[3.5] How's this for a mean little trap?

[Brauron]

So, I'm building a small dungeon for the PCs to crawl in about two sessions' time. Only eight rooms, but I think it might be one of the potentially-deadliest dungeons I've ever designed.

What I'm working on is a quartet of pit traps -- one behind each of four doors. The pits are ten feet square, with a depth of 30 feet. At the bottom of each pit is a Gelatinous Cube. The PCs fall 20 feet and then land in the GC, being automatically engulfed.

I'm thinking the GC will cushion their fall enough to limit falling damage, because otherwise it's just adding insult to injury. The PCs will probably be level 5 by the time they enter this dungeon, so I don't think the GCs will be that difficult of an encounter, though the enclosed space in which to fight it may prove challenging.

There are a couple other traps -- The walls of the main room are lined with statues, and two of these statues spray darts at anything that walks in front of them, and two statues in the final room spray Ungol Dust vapor if a PC stands in front of them for three rounds, but the Gelatinous Cube Pit Traps are the most devious.

Any thoughts?

[Toliudar]

I like the idea of oozes at the bottom of pit traps in general, and this sounds like fun. I wouldn't do one behind each of the four doors, though - after the first one, the PC's are likely to be extra-cautious about floors, and are likely to be able to find the second-fourth pits and either circumvent the pits altogether or kill/deflate the cube safely from the top of the pits.

Have fun with it!

[Glimbur]

Put secret doors at the bottom of a pit trap. Try the third one they would find; so by this point they know to find the pit trap and will avoid it.

An oldie but a goodie is having a hole in the wall and a ruby or something on the other side. There's a swinging blade trap for hilarious dismemberment. You'd have to either turn it to just HP damage or make some houserules for losing an arm though... maybe the arm doesn't work until the damage from the trap is healed?

Throw in a random rolling boulder, those are fun.

[Tamburlaine]

How about a 10x10x10 room where the walls ceiling and floor are all gelatinous cubes (via judicious application of some gravity-altering magic).

[Lord Loss]

I did something like this. Pressure plate + cage above PCs containing cube = :smallbiggrin:

[Forbiddenwar]

pit traps work better in random places. They *might* fall for the first one, but after that, they'll just send the rogue in tied to the sturdiest character. If rogue falls, then they fall 5 feet before being pulled up by the character.

AS a DM this happened to me, it was very frustrating.
Why not do the reverse? have 1 room or two with a break away ceiling that drops a GC on the party

[Kallisti]

I agree with the idea of putting a secret door in one of the pits. The PC's figure out the pattern of the pits and avoid them... then later, when they come to a dead end, watch and laugh as they look for the secret door, but in all likelyhood forget the remaining pits...

[Proven_Paradox]

Add another voice to the chorus suggesting you mix it up a bit. The trap set-up is great: pits plus oozes are excellent for various reasons. But if you have any kind of regularity to the way the traps are set up, the PCs--unless your players are particularly slow to catch on to this sort of thing--are going to catch on and avoid the other traps.

There's still tons of fun to be had with gelatinous cubes though. Someone already mentioned dropping them from the ceiling.

One of my favorite uses of the gelatinous cube was done in one of the only two modules I've ever run; the Silver Skeleton (available for free download on the WotC website). Naturally, SS spoilers follow.

The basic setup was that the PCs were in a hallway ten feet wide that leads into a room with what appears to be some sort of treasure (in this case, the titular Silver Skeleton) apparently suspended in mid-air. What's actually happening is that the treasure (made of a metal that won't get dissolved) is suspended inside a completely transparent cube. In the middle of this hallway is a pressure plate that causes ANOTHER cube to drop down from the ceiling in this hallway. The PCs are now in a narrow hallway with two gelatinous cubes rolling their way. Roll for initiative.



|----|
----------....|
XX...PP....$Y.|
XX...PP....YY.|
----------....|
|----|
X = trap cube dropoff
P = pressure plate
$ = suspended treasure
Y = transparent cube

[Toliudar]

I had an "art gallery" trap - a long white hallway with paintings bolted all along it. At the far end of the hallway was visible a strange abstract work that seemed to move and shift in its very large frame.

The very long hall was on a pivot, such that when more than half of the PC's passed a certain point, about 30' from the end, the whole thing tipped towards the painting on the far wall, which turned out to be a multi-coloured black pudding.

The best part was that the PC's in back had the option of trying to hold onto the floor as it became a wall, or to jump back and save themselves (but be cut off from the rest of the group). If they jumped back, the tipping accelerated, and the slide turned into a fall.

