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View Full Version : A quick little numbers riddle



AvatarVecna
2016-02-19, 09:05 PM
You, the player, have to infiltrate a wizard's tower to locate the McGuffin of Ultimate Power. The wizard's tower is sealed against all methods of magical transportation and is indestructible. The only way to enter is to pass through the door...and only the wizard and their apprentices know the code necessary to pass the door. When the door is approached, a face forms, and speaks a number aloud. Whoever is present responds with a number themselves; if they are correct, they are teleported into the tower; if they are incorrect, the door belches powerful magick onto the would-be intruder, destroying them.

Using your many talents together, you have managed to stake out the door for a few hours, and five times, someone has come to the door and requested entrance; all five were apprentices, and were permitted entry when they spoke the appropriate number.

"6" is answered with "3".

"12" is answered with "6".

"14" is answered with "8".

"8" is answered with "5".

"4" is answered with "4".

Confident in your ability to enter, you stride up to the door, and it speak its number:

"17".

What number do you speak?

(and no, it's in base-10, unlike the other number puzzle thread :smalltongue:)

For the sake of seeing who can actually figure it out (as opposed to just copying the answers and reasoning of others), post your answer, but not your reasoning. I realize this isn't a perfect solution, but the only other option to reach these intended goals of figuring out who actually figured it out would be to have everybody PM me their answer, and that's not really a viable way to do things.

I mean, do what you want, don't let me stop you. That part's just for my personal curiosity.

JNAProductions
2016-02-19, 09:11 PM
It's not 10. I know that much.

Jasdoif
2016-02-19, 09:14 PM
It'd be "9".

goto124
2016-02-20, 12:58 AM
Or... put the reasoning in spoilers. Like this:

Insert answer here.


Insert reasoning here.

ComaVision
2016-02-20, 01:13 AM
I think it's 8. I'll leave out my reasoning for now.

Slipperychicken
2016-02-20, 02:02 AM
I convince the apprentices and/or wizard to let me in.

I cast Detect Thoughts to read the surface thoughts of an apprentice answering the riddle. That should give me the code.


I cast Antimagic Field on myself and brute-force the door by speaking numbers to it until it lets me through. Its powerful magics shouldn't be able to penetrate it.

I don't go into the tower without intel because that sounds like a really bad idea.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 02:17 AM
I convince the apprentices and/or wizard to let me in.

I cast Detect Thoughts to read the surface thoughts of an apprentice answering the riddle. That should give me the code.


I cast Antimagic Field on myself and brute-force the door by speaking numbers to it until it lets me through. Its powerful magics shouldn't be able to penetrate it.

I don't go into the tower without intel because that sounds like a really bad idea.

While these are potentially viable solutions for a particular set of game systems that this scenario is not necessarily taking place within the framework of, the narrative is just a storytelling device being used to deliver the puzzle...but then, you knew that.

Slipperychicken
2016-02-20, 02:26 AM
While these are potentially viable solutions for a particular set of game systems that this scenario is not necessarily taking place within the framework of, the narrative is just a storytelling device being used to deliver the puzzle...but then, you knew that.

Pretty much. I was trying to make myself feel clever because I couldn't figure it out. I'll make a real attempt and ninja-edit the guess into this post.

Khedrac
2016-02-20, 02:54 AM
The answer is "9"
It is the number of letters in the English spelling of the number written on the door.
For me the problems with this sort of puzzle are that whilst I like them, not everyone does, and, they tend to be an "either you get it or you don't puzzle" which is really frustrating if you are having an off day and don't get it within the first 15 seconds.

Plactus
2016-02-20, 03:08 AM
Both 9 and 11 are consistent with the puzzle.


y = quotient(x,6)*3 + remainder(x,6)


But I would guess 9 is the intended answer.

Still, if it's an option, I'd wait till someone goes through the door with an answer that only works with one of the solutions.

Slipperychicken
2016-02-20, 03:17 AM
It is the number of letters in the English spelling of the number written on the door.

A good part of my job is finding patterns in data, and this was driving me up the wall for hours. I guess was in the wrong frame of mind; In the applications I'm used to, the length of an integer's string notation is garbage.

Needless to say, I don't like this kind of puzzle.

Seto
2016-02-20, 06:06 AM
Nine ! This one plays on expectations.

Pinjata
2016-02-20, 06:28 AM
The wizard's tower is sealed against all methods of magical transportation and is indestructible.
We ignore the tower.

This is a **** riddle by not offering other options of finishing a quest.

goto124
2016-02-20, 07:13 AM
Or... the PCs are all level 1 (or level 0!), with no equipment on them whatsoever.

Or...


the narrative is just a storytelling device being used to deliver the puzzle

ace rooster
2016-02-20, 10:29 AM
We ignore the tower.

This is a **** riddle by not offering other options of finishing a quest.

It's not a riddle, it is a cryptographic system. If you were in a modern setting would you start swearing because you couldn't get into a computer with your shotgun?


It is important to understand how the system works. The idea is that apprentices can demonstrate knowledge of the 'password' without saying the password out loud. The password algorithm must be reliably computable by an apprentice, but beyond that we cannot assume that it is the simplest algorithm that produces the answers we have seen. We cannot reject Plactus's 11 answer, or even much arbitrary options like lookup tables. How long do the apprentices take to answer? OOC I assume that the time has no bearing beyond information about complexity, but IC I have no such information. I can't reject that time to answer may be significant, or even other superfluous information like how/where they stand or time of day. We need much more information before we can risk disintegration.

