How difficult is the 3.5 version of Tomb of Horrors?

[gadren]

I am considering running WotC’s 3.5 conversion of Tomb of Horrors for my existing party of level 9 PCs. (But they are honestly about as powerful as level 11 PCs, at least. Major munchkins.)
3.5 ToH says it’s for level 9, and I was curious if anyone had played it, and how hard they found it to be?

[Drynwyn]

I've GM'd the 3.5 Tomb of Horrors a couple of times! The answer depends on three questions.

1: How much have your players optimized their best Search and Disable Device check?

Skill checks are one of the easiest things to turbopump in 3.5, relative to the baseline designer expectation (some classic min-max builds are based on this fact- anything that you can get to scale with a skill check, you can probably get the skill check a lot higher than was intended.) If your players have a +4 stat bonus and max skill ranks, they'll be able to hit the search/DD DC often, but not often enough to be truly safe from traps.


2: How much have your players optimized their saving throws?

Most of the tomb elements that will simply kill you in the original version of the module have been retrofitted to allow a saving throw. (The only exception I recall off the top of my head is the famous devil's mouth.) The DC's are high, but not so high as to be outside the reach of 'make 80+ percent of the time' for a dedicated minmaxer. If your party has great saving throws across the board, I'd consider ticking up the DC's of the various trap saving throws by 3 to 8 points- I recommend aiming for a 50 percent 'kill rate'.

3: To what extent do you, as the GM, allow high Search/Disable Device to protect from traps?
This is possibly the most important question on here, because it determines to what extent (1) will apply. 3.5's trap rules leave a lot to the GM. Generally, there are three schools of handling it, with variations.
1- Charitable- You say you search for traps. You roll your search skill. If you succeed, you find a trap, if you fail, you don't find the trap. If you fail by 5 or more, you set off the trap while searching for it. If you don't find any traps, you can do 10 foot pole pokies and ball bearings and what not, with them setting off traps as logically appropriate.
2- Uncharitable- You say you search for traps. You describe how, in particular, you're searching for traps. You roll search. If you succeed, you detect any traps that your method would have detected without setting them off. You set off any traps that your method would set off, as appropriate.
3- Bonus saving throw- You proceed through the dungeon. If you do something that would set off a trap, your GM calls for a search check- if you succeed, you spot the trap at the last minute and can abort the thing.

I actually got the best result by.... largely ignoring Search and Disable Device completely and going full old-school 'describe how you interact with the environment to hopefully avoid setting off traps'.

That said, if your party has a dedicated rogue, factotum, or other 'trapfinding' character hoping for their day in the spotlight, that may not be a good call. You may wish to use the charitable method, but tie grants hints to trap function for Search or Spot checks rather than 'you have found the trap', or use the uncharitable method if you really want to play up the lethality of the tomb. I don't recommend the bonus saving throw method for the Tomb- it thrives too much on player paranoia while interacting with the environment.

And, of course, the Tomb does have quite a few potentially fatal hazards that Search and Disable Device don't work on- so you should get a few close calls regardless if saving throws are in order.

[Kurald Galain]

I was curious if anyone had played it, and how hard they found it to be?
I've played the 1E/2E tomb (which is absurdly and randomly lethal) and the 4E tomb (which plays like an ordinary dungeon and is pretty much a cakewalk), and have read the 3E one (which appears to be right in the middle of the other two). Still, a lot depends on how nasty or lenient the GM is.

[Crake]

Tomb of horrors was never difficult, it was just arbitrary

[gadren]

I've GM'd the 3.5 Tomb of Horrors a couple of times! The answer depends on three questions.

1: How much have your players optimized their best Search and Disable Device check?

Skill checks are one of the easiest things to turbopump in 3.5, relative to the baseline designer expectation (some classic min-max builds are based on this fact- anything that you can get to scale with a skill check, you can probably get the skill check a lot higher than was intended.) If your players have a +4 stat bonus and max skill ranks, they'll be able to hit the search/DD DC often, but not often enough to be truly safe from traps.


2: How much have your players optimized their saving throws?

Most of the tomb elements that will simply kill you in the original version of the module have been retrofitted to allow a saving throw. (The only exception I recall off the top of my head is the famous devil's mouth.) The DC's are high, but not so high as to be outside the reach of 'make 80+ percent of the time' for a dedicated minmaxer. If your party has great saving throws across the board, I'd consider ticking up the DC's of the various trap saving throws by 3 to 8 points- I recommend aiming for a 50 percent 'kill rate'.

