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Tyndmyr
2010-08-20, 10:27 PM
I love me traps. Not the simple ones...no, the multiple stage ones.

Fer instance, the classic trap behind a trap. The second trap isn't visible unless they search again after disarming the first one.

Or the trap that sprayed grease over a sloped, black colored floor. It's ok, the floor levels out quickly. Cept for the hole the exact shape and size of a black pudding.

What are your favs? I fully intend to copy them.

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-08-20, 10:38 PM
There was one really epic trap that I saw. The adventuring party begins by descending a shaft. At the bottom of the shaft are bloody spikes...on the wall. Not on the floor. So, the adventurers can check for trap plates and such. They don't find any. They descend to the floor in front of the spikes, and there's a passage opposite that leads on. The floor is slippery marble, it requires a skill check to keep balance.

When they reach the end of the corridor, there's a door there. Something triggers the trap...and the entire corridor, which is an L-shape, rotates 90 degrees. The PCs are now at the top of a very long fall. Spikes at the bottom. And they can't get any footing on the walls.

WeeFreeMen
2010-08-20, 10:39 PM
The best trap is one that doesn't exsist..

"You see before you a door, it has 3 lock pads on it and 2 rope levers on either side. What do you want to do?"

The door, is not trapped at all, depending on how you word it and the tone you use, they will waste about 30 mins trying to disarm it, let alone approach it.

However, thats not a "trap" it is, however, hilarious when you see their faces.

As for my trap of a trap.
Have a 5ft hole, paint it deep black. They will try and jump over to the other side, most of the time not even thinking. Set up anything you like, I personally go for the steel net trap they pulls them into ceiling spikes.

Another favorite, contact poison on trap components. Sure Mr. Rouge, disarm the trap. Now make a fort. Whats that? Fort is your lowest save? Unfortunate. ;]

Another favorite, "The tunnel seems to bend further down, as you make a somewhat steep decent the tunnel darkens almost completely. What vision types does everyone have?" "As the tunnel begins to even out, you come across small holes in the wall, the steep climb back-up is somewhat difficult however"

Enclose them in a small vacuumed space. Set up a fireball trap, have small holes seep in methane (from Animal droppings if need be) Watch as they attempt to make a movie-esk escape from the explosion behind them. If thats not enough, Smoke them out. Suffocation is a fun mechanic ;]

Lastly, not so much a "trap" as a monster room. It is however, amusing. War-Troll, or anything that can bull-rush + lots of wall-spikes.

Stompy
2010-08-20, 10:52 PM
My favorite is a pit trap, that when a PC jumps it, they fall through a trap door into another pit trap.

Another classic one is a fog-filled room + a slide that brings that adventurer down at least 2 levels.

darkpuppy
2010-08-20, 10:56 PM
My personal favourite is one which I pull out whenever I seriously want to injure/maim/kill the PCs. As such, I rarely get to use it. But I still love it, and will give full credit to its original source, the Net Book of Traps... can't remember which one, but it's in there, folks.

Okay, picture a sphere, broken only by two stone doors, directly opposite each other. The entry door is shattered, but the exit door is not. The why rapidly becomes apparent. On entering the sphere, the PC falls until they "hit" a wall... whereupon, a specialised version of Reverse Gravity takes place, and they "bounce" without losing any velocity. This continues until one of three things happens.

1) They achieve terminal velocity and sustain it for more than 10 rounds, whereupon they take d6 fire damage per round. This continues until either one of the other two things happens or they die.
2) They bounce through the entryway. This usually has the result of them flying through/grinding along the corridor they came from... Chunky Salsa may result
3) They hit the stone door. Chunky Salsa takes effect if they have started burning and hit the door, but, on the upside, Chunky Salsa also affects the door, as damage is split between the character and the door until the door breaks. If there is damage left, see 2.

Two ways of circumventing this without death. Levitation (fair enough) or the secret passage usually placed which goes around.

Jack_Simth
2010-08-20, 11:22 PM
Another favorite, contact poison on trap components. Sure Mr. Rouge, disarm the trap. Now make a fort. Whats that? Fort is your lowest save? Unfortunate. ;]
The contact poison is, of itself, a trap. When searching, the rogue should find the poison if his search check is high enough, and be able to roll disable device check for the poison just as much as the rest of the trap. If you do have traps that simply can't be found/beaten, or that kill the rogue for trying, then you're just telling the rogue "you die", which isn't really any fun.

Really though, in isolation, traps are DULL ... at least, in D&D 3.X. Roll search or soak a few effects (damage, status effects, death, whatever), roll disable device or soak the same.

