Favorite puzzle you made/encountered- bragging + ideas?

[Yourshallowpal]

One of my favorite parts of DMing is puzzles; but I don't use them enough.

So, I really want all the ideas/examples I can get. (Examples are preferred, as they've been tested at least once.)

I'll start off by bragging on one of mine; naturally, anyone else is free to use it.

I'm assuming it's okay to borrow anything else posted; specify if you were saving it for an adventure you wanted to publish or anything, though.

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The Stygian Boys-

The party (while is hell, near Styx) is woken up by five brothers, who introduce themselves as "The Stygian Boys."

Their names are-

Midnight Blue
Snake-Eyes
Mr. V
Lucky
Decimator

The brothers are all naked and unarmed. All of them have tattoos with a hourglass/sundial theme, and they each have at least one tattoo depicting a near-copy of Da Vinci's "Vatruvian man" imposed over the 12-sided face of a sundial (clock).

The Stygians demand a ridiculous toll (all the magic items); when they don't receive it they attack. They have absurd defenses AND damage reduction, and the party cannot hope to beat them.

(An easy DC for a religion check reveals the Styx sometimes grants invulnerability to infants. A moderate DC reveals the ritual always requires a weak point to be left on the body)
(A moderate Perception check reveals the "Vatruvian man" tattoos may have some vital clue. A Hard Perception check reveals the NAMES of the five Stygians may also have some clue.)

If they fail the checks, they can try either skill again once per round by spending a standard action.

What they need to figure out is each stygian's name alludes to a number; each number indicates a position on a clock-face, and each position correlates with a body part of the "Vatruvian man."

(Midnight=12=head, Decimator=10=r.hand, Snake Eyes=2=L.hand, Mr. V = 5=L.foot, Lucky = R. foot)

By "targeting" the correct body part, the PC's now have normal defenses to overcome. Once the correct body part is hit once, the Stygian loses his high defenses, damage reduction, and most of his HP.
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Anyway, the party was having their asses handed to them, until they beat the checks. Then, they put the clues together, and went for the weak points.

They managed to get the surviving Stygian to tell them where he stashed his loot, in exchange for his life.

I got a lot compliments for this one; my party really enjoyed/appreciated it.

I really liked that; so I try to use puzzles as often as I can, but original ideas are hard. Balancing difficulty is harder.

So, what's a really good puzzle any of you have used/encountered? Bragging is strongly encouraged.

[Sipex]

That's a pretty good puzzle but it's risky. You need a party who trusts that you're not trying to screw them over in any manner. I know D&D players who would think you (as the DM) were simply railroading or putting them in a no-win situation instead of actually trying.

Below I've got a couple that I ran with success:

The party is trapped in a large, seemingly empty, square room (I went for 8x8). On the other side is a set of locked double doors. As soon as they're trapped within, the room starts flooding at 1ft/round from four gigantic pipes in the corners of the room (the room is 10 feet tall, 10 rounds to fill up).

The object is simple, escape the room. Simply getting the rogue to the door to pick it's complex lock (anywhere from 1-3 checks, depending on how you feel) would do this, or having the party just bust through it with attacks or strength checks will do this but there's a catch.

The room is filled with an invisible maze to impede your heroes progress. If they just dash ahead they're going to run head first into a wall. The party will have to use creativity and teamwork to get through this in time.

1) Each round everyone gets a standard action. You can move up to your speed if you like or perform a standard action.

2) If a player moves through a wall their turn immediately ends as they're temporarily stunned. I mean, they walked into a wall afterall.

3) A player can 'move carefully' at half their speed, meaning if they move through a wall they just lose 1 square of movement that turn (testing the wall) and can keep going.

4) Each player also gets a minor action which can be used to make checks or idly feel around from their current position for any adjacent walls.

5) Each player also gets a move action. This might make things too easy though, so figure out if you want to allow this. Maybe cut it out if you're doing this puzzle/trap at paragon tier or higher.

6) There's about a 1/2 foot gap at the bottom of the invisible maze walls to allow the water to fill the room easily (or you can just make the walls full of small holes, this avoids physics complications). The walls are indestructable by most means (being magical) but I did allow a wizard to case 'Dispel Magic' on a square to make a short cut. Items interact with the walls as normal (weapons bounce off, can be drawn on, etc).

7) Other physics checks still apply to the walls, if the PCs try to use perception checks to notice the flow of the water or to detect the bouncing of their voices (as sound doesn't pass through the walls after all), work with it.

8) The walls are arcane in nature so anyone who is trained in Arcana and makes the appropriate check (20+1/2 level of caster I believe, it's detailed in the skills section) as a MINOR action can see the walls as if they were solid for that turn. This information isn't privy to the other players however, require your players to communicate as if they were in the room together, guiding each other. Don't allow the wizard to draw out a map of what he sees and then show everyone when he makes the check. It's reasonable to draw a map as their character's memory, but don't let them pass it around during.

9) As the water gets higher, it gets harder to move. At 2 feet everyone loses 1 speed. At 4 feet everyone is considered 'slow' when they move normally. At 6 feet many of the PCs are going to have to start making athletics checks to swim. Adjust the rules for different sized PCs of course.

10) When swimming your PCs can move 1/2 their speed normally (I believe this is the actual rule), and they can carefully swim at 1/2 their swim speed. Set a reasonable swim check with a fairly strong current in relation to your PCs level. If they fail their check they flounder about or sink...or if the current is strong enough, they get pushed X number of squares if you feel like mapping out the current.

11) When drowning I couldn't find any set rules, so I put it at 2 minutes of holding their breath before a PC has to start making endurance checks. Each failed endurance check would remove a healing surge while each successful check would increase their endurance DC by 2 for the next round (ie: You can't hold your breath forever). Once a PC runs out of healing surges they start taking their level in damage per failed throw until they run out of HP.

12) If you want to be mean (or have particularily high levelled PCs) make the water hard to see through, requiring perception checks to see their way through.

13) Attacking the pipes is benificial. A pipe has HP of 50. When 'bloodied' the pipe only flows at 1/2 capacity. When dead, the pipe bursts open and flows at double the rate. PCs who get creative can clog pipes. If a pipe takes damage from cold it automatically clogs for 1 round.

[Mindartis]

I have to commemerate both of you. Those are genius puzzles. As a new DM, I wish I had some of my own to share, but I don't. However, I might use these as precedents for puzzles of my own, providing that you all don't mind.

