Don't worry. At this rate of you oushing him into things, he'll be dead soon enough.

Actually, I fully expect Quinn to ironically go the route his namesake did and just disappear...

Posting from phone so I cant update map. Quinn is in O17 I believe.

*Censored*!

welcome back!

Thanks. But hope I didn't kill myself just now.

Know it will hurt for Jiardem.

Why didn't he just walk around? Oh well. Hope he likes spikes. Maybe if you're lucky Graydon and Agamemnon wiped off all the poison with their bodies earlier.

Doh!

Edit: Should have taken ten.

I disagree. I agree that hitting the floor to destroy a floor tile or force the trap activation would require an athletics check, not that I think that would work since it didn't activate with Quinn's weight. But to hit the floor just to hear a hollow sound does not require strength, only the hammer weight and a good hearing, that is a perception check more than obvious.

Fair enough.

Perhaps I wasn't clear earlier: you can use a perception check to check one adjacent square for traps (which, is what you are doing). Alternatively, you can attempt an athletics check to strike the ground or wall, and if you hit hard enough, you will sound out all hollow areas in every adjacent square (which, is what I thought you were doing). Hitting the ground hard enough to detect all hollow areas in your immediate surroundings DOES require a certain amount of strength. Consider it as a special action that I am allowing you to use to check every adjacent square via an athletics check instead of the one-at-a-time method that Perception checks allow for. If you want to keep going verifying one square at a time with your perception, that's fine too. Perception IS slightly more reliable than sounding out hollow spots, but it is also more time consuming.

Now that makes a lot of sense.

@Zinger

I wanted to specify what each check was for, but I got busy. I will do next time.

But the more I play this game, the more I don't like your intention. It seems to me that you don't want us to conquer the tomb, you just want to hurt us. For example, not making public rolls and making things with unnecessary difficulty. I like challenges, I really do, I thrive on them, and I don't mind getting hurt. I am just making a friendly warning before you lose a player, just because of your style.

Don't want to loose you Thibor. You're a good player.

And I would love nothing more than to see you conquer the Tomb, because the further you get the more of its exciting surprises I get to unleash (and the really good ones are especially deep). That being said, it will take no prisoners; that is the point of the Tomb, after all.

I am a fair DM. The Tomb itself is unfair (of that you were warned from the get go); but let it not be said that the Tomb is unfair because of my treatment of it. I want you to walk away from this adventure after you've suffered a crippling defeat at the hands of Acererak, not because you have a distaste for my style.

So let me create a little bit of transparency to put your mind at ease. The reason I call for perception checks at every turn in order to locate intentionally hidden things, such as pit traps, is because 4e's passive perception goes against the nature of the Adventure. It was originally written with AD&D in mind, not 4e. There are a lot of things in the original adventure that specifically required active attention, which in the 4e module were replaced with a perception check DC. I am going for something in between both, requiring active attention and the perception DC, to try to create inspire the same feelings that the original module created.

Of course, it didn't take long before you decided to try triple rolling for each square. Now, there are a lot of DMs who just outright don't allow for that kind of thing, because it is meta gaming. In terms of the rules you don't get multiple rolls for one search attempt, you get one roll. Perhaps with a +2 circumstance bonus for being extra thorough, at most (DMs discretion). But I thought, what the hell, if he wants to roll three times let him roll three times, but I'll come up with some conditions to apply to multiple rolls that negates the chances of it resulting in auto-success through trial and effort. Because that's the reason I nixed passive perceptions in the first place, so that no one person with a high enough perception skill could just waltz around freely auto-detecting every little thing in the dungeon. I decided, ultimately, to find the median of your three results and compare that to the DC.

