only one to say screw that and go back to town looking for some way to contact the others before I crawled in- at which point the DM congratulated me on being the sole survivor) and the next just requires a little too much hesitation.I'd say, a lot of whether one thinks this is a "thinking person's dungeon" (as the module claims) depends on if one considers the "bomb-squad thinking" as a sufficient level of thinking to fulfill that claim.  As for deductive thinking, I'm of the opinion that the riddle is a useful clue/guide, so I think it fills that category- to some degree.  But yes, most of the dungeon is simply covering all the bases while you resolve each trap/obstacle, and then the next, and the next...As for the three chest, yes there are no clues or hints to "solve" this but that's where the "bomb-squad thinking" IS actual thinking. I pointed out several tactics for the chests in my <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/306885-wir-s1-tomb-horrors-spoilers-spoilers-everywhere-5.html#post5644672" target="_blank">first post</a> here.  It goes back to the "old school" mind set that I tried to emphasize in that post but didn't quite get across.  This dungeon is set up to give the players NOTHING. They will have to think and try and test at every obstacle to move forward. Just like exploring an actual dungeon- it's not going to volunteer any info. A party hoping for clues/hints will not enjoy this dungeon. If they don't pry their own hints out of it, they're going to have a very rough time.</blockquote>

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