About to run Tomb of Horrors, help please!

[the_brazenburn]

So, my party is 13th or 14th level, and they are about to venture into the Tomb of Horrors. I've never really run dangerous dungeon crawls before, so I'm not totally sure what to do. The campaign up to this point has been RP and combat-heavy, and I don't really have a clue of how to make the Tomb intimidating.

The party consists of a half-orc wolfbarian, a lizardfolk eldritch knight, and a dragonborn evocation wizard. They are occasionally joined by a human swashbuckler, but there's no guarantee that he'll be there.

Considering their low level and inappropriate party makeup, I'd planned to nerf it slightly, but I'm not sure how to do so without making it less intimidating. Considering that they may have no rogue, and certainly no healer, I'm not sure they'll make it out intact. Any thoughts?

[Avonar]

Make sure they know that the Tomb of Horrors is deadly. As in they will almost certainly die. Tomb is brutal and a lot of the dangers have nothing to do with level or build, you can just die for being unlucky. If both the players and characters are aware of this going in, then at least no one will have hard feelings.

If you don't want an entirely new party, this will probably be a campaign-ender.

[the_brazenburn]

Make sure they know that the Tomb of Horrors is deadly. As in they will almost certainly die. Tomb is brutal and a lot of the dangers have nothing to do with level or build, you can just die for being unlucky. If both the players and characters are aware of this going in, then at least no one will have hard feelings.

If you don't want an entirely new party, this will probably be a campaign-ender.

I'm cool with that. I might drag it out for one last session, but this will be among the last in the campaign.

Even if they die, I might have them battle it out with the Big Bad in Hell.

[Avonar]

I'm cool with that. I might drag it out for one last session, but this will be among the last in the campaign.

Even if they die, I might have them battle it out with the Big Bad in Hell.

Fair play. The other thing I'd warn of then would be to be careful of someone dying early and then just sitting around for the rest of the dungeon. You can die at the very beginning.

[Unoriginal]

Level 13-14 th makes the Tomb is significantly less deadly, though. And it's not low level either.


Anyway. To answer your question: to make it intimidating, don't pull the punches. The Tomb is unforgiving, and so shall the DM be.

The Tomb isn't scary like a haunted mansion or a cannibal's human flesh larder. It is not gross, or oppressing, or draw into some primal fear. It's scary because it's a brutal meatgrinder that will kill you for the dumbest things, and trick you, and make you feel like a fool.

The Tomb was in-universe built by someone who saw it as a convenient way to acquire what he considers energy drinks (ie, souls). The Lich is dispassionate about it, he just wants to troll you into killing yourself or perpetuating others' suffering thanks to your paranoia.


Imagine a Dark Souls area like Anor Londo, but without the bonfires, built by someone who had no strong feeling about it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The combination of tricky puzzles and legendarily deadly traps is a recipe for slow, frustrating gameplay broken only by the occasional arbitrary death. The two sessions of the Tomb I played were among my all-time least favorite, and that was with a good DM.

[BLC1975]

I'm currently about 1/3 of the way into running The Sunless Citadel in Tales From The Yawning Portal...I have read through the Tomb Of Horrors module and it looks really nasty indeed. Should be fun!

[Sigreid]

Just make sure the party is game for a murder machine. If they aren't all on board, do something else.

[sithlordnergal]

So, I played in Tomb of Horrors. My DM was good, but due to how optimized our party was we had zero trouble with any of the traps. The Rogue has such a high Passive Perception, and such a high Thieve's Tools check that he could not fail. And when we reached the Demi-Lich, my Paladin/Sorcerer literally killed it on turn one. My suggestions would be:

1) Make sure you let the party know that this is a deadly mission.

2) Increase DCs as needed. If your Rogue has a 25 passive perception and a minimum 30 Theive's Tools roll, increase the DCs to make it a bit more dangerous. In fact, make some of the pit traps undetectable by Passive Perception.

3) Increase Demilich HP if you think your party can cheese the fight.

4) throw in more random encounters to drain party resources. I know Tomb of Horrors is built for skill checks, but when we reached the Demilich the Paladin/Sorcerer had used no spell slots except to haste himself before the fight fully started. Meaning I was able to hit him with not 3, but 4 max smites because of Quicken Spell Green Flame Blade.

[Kurt Kurageous]

ToH is an "adventure" like Deck of Many Things is a "magic item." It's a very old very bad joke told at the players expense.

