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View Full Version : Clever tricks in dungeons



Harperfan7
2010-07-29, 01:51 AM
This thread is for those neat little ideas that you've used in dungeons (whether ones you created and DMed or played through as a PC), such as...

-having small drainage pipes that connect certain rooms and corridors, but only a fine sized creature could fit through the grates/pipes, thus meaning someone would have to polymorph or wildshape to access them.

-using speak with animals on small unimportant dungeon animals (bats, rats, etc.) to learn things about the dungeon or its inhabitants.

-in a room where one of the inhabitants of the dungeon got into a fight, spellcraft can identify many of the spells cast during such a battle solely from the damage or effects they had on the area (melted stone and the like).

Smoke 'em if you got 'em playground.

Dr.Epic
2010-07-29, 03:21 AM
Soften Earth and Stone
Stone Shape

Now you can rearrange the architecture of the dungeon to your liking.

Siegel
2010-07-29, 03:26 AM
Tuckers Kobolds

Kurald Galain
2010-07-29, 03:32 AM
When a stone slab fell down to block a doorway, cast Reduce on it.

Morph Bark
2010-07-29, 03:33 AM
Tuckers Kobolds

Yes. Tucker's Kobolds. Hire them. Now they are in your party. :smallamused:

Curmudgeon
2010-07-29, 07:34 AM
Stone Tell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneTell.htm) is pretty much the answer to any question about how to find anything (an object you're seeking, which way out) in a dungeon.

Person_Man
2010-07-29, 09:10 AM
Buy a large number of dogs and train them to guard and fetch. At the entrance to the dungeon command all but one of them to guard. Bring one with you, and play fetch with him down each hallway until you're satisfied that there are no traps. If your dog is killed by a trap, return to your pack and get other one. You might also need a few trained monkeys, to open doors.

Cyrion
2010-07-29, 09:19 AM
Multiple floorplans for a dungeon that periodically shifts in a scenario where the dungeon itself was actively hostile.

I had an obsessive map-making party once. I put a lair inside of a tesseract. 4-dimensional geometry confused my 2-dimensional mappers.

Private-Prinny
2010-07-29, 09:30 AM
I've been known to do this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0036.html) on occasion.

EvilJoe15
2010-07-29, 10:13 AM
I like traps, that no matter what get you. Like placing use activated AMF arrows in my spring traps, and having an intricate painting of an open pit on the floor, that if examined will trigger the ceiling to collapse.

I also like to convert Grimtooth's traps to D20.

As far as reconfiguring the dungeon, that works both ways. Like having an evil Wizard run down a stone passage only to seal it behind them, then putting up a wall of force right behind it.

Another_Poet
2010-07-29, 10:53 AM
1. Fire Cloudkill into the dungeon and wait a half hour before entering.

2. Bring a druid.

Morph Bark
2010-07-29, 01:11 PM
Multiple floorplans for a dungeon that periodically shifts in a scenario where the dungeon itself was actively hostile.

I had an obsessive map-making party once. I put a lair inside of a tesseract. 4-dimensional geometry confused my 2-dimensional mappers.

:smallconfused: How did you actually manage to make it 4-dimensional?

If that's possible, this requires a lengthy explanation methinks...

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 01:22 PM
:smallconfused: How did you actually manage to make it 4-dimensional?

If that's possible, this requires a lengthy explanation methinks...

You can project, emulate, represent (like a 3d object can be represented by 3 2d objects, or a 2d object in perspective). Actually visualizing it is too hard.
You can also go the matrix way and just have a few set positions in the 4th axis where you have more 3d environments to work on.
http://im-possible.info/images/articles/hypercube/hypercube.gif

ShriekingDrake
2010-07-29, 01:23 PM
I sometimes put interesting things in the adventures that have no purpose. For instance, I had a sculpture in a room of a cube resting on one corner so that it would rotate around. It was entirely mechanical and the party could push it around, but it didn't actually do anything other than spin around. It was just an artistic sculpture. But the spent a lot of time and resources trying to figure it out.

