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almightyk
2009-07-31, 09:39 PM
hey just wondering.
whats the worst trap a dm has pulled on you
1) what were you doing
2) where were you
3) what did they do
4) was it personal or against the whole party
and 5) did you tick them off

edit: by "trap" i mean anything you didnt see coming

Renrik
2009-07-31, 10:00 PM
My favorite trap to have ever used on the players was the magnetic armory.

They walked into an armory in an old fortress, with the walls covered in various bladed weapons loosely held on pegs. The center of the room had a big blackish obelisk on the center with various carvings on markings on it, and ornate-looking weapons stored on it. The weapons, with Nystul's Magic Aura, look like enchanted items to a Detect Magic spell, but the aura does not because it isn't. Stepping up to the pillar to retrieve the weapons causes the floor panel to depress slightly, completing a circuit and activiating the giant carved magnet in the center of the room- the pillar. All the weapons in the room fly towards the magnet, shredding, puncturing, and bludgeoning every inhabitant of the room for however much damage the DM feels like assigning to the trap.

It can work out well if you create another room or challenge that involves the battery/power source and deactivating it so you can get the weapons- especially if you decide just to put a real magic weapon in there.

almightyk
2009-07-31, 10:09 PM
ouch!
you, my friend, must not be angered

Limos
2009-07-31, 10:33 PM
I personally liked the delayed pitfall trap. It goes something like this. There is a hallway, 5 feet wide and very long. Roughly halfway through there is a pitfat, then ten feet in front of that trapdoor there is the trigger panel to the trapdoor.

Depressing the panel severs a cord which runs through a channel in the floor and one in the wall which leads into the ceiling. When cut it simultaneously releases the trapdoor and drops a large stone block 6x5 ft from the ceiling.

The block slam down around the empty space, sealing the trapdoor as well as the corridor but is not wide enough to go down the shaft.

At the bottom of the shaft of course are the requisite poisoned spikes. The walls of the shaft have been studded with caltrops dipped in more poison. There is no light source.

almightyk
2009-07-31, 10:39 PM
reminding not to tick either of you off while playing

Strawman
2009-07-31, 11:08 PM
The bloody see-saw.

Basically there is a long rectangular room with a very high ceiling and a solid steel floor. The room slopes upward. In the middle of the room is a panel that activates the trap. The trap is audible as it activates, a loud whirring sound. The trap is getting ready to release a giant stone block in front and above the players.

If the players run forward, the block crushes them. If they run backwards, the block lands on the other side of the floor (secretly a giant see-saw) and launches them into the ceiling with extreme force.

And the best part is that the trap is designed so that if they stay still, they're completely fine. That rarely happens.

Catch
2009-07-31, 11:12 PM
Tucker's Kobolds.

Jogi
2009-08-01, 12:01 AM
Haha, oh wow

- A square room with a small opening in the ceiling that allows light from sun/moon to come in.
- A chest full of identical saphires and some mirrors can be found in the room.
- One of the walls has carvings in which the saphires fit, but there are twice as many cavings as saphires.
- A closed stone double-door (which is what the player's will attempt to open)

The saphires have to be put in the right spots or, if put in the wrong ones, water will start to fall from the ceiling, and the door behind them will be closed. Now the tricky part is: the window in the celing is an Illusion with magical moonlight. So if they just keep trying they will actually drown.

The solution: use the mirrors to direct the moonlight to the wall oposing the carved wall. This will reveal markings that show where the saphires will go.

Jogi
2009-08-01, 12:02 AM
Or you can just try the delayed pit trap, but instead of a stone block falling you make a Gelationous Cube fall. Lol.

almightyk
2009-08-01, 12:08 AM
or worse
a vampiric gelatinuos cube, that drains levels

Strawman
2009-08-01, 12:19 AM
or worse
a vampiric gelatinuos cube, that drains levels

Does it turn the players into a vampiric gelatinuos cube spawn? :smallbiggrin:

Better yet- a gelatinuos cube with several vampires stuck inside it. "Welcome to the new ecosystem. From highest to lowest it's: cube, us vamps, and then you."

Limos
2009-08-01, 12:26 AM
Here's a good one.

Create a transparent magical barrier in the hallway, behind it fill the room with pressurrized explosive gas. The barrier is airtight. On the player's side line the hallway with torches. On the gas side line the hallway with illusory torches.

Most players will attempt to dispel the barrier and thus release the gas, burning the party to death.

The actual path is an illusory wall just next to the barrier.

Strawman
2009-08-01, 12:32 AM
Here's a good one.

Create a transparent magical barrier in the hallway, behind it fill the room with pressurrized explosive gas. The barrier is airtight. On the player's side line the hallway with torches. On the gas side line the hallway with illusory torches.

Most players will attempt to dispel the barrier and thus release the gas, burning the party to death.

The actual path is an illusory wall just next to the barrier.

I know a good follow up trap for that one, once the players know it. Have a similar room with a barrier, except this time place a monster on the other side of the barrier. The monster should be something way too powerful for the players to face.

The hidden passage is actually filled with lots of traps, and the real door is behind the barrier. When the players finally decide to dispell the barrier and face the monster, they find out it's an illusion.

Phae Nymna
2009-08-01, 12:46 AM
I don't remember his name quite right, but there was a wonderfully sadistic trapmaker on the WotC name something like Ravenwood. Those days were grand, sippin' ice tea late at night reading how he murdered his party... Ah...
I lost all of his trap which I had saved with my old DnD binder, but this guy was the best.

My favorite was a square, well lit room made of sandstone with a sand covered floor. PCs entered through the west door which closed and sealed utterly when the pressure plate by the east door was pressed. The east door had a hard lock DC or perhaps, several hard locks. The ceiling of the room, oddly enough, was made of glass. On the other side of the glass was gold and silver coins and trinkets and treasures galore. Above the glass continued a 50 ft shaft. The way it works, is, rogue picks on lock, and other PCs are wary after door closes. One gets the idea to break glass to get stuff. *SMASH* it all comes raining down, the pick stuff out of the sand for five minutes. In this time, poison gas which does DEX and INT damage (I think.) seeps down and gets everyone. Rogue struggles to fumble with the door as the poison works its way on him, and everyone slowly becomes vegetative and paralyzed and braindead.

EDIT: Aha! Here we are:
TRAPS (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=674705)

Jair Barik
2009-08-01, 03:27 AM
Or you can just try the delayed pit trap, but instead of a stone block falling you make a Gelationous Cube fall. Lol.

Done this one before.

Also done one similar to the magnet idea. Room with paper walls that the players can walk through or round in a spiral to reach the center. Floor is made of coloured tiles that play a musical note when stepped on. As a result of this any attempt to search for traps shows that every square is an individual trap as they are all pressure pads. Only real trap is near the centre of the room, a pressure pad that fires hundreds of poisoned needles at the party from the walls shredding the paper barriers in the process. Every point they fail the save by is 1 damage and a poison DC save.

The old fashioned "spider sitting ina chimney shaft" is good for a laugh too.

Oh just remembered another good one. Underground, mine room made entirely of wooden supports, key at one end with a fire trap spell on it. Grab the key take the damage and then run or get stuck in the cave in.

Icewalker
2009-08-01, 04:05 AM
My favorite one which I'm using (my players, don't read this if you're here :smallwink: )

The giant spiky boulder drop.

So, there's a door. The door is trapped if you check. There's a giant spiky boulder suspended well above it. It's pretty obvious what's about to happen. The boulder is high enough that it's possible to run out from under before it would reach the ground.

Open the door, and reverse gravity is cast in a field, with the trap operating as a simple deep spike pit followed by a pretty large drop back down to the floor.

The_JJ
2009-08-01, 04:12 AM
PC dartboard. Dark narrow corridor, magical darkness that counters magical light, all that. High listen checks, know. dungeons etc. will reveal a big open area up ahead.

The only real 'trap' part consists of paralyzing poison. (Or spell, whichever is most effective in the system being run.)

In front of a big slide. That has a nice upward ramp at the end. On the far wall there are a number of spikes, painted in concentric circles of alternating red and white.

Had one group 'solve' it when the mage grabbed the meatsheild in a tin can and used him to take all the damage from the spikes.

He neglected to figure out how to get down, though, and was left hanging onto a bleeding corpse 50 up a sheer drop for half of a session as the other party members did some creative nonsense with a rope.

Cruel? No, I've run worse. Humiliating? Oh yes.
*rolls dice* "Hmm..."
"Wait, we already rolled for damage, what was that for?"
"Seeing where you landed on the dart board. Tsk. Not even close to a bullseye. 2 points!"

Then there's the 'perfectly smooth ceiling with the obvious crack right near the door. As soon as we trigger the trap by stepping on the doormat, the roof around the door falls. Yawn. I step on the mat and jump back.'
Then everything but the door falls.

I also like traps that douse the PC's in flamable oil or something. Preferably with some burnt out torches also in the line of fire. Rather then avoid the trap, the PC's congradulate me for adding the flavorful addition of a trap that needed maitenece to work, pick up their roleplaying xp by complaining about getting their cloths dirty but not actually expending effort to avoid the oil.

Three, four, twenty rooms later, they meet a fire elemental. A fire mage. A recurring villian with a pack a day habit. *BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!*

Icewalker
2009-08-01, 04:19 AM
I like the idea of having a whole giant network of traps, each one of which in some way helps set up the next. Like an oil trap, then a fire trap which forcibly leads into an overly flammable room trap...

Jair Barik
2009-08-01, 04:27 AM
Remembered another one!

Giant mirrors at the end of some passages. Players walk down the passage and see this massive creature runnning up behind them from round the corner, they turn round nothings there its an illsuion in the mirror. Do this a couple of times but then you spice it up with either a creature actually being behind them or even better the creature they can see in the mirror being invisible in real life. Then later on you repeat this trap, they turn around to attack the creature when it runs at them as they near the "mirror", in reality its a big moonster and some dopplegangers/mirror of opposition creatures/shapeshifters that are charging at them with a giant monster from the other side of a wall of glass from down an identical corridor.

Cespenar
2009-08-01, 02:51 PM
A large square room with a grid on the ground. In the grid there are seemingly random letters. Players will obviously think of a combination/password type of thing to pass. The catch is, every square is trapped.

Smart, right? Right?

Szilard
2009-08-01, 04:53 PM
Troglodytes.

In a barrel. :smalltongue:

Ninetail
2009-08-01, 05:33 PM
Here's a good one.

Create a transparent magical barrier in the hallway, behind it fill the room with pressurrized explosive gas. The barrier is airtight. On the player's side line the hallway with torches. On the gas side line the hallway with illusory torches.

Most players will attempt to dispel the barrier and thus release the gas, burning the party to death.

The actual path is an illusory wall just next to the barrier.

Not a very good one at all, I'm afraid. With this setup, it's either trivial (if the PCs have a means of reliably detecting illusion) or arbitrarily deadly (if they don't). There's no way of telling the trap is present until it's triggered, no matter how cautious they are -- and the means of triggering it is to do what would otherwise be the logical thing.

It's the kind of trap that works logically from the designer's point of view, but is bad for the game.

Of course, it's always possible to plant clues earlier in the dungeon. Sort of takes away from the impact, though.

My favorite trap?

The pressure plate.

It's not hooked up to anything, not any more. There's just a click as it's stepped on, that sensation of the floor sinking slightly, maybe a distant rumble. And nothing.

Drives the players crazy.

Then they go further into the dungeon, and click -- and nothing. Click -- and nothing.

Eventually they start ignoring the pressure plates.

Usually that's just around the time when they penetrate far enough into the dungeon that they reach the traps that haven't been disarmed or tripped by previous parties...

Evil DM Mark3
2009-08-01, 05:51 PM
I will now reveal unto you the single most effective trap I have ever deployed. At least it is the one responsible for most PC deaths over the years. And the thing is, I feel that it is cheating to call it a trap.

There is a small room (just large enough for your regular party) underground (ie in a dungeon) near an underground river. In this room there is a large bronze level set into the oposite wall. There is only one door. When the pull the lever the doorway is sealed off by a huge grante block and a passage to an underground river opens, flooding the chamber. After an hour the counterweights shift and a stone moves, draining the room.

Variation exist.

Drowning is one of the nastiest enviromental rules in DnD and so few wizards take silent spell. And the wonderful thing? They are litterly so stupid they can't blame me! They where the ones to pull an unusual lever. And yet they allways fail to resist the urge.

Owrtho
2009-08-01, 07:41 PM
Well, there's always the Room of Death.

A room where the floor is made of Trappers, the ceilings lurker aboves, the walls stunjellys, and all the items in the room are mimics.

"Hello adventurer. You walk into the room. That's when the floor starts to fight with the ceiling about who gets to eat you. While they fight you sneak along the wall, hoping to escape...only to find out the wall's already starting to digest you the moment you touch it. Adventurer, I hope you've enjoyed your stay in the Room of Death. Remember to fill out your comment card."

Owrtho

Masterclick
2009-08-03, 02:35 AM
Electrical current in a sewer based dungeon.

Thatguyoverther
2009-08-03, 04:20 PM
The worst one I ever was caught in was one we all saw coming. We we're traveling through a dungeon when we came to a part with a path that was filled with rubble. We clear out the rubble to reveal a room filled with some skeletons of various sizes, some weapons (Picks and other piercing weapons) and about 50 gold pieces scattered around on the ground. The thief leaps into the room and starts shoveling gold into his pack. I was playing a swashbuckler so I leaped into the room after him, expecting the skeletons to rise up and attack. They did.

The biggest skeleton swings a pick at the thief and misses slamming into the doorway, collapsing our recently dug out tunnel, separating me and the thief from the rest of the party. It also cut us off from our only light source. So I'm in the dark with the idiot thief and only my pointy rapier to fight off the skeletons. I could try and grab one of the weapons on the floor but their all piercing too, and my guy was only really good with his rapier. At least I could club them with the hilt of my sword right? Wrong, in the dark one of the skeletons manages to disarm me.

I some how miraculously survived, the thief didn't.

Rixx
2009-08-03, 04:24 PM
Create a door with a large, obvious puzzle on it or nearby. Attempting to solve the puzzle in any way sets off a trap. The correct thing to do is ignore the puzzle and open the door, just walking through.

PumpkinEater
2009-08-03, 05:39 PM
A particularly evil DM had a castle above the clouds, where there were no floors. Everyone inside is affected by the air walk spell. There were several dead magic zones scattered about. There was an NPC who warns people about these. Unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to find a dead zone without stepping into one.

Sissyphus
2009-08-03, 06:03 PM
My particular favorites:
a room about 200 ft tall, 25 ft wide, and 15 ft long, when you enter, a large spiral staircase appears to descend to the exit you want (at the bottom, your at the top) every stair has a 50% chance of being illusory, if not it has a 50%chance of being a "Trigger". about 3/4 of the way down, a targeted dispel magic strikes anyone with featherfalling or other slow falling spell. When a "Trigger" step is touched the entire stairwell dissipates, dropping you down the shaft. The walls, roof and platform are all smooth an very difficult to pound a stake with a rope into. if you reach the ground, a network of tiles greets you with four colors of tile: red green blue, and gray. randomly stepping, there is a 76% chance of hitting blue, 10% chance of hitting red, 10 % chance of hitting green, and 4%chance of hitting gray, stepping carefully you need a jump and a balance check of 18 to land on a gray tile. Stepping on the blue ones teleports you to the top of the room (if you fall on them you take no damage but keep your momentum), the red ones launch a set of poison needles (1d2, reflex dc 18,m sassone leaf residue), while the green ones are illusions covering a poisoned caltrop (sassone leaf residue), the gray ones do nothing, when you reach the door, it turns out to not be a door, just the illusion of one, attempting to get back up to the top is nigh impossible seeming, as it appears the only way up is a groove where the door you wanted was. touching the groove causes it to widen to far to climb up however (you can get to the top by using the blue tiles portal style, just be careful, if you pass through the tiles one full set you've fallen 200+ft). The secret to the trap is that there is no room, its a two foot ledge down from the door, and the door is on the far side, but stepping into the room activates the trap. There is a hidden passage which runs along the side of the room, coming out on the other side, the entrance lies inside the door frame (not in the room) and brings you over to the actual door.

A companion trap is an exact replica of the room (traps and all). Halfway along the secret passage however, a cord and pressure plate system crosses the floor, stepping on the Pressure plate lowers it, dropping a pair of boulders (one on either side), so does cutting the cord which lets the pressure plate rise, the wall into the room is ilusory however, and you can step right in (avoiding the boulders) but doing so recreates the trap room (which is the real room, this time the ilussion is the 2 foot ledge room) at the very bottom 15 ft, a featherfall spell lies, making it so anyone who jumps in slows to a feathers pace 15ft from the ground.

my other favorite trap is one where your fighting a few deadly foes, just as they seem beaten, they step into an alcove and dissaper. (use either fantics of some sort, or flying monsters) when you follow them, it turns out the area teleports you 1,800 ft into the air (Fanatics would die willingly while fliers would just leave)

Shadwell
2009-08-04, 12:14 PM
Ok, this one was a Doozy.
Everyone has seen the trap where you fall through the illusory floor onto the pit of spikes. This gets more devious than that.
Start with the pit. Instead of being simply dug into the floor, the trap builder picked up a portable hole and affixed it to the floor with sovereign glue before laying the permanent illusion of continuous floor over the top. Seems a little over the top to make you fall 10 ft. but it gets better. In case you actually see through the illusion, nestled among a few easily avoidable spikes there's a small chest filled with gold/precious gems sitting at the bottom just waiting to be picked up.
So, don't see the fake floor? Fall in the hole. See the fake floor? You'll climb in after the treasure.
The trick? The entire bottom of the portable hole is one big pressure plate. When you jump down, the plate shifts, pulling a rope with permanent invisibility on it down a couple of inches. Unfortunately for whoever is inside the hole that rope connects to a small trap door in the ceiling above which a bag of holding waits to fall. Once that plate is activated, the bag falls down into the portable hole causing both items as well as their contents (including the poor person who fell/climbed in) to be utterly destroyed.
The whole thing is pretty expensive. Running around 35,000 gold if I remember the numbers right off the top of my head. But if it works it'll kill at least one person.
This can also be run with the portable hole set up against a wall, just nix the spikes and use a gust of wind to fire the bag of holding from the opposite wall. This configuration eliminates the chance that someone will just fall in and die without getting a save, instead ensuring that they will only die without a save because of greed.

Celebrochan
2009-08-04, 03:58 PM
The walls, floor and ceiling of the passage way in front of you glimmer and shine as though they were made of liquid mercury. The passageway goes on for about 30 feet. On the other side of the passage way is a regular wall with an iron banded reinforced door. Upon touching what appears to be the liquid mercury you disturb the time bubble that houses the two delayed blast fireballs. There are two delayed blast fireballs each in the floor, ceiling and each wall. Once the fireballs in one section goes off it disturbs the other 3 time bubbles. Damn those illithad sorcerers.

Jogi
2009-08-04, 04:08 PM
Heh this gave me ideas. So, here's the thing:
- A pretty obvious pit trap, which is designed to be found.
- The trap is place in a single square, in any 2 squares corridor.
- The square next to the pit trap is a pressure plate that will cause the wall to move and push the player into the pit trap.

So, as the player's see the pit trap they will avoid it by continuing their way through what they think to be the non-trapped square. This actually activates the trap, pushing one of them into the pit. Add spikes for better use :smallbiggrin:

Now, you can tweak this as you like :smallsmile: and I think most groups will fall for it at least one time.

Jair Barik
2009-08-04, 04:26 PM
Heh this gave me ideas. So, here's the thing:
- A pretty obvious pit trap, which is designed to be found.
- The trap is place in a single square, in any 2 squares corridor.
- The square next to the pit trap is a pressure plate that will cause the wall to move and push the player into the pit trap.

So, as the player's see the pit trap they will avoid it by continuing their way through what they think to be the non-trapped square. This actually activates the trap, pushing one of them into the pit. Add spikes for better use :smallbiggrin:

Now, you can tweak this as you like :smallsmile: and I think most groups will fall for it at least one time.