[Sipex]

No, go ahead. I get my best ideas by reading others as it is. Take what you like.

Oh, another simpler puzzle:

The PCs enter a ruin and find within one of the first rooms an obvious chest with some loot in it along with a silver pendant of a sun with a keyhole in it (a successful easy religion check reveals the sun is the sign of Pelor, this should be given out automatically if you've got anyone who worships Pelor in your party). In addition there is also a silver key which fits in the keyhole of the sun but doesn't really do anything beyond this.

After some adventuring and exploring (through the same temple) the PCs will come to a big set of stone doors, 15+ feet high with no visible handles. Instead a murial is chiseled into the doors. A hillscape adorns the bottom across both doors, showing people and homes. Clouds and a sun (play down the sun when you say this, just make it seem like a thing that is there...or draw a simple picture and make the sun small) hang about midway up on the right door and a moon with stars on the left door.

Along the top of the doors are several faces of what are presumed to be gods. Women and men alike. Some are smiling, some are talking, some are angry and some are watching the people below. None of the eyes have pupils, they're just blank.

The frame of the door way has a cryptic message etched into it in supernal. Note, only make it in supernal if you know your players will actually go through the effort to figure it out. IE: They'll cast the proper ritual, get a translator, have a magic item that allows them to read languages or someone knows supernal, this will cause a total stand still otherwise.

"Those loyal to Pelor only need to touch his eye."

Now, you've probably guessed (since I highlighted it) that the solution is in the sun. It is. The sun presses down and creates a sun shaped hole. You don't want this to be obvious to your players however so remember to play down the sun if you describe the mural or draw a smallish sun if you draw it out for them. Put a lot of description and detail into the doors, add trees, scenes of people worshipping, what the gods are doing, flocks of birds, you name it. The less obvious the sun is the better.

When the players go to touch anything, ask them how they do it. Do they press down hard? Do they tap it? If it's one of the gods faces, how do they reach it? It ultimately doesn't matter but they key here is to get your players thinking a little too hard so obvious solution isn't so obvious.

Don't allow a player to simply say "I touch everything systematically" or anything of the sort either, request they state each try (ie: I touch each of the gods eyes in turn is a valid request. Just go through and say 'you touch this one...nothing' and ask HOW they touch it)

Once someone does touch the sun it doesn't matter how they do it, as long as they touch the sun it presses in creating a sun shaped hole and...nothing happens.

See the pendant they got earlier fits into the hole perfectly and the key can be used to turn the pendant in the hole, opening the doors.

To make this harder, separate the key and the pendant.

[Christopher K.]

My current group was in a dungeon built by a puzzle-obsessed wizard at one point.

My favorite puzzle was this - they were in a chamber with a small hut built on stilts which made a continuous quiet scraping noise, overlooking a large pool of water that they had no chance of escaping if they entered it. Across from the hut was a giant mechanism that resembled a gigantic stone lever with a hollow cube on the end. Carved into the wall in several languages were the words "seek balance in everything you do" and "providing support is the least of your concerns"

The solution?
The scraping noise came from one of the stilts constantly moving on a DC 15 Perception check. It turned out the stilt wasn't attached to the hut, but rather was fed through two connected magical rings which served as portals to one another. After some antics (the party's dwarf sticking his finger in one ring and the fighter on the other side of the room biting it), they threw one end into the hollow cube and the other into the pool of water. The cube filled up, and pulled the lever down, revealing it to be a balance that could then be used as a bridge.

Later on in the same dungeon, the party descended a ladder only to be trapped in a small room(2x2) with numbered walls. After some Dungeoneering checks to tap the walls, the fourth was revealed to be hollow. The fighter smashed it down, only for the party to find themselves standing around people sitting at a table playing a strange game with unusual dice and plastic figures. The map I showed the players was my gaming room, but something was.. off.

The solution?
The map of my gaming room included a thick chain lying on the ground. When a character pulled this chain, it opened a trapdoor to the next room.

[theflyingkitty]

My players would fail at any of these traps.

I've got one set up where they mearly have to listen to some VERY obvious hints and die... and don't they will suceede.

[Yourshallowpal]

Chris, Sipex- Thanks! Those are all great!

(Sipex- Yeah, you're probably right about how some players would feel about that challenge. :smallfrown: Luckily, I have some good role-players in my group, and they're all pretty trained to roll every knowledge check possible. It probably helps that two of them are mythology buffs.)

This next one I was more bizarre, but fun. It started as a puzzle, but ended just being a weird gameplay element they had fun with.

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They were entering the chambers of a particularly vain demigod. The passage to the next room was an indestructable magic mirror, with the sign over it (in elven) "To unseal me, you must enter twice but leave once."

Next to mirror was a table of cosmetic items. The items are listed below. Each item, when applied, required the players to roll a d6, and the following result would occur.

Naturally, an Arcana check revealed what each item might do.

Lipstick
1 - Learn 1 new language.
2 - Learn 2 new languages, forget common.
3 - Mouth vanishes, non-telepathic players cannot speak
4 - Dexterous tongue; allows players to switch weapons as a free rather than minor action on their turn.
5 - Fangs; player gets a bite attack as a minor/immediate reaction, once per encounter.
6 - Tongue bloat- The character's tongue becomes too big for their mouth. It dangles down to their chest, useless.

Rouge
1-2 - Characters's skin becomes transparent.
3-4 - Character's skin changes to one of the six primary/secondary colors, determined by a second d6 roll.
5-6 - Character's biological sex switches.

Comb (d4 for this one)
1-2 - Player becomes bald
3-4 - Beard which always grows back immediately when shaved.
5-6 - Change hair color immediately to one of the six primary/secondary colors, based on a second d6 roll.

Eyeliner (This is the key item)
- Using this item automatically splits the character into two halves. Each half has a max HP equal to the character's bloodied value.

1-3: The player can control both halves, which automatically re-combine at the end of the encounter. Each half has 1 Move action and 1 Standard action. They share the same power pool and have superior flanking.

4-6: The player controls one of the halves, with a standard, move, and minor action, and half their usual Max HP. The other half is a Nasnas (I used stats from a MM1 quickling), which immediatly tries to run away. If the Nasnas isn't caught and forcibly re-attached before the player takes an extended rest, the seperation become permanent.*

Each item had a total of three uses left of it. A different check on each item revealed what it might do to the player. They succeeded on the check for the eyeliner, and figured out using it would fulfill the requirement of the mirror; the two halves would enter seperately, but the combined form would eventually emerge.