[oxybe]

most horrible trap i've ever met?

the room that tried to eat you.

it looks like your standard dungeon storage room. a few stalagmites/stalagties, barrels full of cold water, a few barrels full of backup items, and a chest.

what happens when the party tries to open the chest or get items?

everything tries to kill them!


the chest? a mimic
the barrels? a mimic
the water? an ooze
the items? cloakers/xaviers/ect... D&D loves this type of monster. like the death pillow. i kid you not
Ceiling? lurker above
floor? trapper
walls? stunjelly
stalagmites/stalagties? ropers & peircers


i think the entire room was actually part of a greater mimic who was just f*cking arount with people.

[shadow_archmagi]

Make sure that for at least one of the pits, the Cube hides ABOVE the pit, and then descends downward onto the players as they try to climb down.

[Epinephrine]

Trap in a recent adventure had a false floor (illusionary wall) with a Silence below it. PC just vanishes...

My favourite? Pit of whipped cream.

No visibility. Can't support weight and won't allow swimming. Too thick to lower a rope into. Breath water doesn't work. Can still drown PC just fine.

[Lewin Eagle]

The cream one is funny^^ Though you can use a rope just bind something heavy at the end.

Hmm does any know a good spell to keep a room cold? In my opinion the standard entrance to an dwarven underground fortress should be a a short corridor with floodgates at the side. If uninvited guests come the doors at the end close the gates open an the magma kills them. But the corridor would get unbearable hot if there is magma around it so you couldn't use it as a normal entrance

[Korivan]

Try getting your hands on anything with Grimtooths traps in it...I swear, my players hit me if they even suspect I'm bringing anything from those books.

[lsfreak]

The first door has a trap behind it. The players fall for it.

The second door has a trap behind it. The players might be expecting it.

The third door has a trap behind it. The players are expecting it.

The fourth door has a cube drop from ceiling as soon as they try to open it.

@LewinEagle: Flash Flood (from Stormwreck I believe) to cool it down, Stone to Mud or Stone to Sand to make it into something moveable, and another Flash Flood to wash it all away. Realistically it doesn't work that way (lava can stay hot for a long time), but whatever.

[h2doh]

You could put a second pit with a false floor right past one of the pits at the doors. Make sure this second pit has a slide. That way, if they decide to jump across the first pit they still fall into it.

[Corwin Weber]

Try getting your hands on anything with Grimtooths traps in it...I swear, my players hit me if they even suspect I'm bringing anything from those books.

^^ this

Serious oldies but goodies. This guy had a seriously twisted sense of ironic black humor.

[Baron Malkar]

Hmm does any know a good spell to keep a room cold? In my opinion the standard entrance to an dwarven underground fortress should be a a short corridor with floodgates at the side. If uninvited guests come the doors at the end close the gates open an the magma kills them. But the corridor would get unbearable hot if there is magma around it so you couldn't use it as a normal entrance

How about an ooze that eats heat in the walls?

[golentan]

As long as everyone is suggesting fiendish ooze based traps, one of my favorites is to have spiked walls that slowly contract but clearly leave enough time to get across the room. The catch? Gray oozes that reside in holes in the floor. They don't have to win, just... slow the players down enough that the spiked walls finish them. Being grappled every 5 feet does tend to do that.

[Muz]

Two words to crank up the mean factor on the pit traps: "Living floor." :smallwink:

[Kyouhen]

Here's a way to mix up the second pit trap. Instead of having the ooze at the bottom, have it in a 10x10x10 crevice immediately beneath the platform. When the rogue-on-a-rope trips the pit trap and falls in they won't hit the bottom, but instead will swing into the part of the wall that's actually the ooze. Rope dissolves, party's back with a member down a hole. :smallbiggrin:

[Tyrmatt]

I've always wanted to replicate the OotS "Barbecue Sauce Sprayer" trap in a drake lair. It just strikes me as hilarious.
Or a large Rube Goldberg-esq room where the PCs have to move very very carefully without knocking over or setting off any of the myriad objects around them.

Oh and one I was gotten with a long time ago. Rolled to search for traps, got a 15. DM says the four squares in front of me are covered with a floor coloured blanket. Thinking pit trap, I made a Jump check, cleared the squares beautifully and landed on the real trap: A pressure plate that caused the wall to slam across and crush my character. It was just a blanket. -_-. DM got treated to a great number of glares from the whole table. It was the second corridor in the campaign too.

[Triaxx]

First trap has the cube at the bottom. Second is a stone bridge over the pit. Third is a shelf along one side. Fourth is a rain drain that doesn't wash out until the whole party stands on it. It washes them all the way back to the first pit out a chute twenty feet up one side. The real door to continue is at the bottom of the third pit.

