Has anyone out there survived all of The Tomb of Horrors? If you have please tell me how you did it. Me and some friends are playing it and we are getting mauled!!!!! I would be most curious to find out how you did it!
My party was decimated too, the first time. I don't think a virgin party without foreknowledge (like each person having read it first) can "successfully" complete it. Or, posting and asking for help, etc.
ToH reminds me of that saying I heard somewhere, "everyone falls their first time." You're all gonna die...
Seriously, you will probably get more joy out of reading Camus' "The Stranger" than ToH, unless you DM it and your heart is black and full of hate (or your last name is KAFKA) !
Its a tough one. I've only played the old 1st edition version so I don't know how this stacks up. However if I played this I'd at least start with what worked in 1st edition.
Do not interact with anything. Ever - no exceptions.
Summon things to do that for you. Never touch anything unless a summoned creature has already manipulated the object in every way you can think of. Never walk any where that a summoned creature has not aleady walked. Presume everything is a trap. Use spells to try and manipulate and otherwise test out the objects, rooms, doorways, pits etc. etc. before you venture near such places. Make sure that everything - the floors, the walls the roof the furniture and the dungeon dressing are proven safe by something expendable before you venture near them. Assume the magic items are cursed. Don't use them until you have ID'd them using magic, probably with identify but there are a number of good cleric spells for this sort of thing as well - when in doubt ask a God. If you don't know what it is assume it can kill you.
If your the fighter - just hang back and let the cleric and the wizard do the adventure. Your only job is to protect them when an actual monster shows up. Stop and think ... don't rush any decisions unless you have no choice don't make assumptions, make the cleric and the wizard use spells to test out everything. Keep a few 'get out of jail' items around. Never know when a potion of gasous form or a scroll of teleport will allow you to get out of a jam. Bring a 10' pole.
Has anyone out there survived all of The Tomb of Horrors? If you have please tell me how you did it. Me and some friends are playing it and we are getting mauled!!!!! I would be most curious to find out how you did it!
AD&D 1st ed.
The first time my party got flattened by the juggernaut.
The second time we went through with some hirelings and pulled it off. We spent a lot on hirelings and had to go back to town after half of the first batch died and the rest fled.
Seriously, you will probably get more joy out of reading Camus' "The Stranger" than ToH, unless you DM it and your heart is black and full of hate (or your last name is KAFKA) !
Ooh, this would bring interesting new philosophical approach in running that adventure...mixing total hopelessness of Call of Cthulhu to D&D. Characters are oppressed and dirt poor and their only hope is to get something valuable out of ToH, even while they know that is no real hope..."Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you." (unless you are playing a dwarf with CHA as dump stat).
I read some accounts of one gaming group who at some point did look for new approaches for running old D&D modules, and concentrating on sociopolitical (and Marxist) aspects of adventuring was one of them...
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The whole point of Tomb of Horrors is you're not really suppose to make it.
I've only got the old 1E but my friends and I have fun with ToH every once and a while: often when a player is absent from a session or if a few other gamers show up or it's a special occassion, we do a Tomb of Horrors marathon. It's basically a super dungeon session in which players come with several pre-gen PCs of varying ECLs; when one PC dies another takes its place. The DM awards bragging-rights "points" to players who can keep a PC alive longer. But everyone dies or worse in the end. It's a blast for a one night session between campaigns or whatever.
-W. E. Ray
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Love it. My Paladin got near the end before buying it-over 20 years ago. Great fun. In fact, it has been so many years since ToH, that we have another ToH adventure as well as S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks adventure planned(w/characters in the back covers for both) for a weekend in late June/July. As of now, i believe we will be playing with the 1st(?) edition rules, in Castro Valley, California. If anyone is interested in joining the adventure, im sure there will be extra seats. It's a death module, after all. Doubtful any of us will live. ufoundbrent@yahoo.com (be sure to put ToH under subject).
Thoth-Amon
The whole point of Tomb of Horrors is you're not really suppose to make it.
