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Tanuki Tales
2013-11-13, 01:25 PM
This is for a Pathfinder game I'm about to run in the new future, but since this is just about the concept of traps in general and not something explicit to Pathfinder's (or any d20's) rule set, I feel that it is appropriate to ask it in the main forum. Also, if you're a player in my game (and to my knowledge only one of them is here on Giant's and I have to boot him in the rear to actually get him to look at the sight, let alone log in and post) please kindly leave this thread without reading.


So, I'm going to have the group raid a long forgotten and hidden portion of an old keep that was created and held by a long defunct order that has since split into two separate orders that carry on one part of the older order's mission (one is a militant, justice upholding roaming peacekeeper type and the other is a more subtle and clandestine monster documenting and hunting type). The original order had been formed to safeguard an artifact that was created when a terrible monster was defeated in ancient times. Its soul was ripped from its body and cast out into the void between worlds while its immortal and indestructible body was broken down and spread amongst the world as the curse of lycanthropy (the lesser of two evils). The artifact in question would rip the curse of lycanthropy from the world and reconstitute the monster's body, in the case where a way to destroy it was finally discovered or if the need was dire enough. Unknownst to the group and most the world, they've been tasked to retrieve the artifact for a traitor in the first organization so that he can do just that. A measure of the original monster's instincts and malevolence has begun to awaken across all those with lycanthropy and they're coming together as a "Church of the New Flesh" (yes, this was inspired by the Winter Wolves Hellboy novel).


I unfortunately find myself running dry on ideas for traps to fill the rest of this dungeon with, but here's what I have so far:
One corridor goes on for a few dozen feet and then turns a corner before reaching the door of the next room. About halfway down the corridor, the floor becomes pressure sensitive. When set off, the floor for the corridor pulls back, revealing a 10 foot drop onto silver plated steel spikes.
The doors to certain rooms are trapped. If not disarmed, the doorknobs will explode into silver platted shrapnel if turned.
One room has faux-writing in the center of the room, inscribed on the floor. The floor close enough to read it is pressure sensitive and causes the ceiling to detach a massive stone cube that falls and fills most of the room.
One room is very large and has a pressure sensitive floor towards the center and for the rest of the room. When set off, small slits near the ceiling open and start firing a stream of silver plated steel headed arrows into the room.
One room has already had its trap set off by an unfortunate hunting band of Buggane who had broken into the dungeon to expand their territory. The entire floor had been pressure sensitive and made of silver plated steel tiles. Activating this trap shot the tiles up and off, filling the room with a storm of deadly projectiles.
One corridor has alternating architecture of leering wolf heads about three feet off the ground. The floor in front of each is pressure sensitive and causes the wolf head to shoot out a small, silver plated steel dart that is coated in a magic poison. The poison causes ability damage and wracking pains that interfere with shapeshifting capabilities.
One room has six knight statues and a raised pedestal in the center, with a small chest on the pedestal. Approaching the pedestal causes the statues to animate and attack everyone in the room with silver plated steel longswords. Inside the chest is a fake of the actual artifact (which I plan to at least have one or two more fakes) which will explode like one of the door knobs a short while after it is removed from the chest.


So the basic point of these traps is to just straight kill any lycanthropes that have found and breached the secret entrance that leads to this dungeon. This isn't really a thinking man's dungeon, so the vibe for the traps is more of the straight meat grinder variety. I was contemplating one of the room to be filled with very thin, silver plated wire that fills the whole room but is practically invisible to the naked eye, but I wonder if that'd be too much or just too simple.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

Bucky
2013-11-13, 01:37 PM
You realize your players are probably going to steal all that silver, right?

Jokes aside, I think it's pretty much mandatory that the first room of the dungeon contains an already sprung trap with the remains of a hybrid form werecreature in it.

If the PCs have the Scent ability, they should notice some sort of sucker bait that's not visible.

Benthesquid
2013-11-13, 01:42 PM
A three part trap.

