r/Tombofannihilation

Hi all.

I am currently running my favorite Adventure. Tomb of Annihilation. I am working on some diseases meant to be hinderances rather than straight up lethal. The lore for Chult makes it sound like the enviroment itself is dealy. Diseases, undead, dinosaurs, and more are out for your life. If those don't get you, the heat will. In practice the jungle is trivialized by goodberry, create water, and lesser restoration. I want these spells to be useful, but not to the point of making the jungle a non-threat.

The idea is that the dc to avoid catching them scales with the players, so they remain relevant. However, the cures don't scale, thereby allowing more powerful characters to deal with these easier. I also wanted to have local remedies be useful. None of these are likely to kill you on their own, but they will make you wish they did. I have plans for a disease that makes hydration a problem too, but that is still very much a concept with no mechanics.

Chult is supposed to be a dangerous place.

Blood Drought

A wasting disease that leaves many it infects living a life of extreme care and pain. On it's own it does little. The danger becomes apparent upon injury. Bruises take months to heal, cuts barely scab over before reopening and oozing again, and puncture wounds almost never fully close. Rare outside of the Chultan peninsula, it is carried by parasites native to the Aldani basin.

Gained from parasites in chultan rivers.

Con save is 10 proficiency bonus. Symptoms start at first damage after a long rest. Vulnerable to physical damage. Greater restoration allows a reroll. Can be treated by consuming a paste made of Dropcap frogs (palm sized brown and green frogs) found at high altitudes and Aldani claw flowers. (Cure allows a new save with dc of 11)

Spell Atrophy

A disease common in magical circles. Often caused by magically created plants that have been tampered with by powerful forces. Many a mage has lost their lives to this disease because they simply did not know before casting a powerful spell. Many wizard schools have clerics on hand to take the disease from their students with lesser restoration.

Gained from Plant type creatures in Chult, by the horn of an infected lambeosaurus (rare), or by having a non-damaging spell cast on you by an infected creature. INT save of 10+casting stat modifier. Symptoms appear at first spell cast after 24 hours. When casting a spell the creature takes force damage qual to the spell's level multiplied by their casting stat modifier (cantrips do not trigger this). Lesser restoration can cure a target, but the disease will spread to the healer with no save. Greater restoration is a safe cure. The afflicted creature may attempt a save again if they cast no spells for 24 hours. The horn of a living lambeosarus can absord the disease from a creature, however this will infect the beast in turn.

Noxious Lather

This virus is also known as the Thayan Plume. Commonly spread by particularly old zombies or other rotting undead. This turns the body's sweat and other excretions into a noxious poison. This scent attracts mindless undead and weakens the creature during exertion. Creatures that do not sweat may go entirely without symptoms, or mistake what few symptoms they experience as poor hygiene.

Gained by being crit on by an undead, swallowed by an undead, or by being surrounded by 4 or more zombies (or similar rotting undead) for a whole round. Requires a con save dc 12. DC increases by 2 for every triggering instance before a long rest to a maximum of 22.

Afflicted creatures experience symptoms after 2d4 days. They begin to emit an odor that gives undead advantage on perceiving them. When an afflicted creature exerts itself, it must make a con save equal to 10 + their proficiency bonus or suffer the poisoned condition. Failing with a 10 or lower results in an aura that spreads the disease to those within 10 feet (making a con save equal 10+proficiency bonus). While suffering from the poisoned condition from this the creature is vulnerable to poison and necrotic damage. A creature immune to the poisoned condition has advantage on the save and will only be vulnerable to necrotic (no poisoned condition.) This effect can be ended by a short rest.

Holy water can subdue the disease for 2 hours. Lesser restoration cures the target but causes all the poison to burst forth in a 30 foot radius centered on the creature, causing all within range to save against the disease.

The disease may be cured by burning dried Stinkhorn mushrooms in an enclosed space (IE a tent or shed)

If your character has the name Airdin, Elistar, Balthor, or Razor, look away!

Asking for help from the brain trust! I’m trying to build up to a Helm’s Deep-style siege of Camp Vengeance, with Breakbone in the role of Theoden.

So now I’m wondering what to do about Niles himself. In the book he’s listed as a noble, so as fun as it would be to give him a “ride out with me” moment to complete the sort of redemption arc I’m giving him, it’s going to be kinda anticlimactic when he immediately dies upon losing his 9 HP. On the other hand, my players have a dark enough sense of humor that they would probably laugh it off and maybe even appreciate the subversion.

Alternatively, if I wanted to keep the same ending from the Two Towers, should I allow the players to maybe go through a Draw Steel-style persuasion with him, with the reward being that his “renewed confidence” upgrades his creature type from CR 1/8 to CR Knight? Or even something crazier like the new CR 10 Noble Prodigy? (That’s probably overkill, but I’m just brainstorming.)

Which ending would you prefer if you were the DM or a player in this situation? And if you want Niles to survive, what stat block do you recommend I use for his “final form?”

