I got ahold of Tales from the Yawning Portal, and I thought I'd run my group through Tomb of Horrors. The adventure isn't really clear on what level they should be for this. It says "high" level, but I don't really see that much in it that requires one to be super high level, and the original was for around levels 10-12.
So I've got the characters are starting at 9th level. They are are rolling stats- 3d6 in order. reroll lowest if you want, and swap 2 around. They are each making two characters and starting with whichever one they prefer. I'm also giving them a list of magic items to choose from to start with, and they each get a rare item, an uncommon item, and a couple of healing potions.
Anyhow, it should be interesting. They are rolling up their sacrifices right now. So far I've got a gnome bard, a human rogue, and a dwarf barbarian.
Check the CRs, go from there.
It's mostly the traps that are super deadly, not the combats. Though obviously acererak is pretty dangerous, but I don't know if they'll even get to him. I'm probably going to give this 3 sessions and see where they get by then (maybe 1 more if really need be).
just finished Session #1. Only 3 PCs tonight, but a 4th should be joining on Tuesday for session #2
Sadly, no deaths yet.
Tomb of Horrors (Session #1)
Nudder (dwarf, rogue 1/battlerager barbarian 8)
Grey Rat (human, rogue 9)
Lolo (gnome, bard 9)
Kull (NPC, half orc, fighter 1)
A large expedition sets out aboard a ship on the Lake of Unknown depths (Nyr Dyv) in the Flaness (Greyhawk Setting), following a chart discovered by Grey Rat. The chart is believed to lead to an island that holds the tomb of the legendary lich Acererak- a place of great danger, but also vast wealth.
After several days at sea, they find the island. Boats are deployed and the expedition of a dozen or so bold adventurers sets out onto the island in search of the fabled tomb. As they get further inland, the party becomes enveloped in an unnatural mist. Several members of the expedition become separated from one another, but Grey Rat, Nudder, Lolo, and their servant Kull have the sense to tie themselves together, and eventually they emerge from the mist. They find themselves in an open area that is dominated by a large, barren flat topped hill. Mist surrounds the area, and whenever they venture back into it, they seem to remerge back in the clearing with the hill. It seems they are trapped.
They investigate the hill, and around the north side they find a cliff face that has three depressions in its base. One to the west side, one in the middle and one to the east side. The depressions are filled with gravel and dirt. They decide to investigate the middle one first. Kull gets out his shovel and starts digging, as does Nudder. Lolo and Grey Rat sit back and watch. Eventually the two workers clear out enough gravel to discover a 20’ wide tunnel that makes its way south into the hill (area 3 of the tomb).
They consider clearing out the other depressions, but both Nudder and Kull are a little tired of digging, so they begin exploring the hall. The floor is a bright coloured mosaic of tiles with a narrow red path of tiles winding its way into the darkness. The walls are covered in plaster frescoes, depicting a variety of images. Of note is an image of a pair of jackal headed men holding a bronze chest, though the chest is real and protrudes from the side of the wall.
Another image of interest is a life sized picture of a door to a cell. Lolo summons dancing lights and an unseen servant. He orders the servant to investigate the bronze chest protruding from the wall, but it doesn’t have much luck manipulating it, so Grey Rat moves into the tomb holding his blazing flame tongue sword in one hand, and a 10’ pole in the other. The flame blade, does much to illuminate the dark hall. He taps the floor with his 10’ pole, but discovers no danger. He heads to the part of the wall that shows the door, and starts tapping that with his pole. The plaster falls away, revealing a secret door.
They force open the door, which is stuck shut, and enter a short hall that ends at another door. Grey Rat opens this door, and it takes them into a room occupied by a four armed gargolye (area 8). Nudder rushes the thing and tackles it. The dwarf pins it and holds it down. It thrashes about, clawing and biting at him, while the rest of the party gang up on it and stab and hew at the thing while its prone. It doesn’t take long for them to kill the fiend, though Nudder takes some damage in the process. Afterwards they find a collar studded with 10 gems on its neck that they throw into Lolo’s bag of holding.
