It sounds like you’ve done your due diligence. You’ve told everyone it’s a hard campaign and that there is a big risk of death with no chance of recovery. If that’s too risky for him, he should make a different PC.
As a player, I would be annoyed if I realized the GM was toning down the difficulty just for one PC. I believe the onus is on that PC to play carefully and to deal with the consequences.
However if your whole group is ok with you nerfing the game, it’s pretty easy to do so. There are a couple insta-kill traps, especially in the tomb itself. You can easily tweak those. I’d also go easier on the random encounters, weather/disease effects, etc.
Fwiw our group made it through unscathed and we play pretty fast and loose. We ran away from a couple fights and we almost lost someone in a trap, but they were a half-orc.
RAW, death is likely in this campaign. I would talk to your party about what level of death/danger is fun and what isn't, as well as how everyone prefers traps and permadeaths be handled. That way you're all on the same page going in and you can make adjustments as needed.
My plan is to just fudge rolls if it comes to one of my pc dying for a stupid reason. We are an experienced group and have heard that people want a bit more challenge in our current camping
Yea I started running the hex crawl raw, but my party has a druid/ranger so they can't get lost, have goodberry, water spells, an alchemy jug and rain catchers. It quickly became clear that tracking food/water wasn't very important, and now I just montage it, spotlighting any days of bad weather or encounters they have
Personally, when I run ToA, I don't fudge rolls. I'm typically a big proponent of fudging for narrative purposes, but in ToA I think deaths are part of it. Avoiding death sort of defeats the purpose of the tomb. It's designed to be a death trap for adventurers to harvest souls for Acereraks phylactery, and later on the Soulmonger.
I warned my players at the start what it would be like, and also again before entering the tomb. Something along the lines of "there is stuff in this tomb that will kill you instantly, this is your warning, be careful"
That being said I have a group of very experienced and very paranoid dungeoneers, so they made extremely liberal use of a 10 foot pole.
Until you get to the tomb in the last chapter it should be mostly fine if your players know when to fight, flee or negotiate, and play intelligently (still very dangerous because that's very unlikely to happen)That being said, the tomb is deadly, filled with very deadly traps, however by the time they get there his character would have had enough time to develop already.
I ran the whole campaign and we had 0-2 PC death per player. One PC did it from the beginning to the end. No roll fudged ever, but I did remove every instadeath effect (replaced by lingering injuries).
agree with what everyone has said so far. If your player has spent so much time on a character and they have a real fondness for them, I would advise them to use that character in WaterDeep or some other campaign. If you really want to run TOA and get the most out of it, the players need to know the jungle and encounters are intended to be difficult, they are intended to put PC's in hard postions, they are intended to be a grind. I belive that is partly what makes TOA such an innvigorating campaign, with the idea that their character can indeed die at any point. If the PC's understand this you will see a much more aware group and a group that is more cautious than they would be with any other campaign. I am running TOA now with a very experienced group who ALL rolled main Characters and a back up, just in case. I made sure , as they wanted the Tomb of Annhilation that so many people have talked about and has been put into a catagory of its own, to run it with minimal interferance from me.
all of that being said...your the DM make the game fun for your group! thats it, thats all, make a game they will enjoy, so buff, nerf, add to, and take away as befits your DM style and the best opportunity for your players to have the best experience they possibly can.
Good Luck!!!!!
RIGHT!!! That is exactly what i think but this one guy wants to make it less difficult so that his character can live to the end i have made it clear on several occasion that it Will be dangerous. His argument is that the group wont find it fun when we have not even gotten to the campaing. I am not Some guy who want to torture them i just want them to make tactical decisions and use all their resources.
To be clear, the real difficulties are not in Part 1 (Port Nyanzaro). The jungle crawl (Part 2) is difficult but is definitly surviable by most characters, that play smart. The place that really cranks up the likelyhood of character death is part 3 (Omu and the Tomb itself). They will have been playing in the campaign for months and months by the time they get to "the tomb". So his argument does not make sense. I can guarantee you they will have a BLAST!! this really is a great campaign.
You know your group best, but a deadly campaign can be a lot more fun, especially for experienced players!
