What I Played Today: July 31

Dungeons and Dragons

A friend was recently in the area and had gotten the special edition of the Tomb of Horrors for 4th edition, given only to DMs who participate in the RPGA materials. He’s pretty into that scene, and he wanted to show off the amazing PC-killing power of the module, so we all got together for an eight hour session. Amazingly, nobody died! But my paladin got close a good three times!

The module tried to emulate the original as much as possible, including many of the same traps, images, and general stupid tricks. We moved slowly just because we knew about the tomb’s reputation, and we managed to avoid many of the more obvious pit traps and terrible rooms, although we thought we screwed up hard when we entered the room on the three treasure chests. I opened the oak chest, assume some kind of Last Crusade business, and this was the wrong choice, as a giant skeleton popped out and tried to kill us all, and almost succeeded. My character fell down twice, and failed every death check he made, but we managed to pull through.

There were more pit traps and crawl spaces and locked doors. Every door in this place needed to be broken down, and there was no rhythm to it at all. We walked into a chapel, and I, in my infinite stupidity, decided to touch the altar, which promptly exploded. I dusted myself off and we went down a set of stairs and broke through a lot of doors. We ran across a door behind which we heard music, so we broke in and followed the noise, only for the floor to suddenly pitch and we were now sliding into a furnace. I assumed that my character was totally and completely dead, because she was wearing plate mail and had no strength or dexterity at all, and she was closest the furnace. Everyone else managed to escape handily, but my character kept slipping, and it was only from the amazing and awesome power of Tenser’s Floating Disk that helped me survive.

Oh man, Tenser’s Floating Disk. This saved our ass so many times. Getting over pit traps (which were everywhere) were much easier with it. We even used it to get a key out of a vat of acid. We started to get on a roll after the furnace trap, not feeling any real threat. We came across a fake Acererak, who, while he managed to drop half the party, we still killed him easily, and got through to the second half of dungeon, which we charged through, without any threat. My character continued to be rock stupid, at one point decided to just put on a crown and scepter she found on a throne. Somehow, she survived this idiotic action, and we pressed on, having to give up because we ran out of time. It was interesting, and I’m amazed that nobody died. I guess the DM was taking it a little easy on us.