I've only got the old 1E but my friends and I have fun with ToH every once and a while: often when a player is absent from a session or if a few other gamers show up or it's a special occassion, we do a Tomb of Horrors marathon. It's basically a super dungeon session in which players come with several pre-gen PCs of varying ECLs; when one PC dies another takes its place. The DM awards bragging-rights "points" to players who can keep a PC alive longer. But everyone dies or worse in the end. It's a blast for a one night session between campaigns or whatever.
-W. E. Ray
We are doing something very similar. Instead of backup characters we rolled our HD, and the outcome was the amount of times we could come back to life.
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Do not interact with anything. Ever - no exceptions.
Summon things to do that for you. Never touch anything unless a summoned creature has already manipulated the object in every way you can think of. Never walk any where that a summoned creature has not aleady walked. Presume everything is a trap. Use spells to try and manipulate and otherwise test out the objects, rooms, doorways, pits etc. etc. before you venture near such places. Make sure that everything - the floors, the walls the roof the furniture and the dungeon dressing are proven safe by something expendable before you venture near them. Assume the magic items are cursed. Don't use them until you have ID'd them using magic, probably with identify but there are a number of good cleric spells for this sort of thing as well - when in doubt ask a God. If you don't know what it is assume it can kill you.
If your the fighter - just hang back and let the cleric and the wizard do the adventure. Your only job is to protect them when an actual monster shows up. Stop and think ... don't rush any decisions unless you have no choice don't make assumptions, make the cleric and the wizard use spells to test out everything. Keep a few 'get out of jail' items around. Never know when a potion of gasous form or a scroll of teleport will allow you to get out of a jam. Bring a 10' pole.
Sums it up quite nicely. And, for those reasons, ToH is quite possibly the most boring AD&D/D&D adventure ever made. On the other hand, I rather enjoyed the follow-up (Return to ToH) - it had things like a plot, interesting locations, cool monsters, half-decent art, that sort of thing.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Do not interact with anything. Ever - no exceptions.
Summon things to do that for you. Never touch anything unless a summoned creature has already manipulated the object in every way you can think of. Never walk any where that a summoned creature has not aleady walked. Presume everything is a trap. Use spells to try and manipulate and otherwise test out the objects, rooms, doorways, pits etc. etc. before you venture near such places. Make sure that everything - the floors, the walls the roof the furniture and the dungeon dressing are proven safe by something expendable before you venture near them. Assume the magic items are cursed. Don't use them until you have ID'd them using magic, probably with identify but there are a number of good cleric spells for this sort of thing as well - when in doubt ask a God. If you don't know what it is assume it can kill you.
I would be evil and make sound-activated traps that respond to the sound of a wizard's spellcasting just to make it even MORE infuriating! Better yet, I'd just have the very first room seal up with solid stone walls and fill with magma on a whim just so that I could punish my players for wasting an hour of their lives on making characters that were doomed to life spans of less than 10 minutes! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
...okay, not really.
I would be evil and make sound-activated traps that respond to the sound of a wizard's spellcasting just to make it even MORE infuriating! Better yet, I'd just have the very first room seal up with solid stone walls and fill with magma on a whim just so that I could punish my players for wasting an hour of their lives on making characters that were doomed to life spans of less than 10 minutes! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I'm really looking forward to the PbP now. *laugh* :)
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Wait Vatnisse, I think you miss the point. ToH is not meant (these days at least) to be a campaign, just a one nighter.
Use PCs with no backgrounds that will never be played again and have fun putting them against CRs way too high. The point isn't to try and win; it's to see who can survive the longest -- then start agian with more disposable PCs.
And for the summoners or animators, that's a great idea for PCs to use; let it work the first time. Then they run into an aspect of Acererack who steals the PC Cleric's undead creations and commands them to attack the PC, or the PCs order their Unseen Servant or summoned monster to "touch the alter first;" think of a creative, albeit unfair way to make it backfire: touching the alter activates a spell that turns the unseen servant into an aspect of Acererack who turns and attacks the PCs! That would make for a fun encounter.
It's fun for one night but, no, you certainly couldn't make a campaign of it. ToH is more like Maure Castle without any plotline or story hook WHATSOEVER!
