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Deth Muncher

2011-07-19, 05:51 PM

Xtomjames

2011-07-19, 06:00 PM

Well for one LOL for using D&D terms to describe actual human intelligence, don't underestimate your player's capability to solve puzzles in real life as well as in game. Two logic puzzles are just that, logic puzzles. There are several D&D books that cover logic puzzles, traps, etc that you can use and explain how they work.

However, in game a logic puzzle is determined by success of an intelligence check (via knowledge of some sort, survival, etc). The higher the role the more you can tell the person about the puzzle, giving them more to work on than a basic description. You decided what they do and do not know in game. What more this is regardless of if the player knows it or can figure it out on their own or not.

Here's my favorite logic puzzle. The players are magically (seemingly) teleported to a white space, they can see each other and their shadows but they can't see a light source.

The characters to get out of the maze have to find their shadow's own light source by moving around based on the direction their shadow points. They can't walk with each other as they have their own invisible maze to follow. Walking on to their shadow prevents the shadow from moving and it will not stray from the path.

knowledge nature, arcana, or a survival check of 5 will remind them how a shadow is formed (if they've not already blurted it out) a DC of 10 will tell them these aren't normal shadows, after all there is no visible light source and the shadows aren't all moving in the same way for each person. DC 15 informs them that they each have their own light source, DC 20 informs them that they have to find the light source.

See how it'd work?

Jack_Simth

2011-07-19, 06:04 PM

Wow, is it "Deth Muncher bothers the Playground" 'o clock already? Guess so!

Upon remarking to one of my players today that I received a free Harry Potter Wizard Chess set in the mail today, he responded "You know, we could use some logic puzzles in the game too. They're fun!" And while I like logic puzzles, and I would enjoy implementing them, there lies one problem - Player Intelligence/Wisdom versus Character Int/Wis. Meaning, that while a normal person who might average 10-13 INT or Wis in real life might have an issue solving a puzzle, their 18INT wizard or 18WIS cleric might not, given their superior braining power. How do I handle this? Should I let the PCs work it out on their own? Or do I allow them rolls to let their character figure it out if they get stumped? Or something else entirely, lets say?

This is a pretty much eternal question. Everyone will give you different answers. It's the fundamental IC knowledge vs. OOC knowledge. Players *often* know things about the monsters you're throwing at them that their characters very much would not. If the player of the fighter happens to know that Vampires are vulnerable to magical silver, but the fighter has no ranks in Knowledge(religion), do you (as a DM) stop the fighter when he puts away his +4 Greatsword and draws his +2 Silver Greatsword, as he doesn't specifically know about the silver vulnerability and it would normally be a worse choice for a weapon?

The OTHER part of this is - how do I go about using logic puzzles correctly? As in, how do I avoid the either "DM's Choice wins, no other solutions" kind of strange difficulty, or the "5th grade word problem" kind of difficulty? Or, to make it slightly clearer, what's a good way to start thinking about designing puzzles that are challenging, but not so narrowly focused that you've got to be in my mind to make the connections to figure it out?
Answer a few questions:
1) Why is the puzzle there, in character? Some NPC made it, for a purpose. What's the purpose?
2) What resources did the NPC making the puzzle have available to put it into practice? Nothing in D&D is invulnerable except by total DM fiat. The trap is made out of a particular set of materials - what are they?
3) What was the personality of the NPC who made the puzzle? Would he be the sort to make things go "boom" if the answer is wrong (aka, if they don't get the reference, and thus, aren't *his* minions)? Or is he the sort to have the door there as a test for new initiates (demonstrate wisdom) and not blow up wrong choices?

Answer those questions, and you're well on your way.

A riddle on a door, for instance, might open the door (it's not a riddle, it's a password hint). Think of it this way: There's some writing on the door, and the door just happens to have a mechanism that will cause it to unlock if a particular word or phrase is spoken next to the door. Otherwise, it is a normal door. Speaking the answer to the riddle will open it... but so will other methods of opening a locked door. It's no more invulnerable than any other door. It is an object with a particular hardness and hit points; it can be bashed. If the locking mechanism is at all accessible, it can be picked. It has a break DC for someone charging it. It might have a few traps built into it to attempt to thwart such things, but traps, themselves, can be defeated by a rogue via search and disable device.

Make sense?

Candleke

2011-07-19, 06:06 PM

Make a physical depiction of the puzzle for the Pc's to work with then give them a riddle that hints at the way to solve the puzzle, nothing too hard but something that makes the Pc's actually think and work together to figure out. Also basing your hints off of knowledge checks works really well, but never give them extra info for having a 18 or higher int that's kind of a cop-out just because they are a super smart character doesn't mean they are automatically god of all puzzles.

Deth Muncher

2011-07-20, 12:28 AM

Although it's slightly a cop-out to respond as such, I think you all have it right. I like the scaling DCs to help to figure it out if the PCs are stumped (and make sure they actually roll them instead of just getting hints based off of high scores - everyone has a brain fart now and then), and likewise, I think calling out players who use OOC knowledge on things to solve puzzles.