They tried the eyeliner, and the player was able to control both halves through the encounter on the other side.
(If she had failed, the Nasnas would have jumped through the mirror, forcing them to follow and chase it through the dungeon.)

Some backup rules for the Nasnas: If the seperation becomes permanent, the player naturally does NOT get half their HP or their other hand back. However, they can "steal" their HP back by finding a playable race, killing it, bisecting it's recently slain corpse, and sticking the needed half onto themselves.

The challenge was pretty easy, largely because they rolled well. (Had the Nasnas immediately run away, it would have been much more challenging)

The real fun was they had some amusing items to play with afterwards. They ended up using half the items to "makeover" a captive enemy, and using the rest up as part of a drinking game.

(All effects could be cured via ritual; the price of the ritual for any given effect was 1d10 X 1000 GP.)

During the drinking game, one player did make a Nasnas, but they restrained it immediately. Instead of recombining with it, however, he had another player split in half, and they recombined with half of each other instead.

(I gave them a few sadistic "switch-place" powers, to reflect their condition. As an encounter, they could agree to switch places. As an 2/per encounter, they could roll to transfer an effect a save could end to each other. As a Daily, one of them could steal up to half the other's HP.)

[Bluepaw]

I enjoy riddles but I can't write them for the life of me. Conveniently enough, though, there are compendia online of Anglo-Saxon riddles, which tend to have a tone suitable for fantasy RPGs. Apparently those Anglo-Saxons spent a lot of their time coming up with riddles.

I had my PCs exploring a hollowed-out iceberg being used as a burial chamber for an eskimo people's heroes and kings. Several doors had riddles on them as the key -- of course, they could use fire powers, but every time they "cut the knot", as it were, the structural integrity of the whole berg was weakened...

The best part was having the magic of the doors respond in different ways to different attempted answers. So for this riddle:

My dress is silver, shimmering gray,
Spun with a blaze of garnets. I craze
Most men: rash fools I run on a road
Of rage, and quiet, contemplative men, I cage.
Why they love me – lured from their minds,
Stripped of their strength – remains a riddle.
If they still praise my sinuous power
When they raise high this dearest treasure
They will find through reckless habit
Dark woe in the dregs of pleasure

Give up? the answer:
Wine

I let them work it out, try a bunch of wrong answers and get zapped or hear ominous creaking...Finally, one of our PCs, whose character was an alcoholic, tried to get a circumstance bonus by taking a swig from his flask -- and to everyone's shock, the door swung open...

[Yourshallowpal]

Bluepaw-

Oh, those are nice. I just googled anglo-saxon riddles, and got a dozen hits I think I can use.

Thank you so much! I tried a challenge where they had to "figure out" the answer to some riddles (concerning the three cousins of Erathis, each of which was captured by a Bugbear, and had to escape using guile) but I ended up spending way too much time figuring out usable riddles.

Do you give "hints" for rolling well on a knowledge check? (Insight, Hist, etc) or do you insist they solve the riddle?

These are great!

[Sipex]

Always give hints for good rolls, players rolling for hints tells you they're getting impatient and need a lead. Riddles can stop a session dead if the players lose interest.

[Bluepaw]

Always give hints for good rolls, players rolling for hints tells you they're getting impatient and need a lead. Riddles can stop a session dead if the players lose interest.

Agreed. I gave hints for good rolls, but only if they provided a convincing "circumstance" for making the roll in the first place -- in other words, I wouldn't let them just roll until they hit the jackpot. So, one person earned a roll (and a hint) when he asked if his character would remember the folklore and riddles from his Dragonborn childhood...I said sure, and gave him a History roll to try drawing connections between those riddles and these. Another was the circumstance of trying to clear the mind with some booze -- which in this case solved the riddle! I'd also give "getting warmer" Insight rolls, if players guess something that's wrong but shows they're thinking in helpful ways.

Then again, Sipex is right: if they're getting bored, find a way to move on. You could have them be ambushed by some new monsters -- the leader of whom is carrying something (a key, a potion, whatever) that makes solving the riddle unnecessary.

[Yourshallowpal]

Oh yeah, I'm a strong believer in the "short way/long way" philosophy.

(IE, had they not figured out to how beat the Stygian boys, they were have been knocked out and taken hostage so I could provide a new hint from a helpful Charon; they'd then have to escape and fight the stygians naked to get their stuff back)

On hints, though, the "circumstance bonus" is something I don't use often enough. I usually set limits on how frequently they can roll a check during an encounter. (A Knowledge check is a standard action, only one skill per round, etc.)

Besides circumstance bonuses/capping rolls per round, are there some other ways to make sure they don't just roll knowledge until they hit jackpot?

[Sipex]

By RAW, a knowledge roll about a particular subject is made ONCE and only once by any one PC (ie: So each PC gets a roll). When the PC comes across some new information about the subject they're allowed to roll again to see if they remember any additional information (ie: Just needed a kick start).

[Dsjs10]

Basically, what I did was I put a bottomless bag in a room. The bag is only bottomless for items you put in, so if the player puts their hand in it, but they can feel the bottom. If you drop an item in, it's gone for good. But, if you turn the bag inside-out,the player can stretch it over their head(s) and then walk through walls, as there are no doors in the room but the door you came from. Each wall has a different room with different stuff (monsters, treasure, traps, whatever you feel like) and when a player walks through a wall, the bag gets stuck half way in the wall, therefore it cannot be used to walk through the hidden rooms' walls. It is held in the room with a binding spell, so it can't be carried through the doorway. If a player steps in the bag when it is inside-out, they will fall for eternity. This dungeon puzzle wasn't originally intended for D&D, so feel free to adapt it.

[Sutremaine]

But, if you turn the bag inside-out,the player can stretch it over their head(s) and then walk through walls
I don't get it. Why would draping the bag over your head allow you to walk through walls?

[Daveheart]

I love puzzles!

In my campaign I used them a lot of times, with variable success. Examples:

The mirrored portals
This is a blatant rip-off from Planescape Torment, Player's Maze. The group fails a trap perception and is teleported into a room with 10 portals. The portals are connected with maze-like pavement, so you can reach some but not all of them on foot.
You have to go through the same portal twice, problem is that when you go through one, you get out through the second next clockwise.
It took them two hours and some arrow shooting to get it. That was hilarious: the ranger actually shot the dwarf paladin and they started bickering.
However I had to make a purple hue visible through an arcana check once a player stepped through a portal. There was a hint on one of the portal's pillar, but they missed it.
Did they like it? 9 out of 10. Since both fighter-type and arcane-type participated they had a lot of fun.

