Traps and Puzzles for a High Level Dungeon

[Katana1515]

Greetings All!

One of my regular gaming groups has been meeting up for around 5 years now and during that time 3.5 DnD has been our game of choice, don't get me wrong we have wandered astray at times. Other products from WoD, Star Wars, various 40k RPGs, Exalted etc have all distracted at one point or another but we always come back to 3.5 in the end. In all this time I don't think we have had a DM run what you might call the classical dungeon, with endless rooms of monsters, Traps and treasure, and every few sessions you break into an argument about going 'down a level or up a level'. ( http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html )

Anyway my turn at the helm of our Gestalt Game is coming up soon and I have sworn to rectify this error and low and behold Dungeon Construction is well on the way! But I need the playgrounds help to make this dungeon memorable.

I would like all your suggestions about the kinds of wicked traps and befuddling puzzles I might throw into the dungeon so as to break up the encounters a little.

All suggestions are welcome of course, it would be brilliant to have a large resource of these that could used at a later date! This dungeon specifically is going to be for a LvL 17 or so Gestalt party of powerful evil badasses and is going to have a distinctly Demonic Flavor, so suggestions that work with that get bonus points!

Thanks in advance guys!

[NNescio]

One room that is completely empty save for a handful of easily-bypassed traps.

Watch as your players systematically dismantle that room for nonexistent loot.

Bonus points if you entomb Hidden Fun Stuff in the walls.

--

Other threats:

1) A stereotypical maze, without a ceiling. Invisible Spelled (the metamagic feat) Prismatic Walls are placed where the ceiling should be (and horizontally aligned).

2) Invisible Spelled Illusions/Fogs to mess with people using truesight. Combined with natural illusions, of course.

[sideswipe]

wail of the banshee trap that resets every round and is set off each round, in a room that is instantly flooded with water that has been dimensionally anchored with riverine in the walls and slammed shut riverine doors.
if the walls are touched then power word kill traps are set off.
after 1 min the wailing banshee trap is replaced with targeted heal spells on each remaining creature each round for a min, after that then orbs of force are shot out at anything that is left each round for 1 minute.

5 mins after this the room is drained and everything in the room is disintegrated.

anything less is a bit lackluster

[Hobosub]

A great starting point is of course the wonderful document called Grimtooth's Traps.

Make sure to add some traps that only go on off when triggered for the second/third time to catch the wizard instead of mr. Meatshield :)

A trap I encountered once which I really liked for its simplicity:
A simple pit running the entire width of the room, with just a simple 5ft jump to the doorway and the rest of the dungeon.
Of course, by the time you jump over the pit and into doorway, you realize the doorway is in fact a wall and you fall down.
As usual, it's not the fall that gets you, in fact you land onto something soft and oozy...

Also, if your badasses are built depending on being evil, you can always try the spell Sancitfy the Wicked from BoED in combination with a plane shift to a place where time flies.
Other than that, a random plane shift to Celestia/Ysgard is always fun :)

Another way to have some great fun: create the perfect loot.
Of course, this loot is intelligent with a huge ego and tends to take control of the PC.
Few things are as fun as an item that decides not to function when you need it the most.

[Auron3991]

1) Teleportation Circle into a volcano (best when combined with a bull-rushing enemy).
2) Illusionary air. Have a room with a treasure chest in the center, have two construct guardians. Have the door (adamantine) slam shut when they enter, then have the actual air sucked out. The constructs should be something strong enough to distract them long enough for it to become a problem.

3)A lv appropriate attack bonus arrow trap with the arrows being shrunk ballista bolts and two gems shooting dispel magic at the bolts as they're released.
4)Disjunction trap combined with a monster
5)Black Lotus plants in a large pool of water they have to cross

[Bucky]

Surprise midair anti-magic field is a classic, particularly over something nasty in an area with enemies with (Ex) flight.

One of the "If it has stats" challenge threads has this homebrew gem:

Zone of Incompetence: Punishes high check results within a large area.
(The punishment comes in the form of damage.)

[macdaddy]

Leave a coil of rope in the middle of the room with nothing else around. When they search for traps and find nothing, they will spend forever trying to figure out what the devious trap is to no avail....

Yeah, it happened.

[Barbarian Horde]

http://s4.postimg.org/5dtv9xy1p/Untitled.png

Quoting from an old post but I think it still applies. High level dungeon, low level dungeon, its just mean.

[Jack_Simth]

One thing to remember: Traps should serve a purpose IC as well. If creatures live there, there should be an easy bypass for those that are familiar with them - after all, you do NOT want to fall into your own pit trap just because you partied a little too hard and had a bit of trouble seeing straight on your way home. In that vein...

How hard do you want to kill them? Magic Device traps of Dimension Door are sometimes fun. They're treated as traps (search DC, disable Device DC). Search reveals that they are Enlarged Maximized Dimension Door traps. Identify or Analyze Dweomer on them also shows that they are Enlarged Maximized Dimension Door traps, and also shows that each one targets a spot a particular distance away in a particular direction (be specific). Without further divinations (like, say, Clairaudiance/Clairvoyance) there's no telling what's on the far ends. Of course, the target arrival points are encased in lead sheeting, so that there's no easy way to tell what goes where.

Put six of them in cubbies along the side of a hallway.
One goes To a trap-filled maze full of twisty passages, all alike. It is dark. You might be eaten by a grue.
One goes Into a completely solid block of material that has no open space within 1,000 feet. Take 42 damage (7d6, maximized, which is what you get for that scenario with Dimension Door).
One goes To a large (30x30x30 foot), apparently empty room, the air of which has been systemically fouled so there is no oxygen in there whatsoever. Invoke the suffocation rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#suffocation).
One goes to a large (30x30x30 foot) room, apparently empty save for the Permanent Symbol traps that coat every 5x5 surface (6x6 per wall, floor, or ceiling: 6x6x6=216 of them.... which of course, all go off at once, as you are well within 60 feet of all of them; there's 8 core Symbol spells, so 27 of each).
One goes Into a lake of lava; you're completely engulfed in the liquid, and as such, take 20d6 Fire per round until you get out of there, and enjoy your concentration checks. Oh yes, and even if you're immune to fire, you can still drown in lava.
One goes Into open air: You can fly at this point, right? If not, fall a few thousand feet, and take 20d6 damage on contact with the ground.

There are two magic device traps in addition to the rest that is already stated: One for Dimensional Anchor, one for Dimension Lock - triggered by True Seeing for the arrival square of the Dimension Door traps.

Probing will eventually show that all six are almost immediately fatal for most creatures (save the one to the North), so eventually the party will assume it's a monkey-trap and continue on (which eventually connects to the North segment).

The trick is that the empty, no-air room has ANOTHER Enlarged Dimension Door trap in the middle of the ceiling, which goes another big distance... to the actual, completely-sealed lair (also with the air fouled). This was set up by a lich as his hidey-hole. He enters the correct cubby, waits for the dimensional Anchor to wear off, uses Spider Climb slippers to walk up the walls to the ceiling, out of the range of the Dimension Lock, and walks into the Dimension Door to his lair (which is ALSO warded heavily by way of Permanent Symbol spells, other traps, and guardians that do not need to breath - such as undead and constructs). In his actual lair, the only square that permits teleportation is the one with the planned arrival point.