Best Dungeons/Room Concepts

[incarnate236]

As the title suggests I'm looking for some of the coolest things you've ever come across or built into a dungeon crawl? Traps, puzzles, flavor, etc.

I personally enjoyed a recent session with a maze composed of invisible walls. The door on the other side is visible but finding your way to it or the specific path back to where you started required marking the walls with blood (only available paint).

I also recall a session where all of the defeated monsters were reanimated by the necromancer boss who rather than guard the treasure waited at the entrance with her undead army.

[Mirakk]

I like to have fun with traps. You can always get a good laugh out of having a simple pit trap with a wall of force at the opposite edge for when the rogue finds the pit and decides he's going to leap it. It's a simple gag, but makes a great icebreaker.

Another fun trap is an inaction trap. When the party enters, the door closes and the walls begin to close in to crush them to death. A kind of primitive countdown begins in the form of an hourglass. Pulling the lever resets the hourglass and the walls. However, the only way to get the door to unlock is to allow the countdown to expire. The room itself never actually shrinks enough to crush and kill the party. What it does do is force them to panic and over-think. During this, if anyone speaks, a set amount of water will flood into the chamber. Turns out the dangerous part of the trap isn't the lever, or the walls at all -It's drowning because you can't shut up :smallbiggrin:

[Azoth]

Some fun ones if your party doesn't have nightvision are to place panes of glass vertically infront of long exposed pit traps (DC20 to spot them even if they can see in the dark). Everyone takes a few steps back to get a running leap, and then WHAM into the glass and they fall into the pit anyway. You can use beams of wood or stone to similar effect, but glass is just priceless.

Necromancer's Chess: Portcullis seals a room where on the far side of the room are scattered piles of bones. The piles animate into skeletons and the trap begins. Each 5x5 square is either black or white. Black when stepped on triggers an appropriate level harm/inflict spell. White triggers an appropriate cure/heal spell. The tiles are auto resetting spell traps. This means that EVERY 5ft of movement can heal one side of the fight and hurt the other. The doors only open when one side is completely destroyed.

Infinite Hallway/Fall: Teleportation circle set to put them on the ceiling or start of the hallway depending on redition.

False Safe Passage: Multi-layered illusion spells are the key here. Lay one down to make it look like a spike pit trap. Lay a second down to make the edges look safe. Lay a third on the ceiling to make it look safe. In reality, the edges are spring boards which launch anyone on them up into spike strips on the ceiling.

Greed's Loss: Glass ceiling covered in gems/coins/goldwork. Prying something free causes all the loot to fall onto the floor, along with the Rust Monsters that were stored there.

Tesla's Lizards: Set up a motif of blue lights in the dungeon. Even better if they are used to seeing them move. Have the party enter a room/fall into a pit/ect and find a pack of Shocker Lizards crawling on the walls. They probably won't notice them until they are within range, and well a static crackle later...someone is knocked out.

Welcome to my Parlor: Have them enter a big hallway or room that has cobwebs everywhere and some normal sized spiders scurrying about. As they move around, have pre set up Webs from monstrous spiders in the room. Advance a few hunting spiders so they have Imp Bullrush. Use the Hunters to jump tackle the party into webs and have the normal spiders descend to join the fray or hand back and drop more webs as needed.

*I will think up some more I have used later on.*

[Buddha's_Cookie]

@Azoth Wow, those are very cool traps, super impressed. If you don't mind I might steal some of these for a upcoming game of mine.

[Phelix-Mu]

A friend of mine ran a two person party (cleric/rogue, fighter/wizard...I think this may have been back in 2e, lol) through a flooded cavern with both a boat and stalagmites and stalactites, along with the strong implication that there was something big and dangerous in the water. Solved easily with magic, of course, but then what isn't?

[Rev666]

My personal favourite: a room that has a liquid substance on the floor that is both slippy (balance checks) and also highly flammable. Next add a stone golem made out of flint. Every time someone hits it with a metal slashing or piercing weapon there's a chance of combustion.

[Scarce]

My favorite dungeon concept: the Bag of Holding, Type V:

Inside the collection of a powerful mage lies an unspeakably old magic item; many editions old, in fact: a well-used Bag of Holding. Called the Type V by researchers, the bag possesses nearly infinite space (as a first edition Bag of Holding), and untold treasures. However, in the past it seems that the bag saw somewhat mundane utility, being used to store stone by the mountainfull, perhaps by a mining company in the hopes of saving time and effort. The bag contains a somewhat complex dungeon composed of natural caves formed in the immense volume of rock, and contains many denizens, monstrous and not, who form one of the most unique ecosystems in the planes.

[Bullet06320]

a long hallway, that is fur covered on the walls, ceiling and floors(stone to flesh with a hair growth potion) more comical than anything, but forces balance checks to cross successfully with out falling down
its mostly meant to slow down a party and alert the guards in the next room, lol

[Inevitability]

My favorite dungeon concept: the Bag of Holding, Type V:

Inside the collection of a powerful mage lies an unspeakably old magic item; many editions old, in fact: a well-used Bag of Holding. Called the Type V by researchers, the bag possesses nearly infinite space (as a first edition Bag of Holding), and untold treasures. However, in the past it seems that the bag saw somewhat mundane utility, being used to store stone by the mountainfull, perhaps by a mining company in the hopes of saving time and effort. The bag contains a somewhat complex dungeon composed of natural caves formed in the immense volume of rock, and contains many denizens, monstrous and not, who form one of the most unique ecosystems in the planes.

This... is... maybe the best dungeon idea I've ever seen.

[hymer]

Hardly 'best', but it springs to mind: I'm procrastinating right now from making a dungeon with walls of plants, which block lines of sight and effect. You can get through the walls with Escape Artist. There won't be any secret rooms in the traditional sense, but there may be some rooms you can only get to if you go EA exploring. If you set the place on fire you also torch the treasure.

[SouthpawSoldier]

My favorite dungeon concept: the Bag of Holding, Type V.......

Hrm. Bust out a copy of Cityscape and have the party adventure in Kandor. I dig it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A long, 10 ft. wide hallway, preferably there's a small, fast opponent running to find backup that they're chasing. In the middle of the hall is a pit trap that a single small size creature isn't heavy enough to trigger. At the bottom of the pit is a gelatinous cube. Anyone who falls in gets engulfed automatically. Anyone who escapes the cube but cannot climb/fly/levitate up before the end of their turn gets engulfed again automatically. The walls of the pit are brick and they're slick from the cube reaching up in search of food. If you want to make it less deadly put a trash chute in the side of the pit that's too small to crawl into, but can be used as a handhold/foothold for climbing. If you want to make it more deadly, put a (Heightened) Deeper Darkness at the top of the pit that's not visible until the trap is triggered.


A filthy kitchen with several Grimlock Cleric cooks (Hunger domain and whatever else, first two levels are nonassociated). They constantly cast (DMM: Heightened) Deeper Darkness on the walls of the room, so it will take at least as many Daylight spells of equal level or one of higher level to cancel them all out. There's a side room filled with bones and refuse where several Ghouls/Ghasts are kept.