I'm whipping out Tomb of Horrors, and the players have been fairly warned that I am whipping out Tomb of Horrors. As you all know, Tomb of Horrors is brutal, and PCs are going to die. How should I handle this in such a manner that the players who lose their characters don't have to sit and twiddle their thumbs while everyone else plays?
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I'm whipping out Tomb of Horrors, and the players have been fairly warned that I am whipping out Tomb of Horrors. As you all know, Tomb of Horrors is brutal, and PCs are going to die. How should I handle this in such a manner that the players who lose their characters don't have to sit and twiddle their thumbs while everyone else plays?
Tell everyone to bring three...no, better make that eleven, characters?
EDIT: Okay, eleven might be too many, but I'd seriously consider letting folks make several characters, and either have an agreement to 'go get reinforcements' when someone dies, or to handwave the replacement right in where the last one left off. You could even make it a contest to see who could die the least. Or most, I guess, if your players have that sort of sense of humor.
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Groundhog day.
The PCs are cursed: whenever one dies, the whole party immediately wakes up from a shared, bad dream on the morning of that same day.
Like a video game savepoint, but with some roleplay fluff.
What about a nine lives sort of thing, where you get an immediate true resurrection if you die, but you only have so many lives, and die permanently if you lose them all?
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As much as I love the groundhog day method, it seems not to penalize characters at all, or in other cases too much (if all the characters restart the entire adventuring day every time one of them dies, it can get frustrating).
Another way to do this is to give each character an amulet or other item. When a gem of a certain value is placed into the amulet/whatever item it becomes capable of casting a contingent raise dead effect that also moves them back to their last safe (ie: not falling into a pit of doom) position.
This prevents having to restart sessions repeatedly every time a character dies (which is frustrating), and still allows the characters to continue playing. Just maybe add in one such gem every couple of rooms, as needed.
If the player gets too frustrated with their character dying all the time you can always have them take off the amulet and commit suicide just as their new character is encountered by the party, the new character getting the old amulet. Heck, if I'd suffered dying 20 times just to enter a room with another character who had made it though the same challenges (presumably) unscathed, I'd probably go bonkers and kill myself too, so why not?
I'm whipping out Tomb of Horrors, and the players have been fairly warned that I am whipping out Tomb of Horrors. As you all know, Tomb of Horrors is brutal, and PCs are going to die. How should I handle this in such a manner that the players who lose their characters don't have to sit and twiddle their thumbs while everyone else plays?
My group has used the 3 strike rule for years and it works wonderfully. You have 3 strikes. First 2 times you die your really recieved a glancing blow that nocked you to 0 HP. You look dead and are ignored by friends and foes till the combat is over.
This rule of course is ignored in the case of a total party wipe.
Also having back up characters ready also helps. If you combine the two if each player has 2 characters thats 6 deaths. Not too shabby.
You should know, that by doing this, you are taking something away from the experience. The "Ok, no more rogue. Well, I guess the barbarian will have to check for traps now..." Are you sure you want to let out the "it just got from worse to worser" feeling out?
Maybe you could have the unfortunate players join you behind the screen and play monsters?
As others have said, have the PCs create multiple characters. I'd have them stat them up through the relevant levels, so all they have to do is transfer the correct info to a character sheet.
Beyond that, I would suggest that you then use the characters they created as NPCs that the players can add to the party in case of death.
Is anyone else reminded of "Gamers: Dorkness Rising"?
Yes very much.
I was reading about another system where instead of just saying you are dead when you run out of hit points they have something called consequences. If a character takes too many hits they are knocked out of the scene and you impose some long term handicap that is relevant to the situation that they failed in. Then later some plot line or ability should give a character a chance to earn their way out of a handicap. It might take some extra work and a little more willingness to deal with subjective outcomes on the part of everyone in the game but something like this seems like it would have a lot of potential for fun twists in the right hands.
You should know, that by doing this, you are taking something away from the experience. The "Ok, no more rogue. Well, I guess the barbarian will have to check for traps now..." Are you sure you want to let out the "it just got from worse to worser" feeling out?
Maybe you could have the unfortunate players join you behind the screen and play monsters?
I have to agree. Taking an adventure like this and turning death into a revolving door scenario makes it more about attrition against boredom than triumph over challenge. As the old king said, eventually "the jewels no longer sparkle, the gold loses its luster."
Run experienced players through an adventure like this with the intention of providing a serious challenge. Otherwise, the point is so lost.
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would balancing the encounters to the party not be possible?
if not consider this idea.
the body that the players are occupying are constructs or animated soulless bodies that the players are occupying to complete the mission for a god/wizard/dragon
when ever the body dies the body can go into a regenerative state and be reanimated by soul but doing so costs a certain amount of CON as the body has been beaten up a bit.
there may be ways to recover this con (say death costs 2 con and the players get back 1 con per level) but players that are repeatedly stupid or unlucky will become increasingly squishy till they are irrecoverably dead or simply unplayable as they will not survive battles.
however this TRUE death will have to have serious consequences such as that player has to truly leave the game giving up his/her seat for another player or take a 3 or 4 session break as a consequence.
(also note a requirement that the body be returned to a regeneration station or go through some ritual in order to be reanimated can cause a good in game penalty for death as the rest of the party is responsible for completing this reanimation requirement.)
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would balancing the encounters to the party not be possible?
...It's Tomb of Horrors. It's supposed to be brutal.
We've agreed on giving everyone a limited number of lives, so that they can die a few times before they are screwed.
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Ooh, I like blue_the_wolf's suggestion. You could accomplish this through an artifact which casts an improved version of Animate Image on anyone who uses it, preserving the actual body of the user against harm and creating an effigy of the character which they could use to adventure. All you'd really have to do is add in a fixing station every so often so your players don't always have to backtrack to the entrance.
Actually that should work quite well as, if memory serves, it is sometimes just as hard to go backwards in the Tomb of Horrors, so this adds the pressure of having to decide if it might not be a better choice to just keep going forward. It also rewards the players even more for working together and keeping each other alive and limits the treasure penalty. You might even notice that characters would become more willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the party, at least if it seems like the best way of getting them all through (their "body" included).
The best part: You wouldn't even have to necessarily tell your players what's going on. You could just let them at it and when one of them dies reveal that the body is just a construct. Then they'd just have to piece together all the stations, and voila, they feel like they just figured out the whole dungeon! Until they notice the Con penalty, that is. ;}
Groundhog day.
The PCs are cursed: whenever one dies, the whole party immediately wakes up from a shared, bad dream on the morning of that same day.
Like a video game savepoint, but with some roleplay fluff.
Interesting...this is what our GM added to our campaign for a deadly game: