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jiriku
2009-09-17, 11:29 AM
I'm planning to build a dungeon site that is an Egyptian-style pyramid full of imaginative traps. Low-magic or no-magic traps are preferred, as are traps that include a means of automatically resetting after being triggered. What are your favorite traps that could fit in this setting?

Asheram
2009-09-17, 11:43 AM
Well, there are lots... Rooms filling with sand are a timeless classic. They're a bit difficult to reset though without magic though.

Lapak
2009-09-17, 12:08 PM
I'm planning to build a dungeon site that is an Egyptian-style pyramid full of imaginative traps. Low-magic or no-magic traps are preferred, as are traps that include a means of automatically resetting after being triggered. What are your favorite traps that could fit in this setting?Here's a mechanical trap that resets itself. The sufficiently prepared can simply wait for it to do so; parties constrained by time, supplies, or a lack of environmental protection will have to get clever and escape somehow.

The Sun Room:

This trap simply consists of a 20 by 20 foot room of stone; it is noticeably hotter than the rest of the complex even before the trap is triggered. At the top of the room is a chute that runs all the way to the surface; the chute is lined with a highly reflective material. (Could be whitewashed stone, or metal, or polished sheets of mica, or whatever is appropriate.)

When a man-sized or heavier creature steps on a pressure plate in the middle of the room, a trapdoor is released outside the room, which unloads the sand from a counterweight, which causes massive two-foot-thick stone slabs to seal off the entrance and exit from the Sun Room. Over the course of a week, sand will gradually flow back into the counterweight reservoir and the slabs will lift again. In the intervening time, the now mostly-unventilated room will turn into a roasting oven as the sun beams in through the chute; treat this entire room as being under Severe Heat as per the environmental rules throughout the day.

EDIT: Of course, if the characters continue to move around the room and re-trigger the pressure plate in the middle, it could take considerably longer than a week for the doors to re-open.

Telonius
2009-09-17, 12:11 PM
You could always go with a variation on Lex Luthor's Superboy deathtrap (http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=30%3Aframes-and-panels-index&id=793%3Asuperboy-is-a-colossal-dumbass&Itemid=24).

Teln
2009-09-17, 12:15 PM
A trapdoor held shut by a spring. It is over a spike pit/acid pit/bottomless hole/slide to who-knows-where/whatever. PC walks on the trapdoor, PC's weight causes it to open, PC falls(hopefully), spring shuts trapdoor, resetting trap.

Lysander
2009-09-17, 12:15 PM
The dungeon could have links, small tunnels the size of hands, to an adjacent bat cave or giant underground insect hives. Whenever sound disturbs the creatures they swarm out and attack the intruders. They have small passages to reach the surface so they can hunt and sustain themselves independently.

Jergmo
2009-09-17, 12:25 PM
The dungeon could have links, small tunnels the size of hands, to an adjacent bat cave or giant underground insect hives. Whenever sound disturbs the creatures they swarm out and attack the intruders. They have small passages to reach the surface so they can hunt and sustain themselves independently.

Scarab beetle swarms, like in The Mummy!

Also, I love the Sun Room idea. I'll have to steal that next time I have an Egyptian-y tomb.

Ganurath
2009-09-17, 12:26 PM
A hallway filled with swinging pendulum traps with alarm triggers over both the area of the pendulum triggered by said area and the pendulum previous to it along the line. It'd be like the pendulums in the Aelied ruins of Oblivion: They wait until you show up to trigger, then go off all at once. By putting 5 ft spaces between them, you provide a means for the party to safely bypass them that's readily visible so as to avoid the tedium of Disable Device.

Somewhere along the middle, one of these spaces will have a pressure plate that drops the ceiling on all the other vacancy lines.

Teln
2009-09-17, 12:27 PM
You could always go with a variation on Lex Luthor's Superboy deathtrap (http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=30%3Aframes-and-panels-index&id=793%3Asuperboy-is-a-colossal-dumbass&Itemid=24).