Down the temple of Zehir
This one is mine, it's more of a mind trick than a real puzzle. The group was in a former temple of Zehir, in ruins. They had to go down to the crypt area. Scattered around the temple were obvious leads about the blessing of Zehir beeing needed to go to the crypts, and how to reconsacrate the temple to Zehir through a ritual involving evil prayers, a sacrifice and unholy objects (Zehir's tooth, a knife; Zehir's blood, a vial of venom; Zehir's eggs, some marble stones). There was an elaborate altar with a "strange" pool shaped part, perfect for a human sacrifice.
The group is good-oriented and this was part of the paladin's side quest, so I was really hoping for a gigantic blunder where they actually brought back the power of Zehir, possibly by sacrificing an enemy. The less obvious alternative was to openly refuse to do it and maybe to destroy the altar, in the name of Moradin and all that is just, proceeding then to heroically fight a giant snake statue brought back by the last powers of Zehir still haunting the temple.
They were almost there, debating if a lesser evil was justified by a greater good when the gnome bard got bored, snuck away, picked up a pick-axe and started hammering the base of the altar "to get down avoiding all that religion crap".
God, I hate that b(ast)ard...:smallmad:
At least I had the satisfaction of the snake having a taste of him, and he pissing his pants and running for his life down the temple's nave. TRAPPED nave, that they found but did not disable because "who cares, we'll simply move around the trap". He forgot...:smallcool:
Did they like it? 3 out of 10: I discovered they're not up for "star wars style", ethycal role-play.

Vecna's secrets
Also mine. The party got into a building that was related to Vecna's cult, in search of ancient relics.
They went down some stairs and found a room with 6 doors and 4 statues, described with some details just for the sake of it. In front of the stairs they saw a big mirror.
When they looked into it, their reflection indicated a door. I played this having each of them come out of the gaming room in private and playing as their reflection: the trick was that everyone was led to a different door, but only one reflection also made the sign to keep silent (finger on the lips).
I made sure to make it look natural, putting more stress on the arm that showed the door. Since Vecna is strongly related to secrets, it was a obvious hint in my mind.
The "shush" gesture came out only after half an hour of debate, and they still thought about the order of the room, the statues...
They opened two wrong rooms anyway (and got scorched), got away and came back (since they understood that after 10 minutes the mirror changed the right door through a mind blowing arcana check), disguised themselves to bluff the mirror, came down in pairs and not together... and finally got the right door by chance.
Of course they didn't get xp.:smalltongue:
Did they like it? 6 out of 10. They liked the set up, but not the fact that it dragged on. And of course that they failed and didn't get xp.

[Adoendithas]

When I ran the "room with lots of magic mirrors" (I forget the real name) puzzle in Thunderspire Labyrinth, as soon as one of the mirrors had an effect the party's response was "Can we steal the mirrors and take them with us?"

I eventually told them that the magic would stop if they detached the mirrors from the walls but that they could Craft Magic Item some once they'd seen them.

Now I need to come up with puzzles that don't involve magical scenery or items of any sort, or come up with a really good reason that the PCs can't steal them.

[SSGoW]

Always give hints for good rolls, players rolling for hints tells you they're getting impatient and need a lead. Riddles can stop a session dead if the players lose interest.

What I have to say really applies to all games but...

I always leave riddles for the doors that lead to extra stuff or places that the characters don't need to go.

These are normally places the PCs can come back to once they learn the answer (say an old Bard in the next town known as the "secrete master" could know the password or at least give them really good clues).

I've found that players now days (any edition) don't want to really think that hard without using google on their phone :smallannoyed: (though if someone plays a bard I do allow Bardic Knowledge to be a google search of one of the SRDs/Online Monster Vault things).

[Cealocanth]

Here was one of my favorite puzzle-dungeons. It's kind of a puzzle/combat since some of my players don't care for much more than hack and slash, but it allowed for an entertaining and structured game that each of the players felt they had a part in. By far one of my best games to date.

Spoilered because it's extremely long.
So the players have ventured deep into the rainforest known as the Crown of the Ancients in search of a magical artifact known as the Spear of the Ancients. Said Spear supposedly possesses power enough to destroy the infinite mutant armies of the BBEG and would give the town of Midnight Shore enough of a bargaining chip to ward off the potential hostile takeover the BBEG is planning. They don't know what kind of power it really has or what it even looks like, but they know it was hidden by a civilization technologically adept enough to be able to "shape the world in their image."

Deep within the rainforest the party encounters the lost temple in which the Spear is supposedly hidden. After they breach the outer wall of the temple, they find that it's constructed by the collapsed ruins of four identical towers made of limestone brickwork. There also appears to be a crude ditch worn into the ground in the shape of a diamond in the center of the temple. Worried what the ditch could represent, the party avoids the diamond and enters the first tower, when they find several statues clearly carved by the Ancients. Floating seven feet in the air is a strange ancient device constructed of spinning gold loops and a glowing crystal. As they disturb the statues, they appear to awaken and attack, each speaking in an incomprehensible language. During their combat, the party finds that the statues appear to be pulling up the local plant life, which has remarkably long roots, and using them as some kind of makeshift whip. Utilizing the plants, the party makes a ladder and touches the ancient device, sending a beam of light to a pillar on the first corner of the diamond.

The second tower the party finds that a staircase is still intact leading to this tower's device, but as they touch the device and activate the beam of light, the stairs collapse, leaving a valuable party member suspended ten feet above the ground on a floating stone platform. No ladder plants are to be found in this tower, but as the party begins to figure out how to get down, the tower is filled with a choking swarm of millions of fist sized mechanical insects. While some try killing as many of the biting and scratching drones as they can, they soon realize they are nearly infinite in number and simply fighting them would lead to their deaths. One party member attempts to capture several of the insects, and using their collective flight power as a kind of balloon, allows the other member to descend and exit this tower.

The third tower is guarded by a giant ancient guardian statue. The ancient device is implanted into it's forehead. No real puzzle here, just kill it and touch the device.

