Hardest Module/Campaign ever?

[Sheogoroth]

What, in your opinion, are the hardest modules/Campaigns ever(PF and 3rd party sources welcome.)
Considering challenge as a combination of imbalanced combat, length, mercilessness, proclivity to toss PCs into unforgiving situations, strategy, befuddlement, and whatever other criteria that contributed to you considering one to be difficult.

[Amphetryon]

In before Tomb of Horrors, which in its original form is a giant TPK waiting to happen in the form of "Guess what Garry's thinking!" That said, it was designed as a party-killer for a Con.

[Sheogoroth]

We ran tomb of horrors with three TPKS, it was trauma and we were left with the haunting words, "That wasn't all of it." as our DM was packing up.

But I was a little disappointed at the lack of story and that it was, after all, just a dungeon crawl. I think there is more to making a difficult campaign than 'you all die, no save' moments.

[Chaosvii7]

Appropriate to the module's suggested levels, Dawn of The Scarlet Sun (http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO9500-6_500.jpeg) is an insanely hard challenge, even moreso in Pathfinder Society, in which you can run it to get cool rewards, but they're almost impossible to get without proper setup.

The best part? This was the module they gave out for Free RPG Day to introduce players to the game.

[Keneth]

Yep, Tomb of Horrors pretty much fits the definition. I think it depends in large part on the DM though, since adventures are generally designed to be playable by an average party and ran by an average DM. When I run campaigns, unprepared characters die, there is no mercy and no excuses. :smallbiggrin:

[Tvtyrant]

Red Hand of Doom in an E6 restriction is rough. Your enemies scale over time, but your party largely doesn't.

[the_david]

Shackled City is tough, until you find out that it was written for a group of 6 players with above average stats. (Roll 4d6 drop lowest 6 times, repeat twice and pick the best set out of 3)

Only $30 at paizo.com

[Razanir]

Tomb of Horrors is dangerous enough that you can TPK before even entering

[Nagukuk]

Im going to hearkon back to the olden days of yore ... the Tomb was definately difficult, but we navigated it with out a total loss. I cannot remember if or how many died, but i do remember almost being annihilated at the green devil face.

But Castle Raven Loft claimed ALL who entered there.

If some how you over came the traps beasites and Stroud ... you stumble to the exit with what ever loots you could find all beat to hell ,..... as you near the door 4 ancient red dragon statues breathed fire on the group ... 88 hitpoints per breath save for half 176 damage IF you save 4 times...


and

Raven Loft -- Thought of Darkness

was even worse ... we played this one as a reunion type game "get the gang back together" and such. We brought very powerful characters to this event, and from the get go the DM had to fudge all kinds of stuff to keep us rolling. The initial Drow spider riders plus duergar whooped many characters. plus later on the Vampire Mindflayers with 4+ tentacles draining some thing like 2 or 1-4 levels per tentacle plus having psionics on top of that ... yea ... and back then there was no +4 armor enchant to make you immune to all that lvl drain.


Then there was The Lich Lords which if run well would murder most groups whole sale also. 5 Liches plus nasty LTs and mooks ... you should have seen the "barbarian's" (read Fighter's) face when he rolled a nat 20 with his vorpal weapon on the one Lich and it was UNAFFECTED ... as it needed a +5 weapon to damage it, period:smallbiggrin:

[joca4christ]

Shackled City is tough, until you find out that it was written for a group of 6 players with above average stats. (Roll 4d6 drop lowest 6 times, repeat twice and pick the best set out of 3)

Only $30 at paizo.com

Eek! Playing Shackled City with TWO players. (Hoping to add more.) using PF rules, so this may help?

[AttilaTheGeek]

Eek! Playing Shackled City with TWO players. (Hoping to add more.) using PF rules, so this may help?

Just tristalt it (like gestalt (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm), but three) and give everyone 35 point buy.

(partially kidding. That still might not make up for the action economy loss).

[Soranar]

World's largest dungeon can be challenging due to the problems of multiple encounters and sleeping, one of the few times playing a warlock is warranted since finding spells/scrolls is quite difficult (so a focused specialist wizard is out) and even a sorcerer tends to run out of spells.

The nature of the dungeon also limits what equipement you can use/find (flying is mostly useless in it due to a lack of high ceilings) so you can't access a magic mart whenever you want.

All in all it's a fairly tough campaign.

[Private]

Rappan Athuk (http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/rappan.html) is, so far, the most challenging (and unfair) "Adventure" we've ever played. It is more of a straight dungeon crawl, but We fought a CR 16 encounter at level 7 and a CR 17 encounter at level 8. According to the DM there is a lot more where that came from, and we apparently haven't even found a lot of the worst enemies on the levels we've visited.

That being said, it is pretty good at humbling the Munchkin in me.

[Za'hynie Laya]

For me it was the Forgotten Realms: City of the Spider Queen. Granted it was 3.0, but we played an updated/revised adventure. (I'm told some encounters were nerfed in the conversion.)
The save or die traps were tough at the start, but the templated monsters added insult to injury. Some early boss encounters were encountered twice! (The main villain, Irae would rez her slain elite minions only to send them back after us.)
After the first quarter of the mod was finished, Irae began scrying on the party and nobody in the party noticed. Soon we began encountering monsters well versed in our party tactics. She would call in fiendish support to teleport into combat while other minions were chipping away at our resources.
The mod contained a lot of detail & story. Most of the party survived the final battle in the end.

[Vknight]

There is this Pathfinder module.
That is super long and slow to trek through with the sheer amount of encounters and places one needs to go.
But to add insult to injury.

There is a riddle...
The answer?
In another module not connected to that one