The narrator's Lampshade Hanging is the best part of that.

Kalirren
2009-09-17, 12:36 PM
There is a rectangular shaft that the PCs must climb. The long axis is too long to spread across, and the faces at the end of the long axis are hewn stone, difficult but not impossible to climb. The short axis, on the other hand, is short enough to do a chimney climb, and its faces are smooth copper. Your hair moves strangely as you enter the shaft.

The entire setup is in fact a massive capacitor. A setup near the top of the pyramid constantly harvests static electricity from the desert wind. The first uninsulated PC who attempts the chimney climb will be electrocuted.

Ganurath
2009-09-17, 12:38 PM
There is a rectangular shaft that the PCs must climb. The long axis is too long to spread across, and the faces at the end of the long axis are hewn stone, difficult but not impossible to climb. The short axis, on the other hand, is short enough to do a chimney climb, and its faces are smooth copper. Your hair moves strangely as you enter the shaft.

The entire setup is in fact a massive capacitor. A setup near the top of the pyramid constantly harvests static electricity from the desert wind. The first uninsulated PC who attempts the chimney climb will be electrocuted.With a saving throw against stunning. Hello falling damage!

Lysander
2009-09-17, 12:40 PM
Maybe a thin 30 foot long stone bridge over a chasm with an exceedingly polished slippery 10 foot area in its center. Unless you spot that it gleams a little brighter than the rest of the bridge you need to make a balance check to remain standing, and if you fall make a climb check to grab the bridge and not fall to your doom. The bridge can be safely crossed by crawling on all fours.

Rhiannon87
2009-09-17, 01:40 PM
One that I had that would require a manual reset:

Party has to climb up a ladder that is cut into the wall. One of the hand-holds has a pressure plate (or a button, something like that); when pressed, a bunch of rocks fall down on whoever is on the ladder.

The dungeon I'm using that one in has had some previous guests. Someone painted "ROCKS FALL EVERYONE DIES" over the ladder. My version of it isn't too difficult to deal with, but I wanted to freak out the party a bit.

BigPapaSmurf
2009-09-17, 02:16 PM
Heres a trap reseting mechanism,

Have a catch basin of water, which is fed water from an unseen source, when the catch basin is full the trap is ready, the excess water will then just overflow and keep going down its normal path. When the trap is triggered the water is released, you can use the momentum or weight of the water to move mechanisms or use the water itself as part of the trap.

You can also use sand in this way, though you need a way to keep supplying more sand. or you can have like 10 triggers worth of sand in a hopper and the device will reset that many times.

jiriku
2009-09-17, 02:18 PM
Heres a trap reseting mechanism,

Have a catch basin of water, which is fed water from an unseen source, when the catch basin is full the trap is ready, the excess water will then just overflow and keep going down its normal path. When the trap is triggered the water is released, you can use the momentum or weight of the water to move mechanisms or use the water itself as part of the trap.

You can also use sand in this way, though you need a way to keep supplying more sand. or you can have like 10 triggers worth of sand in a hopper and the device will reset that many times.


Oooo nice. I like all of these so far. Bugs and sand and heat and falling...all fun!

TheThan
2009-09-17, 02:38 PM
Rolling bolder trap:
Borrowed from Indiana Jones, this trap drops a massive bolder on them and chases them through the dungeon. Its classic and probably something they will remember. Kudos of they have to run through other traps they have already bypassed.

Collapsing ceiling trap:
Another one borrowed from Indiana Jones, this one is a good-sized room (say 20x20), when triggered, the doors seal and the ceiling starts to slowly lower, threatening to crush them. For added effect make spikes pop out of the floor and ceiling.

Drowning trap:
The pcs falls onto a chute that promptly deposits them into an empty room. A moment later the room starts to slowly fill with water, sand, poisonous or explosive gas or anything else you can think of that can “drown” the pcs.