I also make sure that my castles/dungeons have rooms that actually serve the inhabitants. Bathrooms, dining areas, closets, etc. as well as internal systems of communication. Lights are located where lights would be for those inhabiting the dwelling, etc.

I also use lots of riddles, mechanical puzzles, and encounters where smart players can use the surroundings to avoid or prevail in an encounter without too much bloodshed.

Toliudar
2010-07-29, 01:24 PM
Not mine, but interesting:

A dungeon that features large stone doors that work on some magic version of hydraulics. The doors open at a slight push, but take a while with hissing and grinding before they actually start to move. In effect, it gives creatures on the other side of the door time to know that someone is coming in. Sure, you can bash down the big stone doors, but by the time you get through, the effect is much the same.

jiriku
2010-07-29, 02:05 PM
I ran an Egyptian-themed pyramid with many undead guardians that had a hidden central chamber filled with black sand. Any undead that escaped encounters with the party would retreat to this room and use the negative energy damage from the black sand to full-heal over the course of a minute or two.

For devious trap-mongering, I'm fond of pit trips placed about 20' ahead of a door, and a glyph or trap of some kind with, say, explosive scintillating sphere of the three thunders on it, lined up juuuust right to knock anyone in the blast back onto the pit trap. Gets 'em coming and going!

Malificus
2010-07-29, 02:09 PM
You can project, emulate, represent (like a 3d object can be represented by 3 2d objects, or a 2d object in perspective). Actually visualizing it is too hard.
You can also go the matrix way and just have a few set positions in the 4th axis where you have more 3d environments to work on.
http://im-possible.info/images/articles/hypercube/hypercube.gif

Basically you have 8 rooms that are perfect cubes. The inside, the 6 around it, and the outside (the outside is not actually an exterior, and is still a cubic room).

Starting from the inside, if you pick any direction (up, down, right, left, straight, back), and go straight for 4 rooms, you'll be back in the inside. As long as you don't do anything fancy, you're basically waking on the surface of a cube. But once you start going up and down floors, you can situate yourself to be walking on walls or the ceiling. That picture would have up 8 rooms and 48 "floors" to go through.

By taking the door straight ahead, then going down a floor, and going through the right door, you'd be on the wall of the original room.

Marnath
2010-07-29, 02:12 PM
Not mine, but interesting:

A dungeon that features large stone doors that work on some magic version of hydraulics. The doors open at a slight push, but take a while with hissing and grinding before they actually start to move. In effect, it gives creatures on the other side of the door time to know that someone is coming in. Sure, you can bash down the big stone doors, but by the time you get through, the effect is much the same.

1. Cast passwall on the door
2. send the rogue through, invisible, to oil the piston
3. ???
4. Profit

dextercorvia
2010-07-29, 02:39 PM
Not mine, but interesting:

A dungeon that features large stone doors that work on some magic version of hydraulics. The doors open at a slight push, but take a while with hissing and grinding before they actually start to move. In effect, it gives creatures on the other side of the door time to know that someone is coming in. Sure, you can bash down the big stone doors, but by the time you get through, the effect is much the same.

This sounds like a job for Time Hop.

WarKitty
2010-07-29, 03:05 PM
I sometimes put interesting things in the adventures that have no purpose. For instance, I had a sculpture in a room of a cube resting on one corner so that it would rotate around. It was entirely mechanical and the party could push it around, but it didn't actually do anything other than spin around. It was just an artistic sculpture. But the spent a lot of time and resources trying to figure it out.

I also make sure that my castles/dungeons have rooms that actually serve the inhabitants. Bathrooms, dining areas, closets, etc. as well as internal systems of communication. Lights are located where lights would be for those inhabiting the dwelling, etc.

I also use lots of riddles, mechanical puzzles, and encounters where smart players can use the surroundings to avoid or prevail in an encounter without too much bloodshed.