From there they explore a bunch of tiny 10’ x 10’ rooms that are seemingly empty, but connect with one another by a series of doors. Eventually, they discover a secret door in one of them, which leads them through a network of small, rooms and halls, all of which are linked by secret doors (area 9- a kind of annoying and frustrating part of the dungeon IMO, so I more or less hand waved the party through it). Finally, their efforts allow them to access another wide hall with mosaic floor and frescoed walls (area 10) . The walls of this hall depict images of animal humanoid hybrid monstrosities holding coloured orbs. The adventurers wander down the hall, which eventually ends at an arch filled with mist. The key stone and two base stones of the arch start to glow with coloured light (russet, olive and citron) as soon as they approach. Grey Rat notices that the colours match some of the colour of the orbs depicted in the mural. He goes to stand before an olive coloured orb and examines it closely. He notices the wall kind of shimmers. He thrusts his pole at the wall and it passes right through it, suggesting it to be illusionary. The rogue then sticks his head through the illusionary wall and with the darkvision provided by his goggles of night, he sees a narrow passage with a 5’ high ceiling.
In single file they explore this long, narrow winding hall. It eventually comes to a dead end. Here they discover another illusionary wall, which leads into a chapel room (area 14). It features rows of wooden pews, an altar made of strange stone that glows dimly with blue inner light, a wooden throne, a pair of big white urns, and an arch on the west wall that is filled with orange vapours. Lolo touches the altar, which sends a lightning bolt shooting down the aisle between the pews. Luckily no one is standing in the aisle. After that the altar turns to a reddish colour. Lolo touches it again, which triggers a fire ball that blasts the party (However, Grey Rat takes no damage due to evasion). Kull is badly scorched (half orc racial feature keeps him from dropping to 0 hp). Once the fireball has been triggered, the altar turns more of translucent grey, and stops glowing- it seems harmless now. Lolo gives Kull a little healing.
Next, Nudder uses his great strength to push the altar along the floor, and he finds a secret cubby underneath of it. The cubby is covered by a stone lid, and when Nudder pries it open, poisonous gas spews out, causing him and Kull to choke and sputter (both take damage). They are both hearty and survive. In the cubby they find a bag of holding, and inside the bag of holding they find a wand with a gold framed, circular lense attached to the side of it. The lense appears to have been crafted out of a gem stone, and there are runes inscribing on the side of the wand that no one can read- so they toss it in the bag of holding.
After this they check out the throne a little, and investigate the two big urns in the SE and SW corners of the room. Grey Rat opens one of the urns and finds that it is filled with coins, which they divide up into the two bags of holding they now possess. He then opens the second urn. This time, noxious black vapour spews out. The vapour forms into a frog demon (hezrou) that tries to tear them all apart. It’s bigger than the four armed gargolye, but Nudder goes into a rage and he manages the foul smelling horror. He holds it prone, while Kull and Grey Rat stab and hew it. It fights back and inflicts some damage on the heroes (mainly on Nudder), but it is out numbered, and Grey Rat’s flame tongue rapier is a deadly weapon, which, combined with his sneak attack skills, does a lot damage. Soon enough they send the demon back to the Abyss.
They then hear a voice calling from the urn. Inside is a short sword, which Lolo levitates out of the urn with a mage hand spell. The sword is the source of the voice. It proves to be a sentient weapon, capable of speech. Lolo asks it a morale question about killing orphans, and the weapon responds that it would do so if its wielder commanded. This answer satisfies the gnome, and Nudder claims Red Mist as his own (he had been lacking a magic weapon).
The session ends with the heroes returning to the entrance to the tomb, where Lolo casts a Leomund’s Tiny Hut spell, and they settle in for an extended rest.
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I'm trying to run this fairly true to the adventure module. I made a few little changes- more as the evening went on.
In the chapel room, I didn't really see any information about anything going on under the altar- but since the barbarian took all the trouble to push it out of the way (with a really high athletics check), I figured I'd reward him- so I on the fly made up the cubby and gas trap). Regarding the two urns in the chapel room, I couldn't find anything about there contents. However, there is supposed to be treasure hidden in some of the pews and some kind of gas trap, so I kind of moved the treasure from the pews into one of the urns, and the gas trap into the cubby that I made up under the altar.