The last tower is a complex network of ropes lashed across the walls in haphazard fashions. The Ancient device, while suspended in the air, is significantly higher than the others, and there appears to be some sort of mirror positioned at the ten foot mark. This tower is a skill challenge, in which the most acrobatic or athletic attempt to climb upon the web of ropes. Some of the ropes are rigged to collapse when weight is placed on them, resulting in the dropping of the adventurer. It's up to the party members on the ground to examine the walls and look for crumbling spots or weak ropes while one party member climbs to the device.

Upon touching the device in the last tower, the last beam of light is reflected toward one corner of the diamond, and giant pillars rise out of the ground on the corners, atop them being redirection crystals that allow the light to border the diamond. In the center of the temple a chest appears to materialize on a pedestal.

At first taken as an obvious trap, the party attempts to free the chest from it's position outside of the diamond, but despite attempts to use a ten foot pole and even a grappling hook to move the chest, it appears it's stuck to the pedestal by some sort of magic. Eventually the rogue enters the diamond and approaches the chest. While noting the strange markings inscribed on the lid, the chest opens with ease and within is a spear. In perfect condition, still glowing as if it had just been forged, the spear is inscribed with intricate filigree and magical runes along it's head and shaft. Upon further examination it shows to be magical. (a Chieftan's Spear).

The party is about to declare that they found the Spear of the Ancients and leave, but the Warlock is curious about the markings on the chest. He finds that they are in the Ancient language, translating as:

This temple is dedicated to four great souls.
They who can draw from their environment to reach great heights
They who could stay their hand
They who held the strength of giants
They who were both lucky and skilled
Upon their backs they bore the light of the divine
On these four pillars the temple stood.

The party soon figured out that there is something more hidden in this temple, and the spear, while magical, is not the Spear of the Ancients. Soon they figure out that they each need to climb atop and touch the redirection crystal on their four respective pillars that fit the challenge they excelled in best. Once they did that, something strange happened.

The area, bordered with the diamond, slid open and revealed a bright disorienting light that flooded the temple around them. Dazed and confused, suddenly each of the party members found themselves standing in the center of what appeared to be one of the towers, but upon further examination they soon realized that they were in a folded space. They could look upon the northern and southern walls and see their allies standing perpendicular to the wall, and on the ceiling as well. In the center of the tower rested a crystal similar to the ones upon the pillars.

The towers held a different risk as well. Each of the towers began to manifest itself in the form of one of the four elements. One tower's walls collapsed into rubble and from that rubble many rock elementals began to crawl their way out, attacking the player in that room. Another tower's walls burst into flames, birthing swarms of tiny flaming insect creatures that also focused on just the one player in their room. Another tower began to fill with water, and one angered water archon began to throw the player around with his devastating waves. The last tower appeared to crumble entirely, the floor collapsing into the ether. While it appeared that the players could fly, the crystal in that room was guarded by a powerful looking lighting elemental, who formed a series of swirling electric rings orbiting him and threw devastating cyclones at the player.

The players found that when they touched their crystal, they were transported onto a random wall and attacked by the creatures there. They also realized that the many different elementals would continue to be born from the environments in the rooms. Just as they were about to die from being overwhelmed, one party member suggested touching each of the crystals at the same time. Luckily, this transported each of the players around the chested pedestal in the non-folded temple. The chest was now gone, replaced by a simple crease in the circular stone that the chest once sat upon. When pried open, the true Spear was revealed.

[crmk00]

This example pales in comparison to the other stories posted here, but I'm new to this whole DMing thing, and I feel gosh darned proud of this.

So, while exploring a goblin den, the group falls down a pitfall trap into what I nicknamed the "Hall of Pain". A hallway 14 squares long and 2 wide, littered with traps and no escape routes.

At the end of the hall the players landed in, the players each saw a goblin dying to one of the traps (Fire from the floors, arrows from the walls, and a ceiling crusher) in a cave painting, and one player landed next to a memorial wall that stretched from the ceiling 25 ft up to the floor.

The fun part wasn't that the party had to make some perception and athletics checks that were fun, it's that some of the pressure plates were faulty and caused the traps to screw up. For example

Flame trap: +4vsRef, 1d6+4 fire damage
Ceiling smasher: +4vsAC, 1d12 damage and target is knocked prone
Arrow trap (any pressure plate activates all launchers btw): +5 vs. AC, 1d6+2 damage and 2 ongoing poison (save ends).

Turns into

Explosive Tile: 1d8 fire damage, the target is pushed 1 square, and the tile is now rough terrain. The trap also no longer works

Troll Ceiling: Target is knocked prone

Shrapnel Trap: 1d6+3, close blast 3, each target in blast takes 2 ongoing poison (save ends)

The idea was that the traps were designed by goblins, so they were going to have some... design flaws. The fire trap, instead of releasing the gas and igniting the stream, would release a large quantity and then ignite the lingering gas ball. The ceiling smasher would mistake the player for ground, and only bop them on the head before retreating up. Arrow launchers were my favorite. The arrows would be loose in the launchers, causing them to get ground up and fired as fragments. The party never discovered this however, since they took a goblin corpse, used it to hold down the pressure plate, and made the arrow traps waste all their arrows

[Dan Arcueid]

This is a super simple one a gm pulled on me but trips up parties in a hurry.

In a previous room the party finds a note in elven ( only 1 party members spoke it in this case me) saying "312 not 321" which meant nothing at the time.

Go a bit further and suddenly the door behind the party slams shut locking us in there with a wall closing in, 2 undead and 3 switches.

While dealing with the undead the party gets in position to flip the switches (which takes time due to it being a kinda long hallway)

So going from top to bottom on the map we flip the switches in 312 order, fails. Try the other way going from bottom to the top it fails. By this time we've dealt with the undead and the wall is dangerously close. Last turn GM has me do an perception check and find the switch i was next to was labeled 2 and not 3 like i thought revealing the switches where numbered in an odd order.

Do it in the order listed and it works.

Not complex but if you're in too much of a hurry to check around you can give your party a bit of a scare.

[Leewei]

A while ago, our DM had us enter into a 45' x 45' room with strange glyphs on the floor. It ends up, we were playing a large Sudoku game. Each turn, a PC could select a symbol as a free action for a tile at or adjacent to his position. Incorrect choices hurt the PCs or buffed the random monsters that kept popping into existence and attacking us.