3: To what extent do you, as the GM, allow high Search/Disable Device to protect from traps?
This is possibly the most important question on here, because it determines to what extent (1) will apply. 3.5's trap rules leave a lot to the GM. Generally, there are three schools of handling it, with variations.
1- Charitable- You say you search for traps. You roll your search skill. If you succeed, you find a trap, if you fail, you don't find the trap. If you fail by 5 or more, you set off the trap while searching for it. If you don't find any traps, you can do 10 foot pole pokies and ball bearings and what not, with them setting off traps as logically appropriate.
2- Uncharitable- You say you search for traps. You describe how, in particular, you're searching for traps. You roll search. If you succeed, you detect any traps that your method would have detected without setting them off. You set off any traps that your method would set off, as appropriate.
3- Bonus saving throw- You proceed through the dungeon. If you do something that would set off a trap, your GM calls for a search check- if you succeed, you spot the trap at the last minute and can abort the thing.

I actually got the best result by.... largely ignoring Search and Disable Device completely and going full old-school 'describe how you interact with the environment to hopefully avoid setting off traps'.

That said, if your party has a dedicated rogue, factotum, or other 'trapfinding' character hoping for their day in the spotlight, that may not be a good call. You may wish to use the charitable method, but tie grants hints to trap function for Search or Spot checks rather than 'you have found the trap', or use the uncharitable method if you really want to play up the lethality of the tomb. I don't recommend the bonus saving throw method for the Tomb- it thrives too much on player paranoia while interacting with the environment.

And, of course, the Tomb does have quite a few potentially fatal hazards that Search and Disable Device don't work on- so you should get a few close calls regardless if saving throws are in order.

Thank you, this is a very helpful answer.

[awa]

how much minionmancy do they have because the best method to detect traps is with a vast horde of disposable minions

[Eldan]

Yeah, that. Any way to summon 20+ creatures invalidates 90% of the Tomb.

[animorte]

Anybody else remember how this became the reason every party needs a "10-foot pole."

[Eldan]

11 ft. pole, actually. The 10 ft. pole is a trap, since it was argued that a ten foot pole would place your arms inside a 10 ft. radius around the trap.

[Thurbane]

As already mentioned, it really comes down to how well the party can deal with traps, and how good their saves are.

It's a module that is very heavy on traps and save or suck/die effects, and relatively light on combat (which is a beef I had with this module right from 1E - oh, you're a Fighter? Prepare to do virtually nothing for the whole session).

Also, having disposable minions (Summon Elemental feat etc.) is going to be invaluable here. March the hapless minions ahead to either activate and neutralize traps/effects, or at the very least, give you advance warning.

[Eldan]

If you know you're going to the tomb, buy a herd of sheep.

[SillySymphonies]

3.5's trap rules leave a lot to the GM. Generally, there are three schools of handling it, with variations.
This doesn't seem to be supported by the actual rules: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/search.htm; https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm ... :smallconfused:

[Akal Saris]

I ran it a few years ago for a duo at L7 who both typically make highly optimized characters, and I think Drynwyn has the right of it: the difficulty will vary significantly depending on how flexible you are as a DM in allowing PCs to roll a million search rolls as they inch through the dungeon.

Personally I was very "charitable" to the players, especially since one player built his character around trap-finding, so I just said '1 roll is fine for any room or hallway, let's not get too bogged down with traps, especially because there's a thousand in this place and most are totally pointless.' (my favorite trap was a skeleton that springs out of a trapped chest like a surprise snake-in-a-can)

My PCs duo'd it just fine. The only two combat encounters that I remember were difficult was the 4-armed gargoyle (right at the start of the module!) and Acererak himself. They died once when they found a room that was basically a localized earthquake effect, so they laid down for a free back massage, only for a pair of green slimes to fall on them and kill them.

[Fizban]

I1- Charitable- You say you search for traps. You roll your search skill. If you succeed, you find a trap, if you fail, you don't find the trap. If you fail by 5 or more, you set off the trap while searching for it.

While this might sound reasonable considering how some other skills have penalties for failing by 5 or more, I've never heard of this in regards to Search. Re-checking the srd, as linked, I think you've just conflated the Disable Device rule with the Search rule.


As for the OP, you might want to look into those rules on how long it takes to do the searching: 1 round per roll per 5' cube adds up fast in 3d spaces, but the game does indeed tell you exactly how slow things should go if your players claim they want to search every inch of the floor (walls, ceiling, etc) X times before taking a step anywhere. Also note that while the core rule from the srd does not list a range, Rules Compendium says that you must be within 10' of the object or surface to be searched- which naturally solves the ability to search at infinite range while also making it possible to telekinetically rifle through someone's backpack. With the 10' range you get one step per 2 searches, so you're going at 1/3 of walking speed, in the narrowest corridor.