You cacan hradly do that and not put an orb of anhialation in the pit!
alternatively make it so theres no real danger at the bottom of the pit but that there is a pressure plate that activates two continous flame traps further up the pit. Then add some anitmagic fields and watch them try figuring a way out of the hole

Jogi
2009-08-04, 10:08 PM
You cacan hradly do that and not put an orb of anhialation in the pit!
alternatively make it so theres no real danger at the bottom of the pit but that there is a pressure plate that activates two continous flame traps further up the pit. Then add some anitmagic fields and watch them try figuring a way out of the hole

Lol, that was evil!

Or maybe the pressure plate activates an engine that makes the corridor walls, up the pit start to move, threathening to squeeze the rest of the party, which only option is to jump into the pit and hope they can figure a way out. Lol.

Stormthorn
2009-08-05, 01:36 AM
I ahvnt used it but i have come up with a room containing a series of traps the feed into one another to inflict damage on the PCs int he following manner: Fall damage, spike damage, poison, fall damage, spinning blade damage, spinning blade damage, spinning blade damage, poison for those three blades, fall damage, and then the PCs are treading lava in an antimagic field at the botton of a 200+ ft deep pit.

The full description if in a file on my PC labeled TPK_In_Case_of_Munchkins.


I guy i knwo told me he actualy used a trap once that was an entire slippery corridor secretly suspended in a much larger room over a balance point. When the party stepped too far into the corridor it flipped up into a verticle tube that dropped into a cage rigged to slam shut and lower slowly (So the guy has a chance to escape) into an acid vat.

almightyk
2009-08-05, 01:40 AM
Lol, that was evil!


now when a dm says its evil, you know its too much

Cespenar
2009-08-05, 03:44 AM
In a mid-level campaign, the players are bound to have at least one bag of holding with them.

So, an illusionary floor on top of a portable hole, they fall in, they are forever lost. That's bound to draw some looks (if not punches) from the players.

almightyk
2009-08-05, 03:51 AM
explain how that works and what it has to do with bag of holding

EjoThims
2009-08-05, 04:33 AM
I like traps that more dangerous the more cautious you are.

For example: Long hallway with two pressure plates, A and B. At the end is a door (C) that has no discernible way of opening. Laid out as such CBA---entrance. A casts any energy spell of your choice, I prefer lightning bolts so it will fry onlookers as well. B, however, casts protection from energy (of the appropriate type) on every person in the hallway each time it is depressed. A loses two CLs each time it is depressed, until it reaches 0, at which point it causes C to open.

So easy once you know what to do, but last time I used it it nearly killed 3 people (each in separate attempts) before they figured it out.

'Trapped' mundane objects that are actually keys which disable the trap on themselves and the door when used are great too. Especially if it's something they're likely to just pocket.

Nehh
2009-08-05, 05:04 AM
Some of the earlier traps rely on killing characters by dropping them from a height. If you have a Bag of Holding, you can avoid this if you can move quickly enough. Here is how:
1: Get everything you want to save from the fall inside the Bag of holding.
2: Take off a nice large fabric piece of equipment. Capes are ideal.
3: Grab the corners of the cape in your hands and stick just your hands out of the hole. With the bag of holding decreasing your weight and the cape acting like a parachute, you should hit the ground safely.

However, I once had a party who kept doing this to escape from traps. Not wanting to kill the without a saving throw, I made this trap:

In the floor, you have your perfectly ordinary pit trap. Nothing deadly at the bottom, maybe even a nice invisible rope out. However, place a triggered Gust of Wind spell near the bottom, to blow the parachutists up and out of the pit. Of course, the ceiling in the room with the pit in is illusionary, and above it are some poisoned spikes.

Eventually one of them has the clever idea to get out of the bag, but not before he's so poisoned he can't get out of the pit. Heh. :smalltongue:

levi
2009-08-05, 06:14 AM
One of my personal favorites is a variant on the good old fashioned pit trap, as such, it works with all the usual pit trap extras (illusion, spikes, gust of wind, pushing walls, reverse gravity, etc).

You simply add a gelatanous cube (held in some way if neccessary) to the pit. You can do it two ways, first, you simply put the cube at the bottom of the trap. The more fun way is to put the cube in the middle of the trap, so the victem falls through the cube and keeps going.

Needless to say, getting back out in the second case can be tricky. Need more damage? Add more cubes or any other pit trap enhacement you like.

Another nice one is the infinite pit trap. Basically, it's a pit trap, which on contact with the bottom, casts reverse gravity. Then, when they hit the ceiling, the reverse gravity turns off again. If truely infinite, it's pretty harsh, but you can tune it by the depth of the pit and number of reverse gravity charges. Just one can be fun, but not too deadly, a lot can be more of a challenge.

To make it more unexpected, make the pit in the celing and the reverse gravity start out on.

Another favorite is the falling celing. Basically, a hundred tons of solid rock come down. Sure, it's cheap and cheesy, and leads to TPKs, but at high levels (where rezes are availible), it's amusing.

Airman
2009-08-05, 06:59 AM
A couple of good ones I heard about:

1: A 90' high shaft. At the 85' high mark, the walls are covered in invisible grease and there's an anti-magic barrier. Climbers slip, flyers fall.
At the top there is nothing but a chest with boots that make you look slightly taller and increase your reach by 5' vertically.