Part one- fairly easy to spot tripwires, at about waist, shoulder, and knee height. Activates silver-tipped spikes from the wall.

Part two- small, harder to spot pressure plates, designed to go off only if a number of them are triggered at the same time (IE, if someone is prone in the square, as if trying to crawl under trip wires). Activates silver spikes from the ceiling.

Part three- hardest to spot- Toppling Magic Missile.

Mostly for the sake of having several stages of the party thinking they've outsmarted the trap, only to have it go off afterwards. I would make sure you have notes on this, in case any of them feel that you've just added more stuff in on the spot to force them into tripping it.

Tanuki Tales
2013-11-13, 03:12 PM
You realize your players are probably going to steal all that silver, right?

Yeah, I realize that. But since everything is silver plated steel and not actual silver, they're more than welcome to try and get some money out of their efforts. :smalltongue:


Jokes aside, I think it's pretty much mandatory that the first room of the dungeon contains an already sprung trap with the remains of a hybrid form werecreature in it.

As amusing as that'd be, it unfortunately wouldn't play into the narrative.


If the PCs have the Scent ability, they should notice some sort of sucker bait that's not visible.

Now that's an interesting suggestion. What kind of trap would you think would play to a misleading scent?


A three part trap.

Part one- fairly easy to spot tripwires, at about waist, shoulder, and knee height. Activates silver-tipped spikes from the wall.

Part two- small, harder to spot pressure plates, designed to go off only if a number of them are triggered at the same time (IE, if someone is prone in the square, as if trying to crawl under trip wires). Activates silver spikes from the ceiling.

Part three- hardest to spot- Toppling Magic Missile.

Mostly for the sake of having several stages of the party thinking they've outsmarted the trap, only to have it go off afterwards. I would make sure you have notes on this, in case any of them feel that you've just added more stuff in on the spot to force them into tripping it.

So, basically the tripwire and magic missile traps are there to make someone set off the pressure plate trap?

Benthesquid
2013-11-13, 04:43 PM
So, basically the tripwire and magic missile traps are there to make someone set off the pressure plate trap?

Well, yes, more or less. Although both function as individual traps on their own.

Traps don't have the opportunities for personal connections that fighting creatures can provide, so I try to make them memorable in some other way, such as being somewhat overly convoluted, or including amusing messages from the trapmakers.

Rama
2013-11-13, 04:43 PM
I don't have my notes with me, but a few thoughts from a similar dungeon idea I'm running in the near future:

1) The trap is a lie

PCs enter a long, narrow room with a door (or other item they want/need) on the far end. The floor is flagstone, except for the areas along the left and right walls. Those sections of the floor are filled with water, which appears to be deep (no bottom visible), murky, and within which slight ripples of movement are occasionally seen.

The catch - the water on both sides is a permanent illusion, covering the only safe path across the room. The flagstone flooring is likewise illusory, and hides a pit trap covering the length of 'solid' flooring.

2) A game of chess anyone?

Less trap than obstacle to be overcome.

The room is square, 8 by 8. A thin patch of flooring allows movement up and down the row of squares, but not up the side of the board without stepping on a square.

Once a PC steps onto a square, a faint image relating to the chess piece for their square flares above their head. At the opposite side of the board, a CR-suitable monster (golem or other construct most likely) appears in the identical position. Once the first PC selects a spot, the remaining PCs have one round to join him on the board; after that time, a wall of force cuts off interference from non-pieces until the game is resolved.

From that point on, any PC on the board is constrained to act in accordance with the rules of chess. That means:

a) Movement may only be undertaken as their piece is eligible to move.
b) Each 'side' moves once per turn; so once a PC moves, no others may move until the enemy moves.
c) Only 'threatened' squares (based on the piece's definition of threatening') can be attacked.

Failure to abide by the rules results in 2d6 force damage per square moved/attacked in violation, ongoing until the PC moves back into his required spot.

All the PCs need to do to pass is advance to the eighth rank and step over the edge; although they may assume they have to defeat the opposition to do so, it is not required.