And if they are searching every square of every surface, twice, etc, you'd be well within your rights to rig up concentration vs boredom rolls for lapses in attention after some amount of time.

While I haven't run or read Tomb of Horrors, I did run some of World's Largest Dungeon, which has its own fairly ridiculous level of traps. The party brought a dedicated trapfinder, taking 10 was not allowed (because traps), and in the interest of sanity they mostly just searched twice on any door or container unless an area seemed suspicious. The bigger problem was things like having a fireball trap on a door, which is only mentioned in the room on the other side of the door, because WLD is a mess.

[SillySymphonies]

While this might sound reasonable considering how some other skills have penalties for failing by 5 or more, I've never heard of this in regards to Search. Re-checking the srd, as linked, I think you've just conflated the Disable Device rule with the Search rule.

taking 10 was not allowed (because traps)
Shouldn't taking 10 on the Search check be allowed, because no such penalty applies on the Search check?



And if they are searching every square of every surface, twice, etc, you'd be well within your rights to rig up concentration vs boredom rolls for lapses in attention after some amount of time.
This doesn't seem to be supported by the actual rules: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/concentration.htm. :smallwink:
(And if it is to prevent boredom at the table, just assume they are taking 10 on their Search checks: saves a whole lot of die rolls right there. :smallbiggrin:)

[Drynwyn]

While this might sound reasonable considering how some other skills have penalties for failing by 5 or more, I've never heard of this in regards to Search. Re-checking the srd, as linked, I think you've just conflated the Disable Device rule with the Search rule.


Indeed, you're correct- I haven't run 3.5 in a while.


This doesn't seem to be supported by the actual rules: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/search.htm; https://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm ... :smallconfused:

It's not, no. The thing is, the 3.5 trap rules, by RAW are... pretty non-interactive, and (probably as a result), I've never played in or run a game that strictly uses Search and Disable Device only as defined by RAW (much like how very few games use the Diplomacy or Bluff rules strict as written). The approaches I described are just how I've seen it run, and run it myself, in practice- and I certainly wouldn't recommend adhering strictly to 'roll as many times as you like per 5 foot square spending a full round action for each roll' for any intended spin on the tomb.

[vasilidor]

Best way to simulate the tomb in any edition is to roll a d6 every time you enter a room.
On a 1 your character dies. There is 20 rooms.

[Zanos]

how much minionmancy do they have because the best method to detect traps is with a vast horde of disposable minions
IIRC, this is how one of the OG players cleared the Tomb. Robilar was Evil; he brought a bunch of Orc flunkies into the tomb with him, and offed one of them himself when he refused to advance further into the dungeon. Once he figured out that Gary was running a trap based adventure, he just wouldn't interact with anything suspicious and grapped all the available treasure and ran away.

It's funny how maligned the strategy of having your minions set off traps for you is by DMs these days.


It's not, no. The thing is, the 3.5 trap rules, by RAW are... pretty non-interactive, and (probably as a result), I've never played in or run a game that strictly uses Search and Disable Device only as defined by RAW (much like how very few games use the Diplomacy or Bluff rules strict as written). The approaches I described are just how I've seen it run, and run it myself, in practice- and I certainly wouldn't recommend adhering strictly to 'roll as many times as you like per 5 foot square spending a full round action for each roll' for any intended spin on the tomb.
Difference in style then. I would say that knowing the correct method to look for traps without setting off traps is part of the skill of searching for traps. I certainly wouldn't require a player describe how he uses his longsword and autofail his attack rolls if he does something I didn't think is a valid attack.

[SillySymphonies]

Shouldn't taking 10 on the Search check be allowed, because no such penalty applies on the Search check?
Shouldn't taking 10 20 on the Search check be allowed, because no such penalty applies on the Search check? Just take 2 minutes per 5-foot square. :smallbiggrin:



The approaches I described are just how I've seen it run, and run it myself, in practice- and I certainly wouldn't recommend adhering strictly to 'roll as many times as you like per 5 foot square spending a full round action for each roll' for any intended spin on the tomb.

Best way to simulate the tomb in any edition is to roll a d6 every time you enter a room.
On a 1 your character dies. There is 20 rooms.

Difference in style then. I would say that knowing the correct method to look for traps without setting off traps is part of the skill of searching for traps. I certainly wouldn't require a player describe how he uses his longsword and autofail his attack rolls if he does something I didn't think is a valid attack.
Key words being 'intended spin': we're meshing together 3.5 (a player-friendly experience) and Tomb of Horrors (a player-hostile experience): https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html. :smallwink:

[Bavarian itP]

Best way to simulate the tomb in any edition is to roll a d6 every time you enter a room.
On a 1 your character dies. There is 20 rooms.