In other sets, it becomes a puzzle... and I've always had a problem with puzzles in RPG's: they're almost always single-solution, with punishment for anything other than the 'right' solution. If you're too 'in tune' with the creator, there's no challenge. If you're not sufficiently 'in tune' with the creator, then you've got little hope of a solution, and you're just being punished over&over. In order for them to be 'fun' (which is the point), you've got a very narrow band of 'not sufficiently in tune' and 'too much in tune'... AND you need a set of players that enjoys such things. Generally a fairly rare combination.

Now, the auto-reset periodic-trigger chain lightning trap in the room with the Flesh Golems? That's memorable. If you don't deal with the golems, you have some difficulty dealing with the trap, as you keep getting attacked by the golems while working. If you don't deal with the trap, the golems are much, much harder to kill as they keep healing up ... oh yes, and the trap has enough juice left over to hurt you, too.

El Dorado
2010-08-20, 11:59 PM
I vaguely remember a couple from the old Tomb of Horrors.

One had us walk into a room. The passage sealed behind us so we couldn't go back. On the far wall were three levers. Our rogue figured some combination would get us out so he did the logical thing---he flipped them all down (his reasoning: put them all in a negative position and begin flipping them in sequence). Of course, as soon as he did that, the floor dropped from under us and we plummeted into a very deep pit.

The other was a teleporting cabinet. You're in a tower and can see outside from a window. There's a cabinet in the room. You open the cabinet door and someone (not the guy opening it) gets teleported outside the window in mid-air (I think he has a chance to catch himself on a ledge) before he plummets to his doom.

Now that I think about it, there was a lot of falling and dying in those old campaigns. :smallwink:

Jack_Simth
2010-08-21, 01:01 AM
I vaguely remember a couple from the old Tomb of Horrors.

One had us walk into a room. The passage sealed behind us so we couldn't go back. On the far wall were three levers. Our rogue figured some combination would get us out so he did the logical thing---he flipped them all down (his reasoning: put them all in a negative position and begin flipping them in sequence). Of course, as soon as he did that, the floor dropped from under us and we plummeted into a very deep pit.

Ah, no, the logical thing is to pull out a pick (not the weapon, the equipment - it's in the PHB - and preferably adamantine) and begin mining the iron/adamantine/whatever out of the door that sealed up behind you. If you know someone is trying to design a place to kill you, you don't play by the rules as they're presented, as those are designed to get you killed. You figure out simple ways to disrupt the anti-logical constructs around you. Almost nobody expects someone to hack through the wall.


The other was a teleporting cabinet. You're in a tower and can see outside from a window. There's a cabinet in the room. You open the cabinet door and someone (not the guy opening it) gets teleported outside the window in mid-air (I think he has a chance to catch himself on a ledge) before he plummets to his doom.
That's an annoying one. Don't hurt the curious guy - he'll trigger all your OTHER traps... get the guy who hangs back first....



Now that I think about it, there was a lot of falling and dying in those old campaigns. :smallwink:Tournament modules are that way by design (TPK's are a GOOD thing for them). Many of them hit actual gaming tables, too, unfortunately.

Balain
2010-08-21, 05:36 AM
Moria from MERP had some cool traps. Don't remember most of them now but they would often be connected to some other trap 7 floors above or below you or the person would be stuck in the trap with no way out till the party found the release switch which again was on the other side of the mountain also 7 to 10 floors up or down.

The Tygre
2010-08-21, 06:13 AM
I have simpler tastes;

1. PC steps on trap panel.
2. PC slides through hog-fat lubricated chute.
3. Nozzle sprays PC with pig's blood.
4. Chute lands PC prone in front of hungry owlbear.

Ranger Mattos
2010-08-21, 11:07 AM
If your reaaaaallllly hate your players:

Flesh to Stone
Soften Earth and Stone twice
Purify Food and Drink.

Failing fort save causes triggering PC to become cool, pure water.

kestrel404
2010-08-21, 11:35 AM
I have two rules for each of my traps. The first is: If the trap builder ever intended to pass by/through the trap, there is a simple mechanism that can disable the trap. Either an off switch or a secret passage that just bypasses it. The second rule is that if the trap builder never intended to go through the trap, it would be built with no way out.

The PCs generally don't know which type of trap I'm throwing at them in advance, but if they're clever they can figure it out.

One example of this philosophy: The second level of basement in a mansion was used to guard the family vault. The entire level was a giant trap-maze. I drew up the maze, lots of dead ends, lots of long and twisting paths. If the party ever went more than 5 feet into a dead-end corridor (including one that turned a few squares before it dead eneded, like most of them did), a stone slab would seal them in. The stone slab looked just like all the other walls. It sealed in place. The only way out afterwards was to break through a wall (the slabs were as thick as the walls, and as hard to get through). Of course, the first time this happened (the first time the rogue missed a search roll), the entire maze prior to that point re-arranged itself to look similar, but to intentionally hide the exit from the PCs. I had one of the players drawing a map from my descriptions, so it was their just to figure out from my slightly different descriptions that things had changed.