3) Going down

Another pit trap, this one at the base of a long set of stairs. PCs should be approaching from the bottom, with the intent of heading upwards. The pit, while disguised, does not need to be a difficult avoidance.

About halfway up the stairs, one step has a pressure switch. Depressing the switch causes the steps to tilt down, changing from a staggered staircase to a near seamless plane. For added evil, a cask of oil can be poured from above to speed their descent (and a burning hands trap at the bottom of the pit if you're feeling really mean).

Hope that helps some. May add more later on as I finish writing them up.

BWR
2013-11-13, 05:13 PM
Step 1. Find a copy of Grimtooth's Traps.
Step 2. determine the specific mechanics in the system you use
Step 3. Giggle disturbingly until traps trigger, at which point you collapse in gales of laughter at the absurdity of the traps and the the pain of the books the players throw at you.

ReaderAt2046
2013-11-13, 07:51 PM
First, I would propose the poison wolfsbane. It's a real plant which is extremely poisonous, but I would propose that in this verse, it is extra-potent against lycanthropes. Specifically, I propose the following stats: Injury/Ingested, DC 18 (25 vs lycanthropes), primary damage 1d6 Con (2d6 vs lycanthropes), secondary damage 2d6 Con (3d6 vs lycanthropes). Apply liberally to trap weapons, also grows wild all over the place near the dungeon.

Second, in at least one room have a concealed magic trap. When a lycanthropic character enters the trap's area, it casts a specialized version of Remove Curse to strip it of its lycanthropy (the specialization allows it to work anytime, not just during the full moon.)

Also, most animals are afraid of fire, so have a couple of rooms packed to the brim with burning hands or similar traps. Also, add a number of golems or other constructs, as those cannot be infected.

Finally, I would propose that there be a couple of rooms inhabited by random livestock. If the players snack, they discover that these livestock have been modified to fix heavy metals, so anyone who eats them gets arsenic poisoning.

Acatalepsy
2013-11-13, 10:32 PM
Interesting question: why is the keep abandoned? The order split, so what happened to whoever was guarding this place? That's the largest obvious place to put some interesting mechanics and encounters.

Bucky
2013-11-14, 11:55 AM
Now that's an interesting suggestion. What kind of trap would you think would play to a misleading scent?

The first three traps are marked with the faint smell of, say, ginger. Then there's a trap where the origin of the smell is behind the trap rather than directly on it. Shortly afterwards, there's an area where the only paths further in reek of ginger but are otherwise safe.

Tanuki Tales
2013-11-14, 02:51 PM
@Rama: Thank you very much for those suggestions. Unfortunately, I don't want to overuse one specific kind of trap when setting this up (pit falls in this case) and the second trap is a thinking man's trap while I'm looking for straight meat grinder stuff.

@BWR: I'm sorry, but what is Grimtooth's Traps?



First, I would propose the poison wolfsbane. It's a real plant which is extremely poisonous, but I would propose that in this verse, it is extra-potent against lycanthropes. Specifically, I propose the following stats: Injury/Ingested, DC 18 (25 vs lycanthropes), primary damage 1d6 Con (2d6 vs lycanthropes), secondary damage 2d6 Con (3d6 vs lycanthropes). Apply liberally to trap weapons, also grows wild all over the place near the dungeon.

Well, I would have to make it magical, but this is a very good suggestion. Though I'm a little leery of poisons since the group is looking to lack a dedicated healer; I'm sorry that I didn't mention it in the opening post but that posion would only do up to 6 Dexterity damage while that poison would be doing 6 to 36 (or 2 to 72)


Second, in at least one room have a concealed magic trap. When a lycanthropic character enters the trap's area, it casts a specialized version of Remove Curse to strip it of its lycanthropy (the specialization allows it to work anytime, not just during the full moon.)

This doesn't actually work that easily for 3.5 (a creature can willingly fail it's save and it doesn't work on natural lycans) and doesn't work at all in Pathfinder. An interesting suggestion though.