I've found there can be great fun intricately describing the armors, weapons, amulets, bracelets, etc. that they find. Particularly given your typical player's assumption that anything detailed like that must be magical. Until they find out that nice armor and sword was just some noble kid's parade dress.

One a DM did to us: "you smell a powerful stench up ahead." We went forward and walked in on a pair of trolls using the loo.

Randel
2010-07-29, 03:25 PM
Having a kennel for the guard dogs the goblins use. I played in a game with that and we were able to kill the goblin in charge and all the attack dogs. When the goblins outside the door heard the commotion my fighter was able to bluff them by saying "Those dogs were acting up again, but I calmed them down." in Goblinese.

Yeah, I tend to make my characters always have at least one known language be a language our enemies would be using. It was worth it having the goblins outside confused for a second but long enough for use to rush out and attack them all before they knew what was going on.


(edited my post since my previous one involved using Control Winds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlwinds.htm) cheese to suck all the oxygen out of the dungeon.)

Curmudgeon
2010-07-29, 03:38 PM
(edited my post since my previous one involved using Control Winds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlwinds.htm) cheese to suck all the oxygen out of the dungeon.)
Good, because that doesn't come close to working. The most intense hurricane listed on Wikipedia only got down to 870 millibar (i.e., a 13% reduction from normal sea level air pressure), which is about the same as the average pressure at 3800' above sea level ─ easily breathable.

ShadowsGrnEyes
2010-07-29, 04:04 PM
GM tricks:
obvious great rewards behind impossible for the level traps. . .but easier alternative entries if the party thinks outside the box. . .

1 or 2 painfully high cr monsters that the party really really needs to go around. . . (because i hate it when my party thinks the answer to every monster is, "kill it!")

Traps that the party wont recognize until they're already trapped. . . and must then escape.

false treasure rooms. . .

Player tricks:
Divination spells to see rooms father into the dungeon followed by teleporting. (when applicable)

Summoned minions to set traps off.

Throw the halfling! (solves more difficult dungeon problems than youd realize)

screw disabling the trap just buff the hell out of the fighter and push him through. . . he can break it from the other side. (for when the rogue is not there or not capable)

going ETHEREAL. . . HAHA suckit dungeon! (gm's may throw a book at you. . . or an ethereal monster if you do it too often)

Keld Denar
2010-07-29, 04:45 PM
You know those ginormous imposing adamantine bound steel doors? The ones that are locked 16 times down the front with a sign that says "Trespasser's will be shocked, survivors will be shocked again!"? Yea, they are usually attached to the walls. The stone walls. Use Stone Shape to carve out the hinges and laugh as the door opens backwards.

For bonus points, loot the door.

Randel
2010-07-29, 05:51 PM
Good, because that doesn't come close to working. The most intense hurricane listed on Wikipedia only got down to 870 millibar (i.e., a 13% reduction from normal sea level air pressure), which is about the same as the average pressure at 3800' above sea level ─ easily breathable.

Well to be fair, my idea was to have the Control Winds spell blow all the wind directly out of the first room and out of the front door. If the spell moves air in only one direction then it would be creating a vacuum that would suck air out of the room and in turn suck in air from other rooms.

Though a dungeon would hopefully have air holes other than the front door so it would be able to replenish the air sucked out. It would be breathable but then again it would still have 175+ MPH winds that could "destroy all nonfortified buildings and uproot large trees" occurring inside a building. Would be breathable but still uncomfortable for its inhabitants.

Escheton
2010-07-29, 07:31 PM
You know those ginormous imposing adamantine bound steel doors? The ones that are locked 16 times down the front with a sign that says "Trespasser's will be shocked, survivors will be shocked again!"? Yea, they are usually attached to the walls. The stone walls. Use Stone Shape to carve out the hinges and laugh as the door opens backwards.