[Musco]

That one... is awesome. I'm thinking of adapting it, and instead of using numbers, using actual random gliphs (serves the same purpose, after all) and letting them have it!

[Leewei]

I'm more than a little bit of a Sudoku fiend. There are all sorts of puzzles of varying difficulty, including 4x4, 6x6 and 12x12 puzzles. www.websudoku.com can generate any of these, which you can then substitute glyphs for numbers.

I'd suggest allowing Standard Action knowledge checks such as Arcana to determine the correct shoice for a tile. Alternately, allow players to give the answers to each other -- it is a team game, after all. This could allow players who are not very puzzle-oriented to still be productive.

Another puzzle I'm a fan of is the nonogram. (Google it -- there are sites that make these as well.)

[PhallicWarrior]

My campaigns tend towards the simple end of the spectrum: Go here, do/find/kill this, etc. I'm sparse with puzzles when I use them at all. What I prefer are multi-staged combat or RP encounters where PCs who invest in the world or pay attention to description and incidental RP moments can use their knowledge to get a leg up. For example, I ran a simple dungeon crawl that culminated with a showdown with a mad scientist/necromancer who was trying to harvest the souls of kidnapped children to energize one of his "experiments" (a flesh golem given a few buffs) The necromancer activated his machinery but placed a necrotic barrier between the innocent children and the party. They had options. If they could get through the necromancer's skeletons and zombies and drag him away from the control panel before he finalized the process (keep him out of reach of the panel before he can spend 4 move actions, while he uses one standard action each turn to attack) then they could stop him from energizing the "experiment". If he got that running, they'd have to find a way past the barrier. (One of the PCs had a daily power that let them teleport, for example.) If they didn't get through the barrier in time, they'd have to fight the flesh golem at full strength, but there was an intermediate period during which they'd be able to stop the flesh golem from fully animating but would have to deal with increasingly harder skill checks to revive the children the longer they left it. The fight was a heck of a battle. They split the difference, managing to take down the barrier generators and destroy the machinery just one round before any of the children died, but as a consequence they had to fight the flesh golem at nearly full power. They all almost died, but in the end everyone walked away from the table happy.

[shamgar001]

A while ago, our DM had us enter into a 45' x 45' room with strange glyphs on the floor. It ends up, we were playing a large Sudoku game. Each turn, a PC could select a symbol as a free action for a tile at or adjacent to his position. Incorrect choices hurt the PCs or buffed the random monsters that kept popping into existence and attacking us.

I am so stealing that.

I would love to have more details on that. How do you let the PCs know that they can select the glyph on each square without metagaming?


One puzzle I came up with but haven't gotten to use yet goes like this:
The party find themselves in a room with a nonfunctional teleportation circle in the middle, surrounded by five statues of dragons. Each statue is a different chromatic dragon, but because they're all stone and unpainted, the only way to tell them apart is by shape. Five hallways go off from the room, each leading to a simple challenge that protects a magic orb. Each orb is a damage-type changing effect (Orb of Acid, Orb of Fire, etc.). Once all orbs have been recovered, they must be placed in the mouths of the correct dragon (Orb of Acid in the Black Dragon, Orb of Lightning in the Blud Dragon, etc). Once the last orb has been placed, the teleportation activates and takes the PCs elsewhere, leaving the orbs behind.

[Burley]

I'm planning on throwing this at my group in the first session of my Oz campaign.

They'll run onto a panel with three levers, two up and one down. A thievery check shows that the must move the up-levers down and the down-lever up, but if all three levers are up or down, a trap springs.
They run into a similar panel soon after, with a similar solution, but with a different start-end configuration. This set opens a door to move forward and a secret hiding spot with a +1 light blade in it. All up or all down at any time will lock the secret hiding spot.
These panels are simple and they'll get the hang of it pretty quick. They run into a third panel. Three levers and an obvious arrow or bolt-sized hole at about face height. One of the levers refuses to move into the downward position. As they've already seen two similar puzzles, they won't think to use Thievery checks, but that or sufficient Perception will show that the stuck lever isn't a lever, but a knob attached to a rod that screws out.
Sticking the rod into the "arrow hole" and screwing in acts as a door knob, opening the hidden door, allowing passage to the lower level.

Simple solution that they won't bother with because they think they already know it.:smallsmile:

[Leewei]

I am so stealing that.

I would love to have more details on that. How do you let the PCs know that they can select the glyph on each square without metagaming?

When a PC examined a tile, he received a mental image with nine glyphs, along with an impression that he could choose one if he wished.

I'd suggest the following instead, however. Each row and column of tiles as well as the center tile of each 9-tile area has a totem with the nine glyphs on it. Each correct glyph on a tile causes the same glyph to glow on the relavent totems.

Something to keep in mind: Action economy is pretty important in this sort of encounter. A sparsely populated map could take a lot of actions to populate. Drawing a glyph as a Standard Action would make a long encounter, unless it gave some form of benefit in the way of stunning an enemy.

I can think of a few alternatives to mentally selecting glyphs. PCs might have runestones that they can drop. Another possibility is to use damage types instead of glyphs. Fire/Cold/Acid/Lightning/Thunder/Psychic/Radiant/Necrotic/Poison are 9 damage types. Positioning an enemy in a tile and killing them with the correct damage type is a possible puzzle mechanism.

[shamgar001]

Something to keep in mind: Action economy is pretty important in this sort of encounter. A sparsely populated map could take a lot of actions to populate. Drawing a glyph as a Standard Action would make a long encounter, unless it gave some form of benefit in the way of stunning an enemy.

I can think of a few alternatives to mentally selecting glyphs. PCs might have runestones that they can drop. Another possibility is to use damage types instead of glyphs. Fire/Cold/Acid/Lightning/Thunder/Psychic/Radiant/Necrotic/Poison are 9 damage types. Positioning an enemy in a tile and killing them with the correct damage type is a possible puzzle mechanism.

I'm thinking of making the floor tiles out of slate and having cups of chalk in the entrance. I think that would send the message that the PCs are supposed to write on them. I do like the idea of using damage types instead of numbers. There could easily be certain sigils that represent the different damage type (anyone trained in Arcana would know them by heart). From there, I'm thinking the enemies could be nine minions that respawn whenever they are hit. When a sigil is correctly placed, the corresponding minion is affected until all nine are placed, then it is destroyed.

*Edit* Or perhaps make them invincible and annoying rather than deadly. A properly placed sigil makes them vulnerable for a round, and a wrong one makes them more dangerous.

