Tomb of Horrors

[apwhite]

Worth the read if you play with your own kids [or a girl].

Well, as some of you know, I marked up Tomb of Horrors for Maptool and just started our first session with the kids tonight. As a refresh, we have me (GM), 3 of my kids (ages 17,13,11) and our cousin (13), each on laptops.

My son is totally paranoid about Tomb of Horrors, he is a Beguiller/Sassin, and certain ToH is a death trap. OK, he's right, it is a death trap. But it's his level of paranoia that is so funny. Every step, I mean every step, he is using his 10' pole and tapping the floor, walls and such. He has a Arachnida cloak and walking on the walls and ceiling and never hitting the floor. Searching and researching everything. He bought nearly every mundane item in the PHB. Chalk? He even bought chalk! He gave a lock of hair to a cleric and prepaid for his Rez spell if he does not return in a week. It's overkill.

His sister is totally carefree. She plays a Shapeshift druid (clevel 11), spends most of her time in Bat form.

So here is the meat of the story. The kids encounter the nasty 4-armed gargoyle that has 4 attacks at +24 to hit (each). The paranoid Beguiller unstops an eversmoking bottle to give himself Concealment and Hide. The gargoyle goes right passed him, targetting the others in the party.

"As the gargoyle passes me, I take a sneak attack against him, then retreat into the corner." he declares. Again he walks on walls and ceilings.

After a painful wound, the gargoyle spins to find who just shanked his stone kidneys. It rolls a natural 20 on the Spot and rakes, rends, rakes some more. In one attack, the beguiller is brought to 2 HP, and that is even have 2 attacks miss due to 50% concealment. He is gonna die next round for sure.

The little sister declares, "I am a bat, so I have echolocation (blindsense) and Fly-By Attack Feat. So I will move into the smoke filled room, attack the gargoyle with claws then fly further into the smoke so he can't find me. Then stuff [beguiler]'s body into my bag of holding so I can get him rezzed."

"OK, roll for your attack" I tell her. The whole time I am thinking that she is a gonner, even with her 36 AC, she only does like 1d6+6 damage. So what does she roll?

"Natural 19, baby! booya critical threat...... and my confirmation....... ... Natural 20. Oh ya." She screams, spilling her popcorn.

At this point, the game goes into time-stop, we break out the video camera and retell the story thus far. Reminding the camera that we play the instant death rule with a "critical-20-hit" as found in the DMG. She confirms her bonus to hit (+12) then checks the monsters armor class. All she needs is a 6 to hit, and subsequently instantly kill the gargoyle who still has +150 HP and took down one character in only one round.

Everyone gathers around her and she tosses her very girly-pink-swirly die-20. The Roll? a 17! "[Batgirl], you fly in and use your tiny bat claws to gouge the Gargoyle. It is rendered off balance due to the smoke. It falls backwards into the spiked pit and is impaled on the sharp, poisoned spines. A pool of blood slowly fills the bottom of the pit. The gargoyle is motionless."

The reckless one wins the day, the paranoid one nearly gets killed because he was a little too cocky.

[Cweord]

That is frequently the way, you can be over cautious

[trevor]

Heh, that's funny

Reminds me of when I was young, playing Summer Games on my C64 (yes, yes, I really AM that old), High dive event, I would carefully craft and execute a controlled dive and consistently get 8s. My sister, two years my senior would spin the joystick and push buttons as fast as she could with no concern for grace and style, making the diver look like he was having an extreme seizure on his way down.

.... And she'd get perfect 10s every time

[jfrazierjr]

Heh, that's funny

Reminds me of when I was young, playing Summer Games on my C64

I had that game on my C64 also! Ah... the memories.

Joe

[wyrmwood]

My rules lawyer creeps out...

"Natural 19, baby! booya critical threat...... and my confirmation....... ... Natural 20. Oh ya." She screams, spilling her popcorn.

At this point, the game goes into time-stop, we break out the video camera and retell the story thus far. Reminding the camera that we play the instant death rule with a "critical-20-hit" as found in the DMG.

technically speaking, I believe if I recall correctly, "instant death" is only on a 20-20, not any critical threat plus a 20 on confirm (otherwise you are favoring those rapier wielders and penalizing those axe wielders...)

Fun read, thanks

[UntoldGlory]

That sounds like a blast, I'd love to play with my kids, but my wife's totally against the idea.

[Big_Mac]

That sounds like a blast, I'd love to play with my kids, but my wife's totally against the idea.

Why?

I am running a campaign now for my 2 daughters 11 and 8 1/2. We also have 2 of their friends as part of the campaign.

[UntoldGlory]

Various reasons. One thing, to ever convince her to let 'em play, I'd rave to run a game that didn't include my usual group, due to language and off topic "content". And for another, my son (age eight) gets scared easily, has zombie related nigtmares etc. Now, in my opinion, obliterating zombies by the score in DnD is a great way to overcome that kind of fear, cause there's nothing you can't beat with a couple levels or a little luck, but we differ on that . Also, she just plain ole doesn't like the magic, undead and lower planar aspects of DnD. She doesn't give me a hard time for playing it (anymore) cause she knows I love it and need a hobby, but unless the kids get to their mid/late teens and beg to play, she's not on board with it.

I should point out that she's not against gaming in general, and even tried playing characters in Star wars and Ninjas & Superspies, but she's really not a fan of D&D.

[Big_Mac]

Ah, Yeah well my kids were begging to play for the last year maybe 2. I agree with not letting them play with the adults. One of my adult players got PO'd at me because I would not let him play when I was trying to figure out the 4th player.

My 8 year old can not handle snake so I understand. I have kept thing pretty vanilla and they have gotten blood thirsty and loot crazy. I teach them the rules as we go a long.

[Orchard]

My wife is pretty much resigned to the fact that eventually the boys will want to play--or at least some of them.

We have four boys, and there is pretty much no way that at least some of them won't be interested. I don't know if they will all want to play, but my first rule will be that they only play with me and other adults who understand content restrictions. Heck, I'd rather they played with me than with other kids for a very long time. At least that way I know what the games are like. Some of the stuff their friends are likely to come up with when they hit high school....it scares me.

Then again, my games tend to be more about socio-political stuff combined with heavy action. Think of a medieval spy games with social commentary, and that's what you get. I don't do romance (why bother? Everyone I play with is married, so the romantic stuff is boring in many ways), and I don't do horror for the most part (horror has never really fascinated me).

[UntoldGlory]

Some of the stuff their friends are likely to come up with when they hit high school....it scares me.

Indeed.

Are there any girls there? If so I want to doooooooo them!

I garuntee my son will want to play. He watches me making maps, but can't seem to wrap his brain around the DM conpcept. He keeps asking me where my character is. "I don't have one. This is just a map."

Currently he plays some of the free not-quite-mmos like Dragon Fable. My wife's not 100% thrilled with that either, but I guess it's different for her somehow.