I also enjoy that puzzle, Xtomjames.

And Jack, you're right too - I needed someone to say it so that my brain could get around it, but the whole "Sure, the password might open the door no harm no foul, but Brarglerag the barbarian slamming into it a few times'll do the trick too" thing was, for some reason, not crystallizing in my brain.

bloodtide

2011-07-20, 01:09 AM

he responded "You know, we could use some logic puzzles in the game too. They're fun!" And while I like logic puzzles, and I would enjoy implementing them, there lies one problem - Player Intelligence/Wisdom versus Character Int/Wis. Meaning, that while a normal person who might average 10-13 INT or Wis in real life might have an issue solving a puzzle, their 18INT wizard or 18WIS cleric might not, given their superior braining power. How do I handle this? Should I let the PCs work it out on their own? Or do I allow them rolls to let their character figure it out if they get stumped? Or something else entirely, lets say?

The OTHER part of this is - how do I go about using logic puzzles correctly? As in, how do I avoid the either "DM's Choice wins, no other solutions" kind of strange difficulty, or the "5th grade word problem" kind of difficulty? Or, to make it slightly clearer, what's a good way to start thinking about designing puzzles that are challenging, but not so narrowly focused that you've got to be in my mind to make the connections to figure it out?

It depends how you want to do puzzles. You get two choices:
1.Set a DC for the puzzle and roll for characters to overcome them. You don't need a 'real' puzzle here...just 'oh there is a puzzle trap on the floor...roll..I got a 30 and solved it''.

2.You want the players to solve real puzzles.

I only do the second way myself. A player must solve a puzzle themselves, with no help from the character.

And most puzzles only have one solution. So that is only 'one way', that's just the way puzzles are...

NichG

2011-07-20, 01:14 AM

My take on puzzles is that obvious puzzles are different (and are treated differently) than subtle puzzles.

Obvious puzzle: The floor ahead of you is a chessboard with pieces on it. You are on the side of Black. The white knight has been moved out in front of the pawns. The black knight is the only mobile piece. A sealed door lies on the other side of the room.

Players will hack, slash, and burn such things on contact in my experience. They will teleport past the door, polymorph the chess pieces into eachother, or start digging with their adamantine daggers. And honestly thats a natural and realistic reaction in a world where a guy with an adamantine dagger is basically a one man subway excavator.

Subtle puzzle: The PCs have encountered various elemental-themed creatures and mages and such in a particular order in the current place: Fire, Earth, Air, Water. This has repeated a few times. As part of their adventures they've found four wands: Fireball, Shape Stone, Gust of Wind, and Control Water. If a PC looks closely at the wands, they'll realize that the wand tip of one can adhere to the base of another. The wands are in fact components of a minor artifact that reveals its powers when the wands are attached together in the right order. The resultant artifact is a staff that can cast those spells and regenerates charges on a daily basis, a nice item but not critical for the adventure.

For the subtle puzzle (not the best example I guess, but it'll do), force is useless. By the time you've realized that you should use Legend Lore on the wands or Divination to get the sequence or something, you've basically already solved the puzzle. If you never solve the puzzle, you're just out a neat item. The worst that tends to happen with these is, the players never realize its there; the best is when a game or two later a light dawns and they say 'oh... I try this!' and it works.

Jack_Simth

2011-07-20, 07:22 AM

And Jack, you're right too - I needed someone to say it so that my brain could get around it, but the whole "Sure, the password might open the door no harm no foul, but Brarglerag the barbarian slamming into it a few times'll do the trick too" thing was, for some reason, not crystallizing in my brain.
Puzzles in RPG's are somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. There is a very strong tendency for DM's to make them single-solution, and cause them to punish all other solutions.

And most puzzles only have one solution. So that is only 'one way', that's just the way puzzles are...
Sort of. With most puzzles, there is only one solution when you play by the rules of the puzzle (whether they're implicit or explicit).

As an example, when I was visiting my grandmother at an Alzheimer's care place, the exit for the building was controlled by a keypad; next to the keypad was a riddle, of a sort. They changed it about once per month (along with the code), but it would say something like...

A Family recepie
One gallon of Love
Six cups of Kindness
Five kisses
and Nine hugs

(Read from bottom to top)

The solution being to type 9 5 6 1 into the keypad to open the door. The residents were sufficiently far gone that they couldn't figure it out. Meanwhile, it was no barrier to staff or visitors.

Is this a single solution puzzle? If you follow the implied rules, yes. If you do not follow the implied rules, however:
The doors weren't so heavy that I (as an adult in could health) couldn't have simply broken them down.
It was entirely possible to have one of the staff members get the doors for me.
Other people would periodically go in and out, and while the doors close themselves, there's a period of time where they're open when that happens - and it was possible to take advantage of that, grabbing a door before it fully closed.
They were electronic locks; any of the "normal" methods for defeating one of those would work.
The hinges and sliding bolts were accessible; a small saw could remove them.
If I had proper timed explosives handy, I could have blown the doors to kingdom come.

