Kobald Trap Help!

[SMac8988]

I am currently building a Kobald mine for my group of 6 level 1's to go down. I have everything planned out, but am having trouble working out how to build the saves and damage for traps. My trap ideas are more simplistic, and would love suggestions for others. But I am really looking for basic save and damage ideas for what I have.


Rolling Boulder -
Arrow Trap -
Pit Fall -
Trip Line -
Heat Vents -
Boiling Water -
Oil/Flare -
Collapsing Rooms -
Rock Falls -
Poison Gas -

[MrStabby]

I am currently building a Kobald mine for my group of 6 level 1's to go down. I have everything planned out, but am having trouble working out how to build the saves and damage for traps. My trap ideas are more simplistic, and would love suggestions for others. But I am really looking for basic save and damage ideas for what I have.


Rolling Boulder -
Arrow Trap -
Pit Fall -
Trip Line -
Heat Vents -
Boiling Water -
Oil/Flare -
Collapsing Rooms -
Rock Falls -
Poison Gas -


Rolling Boulder:
If level 1 dont use - enough damage to kill instantly - if not it doens't feel an effective trap.

Arrow trap:
Dex save dc10 or d8 damage

Pit fall:
Dex save dc 10 or d6 falling damage and become restrained. At end of each player turn make a strength save to stop being restrained.

trip line:
Perception check dc 14 or fall prone

heat vents:
DC 12 con save or 2d4 fire damage. Half on a successful save.

boiling water
DC 8 dex save, on a fail d10 fire damage, half on a successful save

Oil/Flare
DC 11 Con save or be blinded. Save at end of each player turn and recover on success.

Collapsing rooms
probably not worth using - it feels a bit trivial if it only does small damage. If kind of mud/thatch ceiling then maybe dex save or take 4d4 damage.

Rock falls
As above.

Poison gas
DC 11 con save or take d6 damage and become poisoned. Success halves damage and ignores poison. Test at end of each player turn to recover from poison.


Edit:

These are designed to be a spread of physical saves, to give PCs a shock and an incentive to avoid the traps but not for them to be lethal by themselves. Traps are easily circumvented with enough time and caution if they are by themselves so I am assuming that you are combining them with encounters.

[SMac8988]

There is 12 wandering groups of 8 kobalds, plus an ogre pit they can fall in, and a barbarian dragonborn the kobold worship. Plus want to add a couple of puzzles, but can't think of anything kobalds would do that us very puzzley.....

[M Placeholder]

Don't forget the choke points and the murder holes for the kobolds to either fire crossbows or pour boiling oil on the party.

Other ideas for traps

Nets - to slow the party down so the kobolds can fire ranged weapons, as PHB. Either descend from the ceilling or across the floor.

Swarm Pits/Traps - This was a signature trap of the kobolds in earlier editions, dump a swarm of spiders or centipedes onto the party. DC12 to notice the trap, and a reflex save of D10 to avoid being covered in poisonous critters.

As for puzzles, something along the lines of visual, and if you get it wrong, a vat of boiling oil covers you. And don't forget to play up the kobolds laughing at the party as they stumble into traps. Remember the old kobold adage - you are taller than your enemy when he is on his back lying in a pit of spikes :smallwink:.

[gullveig]

DMG page 121

Save DCs between 10 and 20, Attack bonus between +3 and +12, Damage between 1d10 and 4d10.

All of them are directly proportional. That means you follow the following logic: the higher the Save DC/Attack Bonus, the greater the damage.

Also... The difficulty scale are not linear, it is more like exponential. Something like DC 11 is easy, 14 is medium, 16 is hard and so on.

[Dralnu]

This is a tangent but I hope it helps nonetheless:

One word of caution is not to go ham on traps or else your PCs will quickly devolve into paranoid wrecks -- which sounds fun, but when they move at quarter speed carefully inspecting every inch of your dungeon to avoid another mishap, it slows the game down to a crawl.

However, if you DO want to go ham on traps, make it difficult for them to always proceed cautiously. Distract them or give them incentive to rush.

Examples: 1) kobolds are fighting them around the trap. The kobolds know where the trap is and are avoiding it but the PCs will be distracted. 2) environmental hazard forcing them to move quick, like a tunnel quickly flooding with water. 3) time-sensitive plot device, like the PCs see on the other side of a cavernous hall the BBEG slowly walking the Evil Thing to the Evil Altar to conduct the Doom Ritual, so they need to run over and stop it.

[SMac8988]

This is a tangent but I hope it helps nonetheless:

One word of caution is not to go ham on traps or else your PCs will quickly devolve into paranoid wrecks -- which sounds fun, but when they move at quarter speed carefully inspecting every inch of your dungeon to avoid another mishap, it slows the game down to a crawl.

However, if you DO want to go ham on traps, make it difficult for them to always proceed cautiously. Distract them or give them incentive to rush.