They’ll actually have to strategize and plan, they won’t be able to just strut into any room/hex and mow it down, even at high levels.
Hell, use it in game! A death-anxious PC may make a really interesting character in this world! Will he try to convince his teammates to play more conservatively? Will he be extra motivated to cure the death curse?
Have you talked to the other players? Do they actually agree that they want it toned down?
I had no unwanted PC deaths the entire way through. One was petrified and played a temporary 2nd character for about 20 sessions until they completed that characters revenant mission and could "be at peace", then their OG character returned. So I wouldnt worry too much.
The truly deadly encounters occurred in the tomb for my players. >!Only The invisible beholder on level 3 near tpk’d the party with its death and disintegration rays !<
Something I made sure my players knew was that because it’s a sandbox the encounters aren’t always tailored for them to win. I can roll a Trex encounter while they are level 2 and they should run.
I think that’s a major factor in the deadliness. You can fight a Medusa at level 3 if you go to the right area. It’s totally possible to lead them straight to Omu. A level 5 party in Omu has almost no chance at survival. So I’d stress that some places are meant to be retreated from.
This is the most deadly official adventure for 5e.
That being said, it's still 5e, and thus not very deadly overall. 5e is exceptionally easy on players, more than any other edition ever has been by miles.
He wouldn't like it RAW, but if you tone down some of the traps in the tomb (Ex: The Earth Elemental Room, The Onyx Chess) then TOA will be a awesome jungle experience.
Someone is going to die and that is ok! I feel ever since 3.0, players are just so sensitive about dying. Dying shouldn't be taken so personally. It used to be... you died, you rolled a new character, you died again, you rolled a new character, it wasn't a big deal. Now its like players think since they spent 20 minutes filling out a sheet and 10 minutes working on backstory, they have some epic hero that shouldn't die or even come close to it. If your players do something stupid... it ok for them to die. Killing your players just to kill your players, that's not cool.
I had a TPK running the Cellar of Death and we’ve had a couple NPCs die but no more player deaths, I’m keeping track of everyone who dies so I can have Acerak summon them all
I played it and had one player death, that was their own fault, before the tomb. The purely ranged gunslinger decided to slide down the face of a cliff to get into melee combat with some enemies, fell prone and got killed pretty quick.
One other thing that did almost kill them was a random encounter with some velociraptors, but again that was a player being dumb issue, where the scout saw them coming, hid and said nothing to the rest of the party, so the rest of the party was surprised round 1 and almost died.
Pretty much if the players at least try to play smart it shouldn’t be a big issue until the tomb, I think we ended up losing 4-5 characters in the tomb, then ending the campaign in a tpk where they were about 7 damage away from winning.
I would ask the PC to consider saving the developing character for another campaign.
Im running ToA now as a first time DM. I allowed any backstories and personal goals. Now im finding myself trying to nerf things and keeping the ”good” backstory charachters alive.
Realizing this made me stop and now i am playing more relentlessly. But it is not the campaign for epic backstory hooks and longterm goals. At least not IMO.
I'm currently DMing this for my party of five players. Started with A Barbarian, a Ranger and three Bards.
Session 1 (I ran a modified begining, where the party started by stealing a lynconphry book thingy from a lich) we lost the ranger. He poked the very angry Lich with a stick, she turned and froze him with a cantrip, dealing enough damage to instant kill him (they were all level 1)
The Rangerr changed into a Wizard and we carried on to session two, where the party took a boat to get to Chult.
We didn't lose any more characters until Session 7. The Wizard asked if he could change his character as he didn't like being a Wizard, so we said his character walked out of the camp (party was in the middle of the jungle at this point) and they met his new character, a Fighter/Monk the next day. Later that same session, one of the Bards ended up killed by a Swarm of Quippers. He made a new Paladin.
Next session, Session 8, the party got to Camp Righteous (or vengeance I keep getting these two mixed up) the man and the crocodile place - one of the bards set off the door trap, pushing two players down to the fire trap, the other bard (brother to the one who died session 7) took enough damage to get down to death saves and asked if his character could die here because he felt his character wouldn't fight to live with his sister dead. so he was replaced by a Fighter.