Also, most animals are afraid of fire, so have a couple of rooms packed to the brim with burning hands or similar traps. Also, add a number of golems or other constructs, as those cannot be infected.

Lycans are somewhat more than animals though, but the suggestion on using more constructs is noted.


Finally, I would propose that there be a couple of rooms inhabited by random livestock. If the players snack, they discover that these livestock have been modified to fix heavy metals, so anyone who eats them gets arsenic poisoning.

Wouldn't they need to be Outsiders? The dungeon has been closed off for quite some time.


Interesting question: why is the keep abandoned? The order split, so what happened to whoever was guarding this place? That's the largest obvious place to put some interesting mechanics and encounters.

Sorry, I didn't think that tidbit would be important to the dungeon itself. The keep was abandoned after a devastating battle between an army of lycanthropes and the order. The order knew that they couldn't hold the keep, so they fought to the bitter end to get the information about accessing and the key of the dungeon as far away as possible.

After that the order was weakened and ended up splitting, but all the time, theological differences and different outlooks reduced the existence of the dungeon and the artifact to something lost to common knowledge.

The abandoned keep and hidden dungeon are inadvertently protected by several tribes of Orcs who had moved into the area after a coalition of their shamans had a powerful vision quest that bid them to do so (I'm basing Orcs in this setting on Native Americans). They're naturally wary of outsiders in general and believe the keep to be a profane site that no mortal should be allowed to approach (so the party is going to have to get their in secret or whatever method works).

The Orcs themselves won't get closer than a day's riding distance of the place, so I haven't really figured out what I want living in the abandoned keep.


The first three traps are marked with the faint smell of, say, ginger. Then there's a trap where the origin of the smell is behind the trap rather than directly on it. Shortly afterwards, there's an area where the only paths further in reek of ginger but are otherwise safe.

So mark all the traps obviously and then throw in jukes?

Acatalepsy
2013-11-14, 04:06 PM
Sorry, I didn't think that tidbit would be important to the dungeon itself. The keep was abandoned after a devastating battle between an army of lycanthropes and the order. The order knew that they couldn't hold the keep, so they fought to the bitter end to get the information about accessing and the key of the dungeon as far away as possible.

It gets into what the threat model of the defenders was, and what they could accomplish. It seems to me that the order's thinking would have been that, if the dungeon was found, that was it - traps can hold off a thief, but not an army, not if the defenders perished.

In that case, the traps might have been designed for different purposes than simple slaughter. There are two obvious ones I can see. The first one is as a delaying action: the defenders would lay traps that the attackers would need to clear, and would do so slowly enough to buy them extra time to escape with the artifact. Note that against sufficiently ruthless adversaries, that's not enough; it's better to start forcing the enemy to slow down directly by blocking their path. The second is to deal with a traitor or infiltrator (which, given the plotline, seems to be an entirely well-founded fear).

In any of these cases, you would expect (extremely hard to find, defensible) secret passages that would bypass many of the more indiscriminate traps. I'd have chambers that serve no other purpose than to murder anyone that steps into them, and then secret passages that bypass those chambers. I'd have other mechanisms which check for loyalty, or require more than one person to open (similar to the modern two-key system), or a password. Better yet, some doors might require that you prick yourself with silver or otherwise submit blood for 'scanning' in order to proceed. For those traps that are delaying actions, you'd expect certain sections to be designed to be permanently barred or shut as a final defensive option. You'd also expect that some traps (those aimed at verification) might trigger alarms rather than kill you, arm other traps, or lock out certain passages. In the dungeon's ruined state, alarms could attract trouble (example: maybe collapsing a tunnel sends up an alarm flare from the keep, which could attract those Orcs).