[Brauron]

How does this sound:

First pit trap drops the PCs into ten feet of stagnant, foul-smelling water. No monsters, a handful of shinies at the bottom.

Second pit trap is not a pit trap at all -- the floor is solid, but has an illusion cast on it that makes the PCs think the floor falls away.

Third pit trap has a floor that falls away, but a layer of glass that the PCs can walk across -- but if too much weight is put on it, it breaks, dropping the PCs into the water and then the glass magically reforms above them.

Fourth pit trap drops the PCs into the Gelatinous Cube. Under the cube is the secret passage that leads to the treasure vault/boss fight.

The party actually also doesn't have a rogue.

[Ashtar]

My only question is who designed this dungeon and spent money to build it in game and why did he spend so much time devising strange and weird traps?

If he was a gnomish illusionist well known for his recipe of gelatinous cube dessert and his sense of (bad) humour, then it might be plausible.

Also, how complicated would it be for the person who built the dungeon to get to the treasure room and how many times has he done it? This helps create a more interesting dungeon than just a couple of rooms with little or no logic to them, I find.

[Dhavaer]

My only question is who designed this dungeon and spent money to build it in game and why did he spend so much time devising strange and weird traps?

Standard /b/tard wizard. Does it for the lulz.

[Brauron]

It's an extremely old tomb, unearthed during routine construction in the city the PCs are in. It's designed to keep anyone from getting to the final room, in which the occupant (a Mummy) is interred.

My players actually don't like "sensible" dungeons. They want weird and implausible traps and monsters. I tried running them through a dungeon with sensible traps and monsters that would realistically populate it, and they were bored, and told me after the session that they wanted more from a dungeon.

[Ashtar]

Oh great! So it's one you're never supposed to go in and even less supposed to be able to come out of. Then go wild! The only thing is making sure the oozes could survive that long. Also nice stuff like swarms of scarabs and beetles are a wonderful thing to use in these locations and they are thematically appropriate too. :)

[Brauron]

Oh great! So it's one you're never supposed to go in and even less supposed to be able to come out of. Then go wild! The only thing is making sure the oozes could survive that long. Also nice stuff like swarms of scarabs and beetles are a wonderful thing to use in these locations and they are thematically appropriate too. :)

One of the "rules" of my D&D worlds is that many aberrations are, when in an environment that doesn't provide enough food/water/etc., able to go into a state of suspended animation until conditions improve.

And I mean, come on; Gelatinous Cubes evolved to live on graph paper...I mean, in dungeons:smallbiggrin:

[Eldritch_Ent]

I'd certainly love to combine some of these ideas into a dungeon that SEEMS poorly constructed, but is simply a facade to greater deviousness.

Like the "floor-colored blanket" trick. Pit it in a well-lit room, But have an obvious divot in the center that just screams "pit trap", and if the players take the blanket off, yep, there is a large pit there.

Unfortunately, the pit contains an umber hulk or the like that gets woken up by the light coming into his now uncovered hole...

The next room contains nothing but a large number of doors in the wall. All of them lead somewhere that doesn't neccisarily make sense. Broom closet, graveyard, treasure room (that doesn't have an EXIT door, just an entrance door, and is surrounded in an AMF surrounded by a dimensional anchor...), etc. But the door forward is actually the door you came in from the blanket room. (If it's closed and re-opend with the handle turned counterclockwise, it'll open up the way on.)

The next room is one massive cube-shaped room with a normal-sized door entrance. There are objects floating around in it, and an illusion over the door that makes the room look shimmery and out of focus like it was an oversized Gelatinous Cube, but the items are just under the effect of a levitation cantrip. There is a gelatinous cube, but it's just waiting right in front of the exit door, not the entire room- The trap's designed to make adventurers go "Oh, it's all clear" and just charge to the next room and headlong into gelatin.

And more rooms like that.

And at the end you come across the one room where there's nothing obviously fake. Turns out it's the "Everything trying to kill you" room described earlier...

[Jergmo]

The cream one is funny^^ Though you can use a rope just bind something heavy at the end.

Hmm does any know a good spell to keep a room cold? In my opinion the standard entrance to an dwarven underground fortress should be a a short corridor with floodgates at the side. If uninvited guests come the doors at the end close the gates open an the magma kills them. But the corridor would get unbearable hot if there is magma around it so you couldn't use it as a normal entrance

Take the Boatmurdered approach. Keep the doors sealed. If anyone comes up and they're not allies, flood the surrounding terrain with lava. Flooding your entrance just equals cooled lava blocking everything up.