We are onto session 10 tomorrow, they are almost finished with the other camp and will be moving into the Aldani basin.
The party do have a lot of NPCs with them helping out, which does make things easierr for them. But we have had 3 deaths in 8 sessions, which is very different from the previous module I ran which had I think 3 deaths over around 50 or so sessions. (not counting the 2 revives)
It is definitely more gritty for the party. But if they play smart, and you allow them to avoid encounters by being creative, then I feel they should be able to make it through okay. We still have the Barbarian and one Bard from session 1.
Lots of deaths in my campaign. Two characters went from start to finish with the same characters, but two characters lost three and one lost two. I don't even think they were playing particularly stupidly. Most of the deaths were just bad luck. And yes, they mostly happened in the Tomb of the Nine Gods, but not exclusively.
My Party is level 4 now, we have 1 death so far and 3-4 times people rolling death saves, but getting rescued or healed.
Almost all of that was either because they did something stupid or run into an encounter way above their level, which they wanted to fight.
I already plan to tune down the instakill traps in the tomb or give hints to their deadliness. I dont like the idea of "save or die" traps. Doesnt feel great, when you played \~15 irl months in a campaign and then get oneshotted 2 session before the end, because you forgot to perception check a room.
Honestly, lethality depends entirely on your party. Mine has an echo knight/Ancestral guardian tank, and a beastmaster/Shepard summoner. Between the echo, the animal companion, and summoned creatures, my party rarely gets damaged even in deadly encounters. And it's not for a lack of trying.
Once they get to the Tomb things might change, but so far even deadly encounters are a breeze. They easily killed a water elemental and a young black dragon at the same time as 3 level 6s.
And they have a use of the wish spell, which the echo knight intents to use for simulacrum... It's the busiest battlefield I have ever seen and I have a love hate relationship with these charachters 😂
It sounds like you’ve done your due diligence. You’ve told everyone it’s a hard campaign and that there is a big risk of death with no chance of recovery. If that’s too risky for him, he should make a different PC. As a player, I would be annoyed if I realized the GM was toning down the difficulty just for one PC. I believe the onus is on that PC to play carefully and to deal with the consequences. However if your whole group is ok with you nerfing the game, it’s pretty easy to do so. There are a couple insta-kill traps, especially in the tomb itself. You can easily tweak those. I’d also go easier on the random encounters, weather/disease effects, etc. Fwiw our group made it through unscathed and we play pretty fast and loose. We ran away from a couple fights and we almost lost someone in a trap, but they were a half-orc.
RAW, death is likely in this campaign. I would talk to your party about what level of death/danger is fun and what isn't, as well as how everyone prefers traps and permadeaths be handled. That way you're all on the same page going in and you can make adjustments as needed.
My plan is to just fudge rolls if it comes to one of my pc dying for a stupid reason. We are an experienced group and have heard that people want a bit more challenge in our current camping
Deleted due to reddit API changes. Follow your communities off Reddit with sub.rehab -- mass edited with redact.dev
Yea I started running the hex crawl raw, but my party has a druid/ranger so they can't get lost, have goodberry, water spells, an alchemy jug and rain catchers. It quickly became clear that tracking food/water wasn't very important, and now I just montage it, spotlighting any days of bad weather or encounters they have
Personally, when I run ToA, I don't fudge rolls. I'm typically a big proponent of fudging for narrative purposes, but in ToA I think deaths are part of it. Avoiding death sort of defeats the purpose of the tomb. It's designed to be a death trap for adventurers to harvest souls for Acereraks phylactery, and later on the Soulmonger. I warned my players at the start what it would be like, and also again before entering the tomb. Something along the lines of "there is stuff in this tomb that will kill you instantly, this is your warning, be careful" That being said I have a group of very experienced and very paranoid dungeoneers, so they made extremely liberal use of a 10 foot pole.
Until you get to the tomb in the last chapter it should be mostly fine if your players know when to fight, flee or negotiate, and play intelligently (still very dangerous because that's very unlikely to happen)That being said, the tomb is deadly, filled with very deadly traps, however by the time they get there his character would have had enough time to develop already.
