Looking for help on traps (3.5 and Pathfinder)

[MrRigger]

Anyone who is one of my players (you know who you are, I only have like one online name), please stay out for fear of spoilers. Don't think there'd be much in the way of ruining the game for you, but better safe than sorry, you know?

Like the title says, I'm looking for help on traps, and I want to avoid having it boil down to, "The trap you missed in your search goes off, take X amount of damage." I want something that will reward the players for getting around.

To set the scene a little better, the party has been granted a stronghold on the mountainous northern border of the country for services rendered (namely slaughtering a bunch of basilisks that were threatening the capital). Unfortunately, while the king expected castle to be slightly inhabited by evil creatures, he'd never actually visited the place, and so his information was somewhat off.

To make a long story slightly longer, the party is now sealed in their new home, with no foreseeable way out. In the first basement, which at one point was a set of holding cells, there's a tribe of kobolds. They moved in several months ago, and so have had time to trap the place fairly well. However, it still has to be livable, so I can't see having traps every three feet. I think the best way to do it might be to have traps triggered by the Kobolds as the party makes their way through the floor.

What I'm looking for is what might be the best things for the Kobolds to have trapped their home with. I'm already planning on having the Kobolds have at least one pit trap, triggered so the party falls in it and the Kobolds plunk them with crossbows or Alchemist's Fire.

I'm looking for other good options beyond this, but that won't disrupt the daily grind of tunneling about underneath a castle and fighting off periodic attacks by the deep gnomes. A statue that casts Fireball every time someone walks in front of the eyes is a nice trap, but probably would disrupt daily life if it was set up on the end of a hallway.

For a bit more relevant data, the party, when they get to this particular floor (if my planning is correct), they should be Level 7, and the Kobolds are going to be led by a Level 10 Sorcerer.

MrRigger

[tyckspoon]

I'm looking for other good options beyond this, but that won't disrupt the daily grind of tunneling about underneath a castle and fighting off periodic attacks by the deep gnomes. A statue that casts Fireball every time someone walks in front of the eyes is a nice trap, but probably would disrupt daily life if it was set up on the end of a hallway.


Depends on how you trigger it. If the Kobolds put it there, well, they're living in an area that was built for at least Medium creatures, and they're Small (and can act as Tiny if you go with the web enhancement.) So maybe they take the Fireball statue and they rerig it to only go off if something breaks the plane of the eyes instead of just entering its field of view- that is, if a Medium or larger creature/object goes through the hallway. That kind of thing should be a recurring theme for Kobold traps; they can count on being shorter, lighter, and able to squeeze into tighter spaces than almost any other thing that would be making a coordinated attack on them. So they have pressure plates that only go off if you put more than 100 pounds of weight on them, Tiny-sized side tunnels around deadfalls so they're not too inconvenienced if they have to collapse a tunnel, lighter-than-air poison gas traps that fill the upper half of a low tunnel and let them walk around in the lower clear space underneath (and if their enemies figure it out, well, they have to drop prone and are still disadvantaged compared to the Kobolds.)

[TheCIASentMe]

Big Stone boulder trap at the top end of a long downward sloping hallway. All along the hallway are little alcoves however the alcoves are trapped too. The alcove walls are false and will give way very easily dropping the unwary adventurers into a pit of water with some sort of beast in it.

The adventurers can either try to outrun the boulder and hit any other traps the kobolds may have set or they can dive into the alcoves (and get trapped again.)

This will most likely split the party into the faster and less armored (and thus squishy-er) characters and the armored(drowning) fighters.

Ways to avoid the trap:
Reflex Save in the alcove to avoid falling through the wall
Strength check on the boulder in the first round
Running
Shatter Spell in the boulder
Escape Artist check to squeeze into the small area the boulder doesn't occupy while it rolls past.

DCs could be set to whatever you figure would be a challenge.

[MrRigger]

Depends on how you trigger it. If the Kobolds put it there, well, they're living in an area that was built for at least Medium creatures, and they're Small (and can act as Tiny if you go with the web enhancement.) So maybe they take the Fireball statue and they rerig it to only go off if something breaks the plane of the eyes instead of just entering its field of view- that is, if a Medium or larger creature/object goes through the hallway. That kind of thing should be a recurring theme for Kobold traps; they can count on being shorter, lighter, and able to squeeze into tighter spaces than almost any other thing that would be making a coordinated attack on them. So they have pressure plates that only go off if you put more than 100 pounds of weight on them, Tiny-sized side tunnels around deadfalls so they're not too inconvenienced if they have to collapse a tunnel, lighter-than-air poison gas traps that fill the upper half of a low tunnel and let them walk around in the lower clear space underneath (and if their enemies figure it out, well, they have to drop prone and are still disadvantaged compared to the Kobolds.)

That's not a bad idea, though the problem with that idea is that the Kobolds main enemy has been Deep Gnomes, like I mentioned, which are also Small creatures, so the 100 lb pressure plate and Medium height traps wouldn't necessarily work against them. I'll probably include a few though.

MrRigger