Awesome Fun in the Tomb of Horrors (NOW WITH SUNDAES!)

[Fifth Element]

Every year in April, I need to take time off DMing due to my workload as an accountant. So the other DM in my group decided to run Tomb of Horrors for a few sessions to fill the time until we can go back to the regular campaign. We're using 4E characters and rules, but the original version of the module, with only the monster and trap stats converted to 4E. We each made four or five disposable characters at 14th level.

We played the first session last weekend, and had a blast. We managed to avoid the trap in one of the fake entrances, but the second fake entrance claimed the first character death. Once inside the real entryway, we managed to avoid doing anything stupid and found the hidden door, but the next fight claimed the second character (the same player that lost the first one!) when I tried to teleport her and she reappeared as a pile of shredded flesh. Fun!

A third character died in the same fight, with a mundane cause of death (buckets o' damage). Three characters down in four hours of playing time, and we ended up in a room with about a dozen choices of where to go next. I'm all atwitter with anticipation.

Why am I posting this? Sometimes I get tired of all the negativity, and wonder why people don't post positive things more often. So here we go.

 

[amerigoV]

Why am I posting this? Sometimes I get tired of all the negativity, and wonder why people don't post positive things more often. So here we go.

Being positive!?!? Mixing editions all Willie-Nillie
like they are some sort of toppings on gaming sundae? We don't want or need your kind 'round here! Acererak take you!

 

[Fifth Element]

Being positive!?!? Mixing editions all Willie-Nillie
like they are some sort of toppings on gaming sundae? We don't want or need your kind 'round here! Acererak take you!

Hmm...are you saying I'm doing it wrong? Huh.

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

"she KNOWS it's a multi-pass.."

ahem, anyway, I remember those fond days of drudging around inside the ToH - except at the time our characters were years old and anything BUT disposable... descpicable Sphere's of Anihalation...

 

[Rhun]

I remember losing many a character within the Tomb of Horrors. Great times!

 

[Scott DeWar]

Scotley ran that module here as 3.5. My character died twice.

 

[kitsune9]

Why am I posting this? Sometimes I get tired of all the negativity, and wonder why people don't post positive things more often. So here we go.

I enjoyed running Return to the Tomb of Horrors from the 2nd edition box set, but I converted for epic 3e. That was a lot of fun.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Probably my all-time favorite adventure, even though the only time I played it was back in the day, and I died a bunch, and it was hopeless and unfair, and we eventually gave up in frustration. . . .

 

[Thunderfoot]

I remember running a 1st edition crawl in honor of Gary's death 3 years back. I trapped 3/4 of the party in the pit of no return (the one with the flip-top lid) and the 1/4 that were trying to figure a way out wouldn't activate the button on the secret door for fear of slaying themselves. After 20 minutes I called TPK and did the dance of DM joy... The players were not happy but I felt Gary was having a great giggle over the whole affair from wherever.... Keep killing those flesh bags, I mean adventurers.

 

[Fifth Element]

We had the second session of this last night.

The conceit to allow us to bring in replacement characters when we have a death is that there is a whole party of retainers and followers camped outside the Tomb, who can provide any mundane supplies we need as well as replacements PCs. This time, two of our party got caught in a "strip you naked of all equipment" trap and had to trudge back out to grab some basic armor and weapons to continue, much to the delight of the assembled masses.

10 minutes later, these same two characters fell into another "strip you naked trap" and had to repeat the walk of shame. That was the belly-laugh of the night.

We solved the puzzle of the gargoyle statue, and later got blowed up real good by an evil altar. Each character was down and dying, and making death saves. Finally one managed a natural 20 (while on two strikes, remember we're using 4E rules) and then revived my character, who was the only healer in the party. We managed to avoid any character deaths from that, though most of us were carrying two strikes.

The lava trap, on the other hand, claimed an imprudent hafling rogue and an elven ranger who had nothing left to lose (he had lost all his equipment, used up all of his healing surges, and had two failed death saves - talk about walking wounded). Those were the only two real deaths of the session though.

We defeated a disguised zombie and found a goodly amount of treasure, but knew there was more to be had. Finally meticulous searching revealed (yet another) secret door, one which we hope leads to glory.

So far:

I'm still on my first character, a half-elven hybrid Cleric-Fighter who's heavily muticlassed into Wizard (he's a 4E version of a C/F/MU I had in AD&D). He actually works remarkably well mechanically. I'm kinda thinking he might actually survive the whole way through, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Alyson was the imprudent halfling rogue, and she's now on a human cleric.

Tanya has lost two characters, both in the first session; she's our last remaining halfling rogue at the moment.

Jacen has also lost two characters, and is now a dwarven artificer. He's creating characters by picking a mini out of a bag and using the CB to create a quick version of whatever it is.

Sean hasn't lost any characters by accident, but being unhappy with his first decided to sacrifice her to bring in another. This second character swiftly underwent an unwanted gender and alignment change.