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View Full Version : [3.5] I need crazy puzzles



Shadowbane
2010-03-07, 09:55 PM
I need puzzles for my players. I already put them in a room with adamantine walls and a dial counting down from nine with a lever. They were told (by an NPC) if the dial hits 0, they die. If they break through the walls, they're free to go. And if they pull the lever, the dial resets. The trick, of course, is that if they break the walls the entire thing explodes, but if they let it hit 0 they break free. They actually figured it out.

Can you give me some more ideas, preferably for some kind of underground adventure taking place in a network of tunnels? Thanks!

drengnikrafe
2010-03-07, 10:22 PM
The key problem here is the inherent problem with puzzles.

There was a quote about this awhile ago that I forgot. However, puzzles are generally a bad idea. Another problem. Didn't it occur to the fighter to take some of the adamantine? Was it possible? No matter what level a party is, a full adamantine room is worth a lot.

If my warnings haven't had the intended effect, and you actually want to kill them... Have them teleport into their room with no equipment. It's a 25x25x25 room. On the far side of the room, there is a heavy iron door. It has an iron knocker hanging out of the mouth of a lion. Written in fancy lettering below the lion's head is "patience". Every time they knock, the person in the next room takes damage, but they are not informed. Anyway, there is are white tiles, each 1x1, over every part of the room. There is a green tile in the very center (or 4 green tiles. I can never remember how this room lines up). If they step on it, it starts to sink. If they remain on it, it sinks down a full foot. Then, a booming voice says "A bomb has been armed. You have 30 seconds before it goes off". Also, the door unlocks and swings open. If they get off the switch before 30 seconds, the bomb explodes. If they stay on it for 30 seconds, they hear a click. At that point, the bomb is disarmed.
Err... did I forget to say they were all in seperate rooms, and that they have to do them independently? This is just one of the puzzles.

Anyway, it's that or something involving a dark room and the switches the colors of the rainbow.

Sinfire Titan
2010-03-07, 10:29 PM
A 20*20 room, each wall has a lever on it. In the center of the room is a pedestal. Upon this pedestal, encased in a cube of Force (as the Wall or Force spell), is a diamond worth 50K.


The solution:

There is none. The "diamond" is fake, and pulling any of the levers deals 1d6 force damage to the player who does so, regardless of order or number of levers pulled.

Shadowbane
2010-03-07, 10:41 PM
I love 'em. I've thrown some fairly vicious things at my players and they've survived. They love these puzzles, especially the fighter and the rogue. I love my players. (=

Any others?

Starscream
2010-03-07, 10:45 PM
Olidammara's Gift:

The PCs enter a room where the floor is made out of force walls, above a pit of sharp wooden spikes. In the center of the room is a stone column with a big pile of gold on it. Above the gold is a vat of acid.

A sign on the wall explains that anyone who can figure out how to take the gold can have it.

If they attempt to use any magic, an anti-magic spell will trigger, negating the floor and causing the players to fall onto the wooden spikes.

If they approach the column or touch the gold the acid will spill out onto it, and then the anti-magic field will be triggered.

For years this free gift from Olidammara has sat in this temple, unclaimed, because no one can figure out how to get the treasure without destroying it in the process or getting killed.

The answer: Just walk up and grab it. Gold does not corrode (true fact, one of the reasons it is so useful). The acid will spill out over it, have no effect, pour out on the floor, dissolve the wooden spikes, and then drain out of the room. The floor will vanish, the PCs will fall to the ground (just far enough to be funny, this is Olidammara we're dealing with), and then they can scoop up the gold and leave.

I've always like the idea of the Laughing Rogue being a guy who would offer you a priceless treasure, make it look like you'd have to be nuts to take it (who would trust the god of thieves?), but really it's perfectly safe.

AmberVael
2010-03-07, 10:49 PM
Here's one I used just to confuse the hell out of people:

You enter a hallway from a door placed at one end of the hallway, on the left side. In the center of the hallway, there is a white line. There is a similar type of line surrounding the door at the end, which is on the right side.

When you cross the line in the center of the room, you are teleported back to the door you entered from. If, one way or another, you manage to get past it and to the end of the room, and open the door at the end, you'll see precisely the same hallway before you.

You cannot detect any teleportation magic anywhere in the room, and while dispelling may work on the center teleportation trap, it does not seem to work on the second.

Solution:
There's only one teleportation trap. While you are indeed teleported when you reach the center of the hallway, when you reach the door at the end of the hallway, it just leads into another identical hallway. This repeats about ten times.

So really, get past this puzzle is very simple. You just have to keep walking- the thing is, it tends to mess with people's heads so that they stop and puzzle over it and bog themselves down.

If you feel extra mean, make it so that there is a second spell over the hallway group that makes each hallway mimic the appearance of each other hallway, no matter what is done to them.