-W. E. Ray
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I've DM'd this thing about eight or ten times, and every time wound up with a TPK. And I'm even nice when I DM this one.
As I understand it, EGG wrote TOH for only one purpose: to smack down those misguided souls at the different gaming conventions who could not shut up about how amazing their characters are. Every time some guy would start prattling on about how his character was the best ever, EGG would pull this thing out and crush the guy's soul. Worked pretty well, too, from what I've heard.
I always run it as a one-shot, and make sure that the players aren't too fond of their characters. I also usually allow them to each make three characters, and run them all together. That way, they have a chance to make it half way through.
Begging for help I see. You'll need it. Still want to finish it next Tuesday? BTW so far I've killed 10 of them and they're barely halfway through the adventure.
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Wait Vatnisse, I think you miss the point. ToH is not meant (these days at least) to be a campaign, just a one nighter.
Use PCs with no backgrounds that will never be played again and have fun putting them against CRs way too high. The point isn't to try and win; it's to see who can survive the longest -- then start agian with more disposable PCs.
Oh, absolutely - running it as part of a campaign is little less than criminal. I still think it is dull, though, for the reasons Jeremy laid out. You either poke every floor tile with a stick and send a summoned beastie through every door before you go through - or you just die. And either of those is just plain old boring. And even if you have one of those "beer, pizza and dead PC's" themed nights (which can be rather fun), getting sliced in two by that oversized scythe trap gets really old after the Nth time.
However, even a grouch such as I will grant that the Sphere of annihilation trap was inspired. But that's about it.
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I would be evil and make sound-activated traps that respond to the sound of a wizard's spellcasting just to make it even MORE infuriating! Better yet, I'd just have the very first room seal up with solid stone walls and fill with magma on a whim just so that I could punish my players for wasting an hour of their lives on making characters that were doomed to life spans of less than 10 minutes! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Actually, that would be totally in the spirit of the adventure. Go for it, I say!
Has anyone out there survived all of The Tomb of Horrors? If you have please tell me how you did it. Me and some friends are playing it and we are getting mauled!!!!! I would be most curious to find out how you did it!
Repeat after me: Unseen Servant, Unseen Servant, Unseen Servant.
Even us Blue Dragons know it's the best utility spell in the entire game. Great for tripping traps, lifting small objects, touching dangerous items, etc. Heck, you should see what it cleans up my large pile of treasure
I've played it twice and I ran it once with two additional dungeons from Dungeon Magazine. Uh, The Treasure Vault of Kasil and Deadly Treasure. It was great having them teleport and hop around three or four different tombs and several false doors. Sheer brilliance I tell you.
Begging for help I see. You'll need it. Still want to finish it next Tuesday? BTW so far I've killed 10 of them and they're barely halfway through the adventure.
Yo, I'm not asking for advice! Just curious to see if anyone has acually survived iT!!!!
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I had a paladin survive it. He was 75 and nearly unable to stand but he did survive. Barely. No one else did.
I was lucky at the end. Lucky die rolls on my part, bad rolls on the part of the DM. In the few times I have played it since none of my characters have survived.
As a side note, about a year ago we played the 3.5 version from the WotC site. I was not as pleased with it as the original. It took about as twice as long to play, situations were not as "insta-kill" as they once were (odd complaint, I know), and the added encounters fell flat, IMHO.
I am running it now in 3rd Edition. Two of the five PCs have died, but only one was because of getting "screwed" by the Tomb. The other was because the wizard has something like a 14 AC and 23 hp. Poor character design.
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Has anyone out there survived all of The Tomb of Horrors? If you have please tell me how you did it. Me and some friends are playing it and we are getting mauled!!!!! I would be most curious to find out how you did it!
ToH (the original at any rate, not sure of the 'updated' version) is the proof to the claim that one need be right only once to NOT be paranoid. Unfortunately, that one time is probably the time your PC dies ...
The farthest I had a character make it was to the tapestry room (I HATE green slime). The quickest I lost a PC was at the beginning where he scouted out the wrong entry ...