2: An atypical pitfall. It drops you into a cylinder of water, under a bowl shaped room. A boulder is then released into the room. Get out of the cylinder before the rock comes to rest, or hope that the barbarian is hella strong.

EleventhHour
2009-08-05, 07:00 AM
Oh. Trap design? Okay, by the time this is done I'll probably have spent a half hour on all the different killers.

1.) Push Hole

Trap floor. Very obvious. Like, make it incredibly obvious that the floor is a trap, except for a little ridge along one side. (:Easiest way to do this is have the entire 'trap' floor a different brickwork than the rest.) Once they figure out that the ridge is there, they'll try to sidle along it. (:In order to stop them from trying ridiculous jump checks, put a series of 3" holes on the other side, a noticable spear trap.) About midway along the ridge, the wall is set on a magical trigger (:Detect Living, more or less.) to slam outward soon as someone passes. (:If they happen to cast Detect Magic on the wall, admittedly this trap will not work as well.) It pushes them outward towards the trap floor, the floor collapses and drops the unlucky adventurer about 5'. 5'? You ask, knowing that's not even enough to cause falling damage. Oh yes, but it's filled with [Your favorite Swarm here], and a whole 12'x6'x5' area full of them. I suggest something poisonous.


2.) Wormwall

TBA

flabort
2009-08-05, 02:26 PM
WALL OF TEXT WARNING.

I havn't actually played a game (yet!), but i've been preparing a pretty big plot for if/when i do play, and get to DM. however, i have one trap prepared that was inspired from several others, both here and in links posted here.

to make one, it requires:
-a moddified gelatenous cube (gelatenous sphere), or a large stone
-a mechanicaly inclined gnome
-a spell caster
-a few feet of acid resistant rope
-lots of stone
-two long metal poles

the PCs walk up a long halway, and the floor is obviosly made of thousands of segmented stone blocks attached with hinges. it slopes down into the wall at both ends, but a small step can go over that. also, the halway is sloped upwards to the door to proceed. the halway has a darkness spell on it, so that the players can't see the door they left a quarter of the way through. there are two railings allong the wall. at the end, the players open the door towards themselves, and a rope tied to the other knob yanks on a gelatenous sphere sitting on the two railings, which continue for some ways into the next room. so the sphere doesn't touch the ground, but its low enough that lying down won't help. they run back into the halway, and find the flour is moving towards the sphere, because the hinged blocks are moving on two large cylenders. like a large, segmented, conveyer. so they run, and 1/3 of the ways from the door, which they can't see because it's too dark, they hit a teleport trap sending them 2/3 of the way to the door they are trying to reach now. if they turn around then, they can escape, but since they can't see eachother or the sphere, they don't know it.

Lysander
2009-08-05, 03:03 PM
Take a long hallway. The first few dozen yards has all these holes in the stone for spikes to come out of. Your players carefully move through to avoid setting off any hidden pressure plates.

There's a bunch of low level undead skeletons in the middle of the hallway. If they are killed nothing bad happens. But if you turn them they'll run away...over the pressure plates at the end of the corridor.

Usually stepping on the plates is harmless, since it triggers spikes far behind you. It's only dangerous if you repel the skeletons.

Dr_Emperor
2009-08-05, 03:40 PM
Not a trap in the traditional sense, but I had a first level wizard running a fake magicmart using nystul's magic aura to sell stuff to the pc's. No one ever expects a social encounter to be a trap.

Two things should have tipped the PC's off: one I don't use magicmarts, two the city was controlled by a rival group and they quite easily found a guy willing to sell them any magic stuff they wanted at standard prices.

Cracklord
2009-08-05, 05:00 PM
An Antimagic room filled with what looks like spidersweb, but are really just regular threads.
Every time you break a thread, a dart is shot at you and you take 1 dammage. And the room is full of them.
In his defence, that was meant to be a death trap that we were meant to avoid.

Lord Loss
2009-08-05, 05:02 PM
Not a trap in the traditional sense, but I had a first level wizard running a fake magicmart using nystul's magic aura to sell stuff to the pc's. No one ever expects a social encounter to be a trap.

Two things should have tipped the PC's off: one I don't use magicmarts, two the city was controlled by a rival group and they quite easily found a guy willing to sell them any magic stuff they wanted at standard prices.

Two things tip the players off. The First one would be a metagame assumption. The PCs would not think oh , that's odd the dm doesnt...

Swordguy
2009-08-05, 05:16 PM
From the old Lankhmar AD&D setting (which, to be fair, was supposed to be fairly GrimDark):

You see in front of you a 200' long, perfectly mundane hallway. In the center of the hallway, 100' in (too far away for a Detect Magic), is a small depression, with a pebble inside of it. Detect Life is cast on the pebble, which causes the pebble to rise slightly. This releases a pressure plate. When the pressure plate is released, the walls, ceiling, and floor all rotate (hold your hands so the thumbs and forefingers cross and form a square, then rotate your hands 90 degrees while closing the square - that's the action of the trap) and close so that there's a hair-thin diameter hole between them. Any character inside is killed, flat-out (if damage was to be rolled for some reason, the damage was 500d6) and squirted out the ends of the corridor as liquid goo. Any character within 10' of the ends of the corridor may make a save (vs. death magic, IIRC) to jump out of the corridor, and must make another save to avoid losing a random limb that gets caught in the trap.

