I'm currently running the Tomb of Annihilation. We are in chapter 3 Omu and the party is up to 3 player deaths. Am I going too hard or too easy on them? For reference I have pulled some punches and supplied a wandering trader that shows up. They are level 8.
That entirely depends on what fits your group. Some groups are a dripping bloodbath where everyone probably should have a backup character in their back pocket. Some groups its a major trauma if they lose a Character ( which they may almost never, if not never, do ).
What did you and your Players agree on so far as game deadliness and the handing of Character mortality? That's the right answer for your group.
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Most of the deaths when I ran ToA were basically suicide in the tomb. The warlock jumps down a hole by himself, it closes behind him. The bard casts a spell on a swarm of locusts to stun them but she's in the spell area and fails the save, gets eaten alive. The paladin ignores the warning about the "path of death", goes down it and dies.
Three deaths, depending on what you've thrown at them, can be too many or just enough. There's no required number of PC deaths for ToA, but just that the threat of danger and death is there.
When we played, the only deaths were in the tomb, essentially due to bad decisions with the traps. (though we might have had another one earlier on due to some bad luck).
Deaths can be due to bad decisions by the players, the DM amping an encounter too much, and bad luck. The party I was with was made up of good players that understood their characters, how to play them well, how to use strategy when needed. There were a number of challenging fights and some very close calls due to luck (a river alligator critted my level 3 character and came within 2 hit points of insta-killing the character for example) but the DM never made the encounters so hard that death's were inevitable. He also didn't have the monsters attack downed characters which would have also likely caused some deaths.
One of the more challenging ToA sections in first spoiler ..
ToA TPK opportunity
Probably the most dangerous section is dealing with Ras Nsi and the yuan-ti in Omu. There are enough yuan-ti that a frontal assault will likely lead to a TPK. In our playing, we did a lot of sneaking and tried to confront Ras Nsi by surprise in the throne room but it didn't quite go as planned, reinforcements showed up and we were defeated with several down but one person in the party yelled out that we were trying to get the last cube needed to enter the tomb and defeat the death curse which caused Ras Nsi to hesitate killing us (since he is suffering from the death curse). Instead, he sent us into the tomb (which he figured was pretty much a death sentence anyway) after offering the humans in the party the opportunity to become yuan-ti (so as to better tie us to the fate of the yuan-ti).
Also, party composition and abilities will play a significant role in how easy or hard the tomb is. With the right characters and equipment the tomb can range from relatively easy to very deadly. Example below ...
In our party, we had a rogue/warlock with devil's sight, the observant feat, expertise in perception and investigation, stealth and thieves tools. At level 9 the character had a passive perception of 24 and passive investigation of 25. Combined with being able to see perfectly in the dark, this made finding, identifying and disarming the traps and secret doors in the tomb much much easier. Without this, you can expect more deaths.
We found the maintenance stairs which seemed to be a safer way to explore ... and dealt with most of the maintenance staff early on as a result.
In addition, the rogue had picked up Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments which are available in one of the encounters in ToA as well as in some of the Guild Adept ToA supplements. This magic item is only limited by the imagination and can be used to paint doors, peep holes, and any other mundane gear. The paints made it possible to escape or negate some of the traps in the tomb which also helped.
Finally, there are creatures resistant to mundane weapons (golems in the tomb if I recall among others) which are much easier to deal with if the party has some magical weapons. However, magic is very scarce in ToA as written, especially weapons, so the encounters later on may be much more challenging if the characters don't have access to magical weapons or the ability to do magical damage.
After finishing ToA my group figured out that we had 24 collective character deaths. No one finished with their original PC and the actual Tomb was responsible for every single death.
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Lightning Strike - A rebranded Fire Bolt for Wizards & Sorcerers.
Spirit Bomb - A holy fireball for Clerics, Paladins, & Divine Soul Sorcerers!
Sword Dancer - A Cleric subclass specifically for the Drow goddess Eilistraee.
I think my group got really lucky. We only had 1 character death and it was in the final fight to a Power Word Kill. We resurrected them when we escaped the tomb. We also played pretty smart with what we did.
After finishing ToA my group figured out that we had 24 collective character deaths. No one finished with their original PC and the actual Tomb was responsible for every single death.
Holy crap 24 deaths! My group has had 3 pc's go unconscious and one of them was in session 0. Sorry I'm not playing ToA and it's a very smart group.
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The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
After finishing ToA my group figured out that we had 24 collective character deaths. No one finished with their original PC and the actual Tomb was responsible for every single death.
Holy crap 24 deaths! My group has had 3 pc's go unconscious and one of them was in session 0. Sorry I'm not playing ToA and it's a very smart group.
Yeah ToA is brutal and i ended up not really enjoying it. I can handle character death, but a lot of the traps, puzzles, and whatnot just left me and the group scratching our heads in frustration as we died.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Lightning Strike - A rebranded Fire Bolt for Wizards & Sorcerers.
Spirit Bomb - A holy fireball for Clerics, Paladins, & Divine Soul Sorcerers!