I also tossed the hezrou demon in because I felt like the players were getting a little bored of poking around at stuff and needed something to kill. I added the sentient short sword as a treasure item because I wanted them to have something to rp with, and I thought it could lead to interesting stuff further down the road- It will probably try to push its owner into making some sub optimal choices a little later.
Anyhow, so far the adventure has not been living up to the hype of being super deadly. There were only three level 9 characters, and there were no casualties, nor did anyone come that close to death- except the first level NPC half orc fighter.
Hopefully, I'll see some casualties in the coming session.
Tomb of Horrors (Session #2)
Nudder (dwarf, rogue 1/battlerager barbarian 8)
Grey Rat (human, rogue 9)
Lolo (gnome, bard 9)
Flamma (fire genasi, wizard 9)
Kull (NPC, half orc, fighter 1)
The characters leave the tomb and make camp in a Leomund’s Tiny Hut conjured by Lolo. The next morning, another figure emerges from the mist- Flamma the genasi wizard. He sees the tiny hut sitting in front of the entrance to the tomb and recognizes it for what it is, so he knocks on the hemisphere. Lolo the gnome pops his head out with a mug of ale in hand. He, of course, recognizes the genasi as a member of the expedition and invites him in. While he is being introduced to the party, Nudder spends some time getting to know his new sword, which is a sentient item. The dwarf learns that it can communicate telepathically. He also learns that Red Mist is very “thirsty” and it tries to convince him to kill or injure one his companions so that it can drink its blood. Nudder decides to appease the blade by cutting Kull on the arm while the half orc is still sleeping. The damage isn’t major, but as the henchman’s arm begins to bleed, the blood forms into mist and floats to the sword, where it is seemingly absorbed into the blade. The rest of party witness this incident and are a little disturbed and concerned about the new weapon. Kull wakes up and is furious, but also terrified. His wound is minor and his boss Greyrat doesn’t seem willing to do anything to reprimand Nudder, and since Kull is no match for Nudder in combat, he has little recourse other than to suffer the humiliation. Flamma tries to convince Nudder to give him the blade, so that he can cast an identify spell on it to learn more about its properties, but Red Mist isn’t interested, and Nudder refuses to hand over his new weapon. Eventually, the adventurers stop worrying about the strange sword, and they decide to continue their exploration of the tomb.
They begin by exploring the bronze chest they found sticking out of the wall of the first hall (area 3). Flamma takes a look at it closely and notes that it has a latch on the top, but it opens from the bottom. They inspect the latch and notice a needle trap in it. Grey Rat pulls out his thieves tools and takes care of it. They open the latch, and the bottom of the chest swings up, but nothing falls out. They all back away even further from the chest, and then Flamma calls an unseen servant and orders it to reach up inside the chest. Of course, since it is invisible, they can’t tell what it does, but suddenly a pit trap opens up below the chest. Fortunately, none of the characters are caught in the trap, but the unseen servant is destroyed. When they take a look into it, they see it is 30’ deep and filled with spikes. Nudder uses his slippers of spider climb to crawl down the pit and inspect the bottom, but he finds nothing of interest in this pit. The activation of the trap discourages any further investigation of the chest, so the adventurers move on.
They return to the hall with murals of the hybrid animal men holding coloured orbs (area 10). They do some more investigation of the walls of the hall and discover some additional halls hidden behind illusionary sections of wall. The first hall they explore takes them to a room that has a statue of a four armed gargoyle (area 11), much like the one they previously encountered (in area 8). This one doesn’t animate and attack them, and one of its arms is broken off and is on the floor in front of it. They note that the palms of the hands of the three attached arms have small recesses in them, and they eventually learn that the recesses are perfectly sized to fit the gems on the collar of the gargoyle they had previously killed ( in area 8 during session 1). They experiment with putting some of the gems in the recesses, and discover that the hands crush them and turn them to dust. After having 4 of their gems crushed, they decide to not bother with anymore messing around with the weird statue.