No bypass was given.

Coming out the dungeon on the far side of the treasure hoard is a similar trap with a Detect Coin spell on it. If you looted coin from the treasure room (which has something in there that specifically said not to take coin), you die. If you took items, gems, or art objects, you're fine. Assuming nobody else in your party took coin and was within 200' feet of you going down the exit corridor.


I have yet to see a DM-designed trap as mean as these two.

Dr_Emperor
2009-08-05, 05:38 PM
Two things tip the players off. The First one would be a metagame assumption. The PCs would not think oh , that's odd the dm doesnt...

wait you wouldn't find it weird that this guy has every item you've ever wanted, even though the best guy to make you items was a guy who worked on commision? Realistically he broke the competency level of every other shop owner if he was legit.

Back on track kind of
I also had a disciple of some demon, forgetting which one, trick the pc's into attacking the gnolls in his barn, they were paying him rent, during the battle he activated a bunch of arrow traps and a pit trap that led to his giant snake. I believe that was the most chaotic battle I've ever run.
This was actually pretty bad because the gnolls realistically would have seen the traps sometime living there, but hey it was when I was starting out.

EleventhHour
2009-08-05, 05:43 PM
Rings of detect life in a pile of treasure. No paticular visible traps. A quartet of dead skeletons. Upon touching one of the rings all the gold/swords/armour instantly fly across the room fusing with the skeletons and making Gold (Iron) Golems. Oh, and the doors seal themselves.

:smalltongue:

Poil
2009-08-05, 06:20 PM
A very simple trap but I feel it was slightly overkill. A large circular room with a rod on top of a pedestal in the middle. Would you believe there were 16 Incinerating Clouds ready to go off anytime anyone set foot on the floor, which was just a giant pressure plate? We were level 8 at the time.

Lord Loss
2009-08-06, 05:25 AM
WOW! This generally means the DM wants to kill the players. Was he... having a hard time? annoyed by metagaming? Gary Gygax? That or he was rather new to the game. I generally spring traps that clever players have an easy time getting rid, of which will challenge the mind, not just the dice (Although Disable device/ Searching For traps still helps, it just does not completely get rid of traps. Logic does the rest. Usually)

Cespenar
2009-08-06, 01:00 PM
explain how that works and what it has to do with bag of holding

Read the last paragraph under Bag of Holding (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/magicItemsWI.html#bag-of-holding).

Stompy
2009-08-06, 03:42 PM
Here's my best one.

The apple key
So I make a traditional hack n slash tower style, and the PCs run into a reception area. There's nice couches, pleasant music, a fruit bowl, etc. The door out was also locked (with plotomancy). The key was in an apple in the bowl, in fact the key could be seen poking out of the apple where the stem should have been. Finding the key was a DC 10 search check. Finding the black lotus smeared on the outside of said apple was a DC 30 search check. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: Not a trap, but a funny idea I implemented nonetheless

The psyche-out room
So in the same tower I made a room, a beautiful garden room. There is nothing between them and the next floor. There were ducks swimming, cake on the table (this was when portal was REALLY popular), and a bard, strumming on a harp. The bard is not evil, but has been sympathied to stay in this room. The bard also had ~10 HP.

Unfortunately, one of my closest friends somehow figured me out, and went to the next floor. One party member almost launched an orb spell at the bard however.

Jogi
2009-08-07, 07:34 AM
Bumping for greater evil

Brauron
2009-08-07, 07:54 AM
One of the worst I've seen implemented was a room with some treasure in it, and in the middle of the treasure pile, on a pedastal, a gold statuette of a dragon with a very obvious tube sticking out of its open mouth. Expecting it to be a flamethrower, the PCs got out of the line of fire and continued looting...until one of them stepped on a pressure pad, the door sealed shut and the dragon began to suck all the air out of the room.

One of the worst I've implemented was based on a suggestion I found here on the forums, I think...PCs were in a Kobold-occupied keep, and scrawled on the walls were glowing symbols in Draconic. None of the party could really read Draconic, so they didn't know that these were just signs akin to "Mess Hall" "Lavatory" "Stairs to the Second Floor, Twenty Yards to Your Left"

One of the PCs brought a torch a little too close to one, and discovered that the glowing substance it was drawn with was white phosphorous.

Another good one from that Kobold Keep...the whole lower floor (underground) was somewhat moist and greasy, so the PCs didn't think too much of the wetness on the stairs, though they wondered at the way each step had sort of a depression running the entire width of the staircase, kind of assuming that the stairs had been worn down by millions of Kobold feet over the years.

The staircase was forty feet wide and sixty feet from top to bottom. When the PCs reached the middle, a Kobold lurking in the ceiling above dropped a torch. Those depressions on the steps were channels...and the liquid was oil.

Drakevarg
2009-08-07, 08:13 AM
The most noteable DM trap I can recall was from an ADnD campaign I was in years ago. The trap itself was easy to get by, but we missed out on an awesome bonus due to limited vocabulary and inattentiveness.

