Second, the players need to understand that being inhabited by one of the Trickster Gods is not a bad thing. New World Season Pass. I just killed them off by daring them to crawl into a hole of instant death, and thats what sucks. I seem to be on about a lot of "difficult" challenges these days. Check 7 flipbooks from dallas.benning3. This, too, is problematic, because while youre trying to figure all of this out, the whole room is rotating and everyone is being thrown around and bashed against the walls, which are springing out spikes, and sending out knock-out gas, and spewing sparks that make everyone go blind, and gushing out flammable vapors that fill the whole rotating mess with roaring flames. As an NPC, she is portrayed by Spencer Downs. 37 pieces of artwork that are sharable with players. Besides, Acererak runs away from the battle at 30% of his HP or so, which also increases the partys odds for success quite a bit, especially as the PCs will be doing extra psychic damage as another Trickster God benefit. After this, you entered a series of turning passages in the shrine of Wongo. Just assume stuff like that happens in every damn room! in which you get trapped. Essentially, unless the PCs somehow traverse the tunnels without pushing down in the middle of either one (maybe because for some reason theyre flying), someone is going to be trapped permanently in one of the tunnels or other. In order to rule such a motley mob, the goblin queen must defeat any challenges to her throne, and because of this, shes a ruthless and dangerous adversary The problem with Tomb of Horrors is that its very arbitrary, right from the beginning: there are three possible ways to enter, and two of them can get you killed right off the bat. Upload PDF to create a flipbook like Tomb of Annihilation now. Released in 2017, Tomb of Annihilation is an adventure book for Dungeons & Dragons 5e that takes adventurers from 1st to 10th level as they venture into the mysterious land of Chult in search of an artifact called the Soulmonger, hoping to destroy the eldritch machine and put an end to a death curse. When your players have to work together to solve a problem, that . Probably thats because staying out of a pitch black subterranean lake with a psychotic aboleth in it is a really good idea but, staying out of this whole tomb would have been a good idea, and yet here we all are. Tomb of Annihilation's fifth level, the Gears of Hate, is terrible. It avoids some harm, and figuring it out provides a good sense of having dodged misfortune by clever thinking. Ill get down from the soapbox now. Learn how your comment data is processed. If the players say that theyre creeping along really carefully, gently shuffling their feet to stop from stepping on shards of pottery, going on all fours, or whatever, make that good enough. Important to note is that he can cast counterspell at will, but that he can only do it once per round, as it counts as a reaction; this will drive spellcasters nuts but will also not make them totally useless. Now that theyve found two of these weird skulls, one on each level so far, theyll realize that searching out the rest of them is important, and you can make the next three of them a challenge to find, catch, or kill, because the players will know theyre looking for them. Cragg . This tomb is full of terracotta warriors that come to life and kill you if you make any noise, and the floor is conveniently covered with broken pottery to make it easy for you to make some noise. Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation. So no traditional European fantasy tropes - no elves or halflings or dwarves (at least not traditional ones). :) Google is not helping < > Showing 1-4 of 4 comments . Again, Acererak isnt a particularly difficult enemy to run, although youll definitely want to brush up on his major spells and on how to control his sphere of annihilation. Meaning that there are four principles in man, and this is their destiny:the flesh to earth; the ghost to the tomb; . If someone in Shagambis Tomb rolls a low stealth check, everyone in the room dies. There are a lot of things that can be tweaked to make this room actually survivable. Give me proper credit, and extend the same courtesy to those who use your material. Again, this is one where you walk in, but you dont walk out. I'jin's first appearance was when the Tomb Party entered her crypt inside the Tomb of the Nine Gods. So the party decided to use the aid the Red Wizards in OMU were offering to infiltrate the Fane. Over the course of a round, it can get to use all four provided there are four PCs. The old Web plus fire combo, baby. And now the PCs can use spells that bring the dead back, because the Death Curse has just ended. This is a potential game-breaker, because a grey slaad is a pretty formidable ally; at this level that one slaad is enough to give the entire party a worthy battle. I eventually figured it out, though. Ras duty is to keep te Tomb safe from intruders so Acererak would help the Yuan Ti to free Dendar. If that character isnt a bard, I recommend a +2 version of whatever weapon they are currently using; it goes great with Shagambis extra attack. You are most kind, and I certainly hope to continue to be useful to you! The traitor always lies thrice. Refers to area 62c, where correctly interpreting the gargoyles clues results in getting gassed and run over. The Wine Room, Area 20. updated Feb 28, 2023. Over 600 story pages full of adventure and links to treasure, encounters, NPCs, roll tables, quests, and sharable images. Also, they have no way of knowing that being inhabited by one of these spirits isnt detrimental, and theyre going to justifiably assume that resisting the spirit is the best thing to do, because thats how it always is when you have