r/Tombofannihilation

Howdy fellow DM's

I have been running this adventure for a long time now and have finally arrived at the final moments.

The following will contain spoilers so any players.... Please avert your eyes 🫩

My players party consists of 6 level 12 characters; ranger, monk, minotaur barbarian, artificier, rogue and sorcerer (fire damage specialist with very few utility spells)

They have defeated the hags and encountered the atropal, half the group are on 2nd level exhaustion and the other half 3rd level. They have retreated into the hags room and shut the doors in order to rest. (I have played that the stairway to the next level has been blocked by a stone to prevent escape)

Now my options are limited;

do I allow them to rest for multiple days (which I would not normally allow but there are no other interactive elements suitable of interrupting other than the other option below - suggestions welcome) they would then be fully recovered to begin the encounter again but informed.

Or do I bring Acererak in, having been notified of the attack on his atropal and likely felt the defeat of the hags through the ether. But I'm concerned that Acererak and the Atropal will end up being too much for them to handle.

As an aside, I'm not really sure how brutal to play Acererak; I mean in the Lore he would turn up and attempt to take out characters very quickly (which I'm any other situation I wouldn't baulk at) but as a final boss I think if I was a player I'd be really disappointed if I died before actually getting to do anything.

I want to play him as the destroyer he is, but as I said I don't want my players to be disappointed.

If anyone had any tips for running him I would appreciate it. I am running an altered spell list. My players may not have much utility but they do put out a phenomenal amount of damage, much in melee.

[D&D5e 2014] Starting a ToA module soon with a party. I'm interested in doing...

- Foundry module + whatever add on apps

- Physical player minis and fully IRL rolling, char sheets, etc

- Digital NPC and enemy assets. Maybe the occasional physical mini for enemy bosses

- Tabletop display where I'm really just controlling the scene and enemies with my DM computer

My questions are:

- how's that sound?

- how is Foundry for ToA?

- what modules do you recommend?

- what are the red flags/ hiccups with this plan?

Is there any art of players entering Omu from the cliffside and seeing the big city?

Hi everyone!

I'm running tomb of annihilation for the first time in fantasy grounds, and my players wanted to test some classes from AiR. I'm thinking that maybe the Bushi, Pilgrim & Shinobi could be viable options, but I'm not sure if any of those are balanced enough to play it outside the AiR camping.

I like all the options (except the Courtier, since I think is more social focused if I'm not wrong). Which one is absolutely not usable outside AiR?

P.S.: I'm also trying to replicate those in my campaign for fantasy grounds unity, but I can't make them public because copyright issues (as I was told in the FGU forums). If anyone has any advice to replicate some of the attacks/effects/etc that are not implemented in fantasy grounds unity, that would be great. But I think that should go in another reddit.

Viskar, Irodyn, Utette, and Rusala, avert thine eyes! No reading this thread.

My players are progressing through the Tomb of the Nine Gods, but scheduling has been a challenge, so they've been in the dungeon for more than a year of IRL time. We had an out of game discussion about how the campaign is going, and they're having fun, but they did ask for a break from the tomb. They're looking for a chance to leave the tomb, go back to Port Nyanzaru, rest and restock, before diving back in.

They have not yet tried to teleport out of the tomb, so no one has landed in the Oubliette yet. They do have a mechanism to potentially teleport out, but if I stick to the alterations to magic in the Tomb, doing so would inevitably drop them in the Oubliette. I don't want to undermine the tone and inescapability of the tomb by allowing them to teleport out. Not to mention, if they have the ability to come and go as they please, they can just leave when they need to rest, which significantly undermines the deadliness of the tomb.

One thought that I had was to let the players teleport out, go back to PN, rest, restock, maybe check out dino races for some levity, but... then, suddenly, they see/experience one of the traps they've already triggered, and they abruptly wake up from a nightmare. They never left the tomb. A cruel trick played on them by Withers/the Sewn Sisters. This could give them the chance to play a more fun session (downtime at PN), while still maintaining the tone and inescapability of the tomb.

My worry is that, while they would get 1-2 sessions of doing "fun" things, this will frustrate the players even more knowing that their characters didn't get to keep any of the positive outcomes (rest, restocking, etc.) and are still where they left off in the tomb, no better off than before. I would essentially be taking away rewards they had just earned. If it happened to me as a player, I think I'd feel bitter about it too.