Honestly, IMHO, the best use for the ToH is as a tourney adventure, having several groups playing at the same time and scoring points as they go.
I've GM'd the actual Tomb of Horrors (RttToH) twice using the 3.0 rules system and killed about 20 Player Characters in the process, not counting the MANY others that died in the other parts of Return to the Tomb of Horrors that preceded and followed the Tomb itself. I massacred many more Player Characters in the 1st edition version of the Tomb also.
I agree with the 'Hazing' analogy previously offered by a poster. It is a 'd&d classic' that those who have played the game know of and get sentimental about to some degree or another. For me, it is a Killer GM's wet dream. I can massacre countless player characters and feel absolutely NO guilt whatsoever. Everyone knows what they're getting into when they play it, so there are few complaints. A GM can 'waste at will'.
I would not dream of offering advice, because, that would deprive another fellow GM more dead character sheets for his/her collection box; save to say that impulsive and careless players die more readily and gloriously than their more patient and observant counterparts...
Personally, I love this ol' dungeon for its simplicity. It is a one-nighter and that is why its so short. As for survivors----one! I DM'd ToH once with a high level, high powered party back in the 80s and only one of the wizards walked away from it. After the demilich killed what was left of the party, the remaining wizard simply fled knowing he couldn't defeat Acererak.
My favorite moment was the green devil face. One of the PCs stuck his Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn ( from Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth ) in to see inside it. After the Lanthorn "disappeared" he jumped in after it! It was a spectacular death that required no die rolls and we still laugh about it to this day.
This is it...
This is the D&D module that got me interested in role-playing games way back in the late 70s! All those illustrations, that blue map with the skeleton in the chapel, the riddles, the green face on the back cover, everything... This is what sparked it all for me.
True, it's a meat-grinder; But man, what a thrill!
Ultradan
I am running it now in 3rd Edition. Two of the five PCs have died, but only one was because of getting "screwed" by the Tomb. The other was because the wizard has something like a 14 AC and 23 hp. Poor character design."Poor character design?" What level is the wizard?
Drow beguiler 7. Con 10, Dex 10. Some bad choices there (point buy).
Do not interact with anything. Ever - no exceptions...
I would be evil and make sound-activated traps that respond to the sound of a wizard's spellcasting just to make it even MORE infuriating! Better yet, I'd just have the very first room seal up with solid stone walls and fill with magma on a whim just so that I could punish my players for wasting an hour of their lives on making characters that were doomed to life spans of less than 10 minutes! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
...okay, not really.
This is reasonable if the goal is to kill off the players (who presumably know that their one shot characters are expendable). It can - however be used as a really tough challenge to test player skills. Used in this manner I would not interfere with the players attempts to overcome the dungeon. Its really a tough one as is and the players essentially have to hit on the right tactics to beat it.
I think it can be a real bore - but it is essentially one big puzzle. Players that like puzzles will probably like this adventure and take great pride in beating it - it will be fun for them. Other players should probably be wary. I wanted to include it in my current campaign but have decided to leave it out as I don't think my players would currently appreciate it. Too long, too hard, not enough combat. One day I'll run them through it (using the 3.5 version) - but I'll sandwich it in between some really combat heavy fast and furious adventures and call it a change of pace.
heeh I did; played a ranger through it; we played smart; hehe like cowards, going slow and taking every advantage we could come up with, nobody died and we had a good time.
heeh I did; played a ranger through it; we played smart; hehe like cowards, going slow and taking every advantage we could come up with, nobody died and we had a good time.
Thats a good idea - those animal companion thingees just come back if the old one dies, right? So you just feed the adventure an endless array of animal companions.
Still all that travel time traversing back and forth in and out of the dungeon in order to pick up a new animal companion seems like a bit of a pain in the butt.
I just pulled out my 2e version of Tomb of Horrors. After looking at the map I remember my first character to die in this blender.
It was in area 16, as the floor started to tilt, I remember saying, "I sit on my shield so I slide faster, holding my mace out ready to strike!" Not understanding what was going on, and hoping to gain speed to melee as I burst into the room at the end. I was surprised. hahahaha!