[Musco]

I'd make it slightly different.

Have each panel have a totem with nine gliphs on them, and let the players activate one with a minor action (so action economy is not totally screwed).

Tell them nothing at first, and make the room a magical trap.

Have some sarcophaguses or something on the walls, and make it so that the moment they reach the middle of the room, the trap activates, locking both doors (entrance and exit). Each round, have the sarcophaguses spit out a skeleton minion each (have a lot of them), and make it so they get to act immediately, so even if they have 2-3 controllers, the minions will still get a free attack at them before biting it.

Make them hard to break (Keep on the Sadowfell has good statistics for such a trap), and/or uninteresting to try this way out, but consider putting a cap on the number of minions (like, a maximum of 4 minions per sarcophagus out at any given time), so things don't get out of hand if they're bad at this.

Whenever a player activates a wrong gliph, have the totems buff up the minions with temporary HP, makes it hell to kill them.

Whenever they activate a right gliph, have the totem attack the closest minion (so maybe they get a free kill with a minor action, and could even help defend a squishy player), at random if there is more than a single option.

When they solve it, the doors open again. Simple as that.

You could also have, like, a giant floating magic counter or something, so if they solve it within X tries (or heck, X rounds, if you want them to work the economy out), maybe have a secret door open, where they get some nice loot.

Make the counter regressive, so they understand what it means - and to send shivers down their spine if the counter is moving fast, since they don't know what 0 means...

[Burley]

I thought of a little puzzle last night while on a beer-run.

The PCs see before them an altar surrounded by nine pedestals. Each pedestal has a different stone statuette, and the altar looks to have indentations for three of these statuettes to fit into.

The statuettes are: man with abacus, warrior with falchion, warrior with spear, warrior with bow, a prostitute (I'll make sure the regional prostitutes all have some defining feature), a bear, an apple, a rooster, and a quill.

Interacting with the altar or pedestals in any way causes a voice to relay the following: You who wish to be rewarded; choose the three that keep things sorted.
The important part is that I only read the clue one time, because the word "sorted" is a Heterograph Homophone: sorted, sordid, sworded.
The correct answer is: man with abacus, warrior with falchion, and prostitute.
Using knowledge the PCs would have gotten recently, by meeting an accounting clerk, a concubine and a mercenary, when I'll have used the homophones in conversation (to absolve myself of hokines).

Another puzzle that's pretty easy if they think a bit.

Would losing healing surges for incorrect guesses be too much?

[Musco]

Depends if it can drain them dry or not. If they can brute-force it by trading their surges, I'd be more than ok with it, provided the adventure is a race of sorts (where "losing time", as they need an extended rest, is drawback enough for "losing" the challenge.

So as to not make it cheesy, you could have the thing drain them into faintness, after all surges are gone, instead of having them camp at the spot because they're stuck. If everyone faints, they wake up next day. If no, the fainted recover after a few hours, though still surgeless.

But in all fairness, I'm not fond of linguistic puzzles, too much room for complaints.

[Toryn]

So in the first session I ever DM'ed I used this rather simple one. It's good for those people that don't want to sit around and talk, but would rather get straight to the action.

The party enters a room that is obviously the final resting place of a famous king/queen/warrior etc. On the walls are painted the famous figure's life story, including how they died. I merely mentioned that the walls were elaborately painted and allowed a check to see what was on it. Describe a couple of important moments (the death of a parent, their crowning, their death). You must be sure to describe their death, but don't make it seem any more important than the rest of the dungeon.

In the center of the room is a statue of the person. Throughout the room is the treasure they have accrued. This works especially well for royalty, as you can put a real crown on the stone statue.

Whenever any of the treasure is touched the statue comes to life and attacks the intruders. This shouldn't be too hard of a fight, as it will get tougher when the statue reassembles itself, and comes at them again at full strength.

In order to kill it they must repeat the way the person originally died. Try to make this something a little elaborate (but not too crazy), or something simply but unlikely. For example, if no one in the party carries a spear, have them die to a spear through the chest. Now the party must find a spear (you can have several among the treasure) and stab the statue through the chest with it.

Depending on how quickly you expect the party to figure this out can determine how strong you want to make the creature (I used an Animated Statue, I believe, for the party was fairly low in level).

[Ferios]

Not really a puzzle I've made, more like a tip I've found that helped me when it comes to making puzzles as a DM (this tip is for those just starting to DM). From my expierience what I've found as a DM is that preparing for a session with your friends can take some decent prep time, this time is very valuable seeing as you never know exactly what you need to prepare for seeing as players can change what you had planned in an instant by deciding on killing the main helping NPC, or deciding to head into the forest away from the main quest line ECT. Part of this is learning how to direct your players, however if you wish for them to have as good of an expierience as possible I recommend using self formulated method of mine. When it comes to prep, there are things that are of upmost importance. Such as general storyline, progression of story and quests, and other more important things (depending on what is important to your gameplay) so preparing a puzzle for a dungeon, when you haven't met the issue of preparing the most important things of your story can be dangerous. If you find yourself at a loss for time, do what I did at first and make it up. For an example, there was a quest I had my players encounter which involved going to an obsidian obelisk in the dessert. The obelisk had an opening after several times circling the permit we of it, that was revealed via a giant iron egg. The egg had ridges on the top, and had to be put in a vanity in the obelisk and turned. Once turned the egg would break in half and a smaller egg would be found inside. The egg would open a tunnel into the obelisk on the other side from the key hole. Players would make there way inside and the entrance would disagree with a tunnel continuing behind the way they came in. Players met several chambers with puzzles that I had preformulated and they solved them quickly, the first puzzle being an island in a room with a lake that had two canoes. I was DM-info a party of six, and each canoe could hold three people. Players would find on the center of the island a depression similar to the one that they encountered on the outside. They decided to use the egg and once they did the water started freezing from the outside of the room toward the center. Players would have to find on the perimeter of the room a small depression under the frozen water which they had to melt, and use the egg again before they froze to death. Once players used the egg in this depression, the ice began to melt to and simultaneously rise in level. After investigation checks clearing a moderate difficulty level players would notice a 6 by 9 foot rectangle hole in the ceiling. As the water level rose violently, players had to align the canoes with the holes to be able to avoid being drowned. Once players reach the hole it came to an area that continued down another tunnel. This tunnel led to a room with a giant statue snd a floor made entirely of green clay, the statue stood next to a sand dial and an inscription on its base said that players must create a champion. 2 players needed to draw a design for the statue and the rest rolled (d20 plus strength mod) for collecting clay to contribute to the champion. This continued until the sand dial ran out. The two statues would begin to fight, I prolonged this fight for a while, due to the fact that players needed to find the next place to put the key, that place being behind where the opposing statue once stood. Players could use the egg, and an opening of the center of the floor would appear leading to the next chamber. In this chamber players would find a room 50 ft in diameter that had a lifesize obsidian statue of an old man wearing wizards robes. At this point I had come up with the statue only, I had no solution whatsoever. What I decided was to have the statue mirror the actions of the first player to aproach it, and have the tables turn on them by having the statue then take control of that individuals actions and give that player unatural speed and the task of keeping other players from the statue, with a force field around the statue. At this point I had no solution to this puzzle and here's my bit of advice. If you create a puzzle with no solution, you can easily come up with a solution by listing to your players courses of actions. For a while any idea they had I would say was ineffective in stopping the statues control over my friends player. However they had the idea of throwing as many attacks a set could at the force field to break it after a period of time, which I decided to then insert as the soloution. After that players found the last depression that the egg opened and the prize for the quest was found in the center of the egg, an item of teleportation. My whole point in this is that your creative mind can only come up with so much, and you might not have the time to formulate everything for your session, so if it comes down to it, creating a puzzle with no solution, and adapting a solution to your players actions can be a time saver and a learning expierience for your DM-info career. This is my personal opinion, any thoughts on it? Also this whole story was not entirely my idea, some elements came from the fable haven series written by Brandon Mull. Anyone is welcome to give critique or even use this quest and adapt it to there own storyline. Happy playing