The trap basically just a floor that killed you. No real way around it. (Our party was all 13th level if I recall, except for me who was at 14th level thanks to roleplaying XP. If there were any flight spells available at that level in ADnD, we didn't know about them. Mainly because I, the most active spellcaster in the group, only paid attention to fire spells.)

Aaanyway, the way around the trap was so obvious it took zero thinking skills. There was a talking cat sleeping next to the trapped room, and when it woke up it explained that all we had to do is have him perch on one of our shoulders and have everyone else touch that person, or touch someone touching that person and so on down the link, and we could pass through the room safely. So, we did.

Once we reached the other side, we thanked the cat and went on our way. Of course, it wasn't until we were well beyond the room that we recalled that the cat's name was Pauldron. The DM explained that his power wasn't limited to avoiding that room.

So since we didn't pay any attention, we missed out on invulnerability. Yay!

Oh, another one I remembered. One of the last sessions we had with that campaign, we fought some zombies. Not normal zombies, mind you. Dawn of the Dead type zombies. We won the fight of course, not terribly difficult. But we were all freaking out after the battle thinking we were doomed to an eternity of mindless flesh-craving.

Only after leaving us to freak out for a few minutes with completely unsuccessful attempts at Neutralize Poison and Remove Disease (Neither of which qualified, apparently, since it was a VIRUS.) did our party's father Oberon (basically the resident Avatar o' the DM) pop up and point out that as Half-Fae we were all immune to any form of sickness whatsoever.

Jerk.

EDIT: Ah right, I just remembered. Although we were all 13th level characters, we were all cross-class. We were all actually 5th level wizards/8th level something else (except me, who was 6th level wizard/1st level Rogue/7th level warrior. I remember that much.)

Theres Fly... not to mention that one of our rogues was a shapeshifter (from anything betwen a small wyvern to a cloud of gas)... must not have been a death FLOOR then. Death field? I just remember that Pauldron was the only way through...

Jogi
2009-08-07, 08:55 AM
Ooooh I really liked the air-sucking statue thing.
And I am definitely using the stairs+oil stuff hahaha :smallsmile:

So, I was thinking, anyone got any ideas on a moving wall trap together with some sort of riddle/puzzle trap?

Drakevarg
2009-08-07, 08:58 AM
Generic trash-compactor walls. Door lock is one of those stupid slidy-puzzle things. They take for-friggen-evar to solve.

Jogi
2009-08-07, 10:24 AM
Well, it's not a trap, but probably a big puzzle:

- A 4x4 (squares) room, with one way in and at least another way out. In the center of the room lies an altar-like plataform made of stone, and, carved in its surface, if a small but complex maze. Now, just beside the maze carving there's a carved space for a humanoid hand, in which a player must place his hand. As he does so, a small figure representing himself will appear in the maze. You see, scattered through the maze, there are drawings of question marks and they can represent an encounter, a trap, a treasure or nothing. Whichever happens when the find a '?' will happen in the real room. Once any player manages to get out of the maze, the door will open.

This can work out as a way to include traps in a puzzle :smallcool:. Maybe not all sorts of traps, but some of them can surely be used here! Imagine a player trying to avoid the questions marks, striving to find the exit as his real room is quickly filled with water, threathening to make the whole party drown!

RyanM
2009-08-07, 01:11 PM
I just had an idea for an entire dungeon filled with unfair deathtraps, and a really crappy reward at the end. It's actually a money-making scheme that some evil guy thought up and built, then spread rumors about this dungeon being full of treasure, to lure adventurers to their dooms.

Behind the scenes, a gelatinous cube or two keep everything clean and running. They crawl around absorbing corpses, oozing onto "elevators" which use their weight (50,000 pounds!) to reset traps, and at some point get squeezed through something like a sieve to filter out all the indigestible treasure, which gets deposited into the room at the end (which casts a Nystul's Aura on everything, so it seems valuable). Twice a year, the proprietor drops by to take the most valuable stuff, leaving a mound of useless junk that would seem magical to anyone that actually makes it through.

Whether the party finds anything good depends entirely on the time of year.

Jogi
2009-08-07, 02:19 PM
I just had an idea for an entire dungeon filled with unfair deathtraps, and a really crappy reward at the end. It's actually a money-making scheme that some evil guy thought up and built, then spread rumors about this dungeon being full of treasure, to lure adventurers to their dooms.

Behind the scenes, a gelatinous cube or two keep everything clean and running. They crawl around absorbing corpses, oozing onto "elevators" which use their weight (50,000 pounds!) to reset traps, and at some point get squeezed through something like a sieve to filter out all the indigestible treasure, which gets deposited into the room at the end (which casts a Nystul's Aura on everything, so it seems valuable). Twice a year, the proprietor drops by to take the most valuable stuff, leaving a mound of useless junk that would seem magical to anyone that actually makes it through.

Whether the party finds anything good depends entirely on the time of year.

Sounds nice. I'd like to see the cubes scheme working, :D but I think it would piss most players off if they faced a Tomb-of-Horrors-like dungeon and found no reward. Lol.