to roll a Charisma save. Tomb of Horrors. That having been said, I suppose it is somewhat convenient for Ras Nsi to be in possession of all of the puzzle cubes that the party needs, because at least it gathers them all in one place so they can be reclaimed all at once. But wait, the door is locked, and whats more, the designers made it so that the door locks cant be picked. This screen has been specifically built with the Tomb of Annhilation module in mind. You may find yourself using power word kill if any of the PCs are going to actually die, but more on that in a bit. Tomb of Annihilation is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure that takes place on the peninsula of Chult in the Forgotten Realms. Vault of the Beholder, Area 44. Magic is an important ability, magical items are powerful tools, and theres absolutely no reason to cripple characters by denying them the opportunity to use the skills and gear that they have fairly earned throughout the campaign. Again, you might call this metagaming, but its also going to make things easier overall. Theres also a big spherical thing with a drape over it thats enchanted to make you think that the beholder is underneath it. If you really want to leave the elemental cells in the tomb, it might be a good idea to go into them without a clear idea of what the PCs need to do to defeat each cell, and just see what the players come up with. The next fix is to make the actions needed to escape each cell either far less specific, or provide clues that indicate what to do. Who aligns the orbs shall spin fortunes wheel. Refers to area 70, which involves a d100 table of random results if the PCs align the armillary spheres. These clues were part of the treasure I provided as a reward for defeating the invisible beholder: information is always more valuable than money, especially when theres nowhere for you to spend that money anyways. Replace them with a riddle, or a monster, or a door with a trap. Hes the guy with the Ring of Winter, and I placed him in the yuan-ti prison along with the party (who made a pretty decent attempt at infiltrating the temple complex but eventually fell prey to bad luck and an insufficient grasp of yuan-ti culture). This is too broken to fix. In Tomb of Annihilation the heroes are tasked with going deep into the jungles of the Forgotten Realms' Chult, a pan-African cultural pastiche, in order to stop a necromantic plot to steal all the world's souls away. And thats when my buddy socked me in the stomach, and they all stormed away, leaving me wondering what the hell had happened. It will seem to them like it should be avoided, and thats a pretty natural thing to think when youre being told that a mysterious spirit with an unknown agenda is trying to lodge itself in your mind, and would you like to make a Charisma save to not let it in? The door to the puzzle-cube can be forced open by creatures with a combined strength of 25. Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation. The crippling hunger effect is rather more severe than it needs to be, and burning up spell slots to end the effect (providing someone in the party has the spells to cast in the first place) isnt a very equitable solution. Half of the encounter books are designed specifically for their respective 5e campaign adventures: Encounters in Chult (Tomb of Annihilation), . As soon as someone reaches the middle of Tunnel A, the whole thing rotates, and now Tunnel B is connecting areas 31 and 34, and anyone who was in Tunnel A when the rotation happened is now trapped there and waiting to die from suffocation. Think of it as an extra life, but it wont work twice. The onyx chest is quite likely to disintegrate whichever hapless PC is inside when the button is pushed; an average damage of 75 is plenty to reduce most characters at 9th level to zero, at which point they are unrecoverable dust, Death Curse or no Death Curse. That having been said, my recommendation for this room is to let everything in it work as described, but in a more limited way. But where were we ah yes, spinning mastodon. Were talking back when I stole my moms backgammon dice, back when we didnt have books or references except for a few photocopies here and there. Really the only way out is to try to wrench the door off its hinges or else beat on it until it breaks open. Thoughts? This is one of those rooms that you enter but never leave. Anyway, Artus wants to kill Ras Nsi for reasons of his own, and as long as the PCs are willing to help out, Artus is happy to help them snatch up the puzzle cubes, and then they can all escape together. For the Elemental Cells Aces warning only really provides clues to the first two rooms (Death to Fire, Dine or Drown) but the last two warnings dont really help with the Air and Earth cells (Precious Air, and Falling Sand), I wonder if you think adjusting these clues would help PC survival. I will offer the friendly advice that you shouldnt worry about any temporary connections between area 63 and area 58 while the gears are in the process of turning, because youll just give yourself a massive headache even deciding which gears are turning clockwise or counterclockwise. And remember end of the campaign, the DM has to buy the first round of drinks, right? The description does say that if you can open up the door that leads into the revolving drum, the trap will stop, which of course doesnt matter because if you can open the door you can just leave. . They have been played hundreds of millions of times online. the only thing preventing the players from completely circumventing the gears puzzle is the tomb dwarves hanging from the ceiling. Strawbundles charm can help with this, but I would recommend just having a straight-out fight with the hags. Assume that the Soulmonger has as