Collapsing dungeon puzzles and challenges? HELP ME!?

[Aemoh87]

First, I have been gone for a while. Missed you Gtip.

Second I am running an EPIC campaign for school this year. I am a senior in college and so this might be my last chance to truly game my heart out. For this campaign the first session has NO combat. It is purely a survival puzzle. The party of 5 plus about 13 NPCs must survive these encounters (I wanna kill off half of the NPCs this session).

So what are some cool puzzles and challenges related to explosions, falling, and collapsing dungeons? I need your help Gitp.

Let me steal your ideas!

[Segev]

A room flooded with Quintessence (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/quintessence.htm) that has visible but temporally-suspended explosions already going off inside. Not only is it necessary to find a way through it without causing all of the Quintessence to evaporate (and release the explosions), but opening the door to even see inside has caused the stuff to start leaking out. The Quintessence itself is a sort of trap, because of its effects on psionics and its effects on anybody caught in it.

Time Hop (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeHop.htm) traps in a room where the floor or ceiling is collapsing.

A Reverse Gravity (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reverseGravity.htm) effect mid-way through the vertical portion of a room causes a ceiling to constantly collapse, slow down, and fall back up, nearly-reforming before it falls apart again. The twist is that the actual reverse gravity effects are on the "floor" on which the PCs are walking and the "ceiling" above, causing the "ceiling" to "collapse" upwards until it hits the null-magic zone in the middle of the room, at which point inertia and gravity take over to cause the broken bits to slow down their ascent and fall back down into the Reverse Gravity effect there.

The room's exit is on the (original) floor (now the "ceiling"), requiring the PCs to pass through what at first seems a Reverse Gravity section that is actually an anti-magic field interrupting the larger Reverse Gravity effect. Dispelling or Disjoining the magic causing the "ceiling" to keep reversing direction allows the whole thing to fall into whatever lies below the true down of the "ceiling" "above."

[Aemoh87]

That is interesting, but what are some actual mechanics people used to create interesting encounters. I am not a big fan of skill checks and I want it to have a puzzle feel. So far my only idea is to create a falling floor puzzle where characters need to cross a room but each square then step on falls. Some characters will be better at jumping than others. I will represent with a board covered in square tokens that get taken away as the floor falls. Who will get left in the dust? Also every 20 seconds I take away an entire row. So they need to go fast.

[Nettlekid]

That is interesting, but what are some actual mechanics people used to create interesting encounters. I am not a big fan of skill checks and I want it to have a puzzle feel. So far my only idea is to create a falling floor puzzle where characters need to cross a room but each square then step on falls. Some characters will be better at jumping than others. I will represent with a board covered in square tokens that get taken away as the floor falls. Who will get left in the dust? Also every 20 seconds I take away an entire row. So they need to go fast.

The thing that you have to remember about this is that you're Epic. A hopscotch puzzle isn't even a thing. Players will have access to not even Epic spells but regular spells that trivialize that. Mass Fly. Air Walk. Smoke Steps. Spider Climb. Reverse Gravity. False Gravity. Dimension Shuffle, or any similar multi-target short-range teleport. With a Metamagic Rod of Chaining, or even just enough spell slots, they can get everyone along. More likely than not, they'll just bypass the puzzle entirely. It's very difficult to force an Epic character to do anything. The best you can do is get them to think that doing what you want them to do is in their best interest.

It's hard to think of any puzzle that can't be solved by one caster using Time Stop, tripping/destroying all the traps (they aren't attended so they can be interacted with), and allowing the NPCs to go through that way.

For example, I really liked that Quintessence explosion trap that Segev suggested. At low levels that would be devastating. But at Epic levels, it's trivial. Just stick up a Wall of Force over most of the doorway, drain out the Quintessence, let the explosions go off while blocked by the Wall of Force, and once it's clear, head on through.

What are the builds of the party members involved? If you have no dedicated casters then it's a very different situation than if you have one or more.

[thefirecrack3r]

Anti-magic field and riddles? The players have to guess on their own, a wrong guess ****s everything up. No skill check and no abuse from spells. I used riddles in a dungeon as a way to unlock a tomb of a vampire. Wrong answers increased the number of scorpions pouring into the room, to guess you had to have your hands on an alter. It was fun and stressful and my party was screaming at each other with ideas, guesses ect. 100 stinging, pinching scorpions later they finally guessed right and ran screaming into the next room. I was a funny moment and I'd love to do it again, especially since the tomb they were in was made by an ancient society whom's ruins lay all over the world they're in.

[Nettlekid]

Anti-magic field and riddles? The players have to guess on their own, a wrong guess ****s everything up. No skill check and no abuse from spells. I used riddles in a dungeon as a way to unlock a tomb of a vampire. Wrong answers increased the number of scorpions pouring into the room, to guess you had to have your hands on an alter. It was fun and stressful and my party was screaming at each other with ideas, guesses ect. 100 stinging, pinching scorpions later they finally guessed right and ran screaming into the next room. I was a funny moment and I'd love to do it again, especially since the tomb they were in was made by an ancient society whom's ruins lay all over the world they're in.

What was/were the riddle(s)?