I'm going to be DM'ing for my group in about 2 months or so. I've DM'd a couple one shots and CoS and it went pretty decent, though I realize I could have done some things better.

Is there any advice for running this for the first time? I'm obviously going to read the module, currently doing that now. Are there any recommended videos or guides to improve on things?

For context, I’m looking to run a one-shot before doing anything involved with the module. This one-shot is aimed to be a table chemistry test and sampling for all my players to see if they want to commit to the full campaign.

As I attempt to homebrew this, I am unsure what key details I should keep for my potential players. So to open the floor to discussion: if you took Tomb of Annihilation and juiced it, what would concentrate ToA be?

Do you go heavy on jungle and dinosaurs or undead and dungeons?

Is your test game an exploration game or a puzzle game?

Does it feel wacky and aim for the silly bits of Chult or does it feel deadly and aim for the seriousness of the Death Curse?

I don’t think there is a wrong answer, but I would like to add that I know about Cellar of Death and I am saving that for session 1 if my players are on board with playing the actual game.

Hello! Earlier in the year, I decided to attempt to run the entirety of ToA in just a few months. So far, both me and my players have been loving the campaign! We just finished the fight with Ras Nsi, and they're preparing to enter the Tomb. So, I wanted to ask what you all consider to be the most key parts of the Tomb, and which parts can be discarded or heavily adjusted/shortened. Thank you all for your help!

So I need some help. I haven’t had much time to prep my next session. We play in two days. I’m stressing about what sessions should look like once they enter the jungle.

The party has 4 PCs and they have Azaka as their guide and Salida as a hired hand. They also took the task of taking Undril Silvertusk to Camp Vengeance. They are traveling by canoe and plan to leave first thing in the morning for Camp Vengeance down river soshenstar. They have plenty of water catchers, insect repellant and rations.

What does a typical session once exploring the jungle tend to look like? I don’t want it to feel too tedious but still want the perils and dangers of the jungle known.

I ran Tomb of Annihilation with a group a few years ago and we stopped partway in Omu (before the Fane of the Night Serpent) due to players' schedules. Now we're about to start up again with a new group, but 3 of the 5 players were in the original campaign. It was a laid back group and I don't think they remember most of it (they've told me that too), but I am curious if others have re-run ToA like this and have any thoughts on how you'd run it differently.

My current plan is to run the Cellar of Death, then have them basically skip Port Nyanzaru and get sent more towards Mezro on a sort of archeological expedition, then if they want to go to Port Nyanzaru it'd be driven by them if they want to go that route, but it would eat more into the time aspect.

Thoughts?

So I've been looking around for some Pirate / Naval / Seafaring adventures and there are honestly not that many, especially for 5e. The only notable one I've found is Call from the Deep, which seems like an interesting naval campaign, but lacks the "exploration" hexcrawl aspect of ToA. I want to run a naval campaign where the players have their own ship and have relative freedom on where they want to sail it and what to explore. A more sandboxy feeling.

I was wondering if anyone has attempted turning Tomb of Annihalation into a seafaring campaign? Maybe carving up Chult into separate islands and letting players effectively sail deep into the jungle. The Hexcrawl seems to be one of the weaker aspects of the module as-written, so this would cut down on required jungle-trecking to reach places of interest, and condense the locations that do exist into smaller but more interesting islands. It would also make Pirates a more prevalent issue and open up use of some of the Saltmarsh modules as additional seafaring flavor. Any advice on doing smthn like this is appreciated.

Just a fun question. The campaign recommends not having ties to Chult and making characters from other places to keep that foreign and unknown feel. But if you had to make one that was indigenous to chult, what would it be and what would their backstory be?

So the book states that Keshma will “aid [the party] three times with her spells,” which I took to mean that she will cast 3 separate spells as favors to the party, and nothing more. But 1/4 of her spells are useless! But the party doesn’t necessarily know that, so I’m sure a lot of groups will waste 1-2 of their favors trying to bore through walls or seal off rooms for rests. Which is funny, but I bet it’d be kind of frustrating for players, and not in a fun way.

Has anyone either a.) removed (or relaxed) the module’s restriction on passwall and stoneshape, or b.) replaced those spells on her statblock? I think allowing passwall in the dungeon breaks the progression completely, but it kind of sucks that in the only real use case for passwall (getting through dungeon walls) the spell is not allowed. Maybe there are metal walls worked into the stone in between floors and surrounding certain rooms?

As I said in the title One of my players wants to be chultian originally and being an exiled. She will be a fighter or a ranger she hasn't decided yet. I think It would be cool to link her to princess mwaxanarè or her ancestors. Maybe She could be and heir of the last royal guard exiled when the royalty has been deposed. Do you think Is something doable? Every piece of advice and lore on ancient chultian noblety Is appreciated. If you think instead that Is not something doable please give me some other route.

Ps. Sorry if It's poorly wtitten but english Is not my First language and me or my automatic corrector could have done some errors

I read that they are immune to the soulmonger because they are undead and I'm assuming soulless. Does that mean a vampire can still resurrect if it gets killed?