Next, they try opening a couple of the doors they spotted on the west wall of the orb mural hall, but these appear to be only false doors, and they activate spear traps when opened. Again the heroes are clever, and had tied rope to the handles of the door, so that they could pull them open without standing in front of them.
Another section of illusionary hall takes them through a hall that they are forced to crawl through, and into a room with 3 chests (area 13). One chest is plated with gold, another silver, and the third one is oak. They inspect the chests, but see nothing amiss with them. Lolo pops the oak one open with a mage hand spell, which causes a giant skeleton to appear in the room. Lolo is standing in the room’s only doorway, Flamma is crouching behind him in the hall, and Greyrat, and Nudder are both near the chests. The giant skeleton is armoured and the size of a frost giant. In fact, it may once have been such a giant. Grey Rat is surprised, and the thing immediately starts slashing away at him with his scimitar. It nearly brings the rogue down. Fortunately, before it has a chance to finish him, Lolo reaches out, grabs his cloak and dimension doors him to safety in the orb mural hall. Here some magical healing can be administered. Flamma offers his aid by conjuring a magical bon fire under the thing’s crotch, and since the room isn’t overly large, it has little choice but to stand over the flames and be scorched. However, given that the creature is an undead skeleton, it doesn’t have any important bits to toast. Nudder goes into a rage and faces off against it with his new sentient magic sword (Red Mist). Red Mist complains about the creature having no blood to drink, and at first doesn’t prove overly effective, but eventually Nudder lands some of his attacks. Grey Rat, accompanied by Kull, rejoins the battle. Lolo lends support by inspiring them with offers of alcohol, and Flamma keeps blasting at the giant skeleton with scorching rays. The skeleton inflicts some pretty nasty damage on Nudder, and it slashes Kull across the stomach, which brings the half orc to the ground. He isn’t quite unconscious, but he decides to stay down and play possum. Finally, Kull sees that the creature is on the verge of being destroyed. He leaps to his feet and cleaves the horror down with his great axe; its animated bones plummet to the floor in heap. Kull makes sure to make it clear to Nudder that he was the one that destroyed the skeleton and not the dwarf.
Red Mist is frustrated that his first combat in centuries didn’t provide him blood to drink, and he telepathically suggests to Nudder that they kill the half orc. When Nudder refuses, the sword tries to force his hand. Nudder fails to resist and lunges at Kull. He knocks the wounded half orc to the ground and then drives the blade into his stomach. Blood flows from the wound and again turns to mist, which the sword absorbs. Lolo heals him before he dies, and Nudder regains his senses before striking a final killing thrust.
After some magical healing is administered, they continue to explore the chests. The oak chest appears empty. In the silver chest they find a small crystal box containing a ring of protection, which they liberate. Nudder opens the gold chest, and when does shadowy black tentacles burst out. They grab Nudder and pull him into the chest, as he is pulled into the chest, he has the misfortune of dropping Red Mist. The lid slams shut, and the chest starts to shake violently. Lolo quickly tosses the sword into his bag of holding. The adventurers open the lid of the chest to try to help Nudder. Inside Lolo see mostly shadowy blackness, but in it, the gnome catches glimpses of Nudder trying to free himself. Lolo prepares a spell, and when he suddenly sees Nudder’ hand thrust out of the black, the bard touches it and transfers an enlarge person spell to the dwarf. Nudder immediately grows to the size of an ogre, and bursts open the chest. He rolls out onto the floor, covered shadowy blackness. The blackness seems to have some sort of connection to the now broken chest because once it is out in the open and exposed to the light of Greyrat’s blazing rapier it fades away to nothingness. Nudder lays on the flag stones, alive, but hurting badly (extensive necrotic and pyschic damage). Nudder seems more upset about losing his magic sword than his wounds, but when he asks if his companions have seen it, they play dumb and claim they have no idea where it is. The dwarf senses that his telepathic bond with the blade is cut off (due to it being stored in an extra-dimensional space), and he soon gives up looking for it. Kull suggests that maybe he sat on it, and it went up his giant sized ass, which almost starts another fight between the two (Greyrat intervenes to keep the peace).