Some examples along those lines:

A corridor-wide pressure sensitive system. Totally harmless under about 200 kg (440 lb), if more than a few people try to cross at a time, a counterbalance in the floor trips and the entire room is set ablaze by a sparking mechanism concealed beneath the floor, igniting highly flammable alchemical materials that have been applied liberally to things. The fire consumes the room rapidly (seriously, take a look at some fire videos to get an idea of how dangerous fire can be on its own), and if the fire is allowed to spread, the supports in the room will be destroyed and bring down the roof, requiring the PCs to backtrack and find the secret tunnel (barely enough room for one person, nevermind several) underneath. Due to the age of the dungeon, there maybe leaks or other indicators of the nature of the trap, especially in terms of smell.

A guard outpost blocks the way to the next room. The door is solid, and the locking mechanism requires one person on each side of the door, and the person in the gatehouse, each pressing down on a mechanism, placed so as to be very inconvenient to trigger with a mechanism, and requiring a good degree of force to trigger (to prevent arcanists with mage hands or unseen servants). The mechanisms each have rune with the word 'Together' printed on them, but the guard's rune is concealed (not very concealed, but concealed). If they are not triggered all at once, an alarm triggers, and intense shockwaves of sound and light (via thunderstones or a similar mechanism) threaten to blind (temporarily) and/or deafen (for a longer duration, perhaps even permanently) intruders. The guard's (uncomfortable) chair also conceals a small tunnel that leads to a fallback point, but the tunnel is too small to be actually used by most individuals. A decayed (or, if you're charitable, intact) scroll or wand of Reduce Person gives a clue as to how the tunnel was meant to be used. (Sadism bonus: the reduce person only lasts a certain time, and you have to get through a locked door near the end of the tunnel. The lock is a solid, difficult to pick lock. A decent thief could get through eventually...but they only have a limited time before they resume normal size, and are crushed or stuck in the tunnel).

A room with a bas-relief mural showing the defeating of the original monster, and the story of the creation of the order. There's a section where a figure appears to be taking an oath, which appears more worn than other sections. The section includes a small, rusty razor that the person appears to be placing his hand on; disarming the room's trap requires someone to slice their hand on the razor (or drip their blood on it, which is probably safer) to disarm it. Failing to disarm it, or attacking the mural and doing any damage, releases a stored bolt of lightning, contained in a a layer of alchemical gold beneath the mural. The good news is that it's decayed considerably, and probably won't instantly kill anyone; the bad news is that the room has flooded slightly and it's going to hit everyone. The blood test temporarily disrupts the circuit that would trigger if you tried to open the next door.

ReaderAt2046
2013-11-14, 06:06 PM
This doesn't actually work that easily for 3.5 (a creature can willingly fail it's save and it doesn't work on natural lycans) and doesn't work at all in Pathfinder. An interesting suggestion though.



This is supposed to be a homebrew spell anyway, so maybe reverse it so they have to make a save not to lose the lycanthropy?

Also, regarding the animals, perhaps some of them have moved out of the keep, so they live wild around it instead? Also plays into the Orc's fear of the keep, as it's natural to want to stay away from a place where animals make you very sick if you eat them.

Also, another possible trap would be a fail-safe weapon, designed to go off if the artifact is stolen: basically a magic nuke, with enough power to vaporize the entire keep and destroy everything within a couple of day's travel. In order to safely retrieve the artifact, the P.C.s must first disarm this failsafe (and that shouldn't be as easy as disarming a regular trap, it should require some lever-finding or wire-cutting in-game).

Tanuki Tales
2013-11-15, 05:42 PM
Those are some good ideas Acatalepsy, thanks.

And I might try that magic nuke idea Reader, though some kind of soul based weapon might be more poignant. Something that would temporarily (i.e. not permanent, but not short term) rip the animal from the lycanthropes, leaving a weak mortal and a slavering animal behind. Though what it would do to non-lycans, I'm not sure...hm...

Acatalepsy
2013-11-15, 07:41 PM
Those are some good ideas Acatalepsy, thanks.

And I might try that magic nuke idea Reader, though some kind of soul based weapon might be more poignant. Something that would temporarily (i.e. not permanent, but not short term) rip the animal from the lycanthropes, leaving a weak mortal and a slavering animal behind. Though what it would do to non-lycans, I'm not sure...hm...