My party actually survived, which means I'm going too easy on them. It's the kind of dungeon where you measure success by how far you make it before being horribly killed in some unfair trap.
It wouldn't be right of me to spoil the dungeon for players who haven't played through it yet, but according to the mistakes my players made, here are three hints:
1) That black sphere in the demon's mouth at the start is a sphere of annihilation, you nitwit. No, there's no such thing as a sphere of teleportation.
2) Don't get too attached to your character's alignment, gender or equipment.
3) If it looks safe, it's probably a trap.
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ToH is quite possibly the most boring AD&D/D&D adventure ever made.You hit the nail on the head.
On the other hand, I rather enjoyed the follow-up (Return to ToH) - it had things like a plot, interesting locations, cool monsters, half-decent art, that sort of thing.Agreed. It's a sweet mega-adventure.
I think alot of you are missing the point as to why Tomb of Horrors was created......geez now I feel old. To paraphase the man who wrote the adventure, Gary Gygax created the tomb for people who would tell him that they had the most bad@ss character ever and that nothing in the AD&D game could defeat them. He took the design with him everywhere so he could tell people, "Prove it!". It wasnt until later that an actual story came into play and thus this was an adventure that Gygax could use to challenge the skill of his players(mind you this is all 1st edition rules). Dont forget that this was one of the FIRST modules produced by TSR.
So yeah some of you might think its boring or its a one-shot adventure, but to each his own...its what you get out of it that matters, not what you make of it. I bet when you played it way back when(assuming you are that old), that you never thought that a certain device could be used a certain way....it gave you great ideas to use with your own PC's, even though you might have lost 10 PC's in a week to it. :)
Now I have seen the 3.x update on the WotC and plan on running my players in it someday.....hopefully it will be just as thought-provoking as it was 25 yrs ago.
Just my 2 cents.....
As for advice...well.....better make friends with that tribe of gnolls and tell them, there be gold in there!!!
I didn't last long!!!!
Thanks for all your advice, unfortunatly none worked for us!
Awell.
I didn't last long!!!!
Thanks for all your advice, unfortunatly none worked for us!
Awell.
None of my players had mad it through either. By the time they had rolled up their third set of characters and appeared to be making a ZERG attempt, I dumped it and moved on to greener pastures (as it were).
I've DM'd this thing about eight or ten times, and every time wound up with a TPK. And I'm even nice when I DM this one.
As I understand it, EGG wrote TOH for only one purpose: to smack down those misguided souls at the different gaming conventions who could not shut up about how amazing their characters are. Every time some guy would start prattling on about how his character was the best ever, EGG would pull this thing out and crush the guy's soul. Worked pretty well, too, from what I've heard.
I always run it as a one-shot, and make sure that the players aren't too fond of their characters. I also usually allow them to each make three characters, and run them all together. That way, they have a chance to make it half way through.
Actually, he created to teach his players a lession. They were getting full of themselves. He later pulled it back out for reasons you cited. It was them made into a tournament module with pregenerated characters for Cons.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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I'm not sure if anyone has covered this yet, but is there a 3.0 or 3.5 edition of ToH in print? I'd like to get my hands on it if there is. I love killing PCs.
Yes, there is a free update of it on the WotC site:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a
I actually did the criminal and put this in to part of a dimension/time hopping campaign I was running 2 years ago.
My players smoked it. Without a wizard.
For the life of me, I'll never understand it. Some really smart choices: send the guy with racial DR through the arrow trap. Bring an admantine falchion for suspicious doorways.
They did bring a 10' pole, and they did blow all 50 charges out of a wand of summon monster I.
And they made some ridiculously good saving throws. They also tried to space out the party so no AOE mischeif could occur.
Although I did get some gender bending and lost equipment. Yay for that.
Oh, and they came very close to dying against the end boss. Very close.
1st party: All dead.
2nd party: one guy escapes; demilich still intact.
3rd party made it through, but only because of the fact they could cast speak with dead on all the corpses of their fallen predecessors!