The heroes take a short rest to tend wounds, and allow Nudder to attune to the ring of protection. Once they have recovered, they head on their way, continuing their exploration of the tomb. They return to the chapel room (area 14) and give it a more thorough examination. They continue to avoid the arch filled with orange vapours, but they find that the pews open up and inside they find plenty of coin. They are clever and use rope and pitons to open the pews from a distance. This pays off when they discover that the final pew contains a deadly gas trap, but because of their caution they avoid being caught in it.
They also conduct a thorough examination of the walls of the room, and they note that their is a small, circular depression in the east wall that looks sized to hold a coin or gem. Lolo uses mage hand to load a coin into the slot, and it causes a heavy stone slab to lower down, revealing an opening in the wall. This leads them to the land of stairs that descends deeper into the tomb. Greyrat breaks out his ten fort pole and starts prodding the floor ahead of, while Nudder uses his slippers of spider climbing to move along the wall. Everyone else follows behind the pair. Soon they come to a series of doors. Nudder shoulders open the first door, and then Greyrat attaches a rope to his back pack and throws it on top of the area on the other side of the door, which triggers a pit trap. Like the pit they encountered in the entry hall, this pit is 30’ deep and filled with spikes. Over the course of the next few moments, they pass through a two more doors, and once again they find a spiked pit trap behind each door.
After successfully avoiding the pit traps, they follow the hall around a corner and continue down another long stretch of hall. This hall ends at yet another door, though this door is different from the previous doors, as it locked with a series of complex locks (area 16). They hear a muffled sound of someone calling out in distress from the far side of the door. Greyrat inspects the door and picks the locks. The hall keeps going beyond the door, but it appears to come to an end at some sort of pit 50’ further up the hall. It is very hot in the hall, and the sounds they heard prior to opening the door continue. They can be heard more clearly now and seem to be coming from the pit at the end of the hall. Nudder spider climbs along the wall, Lolo remains near the door, and Flamma and Greyrat move forward along the hall with Greyrat prodding away with his 10’ pole. As the pair near the end of hall, something terrible happens. The floor of the hall suddenly tilts dramatically downward creating a ramp that seeks to dump the adventurers into the pit, which appears to drop into a pool of lava (the entire floor of this stretch of hall is on fulcrum and is like a giant see saw). Flamma and Greyrat slide towards the pit, but Nudder moves along the wall with his enchanted slippers and reaches out with his arms to grab Greyrat and Flamma and help them climb back up the ramp past the fulcrum, which results in the ramp tipping back to its original position. Nudder then climbs along the wall to the pit and investigates it, but he doesn't see any sign of anyone in the pit. He does see that it drops some 40’ down to lava, which radiates massive heat that even the dwarf can’t tolerate for long. It seems that this entire area is strictly some elaborate death trap. Nudder feels like they missed something, but he’s not sure what. They carefully inspect the walls of the hall as they make their way back to the chapel, but they don’t find any secret doors. At this point, they decide to return to the entry hall and investigate it some more since they haven’t explored it to it’s end.
The session ends here.
Session #2 DMs Notes: Boo, still no character deaths! A couple of close calls, but the players have been playing fairly smart and cautious, so it's been tricky.
The Yawning Portal adventure seems to suggest that Tomb of Horrors is for high level PCs, and it's set as the final adventure in the series of adventures they selected. So far I haven't run into anything that has suggested the characters need to be particularly high level. Right now part of me wishes I'd had them start play with 7th level characters instead of 9th level- though the danger level does increase further in.
We'll see what happens next, finding the entrance to the next section of the dungeon is tricky, so I'm not sure if they will be able to figure out how to proceed. We'll see.
I mostly ran this session RAW. The only real change I made was in the chest room. In the adventure there is no chest that has shadowy magic tentacles that pull a victim into the chest. Instead, it releases a little swarm of poisonous snakes. That seemed a little dull to me, so I went for something a little different.
We have played a third session of this, which I'm hoping to get a journal up for soon, and it looks like we may fit a fourth session in this Friday.
Um PH, 0 PC demises? A little more cruelty from you might be in order... :)
He just offed 4 of us in the last few sessions of the Moonsea campaign, so I don't think that he's going soft on us...