For bonus points, loot the door.

yeah, if those things are actually on hinges and not deadbolts extending 5 to 10 ft into every direction that is some shoddy work. Given the price of such a door also very unlikely.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 07:33 PM
A much simpler logic for doors is that it doesn't make sense for them to be more fortified than the walls they're attached to.

Also, Telekinetic Maneuver + hostile = trap disabled.

Jack_Simth
2010-07-29, 07:46 PM
I'm fond of the Summon Elemental Reserve Feat for dealing with traps, myself. Goes well with the Permanancy spell applied to Detect Magic. You'll also want something in a direct-offense reserve feat, for purposes of smashing the source of the trap, if it's one of those pesky rapid-reset traps.

Deth Muncher
2010-07-29, 07:48 PM
I'm fond of the Summon Elemental Reserve Feat for dealing with traps, myself. Goes well with the Permanancy spell applied to Detect Magic. You'll also want something in a direct-offense reserve feat, for purposes of smashing the source of the trap, if it's one of those pesky rapid-reset traps.

Screw Detect Magic, go for Arcane Vision or whatever it's called.

Jack_Simth
2010-07-29, 07:54 PM
Screw Detect Magic, go for Arcane Vision or whatever it's called.
Arcane Sight. And yes, it is better to go with Arcane Sight ... but you can't Permanency that until 11th. Detect Magic can be done at 9th.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-07-29, 08:45 PM
A dungeon that features large stone doors that work on some magic version of hydraulics. The doors open at a slight push, but take a while with hissing and grinding before they actually start to move. In effect, it gives creatures on the other side of the door time to know that someone is coming in. Sure, you can bash down the big stone doors, but by the time you get through, the effect is much the same.

I'm doing something like that in my upcoming dungeon crawl, though they're purely mechanical hydraulics with magical repair mechanisms, all powered by a waterfall going down through the center of the ruined temple that is the dungeon. The entire dungeon is hydraulic- rather than magic-powered, in fact, from elevators between floors to traps (and their reset mechanisms) and more. I think it should work quite nicely.

Also, as a bonus, since every wall is honeycombed with water channels and gears and such, trying to stone shape/passwall/Mountain Hammer/etc. through the wall simply floods the room you're in, then a few rounds later stone shapes itself back into shape, with the gears shredding anyone trying to crawl through before the wall is repaired.


For devious trap-mongering, I'm fond of pit trips placed about 20' ahead of a door, and a glyph or trap of some kind with, say, explosive scintillating sphere of the three thunders on it, lined up juuuust right to knock anyone in the blast back onto the pit trap. Gets 'em coming and going!

I prefer the ejector seat o' doom, myself, consisting of a trigger panel on the floor, concealed by any means desired, and a tunnel above going all the way to the surface, also concealed by any means desired and full of more panels. When the trigger panel is pressed, walls of stone go up around the panel to seal it and a twinned repeating explosive fireball goes off, propelling the victim into the tunnel above, just past another panel with a twinned repeating explosive fireball which then goes off, propelling the victim farther up the tunnel, just past another panel with a twinned repeating explosive fireball which then goes off, propelling the victim farther up the tunnel...I think you get the idea. If you fail all the saves you take tons of fire damage and are separated from the party, otherwise you take some fire damage and some falling damage and get to experience the same thing next round.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 08:49 PM
All that complication and you get exactly the same effects just filling the pit with sand.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-07-29, 08:56 PM
All that complication and you get exactly the same effects just filling the pit with sand.

Are you referring to the water trap or the huge cannon? Either way, I just find things like that more interesting than "You can't go through the walls because I said so" or "You're teleported away from your party and no one else can come after you" or the like.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 09:16 PM
Both, and I don't see what "i said you wn't teleport!" appears in either the sand pit, nor the fire ball launcher. I'm just saying equally deadly traps with near-identical countermeasures can be done with a fraction of the work.

Gorgondantess
2010-07-29, 09:25 PM
I've pulled a few gygaxian tricks here and there.