Sword Dancer - A Cleric subclass specifically for the Drow goddess Eilistraee.
I'm currently running the Tomb of Annihilation. We are in chapter 3 Omu and the party is up to 3 player deaths. Am I going too hard or too easy on them? For reference I have pulled some punches and supplied a wandering trader that shows up. They are level 8.
That entirely depends on what fits your group. Some groups are a dripping bloodbath where everyone probably should have a backup character in their back pocket. Some groups its a major trauma if they lose a Character ( which they may almost never, if not never, do ).
What did you and your Players agree on so far as game deadliness and the handing of Character mortality? That's the right answer for your group.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
They're very okay with the permadeath nature of the module and they all keep backups just in case
Most of the deaths when I ran ToA were basically suicide in the tomb. The warlock jumps down a hole by himself, it closes behind him. The bard casts a spell on a swarm of locusts to stun them but she's in the spell area and fails the save, gets eaten alive. The paladin ignores the warning about the "path of death", goes down it and dies.
Three deaths, depending on what you've thrown at them, can be too many or just enough. There's no required number of PC deaths for ToA, but just that the threat of danger and death is there.
When we played, the only deaths were in the tomb, essentially due to bad decisions with the traps. (though we might have had another one earlier on due to some bad luck).
Deaths can be due to bad decisions by the players, the DM amping an encounter too much, and bad luck. The party I was with was made up of good players that understood their characters, how to play them well, how to use strategy when needed. There were a number of challenging fights and some very close calls due to luck (a river alligator critted my level 3 character and came within 2 hit points of insta-killing the character for example) but the DM never made the encounters so hard that death's were inevitable. He also didn't have the monsters attack downed characters which would have also likely caused some deaths.
One of the more challenging ToA sections in first spoiler ..
ToA TPK opportunity
Probably the most dangerous section is dealing with Ras Nsi and the yuan-ti in Omu. There are enough yuan-ti that a frontal assault will likely lead to a TPK. In our playing, we did a lot of sneaking and tried to confront Ras Nsi by surprise in the throne room but it didn't quite go as planned, reinforcements showed up and we were defeated with several down but one person in the party yelled out that we were trying to get the last cube needed to enter the tomb and defeat the death curse which caused Ras Nsi to hesitate killing us (since he is suffering from the death curse). Instead, he sent us into the tomb (which he figured was pretty much a death sentence anyway) after offering the humans in the party the opportunity to become yuan-ti (so as to better tie us to the fate of the yuan-ti).
Also, party composition and abilities will play a significant role in how easy or hard the tomb is. With the right characters and equipment the tomb can range from relatively easy to very deadly. Example below ...
In our party, we had a rogue/warlock with devil's sight, the observant feat, expertise in perception and investigation, stealth and thieves tools. At level 9 the character had a passive perception of 24 and passive investigation of 25. Combined with being able to see perfectly in the dark, this made finding, identifying and disarming the traps and secret doors in the tomb much much easier. Without this, you can expect more deaths.
We found the maintenance stairs which seemed to be a safer way to explore ... and dealt with most of the maintenance staff early on as a result.
In addition, the rogue had picked up Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments which are available in one of the encounters in ToA as well as in some of the Guild Adept ToA supplements. This magic item is only limited by the imagination and can be used to paint doors, peep holes, and any other mundane gear. The paints made it possible to escape or negate some of the traps in the tomb which also helped.
Finally, there are creatures resistant to mundane weapons (golems in the tomb if I recall among others) which are much easier to deal with if the party has some magical weapons. However, magic is very scarce in ToA as written, especially weapons, so the encounters later on may be much more challenging if the characters don't have access to magical weapons or the ability to do magical damage.
My players are still in the hex crawl. We've had 6 character deaths already.
After finishing ToA my group figured out that we had 24 collective character deaths. No one finished with their original PC and the actual Tomb was responsible for every single death.
Lightning Strike - A rebranded Fire Bolt for Wizards & Sorcerers.
Spirit Bomb - A holy fireball for Clerics, Paladins, & Divine Soul Sorcerers!
Sword Dancer - A Cleric subclass specifically for the Drow goddess Eilistraee.
Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch - A pair of magical firearms for your Gunslinger or Artificer.
I think my group got really lucky. We only had 1 character death and it was in the final fight to a Power Word Kill. We resurrected them when we escaped the tomb. We also played pretty smart with what we did.
Holy crap 24 deaths! My group has had 3 pc's go unconscious and one of them was in session 0. Sorry I'm not playing ToA and it's a very smart group.
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
Yeah ToA is brutal and i ended up not really enjoying it. I can handle character death, but a lot of the traps, puzzles, and whatnot just left me and the group scratching our heads in frustration as we died.
Lightning Strike - A rebranded Fire Bolt for Wizards & Sorcerers.
Spirit Bomb - A holy fireball for Clerics, Paladins, & Divine Soul Sorcerers!
Sword Dancer - A Cleric subclass specifically for the Drow goddess Eilistraee.
Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch - A pair of magical firearms for your Gunslinger or Artificer.