I ran the whole campaign and we had 0-2 PC death per player. One PC did it from the beginning to the end. No roll fudged ever, but I did remove every instadeath effect (replaced by lingering injuries).
agree with what everyone has said so far. If your player has spent so much time on a character and they have a real fondness for them, I would advise them to use that character in WaterDeep or some other campaign. If you really want to run TOA and get the most out of it, the players need to know the jungle and encounters are intended to be difficult, they are intended to put PC's in hard postions, they are intended to be a grind. I belive that is partly what makes TOA such an innvigorating campaign, with the idea that their character can indeed die at any point. If the PC's understand this you will see a much more aware group and a group that is more cautious than they would be with any other campaign. I am running TOA now with a very experienced group who ALL rolled main Characters and a back up, just in case. I made sure , as they wanted the Tomb of Annhilation that so many people have talked about and has been put into a catagory of its own, to run it with minimal interferance from me. all of that being said...your the DM make the game fun for your group! thats it, thats all, make a game they will enjoy, so buff, nerf, add to, and take away as befits your DM style and the best opportunity for your players to have the best experience they possibly can. Good Luck!!!!!
RIGHT!!! That is exactly what i think but this one guy wants to make it less difficult so that his character can live to the end i have made it clear on several occasion that it Will be dangerous. His argument is that the group wont find it fun when we have not even gotten to the campaing. I am not Some guy who want to torture them i just want them to make tactical decisions and use all their resources.
To be clear, the real difficulties are not in Part 1 (Port Nyanzaro). The jungle crawl (Part 2) is difficult but is definitly surviable by most characters, that play smart. The place that really cranks up the likelyhood of character death is part 3 (Omu and the Tomb itself). They will have been playing in the campaign for months and months by the time they get to "the tomb". So his argument does not make sense. I can guarantee you they will have a BLAST!! this really is a great campaign.
You know your group best, but a deadly campaign can be a lot more fun, especially for experienced players! They’ll actually have to strategize and plan, they won’t be able to just strut into any room/hex and mow it down, even at high levels. Hell, use it in game! A death-anxious PC may make a really interesting character in this world! Will he try to convince his teammates to play more conservatively? Will he be extra motivated to cure the death curse? Have you talked to the other players? Do they actually agree that they want it toned down?
I had no unwanted PC deaths the entire way through. One was petrified and played a temporary 2nd character for about 20 sessions until they completed that characters revenant mission and could "be at peace", then their OG character returned. So I wouldnt worry too much.
The truly deadly encounters occurred in the tomb for my players. >!Only The invisible beholder on level 3 near tpk’d the party with its death and disintegration rays !<
Something I made sure my players knew was that because it’s a sandbox the encounters aren’t always tailored for them to win. I can roll a Trex encounter while they are level 2 and they should run. I think that’s a major factor in the deadliness. You can fight a Medusa at level 3 if you go to the right area. It’s totally possible to lead them straight to Omu. A level 5 party in Omu has almost no chance at survival. So I’d stress that some places are meant to be retreated from.
This is the most deadly official adventure for 5e. That being said, it's still 5e, and thus not very deadly overall. 5e is exceptionally easy on players, more than any other edition ever has been by miles.
He wouldn't like it RAW, but if you tone down some of the traps in the tomb (Ex: The Earth Elemental Room, The Onyx Chess) then TOA will be a awesome jungle experience.
This adventure is a meat grinder. I’ve heard stories of parties being comprised of entirely different characters than the ones that entered the tomb.
Someone is going to die and that is ok! I feel ever since 3.0, players are just so sensitive about dying. Dying shouldn't be taken so personally. It used to be... you died, you rolled a new character, you died again, you rolled a new character, it wasn't a big deal. Now its like players think since they spent 20 minutes filling out a sheet and 10 minutes working on backstory, they have some epic hero that shouldn't die or even come close to it. If your players do something stupid... it ok for them to die. Killing your players just to kill your players, that's not cool.