One of them, tried and true, is when the players enter the room, opening the door causes a splash of oil to spill on them, and a burnt out torch: beyond is a hallway filled with soft tapestries along the wall. The players think it's a nice touch, the trap decayed into uselessness, and use the tapestries to dry the oil off: lifting up a tapestry causes a jet of flame to spew out and light them on fire.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 09:28 PM
I've pulled a few gygaxian tricks here and there.

One of them, tried and true, is when the players enter the room, opening the door causes a splash of oil to spill on them, and a burnt out torch: beyond is a hallway filled with soft tapestries along the wall. The players think it's a nice touch, the trap decayed into uselessness, and use the tapestries to dry the oil off: lifting up a tapestry causes a jet of flame to spew out and light them on fire.Even here wizards are universal jerks XD Why doing lowly menial labor at washing yourself when you can use prestidigitation? :D

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-07-29, 09:32 PM
Both, and I don't see what "i said you wn't teleport!" appears in either the sand pit, nor the fire ball launcher. I'm just saying equally deadly traps with near-identical countermeasures can be done with a fraction of the work.

I was referring to the old Gygaxian "trap that teleports one PC minus gear to a random part of the dungeon" traps being more boring relative to a "launch you into the air using successive explosions" trap. Again, the point isn't to make them lethal (if I want to kill a PC, I can), the point is to make them interesting and different, and I find Rube Goldberg devices more interesting than Pit Trap 174 and pseudo-steampunk self-repairing walls more interesting than traps that are just immune to being bypassed.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 09:41 PM
Ah, so the goal is overcomplicating? Well, there are...methods to create nasty crazy. Female polar bears in heat are particularly effective.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-07-29, 09:49 PM
Ah, so the goal is overcomplicating? Well, there are...methods to create nasty crazy. Female polar bears in heat are particularly effective.

Not so much overcomplicating as provoking both a "Hey, that kinda makes sense..." reaction and a "What in Baator was he smoking when he made that!?" reaction at the same time. Polar bears in heat will of course add plenty of the latter to any scenario (especially if the "in heat" refers to them actually being on fire :smallwink:).

Snake-Aes
2010-07-29, 09:55 PM
Not so much overcomplicating as provoking both a "Hey, that kinda makes sense..." reaction and a "What in Baator was he smoking when he made that!?" reaction at the same time. Polar bears in heat will of course add plenty of the latter to any scenario (especially if the "in heat" refers to them actually being on fire :smallwink:).

The fire interpretation is reserved to the party's druid/animal companion/familiar.

Jjeinn-tae
2010-07-29, 09:56 PM
...And then at the other side of the door, the room was was pitch black, a musty scent was on the air, giving a slime to the air. The fighter in front lit his torch. FAWOOM, the oil in the air ignites, the snarling of the many polar bears restrained in the room by the evil wizard. The bears burst forth, burning all in their path.



Definitely a unique occurrence.

I once had a kind of tunnel shaped dungeon "inhabited" by a Fire Genasi wizard, it had balconies through every room, but the only way to get up onto the balcony was the furthest room. He had loaded the stairs and ground of that last room with combustables, and ignited it when the party entered the room.

cd4
2010-07-30, 04:40 AM
Here's a simple but annoying one for Dms to use:

A treasure chest, carved from one single block of wood, and painted to look like a normal chest.

The rogue will have trouble picking the lock, even on a natural twenty.:smallbiggrin:

2xMachina
2010-07-30, 06:22 AM
Hmm, for me as PC.

11' pole always on
Guisarme to cut trip wires.
Quarterstaff to toss at suspicious things.
Gloves (comes with your explorer clothes)
Adamantine arrow for cutting stuff.

Negates most traps at lvl 1.