[darkbard]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks at a wall of text like this and thinks, "next!" Just sayin': Reformatting might be to your advantage...

[MwaO]

In general, unless you have a group who loves puzzles across the board, it is a really bad idea to put them in. Namely:
Puzzles generally don't make a lot of sense, even the ones that seem logical. If you're trying to protect your stuff from an intruder, why do you leave an opening that could possibly be figured out by an intruder as opposed to someone supposed to be there in the first place?

They break the 4th wall - I can't tell you the number of puzzles I've run into in Organized Play events where I'm playing the dumb as a brick PC and I'm the only player good at puzzles. One mod clearly used Mastermind as the way the puzzle worked, I'm recognizing that's the way it works, and someone is arguing with me that we can't go the obvious route to crack the puzzle for anyone who has ever played it. We eventually went my way, but it was one of the most unpleasant D&D experiences I've ever had - knowing that we'd be absolutely screwed if I didn't brute force it, yet getting into a fight with other players about how to do it and with a PC who should never be solving such a puzzle.

They usually dismiss the skilled PC into a position of basic irrelevance. "Yes, it is my PC's thing that he can break into anything, but if we run into a puzzle? Oh well." - a lot of puzzles should just be, "Oh, the party has a super-skilled Rogue, so therefore you get to bypass it with a good Thievery roll" - yet because the DM usually has put a lot of effort into it, simply bypassing it isn't ok with the DM. That's adversarial DMing...

[masteraleph]

Parties definitely have to like puzzles, but if they do, they can be a lot of fun. I'll note that they can make plenty of sense, as long as they're portrayed as designed for a specific group. For example:

You encounter the entrance to an ancient temple dedicated to Asmodeus. In order to ensure it stay sealed even if abandoned for a period, a puzzle was built into the entrance. Part of the puzzle is a skill challenge, and part a puzzle, to discover the things that a true high ranking priest of Asmodeus would know, but that you don't.

We've had a few letter/number substitution ones- those were fun. Another interesting one involved the Black Star (Timesus, from the original 4e set of campaigns)- there was a riddle, and the DM had put together some code showing 3 planets orbiting a star. You had to figure out from the riddle, and from watching the orbit of the planets, that there was a black star that was also pulling the planets, and get it into the right alignment (this was displayed on a tv, but the framing was that we were watching a magical image in a ruin).

[jaezon3]

I was inspired by the "Enter twice, leave once" post.

PCs walk in the room and there is a mirror directly facing the door (as well as whatever else you want to be in the room). The door disappears when everyone gets in the room. To get out, they need to cover the mirror. They entered twice (physical and mirror image), but leave once (no mirror image). The phrase could be written above the mirror or stated via magic mouth when the door disappears or whatever.

[Cyrus_Mortis]

Here is one puzzle I used recently. It is fairly simple, as they were new players , but they had a lot of fun doing it.

OK, so they come to a double door, they open it, and the doors open all the way and snap into the wall.
The ground is covered in 3 different glyphs.
A int check of 20 or arcana check of 10-15 (depending on how hard you wanna make it) reveals that the 3 glyphs are archaic arcane symbols for: fire, air, and earth.

There is a message written in some strange language... with a proper investigation check, and knowledge of said language, it reads something like "follow the mountain" just something revealing that the earth is safe.

I placed the earth tiles right in front, as the player steps on them the tile slides down and snaps into place, doing nothing... they still freaked out expecting something the entire time..

Upon pressing fire the entire room lights up with fire dealing damage (amt depending on how hard you wanna make it for me it was 1d10.)

Upon pressing air the room filled with gas, causing the players to take 1d6 poison every turn they were in the room, (but pressing fire again burnt the air, clearing the room of gas)

After that it is merely following the earth tiles, but of course I made several of them fake, and they had to make several athletics/acrobatics checks to jump to farther away tiles.

My players actually went about it pretty smart.. while outside the room they pressed each tile from range with a staff (after the arrows and rocks weren't heavy enough)

I had a few more ideas for this I haven't used:

1, to add a water to it perhaps it could cause all tiles to randomly change(just have several layouts ready; or if your lazy just use a mirror image of current layout and switch back and forth between presses. !!! oh! maybe even make it mandatory to make it out... like certain tiles are only available from the mirrored layout?)

2, I had my players ruin it slightly... after they set off the trap(while in the middle of the room) they said **** it and booked it to the exit. maybe add something that stops this
Perhaps make giant hole/crags in the room, making it impossible to just run out witout getting really messed up.

3, as part of the last idea . you could make another tile or earth if you make it a harmful one instead, make it a fall away tile, like it just falls into the crag/hole and they have to make a DEX check to avoid falling as well.