You can include weapons designed to damage the enemy specifically, but you'd have to assume that they'd bring mercenaries, slaves, followers or thralls to handle anything that was too heavy on the silver or other magic that only affected them directly.

As for the magical nuke: it seems like it would be easier to do something like dropping (collapsing) part of the keep on the artifact. Just blowing up the place, or killing everyone nearby, just means that (a) all of the defenders are dead and that (b) the enemy's reinforcements outside the blast radius come check it out and quickly find it (it's at the bottom of the crater). Alternatively, teleporting it randomly, or dropping it somewhere (for example: in a river weighted to be neutral buoyancy) via some mechanism would let you get it away from those you most fear getting it, and offer your own forces the chance to recover it, especially if you've tagged with something easy (for you) to track.

Raum
2013-11-15, 10:20 PM
So the basic point of these traps is to just straight kill any lycanthropes that have found and breached the secret entrance that leads to this dungeon. This isn't really a thinking man's dungeon, so the vibe for the traps is more of the straight meat grinder variety. I was contemplating one of the room to be filled with very thin, silver plated wire that fills the whole room but is practically invisible to the naked eye, but I wonder if that'd be too much or just too simple.A couple things to consider are trap locations and trap types. If you want locations to make sense traps will be placed to protect something and not simply scattered at random. They'll also be tailored towards not killing friendlies...in other words traps in heavily used areas will be one of the following operated manually (i.e. a murder hole), armed manually (i.e. a spring triggered trap which is left unarmed unless necessary), or obvious (i.e. a colored tile pattern which only triggers if you don't step on the white tiles). Continually armed traps in commonly used areas are simply future Darwin Awards. ;)

As for types, you have two possibilities (from a meta-game point of view): challenges and hit point taxes. The latter tend to be boring because they're binary - you either find them or take damage. The process of finding, or at least looking, also tends to slow game progress significantly. On the other hand challenge traps are something for the PCs to interact with. They tend to be easily found (often obvious) but take skill to bypass. These include things like pits with a narrow ledge or rope for crossing, water filled tunnels, patterns to walk, murder holes to sneak past, and of course puzzles.

Regarding trap ideas:
- Google "Punji traps" for some nasty hit point taxers
- Dropping lots of marbles on a slightly sloped narrow corridor is fun, particularly if they have to pass it quickly
- Caltrops in shallow water are painful
- Murder holes & secret passages are great for manned traps
- Chinese finger traps in a wall with a button to push or item to grab make decent one time puzzles
- Traps armed by opening a door and disarmed by opening another can be fun, perfectly safe if approached from the right direction
- Balanced floors with the balance point marked make good traps for common walkways
- Two part chemical traps are also good...no issues unless they mix
- Don't forget "natural" traps either, things like decaying floors or stairs, statues on rusty pedestals, and poisonous plants

How many types of trap do you want? ;)

ReaderAt2046
2013-11-16, 11:58 AM
You can include weapons designed to damage the enemy specifically, but you'd have to assume that they'd bring mercenaries, slaves, followers or thralls to handle anything that was too heavy on the silver or other magic that only affected them directly.

As for the magical nuke: it seems like it would be easier to do something like dropping (collapsing) part of the keep on the artifact. Just blowing up the place, or killing everyone nearby, just means that (a) all of the defenders are dead and that (b) the enemy's reinforcements outside the blast radius come check it out and quickly find it (it's at the bottom of the crater). Alternatively, teleporting it randomly, or dropping it somewhere (for example: in a river weighted to be neutral buoyancy) via some mechanism would let you get it away from those you most fear getting it, and offer your own forces the chance to recover it, especially if you've tagged with something easy (for you) to track.

The "magic nuke" was supposed to destroy the artifact as well. The idea is that this is an absolute last-resort trap, designed to be used only if the choice is between losing the artifact and the forces of evil capturing it. Or at least that's how I was thinking of it.