The jumping puzzle:
More of a puzzle than a trap, the pcs come to a seemingly impassible precipice. However there are several floating disks, rocky columns protruding form the bottom etc. The pcs must try to leap across the spaces to get to the other side. Please note that fly, dimension door and other such movement spells ruin this one.


The big red button:
Another puzzle, this one consists of four things; a mostly empty room, A big red button on a pedestal, an ordinary unlocked door and the player’s own paranoia. Hitting the button does nothing at all, but the pcs won’t know that. They will assume that hitting the button does something, and they may stay there and puzzle over what to do about it. Eventually someone will try the door, and find out that the button does nothing. The trick to this one is to simply stall them and waste their time. It should prove an annoyance.

Walk on the left side:
This is borrowed from an old fantasy film called “lady Hawk”. It’s a simple wooden bridge crossing a chasm/fast moving water/something the pcs won’t want to fall into. They should get some sort of information telling them which side they should walk on (a short riddle works good here). One section of the bridge has been weakened, and any appreciable amount of weight will make the bridge collapse. The pcs will have to figure out which side of the bridge to walk on to safely cross the hazard. If they walk on the wrong side, they fall into the hazard.

The stepping stones trap:
Another one I borrowed from a movie. This one entails a pit of nasty acid or lava, and a series of stepping stones that allow the heroes to skip across safely. One of the stones should be marked (but not too obviously). When that stone is stepped on, the whole section of stones collapses into the lava/acid etc. You can amp this up a notch by having the marked stone a “bate” stone, and set the trap trigger on one of the stones surrounding it. So if they try to avoid the marked stone, they may very well fall into it anyway.


The inferno trap:
This is similar to the drowning trap above. The pcs are dropped into an empty room. Soon after fire shoots from holes in the walls, burning anything they touch. the fire should be hot enough to hurt them even if they are not in the flames.

JerryMcJerrison
2009-09-17, 02:44 PM
My favorite trap of all time is the 10x10 foot hallway coated with some sort of jelly. At the end of the hallway there's a door. PCs expect a gelatinous cube, move carefully through the hallway, open the door... causing the steel sparker to strike the flint floor, igniting the petroleum jelly coating the walls. Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

Sipex
2009-09-17, 02:48 PM
Don't forget:

Traps that seperate the party simply for the effect of separating them for a while. A doorway which slams shut with stone when a character steps on the pressure plate on the other side for example.

Maybe a small room where the floor is made up of two pressure plates that are obviously some sort of scale, no signs of a door. The PCs will instinctively try to balance it and if they do so using their own weight...once it becomes balanced it locks in place, the door out shuts and a thick wall pops up through the middle of the room, separating the PCs.

Then secret doors pop open for each seperate group.

Heck, it could evolve into a puzzle where the groups are separated but can see each other. Things one group does affects the other, allowing them to progress. (ie: A switch that group 1 presses which opens a door for group 2)

TheThan
2009-09-17, 03:13 PM
The seesaw floor trap:
The floor of a room is set on a large pivot point. A huge bar crosses the whole room, underneath the floor. The floor itself is attached to it, in such a manner that it will spin freely when weight is put on it. When the pcs enter the room, the whole floor gives under their weight exposing a bottomless pit. The trick is to figure out how to keep equal weight on the floor so it doesn’t dump everyone into the bottomless pit.

ericgrau
2009-09-17, 05:21 PM
Pressure plate, hole for poison darts, 20 dart clip, and a pendulum-based clock that prevents it from being activated again for 10 minutes. Not self resetting, but you get 20 uses out of it, and it could be manually reloaded from time to time. Plus PCs with good listen checks get to freak out about what that ticking is right after their buddy is poisoned. Enclose the mechanism in the wall, so the pressure plate can be jammed, and the firing mechanism can broken through a hole, but the clock mechanism is virtually inaccessible.

Have a trip wire pull a pin that lets a stone door come down, trapping the PCs inside a room. At least until they lift the door or break it or teleport. A crank in another room lifts the door again until it moves past the pin and clicks into place. Maybe the PCs even turned the crank to get in the room in the first place. Maybe the skeleton of the last visitor is there. As the gears turn from the weight of the door, it could also pop open vessel full of poison gas, but that's not very resettable.

