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Eorran
2008-02-07, 05:31 PM
After being warned many times not ever to enter Tomb of Horrors, I have of course convinced several friends to try it.
We will be making 4 "throwaway" characters, of 9th level, exclusively for this module. If they TPK, we'll probably just start at the beginning again until we win or get bored.
O great Forum, what is the most useful combination of classes for this purpose?
Note: we have a houserule that "Once a class skill, always a class skill", so multiclass characters simply pool all their skill points, to spend how they wish.
We have access to Core, PHB2, Complete: Scoundrel, Arcane, Divine, Champion, Adventurer, Warrior. Also Tome of Battle, Dungeonscape, Frostburn.
Thanks!

Fax Celestis
2008-02-07, 05:34 PM
I'd say you're best served with Spellthief 9 (or Factotum 9, your call), Crusader 9, Wizard 9, and Cleric 9. Gear up on the biggest, baddest spells and wands you can find, and hope you don't die.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-02-07, 05:36 PM
I cannot stress the importance of warlocks strongly enough.

lord_khaine
2008-02-07, 05:37 PM
i would bring a psion along, not alone does astral construct give you a allmost unlimitet supply of trap triggering servants, but clever use of Time Hop can dismantle allmost any trap.

Shishnarfne
2008-02-07, 05:41 PM
Also, one hint:

A powerful character that does the wrong thing is dead/genderchanged/teleported elsewhere...

Be careful...

But yes, one character with MAX trapfinding/disarming (Open Lock is nice, too),
one character to prepare your batman list of arcane spells (literally, preparing your utility belt), a divine caster for a batman list of divine spells (divinations are nice), and hopefully a fourth to try to either back these up or help them not die.

Combat in the Tomb is infrequent, but very dangerous. Traps are frequent, and occaisionally just plain mean. You have been warned.

Good luck!

I'm going to try to convince some people I know to try their hand... I had the joy of playing through the Tomb for the first time a few weeks back (we all died, were level 10, and had about 8 PC's.... but only a few well-made, and we got a bit unlucky, and made about 3 bad decisions that hurt our party).

Illiterate Scribe
2008-02-07, 05:44 PM
i would bring a psion along, not alone does astral construct give you a allmost unlimitet supply of trap triggering servants, but clever use of Time Hop can dismantle allmost any trap.

Summon elemental reserve feat is better for this, in my opinion.

ZeroNumerous
2008-02-07, 05:57 PM
But yes, one character with MAX trapfinding/disarming (Open Lock is nice, too),
one character to prepare your batman list of arcane spells (literally, preparing your utility belt), a divine caster for a batman list of divine spells (divinations are nice), and hopefully a fourth to try to either back these up or help them not die.

Actually, you shouldn't even bother with a pure Rogue. Make a Wizard/Spellthief/Unseer Seer instead. Take the spontaneous casting for divinations from Complete Champion. Abuse the hell out of Divine Insight and Spontaneous Search (+CL to a skill check, auto-search a 20ft burst as if you took 10). Properly made, you should be making Search checks in the area of [10+6(Int)+12(Ranks)+9(CL)+2(MWK)=39] without ever actually touching any squares in the room.

Kazuel
2008-02-07, 06:02 PM
Here's a thought. If Tomb of Horrors is the most killrifick dungeon where its just as important to survive as it is to kill, and monks are the most survivable class. wouldn't it stand to reason that 4 monks of appropriate level be able to complete it?

Gorbash
2008-02-07, 06:31 PM
No, because monks suck.

Chronos
2008-02-07, 06:37 PM
Surviving the Tomb is not the same thing as completing it. Four monks would surely be able to survive the Tomb, since they could just run away from all the nasty things in it. Thing is, the direction away from all the nasty things leads straight out the door, and into the surrounding countryside. Which rather defeats the purpose (whatever it is) in entering the Tomb in the first place.

Moff Chumley
2008-02-07, 06:40 PM
Here's a thought. If Tomb of Horrors is the most killrifick dungeon where its just as important to survive as it is to kill, and monks are the most survivable class. wouldn't it stand to reason that 4 monks of appropriate level be able to complete it?

Silly Kazuel. Monks are never the answer. [Shakes head] :wink:

Buffs are pretty important survivability-wise. A Crusader (White Raven buffs+melee survivability), Wizard (more buffs of a different sort+Batman), Cleric (Healbot+Buffs+A tad more melee power) or some variation thereof could be very effective, if played very cautiously.

Captain van der Decken
2008-02-07, 06:42 PM
Given that (as far as I can tell from what I've heard of this dungeon) it's absolutely brimming with traps, wouldn't an incorporeal character do fairly well? Glide through walls instead of doors, glide through traps, glide through pretty much anything. Of course, that also includes treasure.

Kraggi
2008-02-07, 06:47 PM
Resounding no.

That sort of thing is not to be mentioned.

Or...is it not incorporeal that makes.... it... happen? I don't even play DnD. This is just something I picked up from being around these boards for a while.

Should this be spoilered?

Myatar_Panwar
2008-02-07, 06:49 PM
Whatever your class combo eventually comes out to be, make sure to have something expendable to do nearly everything (walking down corridors, opening doors, experimenting with puzzles, etc) and you should be fine. Plus its just hilarious as hell to watch a trio of celestial monkeys being forced to walk down a corridor riddled with spiked pit traps.

Shishnarfne
2008-02-07, 06:50 PM
Given that (as far as I can tell from what I've heard of this dungeon) it's absolutely brimming with traps, wouldn't an incorporeal character do fairly well? Glide through walls instead of doors, glide through traps, glide through pretty much anything. Of course, that also includes treasure.

