Death House at level 8

[Redhood101]

I'm possibly running a Halloween oneshot for a group I'm playing in as a guest DM. I was thinking of doing the Death House. I ran it once before at level 1-3 and even if it ended in a TPK it was a ton of fun and I think it would be fun to run again as a random oneshot. The slight issue I have is if the group would want to use the same characters we have been for the campaign which are level 8.

I figure my two options are to have people make new level 1 PCs and just be a totally random group of adventurers. Or scale up the enemies and traps in the Death House to match level 8 PCs. I'm just not sure how I would do that. Level 8 players are a lot less squishy than level 1s and I feel like it could take away from the tension.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I'm possibly running a Halloween oneshot for a group I'm playing in as a guest DM. I was thinking of doing the Death House. I ran it once before at level 1-3 and even if it ended in a TPK it was a ton of fun and I think it would be fun to run again as a random oneshot. The slight issue I have is if the group would want to use the same characters we have been for the campaign which are level 8.

I figure my two options are to have people make new level 1 PCs and just be a totally random group of adventurers. Or scale up the enemies and traps in the Death House to match level 8 PCs. I'm just not sure how I would do that. Level 8 players are a lot less squishy than level 1s and I feel like it could take away from the tension.

Go with your plan A. The options available to 8th level characters would negate much of the built in challenges (misty step, blowing away undead instead of just turning them, etc.). You'd have to rewrite, and that will get you out of a good ratio of fun to work.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I agree with Kurt-- roll up new characters. By level 8, the main party will probably be too jaded to be really scared and have too many options to effectively trap. Jumping back to 1st, on the other hand, instantly gives them a feeling of relative powerlessness (important for horror) and lets you unfairly murder characters without worrying about emotional or narrative attachment.