Archpaladin Zousha
2010-03-07, 10:54 PM
I've mentioned this idea before, but I found it somewhere on the WOTC Boards and thought it was particularly interesting.

The floor of the puzzle room is set up as a giant map of the world, and scattered about the room are statues representing the peoples of the nation that particular statue is placed on. The statues are chained to the floor. If the PCs approach a statue, it animates and attacks them, similar to an Armos from Legend of Zelda. The statue follows the PCs until it reaches the end of its chain, at which point it snaps back to its original position and stops. The PCs can't destroy the statues with conventional weaponry.

If the PCs sunder a statue's chain, it snaps back to its original position, with the statue's expression changing from anguished torment to happiness, and no longer animates. When the PCs break all the chains of all the statues, the door opens.

The puzzle is a metaphor for opposing tyranny in the world. Only by "freeing" the oppressed peoples of the world can the PCs move forward.

The original post could probably explain it better than I could.

Dr Bwaa
2010-03-07, 10:57 PM
This (http://www.thievesguild.cc/traps/) has some interesting ones (a bunch of boring ones, as well).

aaaand I thought I had a great thread on these very forums bookmarked, but apparently I don't, and I can't find it again. :smallsigh:

Mushroom Ninja
2010-03-07, 11:34 PM
Some people in my gaming group tell stories about one particularly annoying puzzle/trap/mindscrew which I will recount:

Apparently, there was a hallway with a door at one end. About halfway down the hall are three levers with diagrams next to them. The diagram next to the first lever shows a man on fire. The diagram next to the second lever shows a man getting hit by lightning. The diagram next to the third lever shows a man getting frozen in a cube of ice. The party, wary of such obvious danger, ignored the levers and opened the door. They were hit by fire, ice, and lightning. Later they discovered that the switches they had seen deactivated the traps when pulled. Needless to say, they were more than a little surprised/annoyed.

Olo Demonsbane
2010-03-08, 01:40 AM
Of course, after all of this, you need to have a series of traps which do EXACTLY what they look like, just to screw with your players.

Shadowbane
2010-03-08, 02:07 AM
I plan on using a straight forward version of the first trap soon. :p

Soonerdj
2010-03-08, 03:36 AM
Well I have some puzzles but my players shouldn't look in the spoiler :P

1. The Geyser of DOOOOOM!
After finding one of the stairways to the surface blocked the players are forced to take a detour down a stone path eroded out of a wall. At the end of the path (which contains a few illusions of floors hehe) they are confronted with a circular room with a smallish hole in the ceiling. Every few seconds a geysers spews from the floor up through the hole. The trick is to get a player up past the hole without them being blasted into the jagged ceiling of the room above. Once above the find some excavation tools including an pickax. If they use the pickax they can chip away at the rocky ceiling to have it drop down and block the water then throw a rope down for safety. Not the hardest puzzle but sometimes applying RL physics to D&d can be tough.

2. Altar of Greed
Walking into a room you are confronted by a sizable altar set with gold pieces however it is balanced at the top of a pillar surrounded by an adamantine grate. Removing any gold pieces from one side without a removing a balancing one will cause the entire platform to tip dumping all the gold beyond reach. (party members -1) ropes hang from the pillar allowing it to be stabilized. However, if all the people pull on the ropes the altar will crack and spill all the gold through the grates also.

Solution 1: Lay down cloth, tarps, tents, etc. to keep the gold from going down the grates.

Solution 2. Use a wall to support it or cover the floor.

faceroll
2010-03-08, 03:44 AM
How much digging do you expect them to do? The party fighter probably weighs around 300lbs with all his kit, armor, and bulging muscles. If the geyser is forceful enough to throw him into the ceiling, small amounts of rubble put on top of the geyser will just become projectiles. They'd have to either knock down a huge chunk of it at once and quickly get across before the geyser eats through it (or bridge it with a tower shield first, to prevent erosion), or roll a big boulder across it.

Another danger of geysers is their boiling hotness.

Soonerdj
2010-03-08, 03:52 AM
How much digging do you expect them to do? The party fighter probably weighs around 300lbs with all his kit, armor, and bulging muscles. If the geyser is forceful enough to throw him into the ceiling, small amounts of rubble put on top of the geyser will just become projectiles. They'd have to either knock down a huge chunk of it at once and quickly get across before the geyser eats through it (or bridge it with a tower shield first, to prevent erosion), or roll a big boulder across it.

Another danger of geysers is their boiling hotness.

The party consists of a Nerapim Monk, Halfling Sorc, Halfling Rogue, and Human Bard. The rock above is pretty precarious and the setting is near the shore of a major ocean so instead of steam power the geyser is more wave powered (Geyser may be the wrong word, I just don't have any better on hand) which also explains how it can be quick enough to make getting through the hole a big deal.