Examples: 1) kobolds are fighting them around the trap. The kobolds know where the trap is and are avoiding it but the PCs will be distracted. 2) environmental hazard forcing them to move quick, like a tunnel quickly flooding with water. 3) time-sensitive plot device, like the PCs see on the other side of a cavernous hall the BBEG slowly walking the Evil Thing to the Evil Altar to conduct the Doom Ritual, so they need to run over and stop it.

They will have incentive to move quickly through it and, as a benefit to me, I normally don't run many traps so this will be their first time delving into something this "defensive." This is kinda a new set up for me, and is set to show the up coming adventure into the underdark to a dark elven fortress and beyond.

Figure If i am going to show the group how traps can be used, might as well use the best trappers in the series. I debated having a tribe of orc's live in the abandoned volcano, but felt a group of kobalds with a Dragonborn barbarian leader would be different and fun.

[eastmabl]

Rolling Boulder - I wouldn't worry about dealing damage with this trap. Look at this from a theatrical perspective - the party sets the trap and now needs to book it safety. Make safety relatively easy to reach, but make them jump across a 10 foot opening to get to that safety.


For the rest, I would set the detection DC somewhere between 12 and 14.
For arrow traps and other attacks, I would make the attack either +4 or +5, with damage between 1d6 to 1d8.
For traps with a saving throw somewhere between 11 and 13. If the saving throw is something that the kobolds are good at, like Dex, make it 13, while strength saving throws might be the 11s.

[Murska]

It depends on what your group is willing to take and how dangerous and lethal you want things to be, but in my opinion the best way to use traps is giving enough clues in description for players to be able to notice them if they specifically pay attention to the right things, and once noticed have them be relatively simple to circumvent, but on the other hand if the players have to resort to using a save the penalty on failure should be severe. Collapsing rooms and rockfalls are situations where if the players get caught it's perfectly valid to just say that they're dead. But this also requires the traps to make sense. There is unlikely to be an array of lethal traps built into corridors that the inhabitants of the place use constantly, whereas specific chokepoints probably would have something to slow down or hinder the opponent. A collapsing room is a last resort, single-use trap that causes a lot of problems for the defenders as well and isn't exactly easy to set up properly while avoiding it collapsing by accident. There's probably going to be a hidden lever or somesuch near a pit trap to lock it closed so that it can be walked over safely when not being invaded. The kobolds are going to know of the traps and be very careful around them, which can also clue in perceptive players that something's up. Net traps and such are going to be used only when coinciding with an attempt to fight off the invaders or slow them down as the kobolds retreat, and so they'll be quick to prime and placed in chokepoints, important corridors that lead to escape routes or last stand positions and so on.

[SMac8988]

Rolling Boulder - I wouldn't worry about dealing damage with this trap. Look at this from a theatrical perspective - the party sets the trap and now needs to book it safety. Make safety relatively easy to reach, but make them jump across a 10 foot opening to get to that safety.


For the rest, I would set the detection DC somewhere between 12 and 14.
For arrow traps and other attacks, I would make the attack either +4 or +5, with damage between 1d6 to 1d8.
For traps with a saving throw somewhere between 11 and 13. If the saving throw is something that the kobolds are good at, like Dex, make it 13, while strength saving throws might be the 11s.


My goal was for it to lead them down a hall, that if they had the time they would see the pit fall. And there be a large pit a the end of the hall. If they can make the gap, which will be hard they are good. If they fall, they will fall into a pit where the Kobald will be shouting and cheering as a beaten and broken Ogre is trapped. Basically my idea is the tribe captured him long ago, and feeds him just enough to keep him hungry and use him as entertainment.

[M Placeholder]

Also, when dealing with traps that are sprung by pressure plates or other means due to weight, remember that a kobold (according to Races of the Dragon) weigh less than 50 pounds. Traps that are callibrated to go off when a weight is placed on them above a certain threshold means that the kobolds (unless they are riding dire weasels) can move over them with impunity, while any of your medium sized characters cannot.

Also, here is a little something for ramping up the paranoia of the players if you so wish to choose, though be mindful of making them too paranoid -

False Trap

When a creature above 100 pounds steps on the pressure plate, either the sound of a venting gas, the clunk of a crossbow, the sound of rock sliding against rock or the sound of a metal bucket ringing against the rock formation eminates. But nothing else happens.

Oh yeah, remember to include remains of past victims ensnared in traps.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Oh yeah, remember to include remains of past victims ensnared in traps.

Like just the severed arm with a torch in it's grip outside a doorway with a blade trap.

Another nuisance that promotes player haste is a gong or loud mechanical alarm. I like alarms to get the kobolds mobilizing and get the party worried about them mobilizing. Corridors previously passed now have manned murder holes. Command fired traps become a thing. The kobold has to fire the ballistae, but there are no trip wires to disarm. The kobold releases the oil/water/boulder/net/ogre, etc.