That doesn't sound like much fun, oooooh, I get it.

[rel]

In addition to the aforementioned skill checks and minions beating a lot of the traps, the dungeon is decidedly old school in its assumptions; a party of human adventurers creeping through the dungeon with ropes, 1- foot poles and lamp oil.

Esoteric build choices like necropolitan, psionics, wearing an antimagic torc or relying heavily on variant movement modes can flat out invalidate much of the challenge.

[vasilidor]

In the version I had for the dungeon it said any time the players thought of something clever to keep from dying, punish them. Make it backfire and kill a character. I stopped reading it at that point and decided this was not a dungeon for me to run or play.

[SillySymphonies]

In the version I had for the dungeon it said any time the players thought of something clever to keep from dying, punish them. Make it backfire and kill a character.
What.



I stopped reading it at that point and decided this was not a dungeon for me to run or play.
❤

[icefractal]

Shouldn't taking 10 20 on the Search check be allowed, because no such penalty applies on the Search check? Just take 2 minutes per 5-foot square. :smallbiggrin:That is in fact possible, if you've got enough time.

I'd also say that not only is take-10 possible on the searching, it's possible on the disarming (assuming you're not trying to do it in combat or while another hazard is occurring). "Only if there are no negative results for failing" is the condition for take-20, not take-10. The latter just requires a non-distracting environment. And yes, for a seasoned dungeon-delver a possibly-deadly (but currently empty) corridor is a non-distracting environment.


TBH, I always find the "stop being a wuss and disarm traps the macho way - one roll, no extra prep" to be fairly silly as a critique. If you look at bomb squads, probably the closest thing to trap disarming that's common IRL, they take all the precautions they can.

They evacuate the area first. Then they take-20 on everything they can, do the rest in a methodical way that seems like a perfect example of take-10 to me, get as many bonuses as possible to the check (assistance, special tools, looking at blueprints, etc), and use minions if available (bomb disposal robots).

So yeah, unless you're playing a notably reckless character, it's entirely IC to get any advantage possible when dealing with potentially deadly traps. If that results in less exciting gameplay, then maybe it's an indication that traps just sitting by themselves in an empty corridor/room aren't good obstacles. You want exciting traps that need to be handled by the seat of the PCs pants? Put them in a battle, or a chase scene - somewhere that time is naturally very limited and things are already somewhat chaotic.

[Eldan]

What.

❤

It even gives a few examples. Like, if anyone tries to go ethereal and just phase through treasure rooms, you should just spawn a horde of ethereal plane monsters and kill them.

[Kurald Galain]

So yeah, unless you're playing a notably reckless character, it's entirely IC to get any advantage possible when dealing with potentially deadly traps. If that results in less exciting gameplay, then maybe it's an indication that traps just sitting by themselves in an empty corridor/room aren't good obstacles.
Right. Traps can be interesting if they are in-character puzzles that can be interacted with in a variety of ways; not if they are "roll for X or you take Y damage". I'd say 1E dungeons are mostly the former (although it could be that the memorable 1E dungeons are that, and TOH almost certainly isn't); 3E and later dungeons are almost exclusively the latter.

[rel]

1e gameplay had a baked in assumption of meaningful resource management between encounters. HP tax traps, encumbrance, spell slots, rations and light and other mechanics fed into that idea.

A large part of the expected gameplay was a minigame of controlling your resources, a process that involved tradeoffs and meaningful choices throughout. The closest modern equivalent being the character creation minigame.

As the game evolved, the resource management minigame was phased out, largely because the restrictions required for it to work were phased out. However vestiges of those old systems like encumbrance, traps that do little more than tax the PC's health for walking down a corridor and tracking ammunition still exist.

Without the underlying minigames and systems, these unconnected mechanics no longer add interest to a game session and simply slow things down with meaningless busywork.

[vasilidor]

It even gives a few examples. Like, if anyone tries to go ethereal and just phase through treasure rooms, you should just spawn a horde of ethereal plane monsters and kill them.

The one I had said that in it.

[Aquillion]

Right. Traps can be interesting if they are in-character puzzles that can be interacted with in a variety of ways; not if they are "roll for X or you take Y damage". I'd say 1E dungeons are mostly the former (although it could be that the memorable 1E dungeons are that, and TOH almost certainly isn't); 3E and later dungeons are almost exclusively the latter.
I mean, the ToH is certainly memorable... just for the wrong reasons, at least from a game-design standpoint.

(Although I guess it depends what you want. Having one Tomb of Horrors notionally exist so we can discuss it is not a bad thing. Using it as a direct inspiration or guide for how to make dungeons, on the other hand, would be a very bad thing.)