Alright, common misconception:

DON'T GO ETHEREAL. Gary Gygax specifically wrote in bad things if you try to enter the Ethereal plane in the module. Yes, worse than (most of) the rest of the Tomb bad. I'm fairly sure that, unless you have a way of going Incorporeal (i.e. being a ghost) that doesn't involve the Ethereal Plane, you will not enjoy the result.

Oh, and I recall saying that Maxed trapfinding was probably necessary... I don't recall saying much about any specific class... Factotum is probably a better choice than Rogue for the Tomb IMHO...

But then, what do I know... my party all died in the tomb, never got a whiff of Acererack, and there were about 8 of us, and we were all level 10.

Frankly, I think the Tomb is a great way of teaching a party that how well their characters are built is less important to survival than how well they are played.

Frosty
2008-02-07, 06:51 PM
Why not try burrowing? Or using transmute spells to reshape the dungeon to your whims? I can also see an Underdark Paladin (can glide through rock) with an item that makes him not need to breathe (ioun stone) can probably skip through a lot of the dungeon, assuming most of the dundeon is made out of rock and not metal. Alternatively, you could try to hack your way through the walls. A dunceoncrasher fighter does bonus damage to objects right? Some ToB maneuvers also help in that regard.

Alternatively, get a lot of gold, and invest in a LOT of Simulcrams and have them explore the place for you.

Ganurath
2008-02-07, 06:53 PM
A Human Warlock with Voracious Dispel, Fell Flight, Baleful Utterance, and the rest as you will. Supernatural Ability as a feat to bypass SR for the Eldritch Blast is always good by this level, because you'll inevitably run into something with SR.

An Elven Rogue with max levels in Dungeon Delver. You have yourself a trapmonkey, and someone in the party who doesn't need to sleep. Max UMD and a Spell Storing ranged weapon.

A Dread Necromancer of whatever race you please. Everyone in the party is going to take Tomb-Tainted Soul, so Charnel Touch becomes Infinite Healing. Go buck wild as you will after that, pump out a minion legion. Keep your brute force in a bag of holding with spare corpses.

Finally, a Human Batman Cleric who uses the Magic domain and Persistant Divine Metamagic cheese in conjunction with divinations to know what to do prepare for and how to do it. This one will be Human so there's a feat to spare for Tomb-Tainted Soul. Oh, and this one will channel negative energy for emergency healing.

Shishnarfne
2008-02-07, 07:03 PM
Why not try burrowing? Or using transmute spells to reshape the dungeon to your whims? I can also see an Underdark Paladin (can glide through rock) with an item that makes him not need to breathe (ioun stone) can probably skip through a lot of the dungeon, assuming most of the dundeon is made out of rock and not metal. Alternatively, you could try to hack your way through the walls. A dunceoncrasher fighter does bonus damage to objects right? Some ToB maneuvers also help in that regard.

Alternatively, get a lot of gold, and invest in a LOT of Simulcrams and have them explore the place for you.

Well, the thing about trying to redesign the Tomb by burrowing is that it's pretty big, see... and you can easily miss most of the fun things that you came there to find... Also, sometimes traps extend belong the floor of the cavern...

Simulacrum is not an option for 9th level PCs... unless they have really high level caster friends, in which case Find the Path is usually more efficient (seriously, Find the Path might be one of the fastest ways of bypassing some of the nastiness).

Also, most of the dungeon is solid rock... rooms are only roughly half of the map IIRC. Knocking down walls is not necessarily going to get you very far...

I think also that the 2nd Ed. Return to the Tomb of Horrors module had some suggestions about what might happen to adventurers who attempt to "redecorate" without permission.

Anyway, if you intend to simply bypass everything, what's the point in going to the Tomb of Horrors? There are much more lucrative, much less arbitrary dungeons that you could visit instead... No, as I see it, the point about adventuring in the Tomb is simply to try to see if you can pull it off, either as an exercise in well-executed dungeon crawling, or to boast to your friends.

Trying to bypass everything sort of defeats these purposes...

Frosty
2008-02-07, 07:13 PM
Solid rock? Perfect. Those underdark knight Paladins will be able to Earth glide through the entire thing then. The point of this is to survive any way you can. We're not here for "fun" or even for "loot." We are here to not die. Find the Path is an excellent suggestion. also, craft a LOT of Contingency spells. If you can someone have ways of seeing the tomb before you have to enter, you can also teleport to the key areas, get what yu need, and then teleport to the boss I guess. Lot sof advanced scrying techniques. I'm sure Miracle or Wish can help.

What? No one said it had to be done with 9th level PCs :smallyuk: From what I've heard, this dungeon cheats, so the PCs should bring whatever munchkining they can bring. I'm not above blasting the entire thing to kingdom come and calling it a victory.

Fax Celestis
2008-02-07, 07:18 PM
What? No one said it had to be done with 9th level PCs :smallyuk:

The cover of the adventure reads, "For four 9th-level PCs." The OP also specified a party of 4 9th level PCs.

Frosty
2008-02-07, 07:40 PM
Meh. Throw 20th level PCs at it for fun. Probably still TPK though.

Captain van der Decken
2008-02-08, 03:08 AM
Alright, common misconception:

DON'T GO ETHEREAL. Gary Gygax specifically wrote in bad things if you try to enter the Ethereal plane in the module. Yes, worse than (most of) the rest of the Tomb bad. I'm fairly sure that, unless you have a way of going Incorporeal (i.e. being a ghost) that doesn't involve the Ethereal Plane, you will not enjoy the result.

'nother common misconception. Incorporeal has nothing to do with ethereal. It's all those durn ghost's faults.