A pit of lava

 Today myself, Naked Man, and some friends set out to conquer the Tomb of Horrors.  The Tomb is an old DnD adventure written before I was born.  I have never looked at it, but I have heard many a tale about its outstanding implausibility and lethality.  The stories did not lead me astray.  We only got about 2/3 though the thing, but it is definitely the pinnacle of absurd funhouse dungeons that try to kill characters in the most over the top ways possible.

I had a fun time playing.  The group is great.  However, the dungeon is a silly mess that I couldn't take seriously.  

I actually went into the session figuring it would be brief.  Everyone else seemed to be sold on the idea that if their characters died to something they would just bring in a new one and keep going.  I wasn't into that idea at all.  If we aren't going to die to the dungeon, why bother playing in the deadliest dungeon?  If we are going to go for nonsense deathtraps, then let us actually respect them and let the heroes die.  If I die, I am out, and I go home.

But we didn't die.  None of us even came all that close, really.  We are all in good shape and have lots of resources left at this point, most of the way through the dungeon.  I am sure it gets even more dangerous near the end, so I expect us to have a TPK next session, but we could live, you never know.

In the first hallway we found a Sphere of Annihilation sitting in a carving, 5 gigantic poisoned pit traps, a dart trap, a switch trap, and a teleporter that sent us to all kinds of different places.  In the first hallway!  You might imagine that a dungeon designer who had access to 'teleport anywhere' as well as 'anti magic zone' and 'undetectable trap' could easily dispose of any interlopers, but this dungeon was clearly built by an idiot who merely wanted to inconvenience invaders, not actually stop them.

For example, one trap is a hallway with an illusion of weak enemies fleeing in fear.  If you enter the hallway, the entire 13 meter length of hallway turns into a slide, sending everyone on it into a pit of lava.  We know that the lich could simply have teleported us all into the lava.  But they didn't.  They could have put the lava under or above the hallway, killing us all easily.  But no.  They made sure to make a trap that is both preposterous and also not necessarily lethal.  They also made sure to make the mechanics of it completely ridiculous.  How exactly does a chunk of rock that big shift like that?   How is everything nearby not destroyed by the lava?  "Magic", obviously.

From a game standpoint, instantly lethal traps that you can't avoid aren't much fun.  From an immersion standpoint, an opponent with godlike power, unmatched intelligence, immense time to prepare, and home ground advantage should be unbeatable.  The sensible way that this situation plays out is that the lich inhabiting the Tomb simply murders us without any effort at all.  Instead the lich is a bumbling fool, wasting their power and resources on fruitless endeavours, because that way our party has a chance.

One issue with a place this full of secret doors and traps is that it encourages wretched, boring play.  We have a rogue with incredible Perception and Investigation skills, so he automatically finds everything.  We have a warlock who casts Detect Magic at will, so every single magical effect is found immediately.  In each corridor and each room we promptly find all the magic and all the traps, but everything takes a long time to do because we have to keep talking about searching with our powers on every single thing.  We can't just move down a corridor - we have to slowly walk, talking about investigating each thing we find.  Tedium, not fun.

If, for example, you have the Find Traps spell but can only cast it a few times a day, that is interesting.  You have to pick the right spot to use it, and conserve resources.  But constant, always on detection simply means that there is temporal overhead, and every single thing we do has to be framed in "I stare around the room Perceptively!"  Detect Magic is the worst offender here.  I would personally remove it from the game completely because I think it torpedoes fun, but at least it should always cost something.  I understand the appeal of making players think about the things they find, and consider how to handle them, but you don't encourage this by just filling every corridor with pits of spikes that the players defeat with tedium - you include evocative descriptions that they can interact with in normal, sensible ways.  Avoid things that require the GM to say "Well, it works because Magic."

I am glad I got to try out this thing.  I like playing with these people.  But geez, what a badly designed mess this thing is.