Tomb of the Nine Gods “false tomb”

[Dmdork]

Room 20 is a false tomb where the only way out is to make a dc25 str athletics check. Water breathing doesn’t work cuz it’s not water, and u can’t ‘port’ out. The check out the shaft is really the only way out. And when u die in the campaign, you’re dead forever. Too harsh. Does anyone have any suggestions to make it scary but not so deadly? Or should I just suck it up and play it as is, which is what I’m leaning towards.....

[No brains]

What's the exact nature of the trap? I'm assuming it is something like quicksand or a whirlpool that drags a PC under.

Working off of that guess, you could lower the DC if the PCs use a rope to anchor themselves or pull the trapped PC out. If its something else, consider looking in the DMG for the breakability of materials; they may be able to smash their problems.

[Zhorn]

What's the exact nature of the trap? I'm assuming it is something like quicksand or a whirlpool that drags a PC under.

The trap is a room that is flooded with wine when triggered. Waterbreathing is specifically called out as not helping against characters drowning in wine.
When the trap is triggered, the stone block door to the room closes over 6 seconds, leaving enough time for characters to move to the door to escape (module calls out the characters that wish to leave in this time are allowed to), ~30 feet from the room's centre where the trigger is, ~70 feet from the furthest distant corners of the room from the door, and ending in the door's space gives a further DC15 Dex save to pull clear of the door.
Running the trap as per the book, characters would only die in the room by refusing to leave in the time allowed to them. They could trigger the trap and casually walk out as it is written.

If they do stay
The DC is high because of how much time character will have while inside the chamber. The chamber is 12 feet high, and the wine floods the room at 1 foot per round, leaving characters able to breath till that 12th round, added the length of time for holding breath per RAW, that's a minimum of 1718 rounds with dumped CON scores (12 from the room filling, 5 rounds from the 30 second held breath minimum, plus 1 more round from the minimum before passing out from suffocation) to get one single result of 25 on an athletics check across all characters trying to pry open the stone block door
The DC isn't overly harsh given that context.
edit (thankyou OldTrees1): sped read for the door, mistook the dc as prying to door open. Stand by the DC 25 escape not being too unfair given the amount of time afforded to the characters since even if the DC maintained AFTER the flooding finished, the moment one player is up; then like No Brains suggests, lowering a rope to pull up the stragglers would solve the problem.

[OldTrees1]

As is:
Round 0: The party can leave the room
Round 1-2: The room starts to fill with wine. It only gets to 2 feet, but escaping the room takes the DC 25 athletics check to swim up a cistern
Round 3-5: The room is still filling with wine, but they are fighting 3 water weirds.
Round 6-12: The wine is continuing to rise but standing on a coffin or the gargoyles buys you time to continue to fight.
Round 13: Casually swim up into one of the cisterns. It no longer requires the DC 25 check since the cisterns are emptied.
After 10 minutes: Hearing the wine flowing out the open door, the party exits the cisterns and the wine soaked room.


Hopefully the party will run out of the room.
If they don't, do you think they can defeat the enemies? The wine trap just makes the fight harder, it is not a lethal trap by itself.


If they do stay
The DC is high because of how much time character will have while inside the chamber. The chamber is 12 feet high, and the wine floods the room at 1 foot per round, leaving characters able to breath till that 12th round, added the length of time for holding breath per RAW, that's a minimum of 17 rounds with dumped CON scores to get one single result of 25 on an athletics check across all characters trying to pry open the stone block door
The DC isn't overly harsh given that context.
The DC to swim to safety drops from 25 to undefined on the 13th round. I did not see a DC for the door (it might just be 100 rounds).

[Zhorn]

My mistake; the curse of speed reading

[OldTrees1]

My mistake; the curse of speed reading

I think you crossed out more than was needed. You had a good breakdown on the rising wine and how it interacted with holding your breath. That information helped me be confident in my analysis.

[sithlordnergal]

So I ran it as is, and buffed up the Wine Weirds. I'd say run it as is, because ToA is supposed to be a deadly game. There are supposed to be deaths. There is a trap on a later floor that basically instantly kills you if you fail a single Dex save, even if you're at max hp. There's another trap that will send a character off to a different plane of existence with no way of returning.

There are ways to bring in new characters mind you, usually beings that were trapped in the tomb in the past. If a player dies, the die.

[Dmdork]

As is:
Round 0: The party can leave the room
Round 1-2: The room starts to fill with wine. It only gets to 2 feet, but escaping the room takes the DC 25 athletics check to swim up a cistern
Round 3-5: The room is still filling with wine, but they are fighting 3 water weirds.
Round 6-12: The wine is continuing to rise but standing on a coffin or the gargoyles buys you time to continue to fight.
Round 13: Casually swim up into one of the cisterns. It no longer requires the DC 25 check since the cisterns are emptied.
After 10 minutes: Hearing the wine flowing out the open door, the party exits the cisterns and the wine soaked room.


Hopefully the party will run out of the room.
If they don't, do you think they can defeat the enemies? The wine trap just makes the fight harder, it is not a lethal trap by itself.


The DC to swim to safety drops from 25 to undefined on the 13th round. I did not see a DC for the door (it might just be 100 rounds).
The rooms fills up with wine and there’s no way out. It’s lethal

[Zhorn]

The rooms fills up with wine and there’s no way out. It’s lethal

No, OldTrees1 has the core of it correct (setting aside whether the DC 25 persists or not once the room is flooded), crawling through where the wine is pouring into the room from is a legitimate strategy presented by the book for exiting the chamber.
ToA p141 notes that the southwest one (under the heading "Escape Tunnel") leads up to area 24.

[Dmdork]

Ok kids. Ty. Good enough, they have enough options to escape...