many tentacles as it has possible targets, but that it can only take one or two tentacle actions on each of its turns, and only against a creature that has damaged it since its last turn. As I briefly mentioned in the previous section, I came up with a set of clues for this level, much like the clues provided for the previous levels as Handouts 17 through 20. And thats assuming they survive long enough to get to the arrival of the erinyes. But you can only do this trick once. Q18C. The next room featured a 15-foot deep pit with a stone chest and a clay golem. Lets take a look through this tomb, and hopefully I can help you figure out some of the tricky parts; when we get to those rooms and traps that are instant death, Ill give you some ideas as to how that can be fixed without making the dungeon easy. Nevermind that an erinyes, at CR12, is probably more than a match for the party all on its own at this level, even if they werent already running low on HP and spell slots from the inundation of devils. I like the suggestions, although I think the time pressure involved in these traps makes clues a little pointless in general. Of course, we could have eliminated all of that by simply not making Ras Nsi stealing the last cube explicitly part of Chapter 3. Avoid that. Before we get started, you need to realize that part of the inspiration for the Tomb of the Nine Gods is none other than the classic Tomb of Horrors. My VERY brief non-spoiler review so far: I really like it. Did I mention yet that a giant stone block traps them in here with no way to escape? called the Monkey Bridge. PUZZLE FLOOR To reach this section of hall, characters must climb a 7-foot-high ledge. Well, the party has finally collected all ten of those crystal eyes that are scattered all over this level of the tomb, and now you can open up the door that lets you into the secret vault with the invisible beholder that kills you. Having a magic ring that can throw up ice walls and create areas of intense cold (which presumably are a problem for yuan-ti, who are snake people, and therefore probably cold-blooded and sluggish at low temperatures) makes the escape exciting but not very susceptible to failure. If they really cant figure it out, have the arcanaloth tell them how to do it, or something like that. In any one turn (effectively, in any one players turn) one tentacle can be used. One side boasts evocative artwork from the adventure, while the other displays helpful charts, maps and character illustrations for quick reference. Even so, its not hard to figure out how to use it in the battle. The gears can be solved by squeezing through the small gaps between the cogs and the catwalks, making the whole puzzle seem anti-climactic. Throne Room, Area 52. Solving the Tomb of Annihilation Puzzle in D&D can be a daunting task, but there are some tips and tricks that can help make it a bit easier.First, it is important to remember that the puzzle is not meant to be solved in one sitting - it is meant to be worked on over time, with each person taking a turn trying to piece together the clues. Trying to figure out clues when a PC is seconds from death seems like an unfair expectation, even for those players who are riddle masters. The answer, then, was to place puzzle cubes such . I talked in my last post about the goals of play, and how the Meat Circus in Psychonauts and the Tower of Sarek in Trine both suffer . This is a challenging level to get your head around, because its made up of three moving gears that line up with each other and with the surrounding dungeon in different ways depending on how often a lever is pulled. If you need a reason to give the party another chance at a room or trap that finishes them off, you can use this trick once. When you describe the ebon pool in area 81, use those very same adjectives to describe it we dont want to be too coy at the very end of it all, so be sure to make the connection between the marbles and the pool fairly clear. Casting Entangle on a ceiling. Handing the prop around for each player to get a look at is also a good way for them all to read the rhyme without anyone actually saying anything until theyre ready to try for the solution. GM: And poison gas starts filling the room! Every Day new 3D Models from all over the World. There's just enough room for a person to stand at the top of the ledge without stepping on the tiles, but beyond that, the Hes not as cool as the King of Feathers, but youll be cheating your players out of a great battle if you dont spring the zombie rex on them, deserved or not. This isnt as bad as it might be, because at least PCs who are knocked out by poison gas or run over by Napaka the Juggernaut have a reasonable chance to survive. The tentacles are another thing to consider, and the instructions on how they can be used are not entirely clear. Normally the party would have no chance at all of defeating Acererak (hes listed as CR23 in his stat block, and these characters are maybe level 10 or 11), but the Trickster Gods throw a wrench into the works, granting any character who is inhabited by a Trickster God 50 temporary HP at the beginning of each of their turns. I dont have the time or the space in this article to go through the entire tomb room by room, nor would it be super helpful even if I could and did. Sometimes itll be best not to search too thoroughly for one, like Nangnangs, which can really only be accessed by secret doors and passages. This place is exciting enough without adding combat encounters that arent needed. Dungeons are supposed to be dangerous, even deadly. If the PCs want to end the hunger effect by going back into the room and eating something, and of course suffering the benefit and detriment of whatever they eat, I think thats a fair way to handle the situation.