Oh, and did I mention that the only way OUT of the maze was to take a hidden door that was hidden INSIDE the staircase back UP? There were also several very nasty trap rooms (door seals, room fills with water, or both ends of a corridor seal and the ceiling starts to descend, etc.). But the real trap was that there was only one way out of the maze, and that was never to go into it in the first place.

Stompy
2010-08-21, 04:38 PM
I forgot one: a mimic disguising itself as a dumbwaiter. It was funnier when a halfling actually went into it. :smallsmile:

Mr. Anon Omys
2010-08-21, 06:15 PM
During a one-shot I DM'd for my group, I set them in a hallway in which most of the floor in the middle was painted black to resemble a pit. Halfway across the hall was a tripwire that dropped the cealing on them. They bypassed the trap by climbing across the wall, not realizing that the pit was fake. They still hate me for that one.

boomwolf
2010-08-21, 08:17 PM
As the party walks throw this corridor you give a fair description of the tourchs on the walls, the hard stone floor and the unstable apperance of the ceiling.

Now, the ceiling actually won't fall. but they WILL check the ceiling, and probably the tourchs too.

But they won't check the floor.

And the floor isn't the floor. the real floor is 5 ft. lower.

You are standing on a bunch of earth elemental. roll initiative.

TheThan
2010-08-21, 09:07 PM
here's a few good ones:


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.

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.

the sphere of annihilation trap:
One game I ran, the pcs were cleaning out an overrun dwarf mine. They came upon the dwarf’s kitchen and in there they found a chute in the wall. At the ‘bottom” of the chute sat a sphere of annihilation. The thing, is that it’s not really a trap, it’s the dungeon’s garbage disposal. I nearly got one of the PCs to go into it and check it out (would have killed them), but he wound out enough rope so that it went into the sphere and they found out what it was. Though they did have a blast tossing dead goblins into it.

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-08-22, 07:14 PM
Here's one that isn't lethal, in that it does no damage, but is particularly annoying, and can cause the party a lot of distress:

The trap starts with the PC's chasing a Something. Kobold, BBEG, whatever you want them chasing after. It's probably got Freedom of Movement up to keep it from being snared and stomped.

The Something runs through a four-way intersection, activating the trap. The party follows...

Roll 1d4 for every character that passes through it, to determine which corridor they actually end up in, as it randomly teleports victims 20' down any of the four corridors in this intersection as they pass through it, facing away from the trap.

Jumping and/or levitating will not work, as any creature which enters the square is teleported.

The solution is the stone in the center which the Something stepped on to activate. Shoot it with an inanimate object and it will turn off. Of course, Balance checks, DC 20, will be required to keep from stepping on that stone and re-triggering it as the party passes...

Now, this is bad enough, you've split the party, and depending on how devious the GM is... some of them may not be immediately aware of this.

So appropriately placed CR appropriate encounters down the corridors will be surprisingly more difficult with the party split up. Or you have other 'channeling' traps, such as collapsing roof trap or a chute opening underneath him, to keep PC from getting back to center once he's been split up... just to make things more fun.

Just getting the PC's back together in one group will be a significant challenge, whatever the Something was that they were chasing is certain to get away. A good trap for the BBEG to set up in his 'secret exit' that the PC's are certain to find and pursue down.

devinkowalczyk
2010-08-22, 11:04 PM
"You wake up in a room, it is white. There doesn't seem to be any walls, or ceiling, everything is just white."
"Eventually you come across a 20 foot wide black spot."


They must disbelieve the illusion they are all trapped in

mobdrazhar
2010-08-22, 11:17 PM
The one i threw at my players last week. They found the treasure room in the thieves guild and found a chest sitting in the middle of the room along wish gold and other shinnies laying all over the room. While the rouges cleared the room of the scattered shinnies the psion decided to open the chest. Well he almost became mimic food...

Level8Mudcrab
2010-08-23, 03:51 AM
This isn't really a clever trap but it turned out to be an amusing one. This was in a homebrew RPG I was playing with some friends.

They had just defeated a demon and had found a sword in a pedastal in the next room. The problem here was that the sword was surrounded by a hellfire aura, which dealt fire and darkness damage to anyone who was in it.

In the end they sent their fighter into the hellfire aura to retrive the sword. They ended up using all their potions, healing items and healing spells to get him out alive. Another turn or two and he probably would have died.

The funny thing about it was to destroy the aura all they had to do was have cleric and the wizard simultaneously cast a water based spell and a light based spell at the aura. The players certinaly felt stupid when I told them.