I'm sure there's more, but you should get the idea - any of these were "solutions" in the sense that they would have gotten me past the doors. They all have different facets to them; bashing a door down might leave me covered in glass, and have people after me on charges of vandalism, for instance. But they still would have been solutions in that they'd have gotten me past the door.

In RPG's, though, the common thing is to make them *true* single-solution, and additionally have them directly and immediately punish anything other than the pre-conceived "right answer".

Does that make sense?

Saph

2011-07-20, 09:52 AM

I'd second the advice from Jack and Nich.

I've run puzzle-themed games in the past, and I've found they can work very well as player challenges. The key thing to remember is that you have the entire group working to solve the puzzle together. This cuts down on the frustration factor a lot since even if one player gets stuck, someone else might figure it out.

My favourite is a 'puzzle dungeon' I wrote a few years ago - my group at the time loved it so I saved the adventure and reused it several times as a one-off. It was done on a Crystal Maze theme - there were 16 puzzles in four categories: logic, combat, intuition, and other. The players had to solve at least 3 out of 4 of each category to clear the 'area', getting a gem for each. Getting 4 out of 4 earned them a free minor magic item. This meant that they could afford to get stuck on one and still succeed. The best score I've had has been 15 out of 16.

Here's a sample of four, one from each category:

Laboratory (Logic)

This room is a laboratory, stocked with all kinds of vials, bottles, materials, reagents, and components, scattered around stained and pockmarked benches. One bench catches your eye, being the only one that's absolutely clear, except for three conical flasks, small, medium, and large, marked 3, 5, and 8. The 8 flask is full of a hissing pink fluid. On the wall is a bracket, with an empty holder the size of a flask; on the wall next to it is carved the number 4.

Mechanics

The pink stuff is lethal. It'll eat through anything except the three flasks. I've never had a player dumb enough to stick a finger in it, so I haven't bothered statting up its effects. :smalltongue:
Solution

This is the classic Three Jugs Puzzle. Every player I've given it to has been able to solve it with some pencil and paper and a few minutes' work - it's one of those ones that most people have encountered before, and can work out if they haven't.
Balcony (Wisdom)

The balcony gives a spectacular view of the striated sky. Swirls of brilliant energy sweep above and below you, flaring occasionally in a glow that lights up your faces and invigorates you. There's a gap in the railings at the northeastern tip, dropping off into an endless abyss of multicoloured light, and near the gap a symbol is carved into the wall. About thirty feet away, in line with the gap, a platform of white stone hangs unsuppported in the air. A spot at the centre of the platform shines green.

Mechanics

The players know from previous information received that a fall off the edge of the balcony will be fatal.

The symbol carved into the wall behind is the elvish symbol for faith.

Sweeping one's hand or using detection spells will reveal no pathway to the floating platform.

Flight or other mobility effects will get the players to the platform without difficulty, but upon landing there they'll find that the green spot is only painted onto the stone.
Solution

Anyone who's seen Indiana Jones will probably know this one, but it still scares the hell out of most players. You should get lots of entertainment watching them work up their courage to try it. :smallbiggrin:

Stepping out into the abyss will activate a force pathway. Once it's active, the character only needs to walk to the platform and pick up the gem.
Study (Other)

This long, cosy room contains stacks of paper and pencils. There are quills, bottles of ink of every different colour, and stacks of small cylinders that you don't recognise. There are four desks. Two are covered with old papers, a third has books, a fourth map-making equipment. The fifth holds a small statuette. The statuette is made of wax, and it's a harlequin. It's only nine inches tall, but very lifelike. The patchwork figure grins cheerfully at you. There are two dice sitting on the table. One is white, and one is black. The black one is attached by a cord to the Harlequin's left hand.

Mechanics

If you roll the white die, the black one rolls with it. Have the player roll a d6 in the open, while the DM does the same behind the screen.

Whatever the white die comes up with, the black die will equal it or come higher. The harlequin will keep grinning, as if mocking you.

A painting elsewhere in the adventure suggests that to beat the harlequin, the white die needs to roll higher than the black die.
Solution

Since the harlequin cheats, the only way to make the white die come up higher is to cheat back. Possible solutions include changing the pips on the die, replacing it with a d10 or a d20, cutting it in half to make the two halves add up to 7, etc. The solution my players hit on was swapping the dice around so the white one was tied to the harlequin's hand, and then rolling the black die themselves. I figured it was creative and had it work. When the players win, the white die shimmers and becomes a diamond fragment.
War Room (Combat)

This room has melee weapons of all sorts hanging on the walls. An arena is marked out in the centre of the room. A plaque on the far wall reads as follows:

Ware, warrior!
These letters spell your adversary's name:
RUIN MOAT
To battle him, speak it aloud.

Mechanics

This one takes most players a surprisingly long time. Listen to what they're saying, and assume it's all in-character unless they specify otherwise. :smallbiggrin:
Hints

It's an anagram.

Elsewhere in the adventure, there's a picture of a maze.
Solution

As soon as someone says the word 'minotaur' in the room, there's a flash and one appears right in the middle of them. Roll initiative. Defeating it gets them a gem.