RE:Insanity
2010-07-30, 06:55 AM
As a dungeon master, I once had a room that was built to make noise and have the ceiling go up so it looked like it was a downwards elevator. What was it really doing? Corkscrewing the stone pillar it was in upwards to press a button that armed a bunch of traps and teleported in a pack of fiendish dogs. It also moved the players to ANOTHER room by turning, though this room looked exactly like the earlier room, that way any players smart enough to recognize the 'oh the ceiling's jut raising, we're not going down' trick would notice it. When the enemies attacked and they activated a bunch of traps they thought they had disabled, they ran for where the door had been in the other identical area. What was there instead? A moving maze full of starving minotaurs.

Lysander
2010-07-30, 07:09 AM
For the wizard trying to save money, have the party fight a few golems. The party can't use magic directly against them because of their magic immunity, so the battles are bloody and difficult. In later rooms the dungeon has animated statues (animated with Animate Objects) designed to look exactly like golems. Unless a PC passes their spellcraft check the players will think these are also golems and use anti-golem tactics against them, rather than easily blasting them with attack spells or dispel magic.

KillianHawkeye
2010-07-30, 07:16 AM
11' pole always on

11-foot pole: when a 10-foot pole just isn't long enough? :smallwink::smallamused:

Cyrion
2010-07-30, 10:11 AM
Basically you have 8 rooms that are perfect cubes. The inside, the 6 around it, and the outside (the outside is not actually an exterior, and is still a cubic room).

Starting from the inside, if you pick any direction (up, down, right, left, straight, back), and go straight for 4 rooms, you'll be back in the inside. As long as you don't do anything fancy, you're basically waking on the surface of a cube. But once you start going up and down floors, you can situate yourself to be walking on walls or the ceiling. That picture would have up 8 rooms and 48 "floors" to go through.

By taking the door straight ahead, then going down a floor, and going through the right door, you'd be on the wall of the original room.

A way I saw it described once was to imagine a stack of 4 cubes with a halo of 4 more cubes around one of them. You can simulate the folding of the hypercube by rolling the halo-cubes down the column. Even though in three dimensions the halo-cubes aren't touching each other, in four dimensions their faces touch. I then mapped out where you could get from each position of the cubes. To keep things simpler I kept gravity internally consistent so that a floor was always a floor even when upside down in the roll.

Using this model gets you much more space inside than you'd predict from outside and plays hob with directions:

"You come into the intersection from the west and see the chalk mark you left behind, pointing north."

"But we just kept going north! How did we make it back from the WEST?"

It doesn't get the full hypercube effect of coming out on walls and ceilings, but was a good approximation for that adventure.

ZiggZagg
2010-07-30, 10:26 AM
Not exactly a trick, but a fun idea I used in a dungeon once:

Create a room that is magically on fire (you're the DM. Justify however you want). Put in the undead from Libris Mortis that look covered in ice, but "eat" fire. Put a safe zone in the center of the room in the form of Anti Magic Field. Watch the players figure out how to kill the regenerating undead and not burn to death. For higher levels, increase the fire damage per round. In mine, I had it doing 5d6 per round (15th level party), and every 1d4 round, it would explode and send a 15d10 blast through the room. It was an intense fight and the players had to be clever to overcome it. (It was a long dungeon, and involved multiple traps like this, so they couldn't prepare for everything. In this case, no protection from energy spells :-p)

Harris the Ford
2010-07-30, 11:10 AM
As a paladin my mount is a nightmare that can use etherealness as a spell like ability at will. Yeah, he doesn't make dungeons anymore...

Lysander
2010-07-30, 12:23 PM
As a paladin my mount is a nightmare that can use etherealness as a spell like ability at will. Yeah, he doesn't make dungeons anymore...

Well, there are ways of defending against ethereal invaders. One frequently cited method is to move a mountain (or just build walls) in the same spot on the ethereal plane so the area is blocked off. Or use Walls of Force as barriers. Or use Forbiddance to seal off the entire area to ethereal travel and teleportation.

Randel
2010-07-30, 06:17 PM
making use of Green Slime or Brown Mold (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/dungeons.htm)


Is your dungeon unnaturally hot due to volcanoes or lava? Just add some hand Brown Mold! The brown mold will feed off of the heat of the lava, rendering your dungeon nice and cool. It can also be used as a half-decent food source by freezing it with ice magic (note that you should be extra careful to make sure all the mold is dead before feeding it to a living creature).