A room in a dangerous area contains something interesting and complex, like hieroglyphics. Perhaps it translates to a story of some sort. Once the PCs close the door they came in for their safety, the room slowly falls over about a minute or two. The rooms immediately adjacent look similar to the rooms one level above, so at first the PCs don't know they're somewhere else. When the PCs leave the room - or otherwise remove their weight from the floor - and close the doors the spring loaded mechanism causes the room to rise back up. Below it is another similar looking room, so if the PCs go back in they don't notice unless they left something in the original room. The way the PCs think they came from should contain new dangers. The way the PCs think is onward could contain secret passages that lead to places the PCs think they have already been, so they don't bother checking those walls. Or w/e.

SoD
2009-09-17, 07:28 PM
A fun trap; one that I like to call...the PHANTOM BOULDER!!!

The party is walking down a corridoor, when suddenly they step on a pressure plate, and the room is filled with darkness. Suddenly, they hear from up ahead, the rumblerumblerumble of a boulder flying towards them. Of course, they turn and leg it. In the dark. Little do they know that it's just a ghost noise of a boulder, when really there's a silenced boulder flying towards them!

Shpadoinkle
2009-09-17, 07:50 PM
You could always go with a variation on Lex Luthor's Superboy deathtrap (http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=30%3Aframes-and-panels-index&id=793%3Asuperboy-is-a-colossal-dumbass&Itemid=24).

This is the best kind of trap, because you get to gloat when the players are stupid enough to fall for it.

A sign wth
"(down arrow) INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS DEATHTRAP (down arrow)" hanging over an incredibly obvious deathtrap (a deep pit with rusty spikes at the bottom or something) is good. As is a lever marked "DANGEROUS ANIMAL CAGE RELEASE," which does exacly what it says.

Another is to have two levers, marked "ACID" and "COINS" which again, release from the ceiling exactly what they say they do. The acid could fill the room, drain through holes in the floor, where a pump hooked up to a waterwheel or a windmill or something moves it back up into the reservoir above the lever (the release hatch only stays open as long as the lever is pulled.)

Schmuck bait is the BEST kind of trap, EVER.

herrhauptmann
2009-09-17, 10:45 PM
Coin lever: First pull causes a few dozen gold coins to drop. Second pull causes a few hundred gold worth of silver to drop. Third pull A couple thousand in copper.
4th Pull: And this is really only for players stupid enough to keep pulling. Drops enough copper coins throughout the room to cause falling damage to everyone within.
5th Pull: Randomized lightning or fire effects, that continue to occur. Players get a minus to the reflex save. And the copper around their feet melts and solidifies from the heat. Now they're stuck.
6th PUll: Water starts filling the room.
Afterwards, the floor opens up and drops everything within, into a smelter. :)

**********************************
Another, and my least favorite. Really only works on parties that are missing something.
A plain wooden door. Or a 2 ft wide bridge over some hazardous material, that is 20ft or so long.
I've numerous times, been in parties which wasted an inordinate amount of resources going through those, because we were sure the DM was going to spring something horrible on us. Especially the door. It wasn't even locked.

*********************************
More apuzzle than a trap:
Hall of statues, on the entrance is a message "The path in/home/to safety, is through the sinister man." Or "The sinister man guards the path to safety/home etc" Each statue is detailed, some look like heroes, some like villains.
You can then go several ways: Behind each statue is a doorway, choosing the correct leads to a treasure chest and the goal. Choosing wrong leads toa fight, and drops you off at the beginning.
OR: The statue is the guardian of the doorway, and you must defeat him to pass. The correct guardian is the easiest one, with the most treasure.

Here's the trick, each statue but one is either ambidextrous, clearly righthanded, or indeterminate. Only one statue is of a lefthanded man, and that is the correct one.