Puzzles

[Guinea Anubis]

Need some help coming up with some new puzzles I can use in an ancient ruined city they are going to be going in to.

[kamikasei]

Why are there puzzles?

[Optimystik]

I presume he means some kind of trap(s) or obstacle(s) that require(s) something other than a Disable Device roll to bypass.

I highly recommend Indiana Jones movies for ideas (not the new one.) e.g. a floor covered in letters, and only the ones that spell a key word are safe to step on. You can make the word not be in Common in order to throw people off a bit.

[kamikasei]

Well, that's exactly what I was asking. Are these meant to be puzzles for someone to solve? Or obstacles that happen to have to be puzzled out? Did the builders of this ancient city lock fabulous wealth up in impenetrable vaults and then make the lock a riddle or a game of hopscotch? Why?

Asking for "puzzles" is pretty much meaningless - to give useful answers we need to know what kind of puzzles and why they're there.

[Guinea Anubis]

Ok they are going in to what remains of an ancient city. The race that use to live there prizzed intelligence over everything else. So the smarter you are the higher up you could get and have a better job ext,. So to test if you could get in to places in the city they had puzzels.

So all over the this city there is going to be puzzles and riddles. But most of the ones I know have been used in the professor layton games and I know at lest one of them have played them.

[kamikasei]

Honestly? I would advise against the whole idea.

Puzzles are frequently Not Fun. They can be an entertaining diversion if the players have the option of walking away if they're stumped - if they're a side thing that would reward them with something neat if they get them out but don't prevent them from continuing with the game otherwise. If the players have to solve the puzzle in order to get to whatever their next goal is, then any failure is a frustration and it rapidly becomes very frustrating.

There's also the fact that puzzle-solving in a group during your precious play time is likely to be much less entertaining than puzzle-solving on your own when you can spend as much time as you want mulling it over in your idle moments, and that you're testing the players' ability rather than their characters (are the players going to be as smart as the geniuses of this ancient society? Is the wizard going to get some sort of bonus over the barbarian?)

Unless a) your players know what you intend and are all game for it and b) you're prepared to wake up to find yourself being beaten to death with a giant Rubik's Cube anyway, I would strongly urge you to revise your plans.

[Optimystik]

kamikasei has a good point. Optional puzzles can be a fun break from dice rolling. Mandatory puzzles will result in your players saying "shouldn't my wizard be smart enough to just solve it?" followed by an Intelligence check, which I think is exactly the kind of solution you're trying to get away from.

[jiriku]

Consider a mechanical sort of puzzle that's intended to be resolved with skill checks. One must manipulate a series of blocks or rods or switches in a particular fashion in order to gain access. Characters can use Knowledge (architecture and engineering) or Disable Device to open the doors, at progressively more difficult DCs. If you'd like they can roleplay through the first puzzle, then once they understand the methodology of the puzzle, they can use skill checks on the other doors.

An alternative is a different sort of "puzzle". In an old Grimtooth trap dungeon I bought, every door in the complex is opened by a system of three finger-sized holes drilled into the door. Each hole has a touch-plate at the back. Triggering the touchplate in one of the holes unlocks the door. Triggering the touchplate on the other two holes released a pneumatically driven cleaver that bisects the hole with incredible force, chopping off your finger. The hole that opens the door is random for every door. Knock and disable device will get you through, but sooner or later, someone will do something stupid, and you'll claim a finger or two. :smallbiggrin:

This also lends itself well to the trick where the dungeon has ONE fake door in it somewhere, and activating the hole system triggers an AoE trap of your choice on the area in front of the false door.

[Cyrion]

To help avoid the stuck/frustration problem make sure there are alternative ways for the party to get around the puzzles. The alternates may be more time/effort/resource intensive, but it allows the party to get around them if necessary. Can work well in a ruined city- you can either puzzle out the lock on the door or figure out a way to get through the small hole 40' up the wall kind of thing.