You can also make plenty of ice by keeping buckets of water near the patches of brown mold. Be careful not to dump water on the brown mold or it might cause the mold to freeze and die.

Also, be very careful of meddling adventurers who might disturb your brown mold dungeon refrigeration garden. If they kill all the brown mold then your dungeon might suddenly get uncomfortably hot due to the lava. Be sure to have back-up systems in place or personal protective magic in the event of this happening.



Green Slime is natures garbage disposal! If you have lots of organic, wooden, or metal garbage you need taken care of then just get a vat of Green Slime to quickly dissolve it. Green Slime doesn't harm stone objects though. If you need a sewer system built into your dungeon (or a dungeon built into your sewer) then by all means use green slime to get rid of that nasty gunk!

Also, if you order over 1,000 gallons of green slime then you'll get a special discount on our fantastic Stone Golems. Stone Golems are made of rock and therefore immune to the effects of green slime... just fill a hallway or maze with green slime and have your handy rock solid buddy wade through it to perform whatever tasks you need done in that area!

Put a hallway full of green slime at the entrance to your dungeon and have all traffic in and out be done with stone gollems carrying passengers. If those adventurers damage your new construct... then they can jolly wells stay outside can't they!

Note: To comply with safety regulations for dungeons, be sure to install a draining mechanism for your green slime hallway in the event of an earthquake or fire. Its no use making it functionally impossible for people to get into your dungeon if it becomes impossible to safely leave in an emergency.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-30, 06:41 PM
KQ has a clever slime trap. It's 2 pools over a slime dump over a hallway, all connected by sealed trapdoors. Unwanted visitors in the hallway explode the trapdoor (ouchies), which chains to the pools' trap doors. the pools flush, filling the hallway with water and green slime.

Marnath
2010-07-30, 10:59 PM
As a paladin my mount is a nightmare that can use etherealness as a spell like ability at will. Yeah, he doesn't make dungeons anymore...

This i gotta hear. How did a paladin end up with a Neutral Evil special mount? :smallconfused::smalleek:

*edit V oh yeah, the UA paladins... i totally forgot those. Mmmkay:smallsmile:

Escheton
2010-07-30, 11:02 PM
Paladin of slaughter or tyranny does the trick. A fallen paladin turned blackguard does it as well.

Tyndmyr
2010-07-31, 02:59 PM
A much simpler logic for doors is that it doesn't make sense for them to be more fortified than the walls they're attached to.

Oh, so you're telling me in addition to a door worth tons of gold, the very walls are equally valuable? Dear me, whatever will I do now?

*casts fabricate, and mutters "blocks small enough to fit into my bag of holding"*

Snake-Aes
2010-07-31, 03:13 PM
Oh, so you're telling me in addition to a door worth tons of gold, the very walls are equally valuable? Dear me, whatever will I do now?

*casts fabricate, and mutters "blocks small enough to fit into my bag of holding"*

<giggle> that's kind of the point. If the door is better defended than the wall it's attached to, you just break the wall instead of the door. This leads to more mundane doors, or more fortified walls. Wizard Wins either way.

Jack_Simth
2010-07-31, 03:13 PM
For the wizard trying to save money, have the party fight a few golems. The party can't use magic directly against them because of their magic immunity, so the battles are bloody and difficult. In later rooms the dungeon has animated statues (animated with Animate Objects) designed to look exactly like golems. Unless a PC passes their spellcraft check the players will think these are also golems and use anti-golem tactics against them, rather than easily blasting them with attack spells or dispel magic.
*Glitterdust* "Hey, Mr. Fighter: Would you pleas dispose of that blind, slow, stone beasty? Thanks." (Works equally well on golems and animated statues).

But yes, Animate Objects make for *wonderful* one-shot traps.