But perhaps I am going about it the wrong way. (and this is the part that everyone should clue into, if the others haven't read my response thus far) As I state in the setup thread OP: "Unlike other modules, the Tomb was specifically designed to challenge not only the characters but also the skills of the expert players in his own campaign at the time, and to put anyone who boasted having mighty unbeatable characters back in their place." To go into a little more detail, in 1975 Gary Gygax had a problem: his players had grown arrogant, and rightly so, because by now their high level characters where capable of thwarting any challenge his rules could throw at him. They had beaten everything that came before, and with certain amounts of ease. He needed something that would truly challenge his expert players, regardless of the purported unbeatableness of their heroes. This is how the Tomb of Horrors was born. The true secret as to why the Tomb is so challenging doesn't lie in the dice challenges you will have to overcome. No, pit traps and collapsing tunnels are mere bumps in the road. The true challenges will ignore your vast amounts of skills entirely, because they will challenge you, the player, leaving your fate up to your decisions as opposed to a simple die roll.

It is my goal to recreate faithfully that same feeling of hopelessness. That no matter how good your rolls are, you still won't beat this Tomb. It is in pursuit of THAT goal which makes me re-evaluate my method. So, here is what I will do.

And this is the part where you should really pay attention if you haven't yet: I'm changing Rule 1 of the Special Rules. I'm bringing back Passive Perception, in a sense. What I mean is that, when outside of combat or an encounter or any stressful situation, I will allow you guys to effectively Take 10 on your Perception checks. I do however want to make one thing perfectly clear: you still have to actively search an area to find something that was expressly hidden. Allowing you to Take 10 on your Perception check does not mean that if you waltz by a trap you will spot it with your Passive Perception. You still need to get down and search, I'm just mitigating the need for a roll. Should you choose to still actively make a Perception check instead of taking 10, you may do so. If you want to make multiple rolls to "triple check" an area, just make one roll and explain in your IC post in what way and to what degree you are being thorough, and I'll decide if that merits a circumstance bonus or not.

Are we all clear in understanding the changes being made?

TL,DR; You may now Take 10 on Active Perception Checks made outside of encounters.

I want you all to understand that I made this change because I came to the conclusion that it was better towards my overall goal of creating the right atmosphere for this game, not because True_Believer complained. I don't want to create a precedence for players to complain that the Tomb is too hard and expect me to make changes, because that won't happen.

Also, because of the number of pit traps that you guys have triggered and/or discovered, I'm giving you all a +2 circumstance bonus to any checks made to locate additional similarly crafted pit traps for a duration of 1 in-game hour. You've learned, more or less, what to look for.

Psoted a set of actions... Will edit if I somehow fallen into another trap.

Sorry for the wait. Busy week.

I think the idea of rolling per square is just gumming up the game. You should just make passive perception DCs, and if a character's passive perception hits those DCs they can then be notified something might be amiss and roll an active Perception check. This allows players who don't have high passive perception scores to still choose to investigate areas, and seems like an in-character way to ensure players with high perception scores are given an opportunity to use them.

So, let's say the DC to find a trap is 25, but it's in a nondescript area of the map. Players always have the option to investigate that area, but really, it's probably innocuous... unless someone with a passive perception of 20 (passive perception DC20 to see you might want to roll or not) sees there are scuff marks near that area of the room. They roll for a perception check, but only roll a 22 and decide there's no trap. They fall into a trap, but at least they rolled for it. Seems fair.

This somewhat helps PCs in that it points to potential traps, but this seems like a reasonable way to make sure we're not rolling Perception checks up the wazoo for weeks on end before we get to some action. This isn't just a descrepancy between 2nd Edition and 4e, we're also just not in a position where we can roll a bunch of d20s and have a DM check a book. By all accounts it takes about 1-2 months to finish none adventure on PbP boards, and here it's taken 8 months to fight a serpent, find a hole, and walk halfway down a hallway.

Sorrt for the delay guys I've been out of town for reading week. Thought I'd have internet access but did not.

Welcome back Zinger.

Let the trap triggering commence!

...Hopefully not too much.

I have to ask, do any of us (as PCs) know there is a door in the hallway?

The door fresco, marked on the map, is apart of an intricate plaster painting that adorns all the walls and ceilings. Not, in fact, a real door. You are all aware of it and are welcome to examine it further if you wish.

May have to play with that.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=45716
Hello. I will be joining the party shortly. I am playing Henleber who is currently trapped in the tomb. His character sheet is linked above. He is a rogue who this time plans to use his brains as much as possible to beat traps. Incidentally, he has decent thievery skills so this might help.