One thought that I had was that, upon awakening from the dream, Withers could have left them a "gift" as a consolation prize for the nightmare, which might include some (but not all) of the things they would have bought at PN. While the act of generosity might seem contrary to Wither's/Sewn Sisters'/Acererak's goals, I think it could still be consistent with their characters, because giving the players "gifts" raises their hopes, meaning their hopes would be shattered even harder when things continue to go terrible for them in the tomb.

Thoughts about this idea? Is it too cruel of a trick to play on my players? Any other suggestions to give the players a break from the torture without undermining the tomb?

Any feedback is appreciated!

Hey all! My group went through the gravity hall in floor 2. From what I've read, it basically takes them to a fake tomb 1 year before the tomb they arrive in. So, how do you play it if they don't realise? I gave them the hint of the body of the goat dude disappearing, but they haven't seen anything else obviously out of the ordinary yet....

Would you give them hints that they're out of time, or just let them find out when the Soulmonger isn't there?

TLDR: How best to have a one session guest player play a previous PC as a "baddie"?

I hope none of my players read this subreddit haha

I had a player who played in my IRL ToA campaign who had to move to different state. Everyone loved this player and her character, so instead of just dropping her character (Human Paladin) into an abyss ("you wake up and have no memory of any character by that name that was ever with you"), I had the character get captured and the party goes to rescue her. They end up discovering that the character was captured by the Grung and I played the character as an NPC now. But, because she has an anthropologist background, she says that she doesn't want to rejoin the party bc she's decided to study the grung instead. I really loved the character and hoped that I've have the opportunity to one day bring her back in some way, so that was a way for me to leave an opening if I ever got the opportunity.

Fast forward to now, many sessions later, one my players said they have a friend who would like to come to our session and just watch as they've never played D&D before. I immediately want to seize this moment and suggest instead that she come in and play a guest character.

Now the character had a really cool backstory of her grandparents (who raised her) would tell her the legend of Acererak coming to Omu and destroying the trickster gods. This became the obsession of her character to find out Omu and what really happened and how this related to the disappearance of her grandparents.

At this point in the campaign, my players just happen to be in Omu and in the process of trying to get all the keys to open the tomb, so here's what I want to do and I would like some help fleshing this idea out.

I'd like the returning character to stumble upon the party while they explore Omu (that way I can get the new player in action right away at the start of the session). But, in the time that this returning character was away, she's changed. She's now convinced that Acererak is the key to bringing back her grandparents, the most important people in her life ever, so she's become an oath breaker paladin. She has more lore of what Acererak is really up to (through her research) and wants to actually help him bring forth the Antropal... just like Acererak deceived Ras Nsi to guard the tomb, Acererak has done sort of the same with this guest character bc he's aware of the party bc of information from the Sewn Sisters (which have appeared to the characters in dreams several times through their exploration).

Now, I've talked with the player about the idea of playing essentially a, now, evil character that will probably end in a PvP battle. They're good with it. But, I told them to please let me know at any point if they don't like an idea bc my goal is always to ensure that everyone at my table has a good time.

My question is, how best to implement this for the biggest emotional gut punch and shock value to my core players (the players that bonded with the original PC) as possible... while recognizing the limitations of a first time DnD player? Or is this just simply a bad idea?

PS. When the original player left the campaign, I got permission to keep her character alive and potentially use her as an future NPC.

I ran a level 1-7 campaign in icewind dale, my players really liked the Aussie (Steve Irwin inspired) dwarf NPC who said he was on walkabout from Nyanzaroo, so I'm thinking of sending them to Chult with him for ToA or a homebrew campaign.

Has anyone got any fun ideas of how to give chult/the creatures/factions/locations an Australian vibe?

I posted a few months ago about running TOA and the time has finally come for me to start the campaign!

I was wondering if anyone had any good intros/ way of getting their players to Chult that they used for their campaign?

I’ve read through cellar of death and it looks interesting but I was curious to see what other ideas people had come up with to introduce the story and getting their players to Chult.

Any ideas welcome!

Hi everyone, My party just left Port Nyanzaru and decided to take Eku as a guide.

So my question is how have you that have ran her handled Eku? When/how did you reveal her true form and how did you handle her not being to strong for encounters this early on?