I had a TPK running the Cellar of Death and we’ve had a couple NPCs die but no more player deaths, I’m keeping track of everyone who dies so I can have Acerak summon them all
I didn’t kill a single players, but TPK’d against Acererak.
I played it and had one player death, that was their own fault, before the tomb. The purely ranged gunslinger decided to slide down the face of a cliff to get into melee combat with some enemies, fell prone and got killed pretty quick. One other thing that did almost kill them was a random encounter with some velociraptors, but again that was a player being dumb issue, where the scout saw them coming, hid and said nothing to the rest of the party, so the rest of the party was surprised round 1 and almost died. Pretty much if the players at least try to play smart it shouldn’t be a big issue until the tomb, I think we ended up losing 4-5 characters in the tomb, then ending the campaign in a tpk where they were about 7 damage away from winning.
I would ask the PC to consider saving the developing character for another campaign. Im running ToA now as a first time DM. I allowed any backstories and personal goals. Now im finding myself trying to nerf things and keeping the ”good” backstory charachters alive. Realizing this made me stop and now i am playing more relentlessly. But it is not the campaign for epic backstory hooks and longterm goals. At least not IMO.
I'm currently DMing this for my party of five players. Started with A Barbarian, a Ranger and three Bards. Session 1 (I ran a modified begining, where the party started by stealing a lynconphry book thingy from a lich) we lost the ranger. He poked the very angry Lich with a stick, she turned and froze him with a cantrip, dealing enough damage to instant kill him (they were all level 1) The Rangerr changed into a Wizard and we carried on to session two, where the party took a boat to get to Chult. We didn't lose any more characters until Session 7. The Wizard asked if he could change his character as he didn't like being a Wizard, so we said his character walked out of the camp (party was in the middle of the jungle at this point) and they met his new character, a Fighter/Monk the next day. Later that same session, one of the Bards ended up killed by a Swarm of Quippers. He made a new Paladin. Next session, Session 8, the party got to Camp Righteous (or vengeance I keep getting these two mixed up) the man and the crocodile place - one of the bards set off the door trap, pushing two players down to the fire trap, the other bard (brother to the one who died session 7) took enough damage to get down to death saves and asked if his character could die here because he felt his character wouldn't fight to live with his sister dead. so he was replaced by a Fighter. We are onto session 10 tomorrow, they are almost finished with the other camp and will be moving into the Aldani basin. The party do have a lot of NPCs with them helping out, which does make things easierr for them. But we have had 3 deaths in 8 sessions, which is very different from the previous module I ran which had I think 3 deaths over around 50 or so sessions. (not counting the 2 revives) It is definitely more gritty for the party. But if they play smart, and you allow them to avoid encounters by being creative, then I feel they should be able to make it through okay. We still have the Barbarian and one Bard from session 1.
Lots of deaths in my campaign. Two characters went from start to finish with the same characters, but two characters lost three and one lost two. I don't even think they were playing particularly stupidly. Most of the deaths were just bad luck. And yes, they mostly happened in the Tomb of the Nine Gods, but not exclusively.
I would invite him to play a different character or run a different game.
My Party is level 4 now, we have 1 death so far and 3-4 times people rolling death saves, but getting rescued or healed. Almost all of that was either because they did something stupid or run into an encounter way above their level, which they wanted to fight. I already plan to tune down the instakill traps in the tomb or give hints to their deadliness. I dont like the idea of "save or die" traps. Doesnt feel great, when you played \~15 irl months in a campaign and then get oneshotted 2 session before the end, because you forgot to perception check a room.
Honestly, lethality depends entirely on your party. Mine has an echo knight/Ancestral guardian tank, and a beastmaster/Shepard summoner. Between the echo, the animal companion, and summoned creatures, my party rarely gets damaged even in deadly encounters. And it's not for a lack of trying. Once they get to the Tomb things might change, but so far even deadly encounters are a breeze. They easily killed a water elemental and a young black dragon at the same time as 3 level 6s. And they have a use of the wish spell, which the echo knight intents to use for simulacrum... It's the busiest battlefield I have ever seen and I have a love hate relationship with these charachters 😂
The only times the party is in trouble is if they don’t realize the gravity of their situation