ToH is a very early concept by Gygax, before the concept of "balance" was scientifically quantified, when level 35 characters could be very very powerful by virtue of the magic items they accumulated, by the world changing spells they could cast. 5e doesn't even have characters of that power. Can you take out a god? High level AD&D characters could. And then STILL perish in ToH. Because of one wrong irrecoverable decision. ToH is the Running Man game show.

ToH relies waaay too heavy on rogue skills, does not give every class a chance to shine, and is an unpleasant series of unfortunate events strung together. It's what one called a "killer dungeon" by a "killer DM" on a power trip. I imagine it was converted to 5e to "complete the record" of 5e. I use it as a reference on what not to do when designing a dungeon, and a testimony to the fact that Gygax may have made the game, but we the players/DMs of now own it and run it best.

[Unoriginal]

ToH is an "adventure" like Deck of Many Things is a "magic item." It's a very old very bad joke told at the players expense.

ToH is a very early concept by Gygax, before the concept of "balance" was scientifically quantified, when level 35 characters could be very very powerful by virtue of the magic items they accumulated, by the world changing spells they could cast. 5e doesn't even have characters of that power. Can you take out a god? High level AD&D characters could. And then STILL perish in ToH. Because of one wrong irrecoverable decision. ToH is the Running Man game show.

ToH relies waaay too heavy on rogue skills, does not give every class a chance to shine, and is an unpleasant series of unfortunate events strung together. It's what one called a "killer dungeon" by a "killer DM" on a power trip. I imagine it was converted to 5e to "complete the record" of 5e. I use it as as a reference on what not to do when designing a dungeon.

To be clear, Gygax wasn't on a power trip when he wrote that dungeon, it was specifically made for a game event where the goal was to see how far you could go before getting crushed.

[Theodoxus]

So, I played in Tomb of Horrors. My DM was good, but due to how optimized our party was we had zero trouble with any of the traps. The Rogue has such a high Passive Perception, and such a high Thieve's Tools check that he could not fail. And when we reached the Demi-Lich, my Paladin/Sorcerer literally killed it on turn one. My suggestions would be:

1) Make sure you let the party know that this is a deadly mission.

2) Increase DCs as needed. If your Rogue has a 25 passive perception and a minimum 30 Theive's Tools roll, increase the DCs to make it a bit more dangerous. In fact, make some of the pit traps undetectable by Passive Perception.

3) Increase Demilich HP if you think your party can cheese the fight.

4) throw in more random encounters to drain party resources. I know Tomb of Horrors is built for skill checks, but when we reached the Demilich the Paladin/Sorcerer had used no spell slots except to haste himself before the fight fully started. Meaning I was able to hit him with not 3, but 4 max smites because of Quicken Spell Green Flame Blade.

I thought you might have been talking about the game I ran... until the paladin/sorcerer part.

I heartily agree. In fact, I made the save DC on the sleep gas a 35 - simply because the party, who was level 14, had a paladin. The lowest passive perception of the group was 20. They saw all the traps.

The next time I run it (if ever), I'll make certain to have every trap covered in an illusion. No passive perceptions to spot them. First, you'd need to investigate, then actively perceive them. Yeah, it'll slow the game to a crawl, but at least there's a chance the traps will actually be sprung.

I never saw it as particularly deadly. There are 2 traps that are "you're dead, no kidding, haha" - a sphere of annihilation and the sleep trap -> rolling "rocks fall, everyone dies". Everything else does piddly damage against 14th level average hit points. (And of the two deadly traps the first is pretty obvious if you're even moderately cautious and the second is off the main path and only encountered if the party has a completion fetish.)

Acererak in ToA was a much tougher fight, and more interesting, IMO. Demiliches are boring. It took my party 2 rounds to wipe him out. I almost wish they'd left after the false lich. They do too, probably, since that fight actually took them 4 rounds to complete...

[djreynolds]

If some of the traps and puzzles are... strange and in all honesty can be confusing.
Change them around if you need to.

Also players will purposefully build perception radar stations. And spot everything.

So find ways of pushing and hounding them, just to legitamely give them some disadvantage on perception , so they cannot just bypass all the traps.

Otherwise it may not be... much fun.

Also, have some of the roaming monsters set off traps.... accidentally

Good luck, also play to certain points in the map and call it a night, so you can be really prepared as a DM for the sessions.