As for my solution, I have to go the same direction as Slippery Chicken, though without the system dependence. Track an apprentice, start buying drinks, once they are stupid drunk start implying that I already a member, and that I suspect he is involved. I would use what I suspect the algorithm to be (gives 9) as a test for him to prove that he is a member. The idea is to use them as a 'safe' way to test theories about the algorithm, even though I can't get them to explain it.

nedz
2016-02-20, 12:01 PM
"7"

Or other any single digit number

Socksy
2016-02-20, 12:29 PM
9, probably, for the obvious reason.

The Welsh language has two different number systems. If a language spell could be dropped on the area, we could see for example if the answer to "deuddeg" (Welsh for 12) would be different to the answer to "un deg dau" (also 12). Of course, that implies the system has such a language...

Slipperychicken
2016-02-20, 12:33 PM
Does anything bad happen if we walk away from the door without giving it a number? Because if that's the case, we could use that to brute-force the door. Walk away, and keep coming back until it gives us a number we know the answer to.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 12:53 PM
Nine ! This one plays on expectations.

Indeed. Not ashamed to say that it tripped me up the first time I saw it, but I've used variations of it a couple times for IRL games, and it's gone fairly well usually (usually because there's not an "instant death" consequence, and alternate methods of entry if they don't want to do the puzzle door).


We ignore the tower.

This is a **** riddle by not offering other options of finishing a quest.

As was pointed out immediately after your post, sometimes adventurers aren't super-capable, particularly in the face of powerful magic...and sometimes, the story exists to justify the puzzle, rather than the other way around.


It's not a riddle, it is a cryptographic system. If you were in a modern setting would you start swearing because you couldn't get into a computer with your shotgun?

An apt analogy.


It is important to understand how the system works. The idea is that apprentices can demonstrate knowledge of the 'password' without saying the password out loud. The password algorithm must be reliably computable by an apprentice, but beyond that we cannot assume that it is the simplest algorithm that produces the answers we have seen. We cannot reject Plactus's 11 answer, or even much arbitrary options like lookup tables. How long do the apprentices take to answer? OOC I assume that the time has no bearing beyond information about complexity, but IC I have no such information. I can't reject that time to answer may be significant, or even other superfluous information like how/where they stand or time of day. We need much more information before we can risk disintegration.

While I agree that Plactus' answer cannot necessarily be rejected until some combination comes up that disproves it, the problem I have with solutions like that is that it fitting all points of data to a graph and figuring out the equation is something that not everybody could do...which is the point of the puzzle. I could list another thousand data points, and could continue this little game forever...but there would always be some equation that perfectly fits the existing data, and since including every solution would take infinite time...well, you see the problem. More abritrary solutions (like the look-up table you suggested) are also viable ideas, but that ruins the point of making it a puzzle; no clever trick, no mental gymnastics, just a random cypher that could never be puzzled out because there's nothing to puzzle out. Granted, the biggest problem with the presented scenario is that no wizard capable of building an indestructible, teleport-proof, gate-proof tower is going to have the only entrance into his home guarded by such a simple trick; if nothing else, all of the doors numbers would be somewhere in the millions, to make any attempts at "mathing things out" far more difficult to the point of leading people on a wild goose chase.


As for my solution, I have to go the same direction as Slippery Chicken, though without the system dependence. Track an apprentice, start buying drinks, once they are stupid drunk start implying that I already a member, and that I suspect he is involved. I would use what I suspect the algorithm to be (gives 9) as a test for him to prove that he is a member. The idea is to use them as a 'safe' way to test theories about the algorithm, even though I can't get them to explain it.

For a real game, something like this would certainly be the better solution: rather than risk death taking your best guess at an archmage's ever-changing password, just steal the answer key from his minions. Of course, when I use this puzzle in a real game, I include other opportunities to enter, such as a high window, or an emergency exit tunnel that leads into the basement, or apprentices that can be more easily manipulated than the door, or other such things.


9, probably, for the obvious reason.

The Welsh language has two different number systems. If a language spell could be dropped on the area, we could see for example if the answer to "deuddeg" (Welsh for 12) would be different to the answer to "un deg dau" (also 12). Of course, that implies the system has such a language...

The entire exercise has a measure of "suspension of disbelief" to it, since the trick is dependent on English rather than Common. It's possible the common alphabet and language has been more detailed elsewhere, particularly in regards to numbers, but I don't bother tracking that down when using this IRL, because it'd be like presenting the puzzle with the numbers in (for example) Welsh, which I have no reason to believe my IRL gaming buddies have any experience with. Actually, that's not a fair comparison: it's feasible that they could understand the puzzle if it was presented in Welsh, because Welsh is a real language where Common is not.

As was mentioned above, the suspension of disbelief also applies to the archmage who set the password; you think a wizard this powerful would have a password cypher that's a bit more complicated than this.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 12:55 PM
Does anything bad happen if we walk away from the door without giving it a number? Because if that's the case, we could use that to brute-force the door. Walk away, and keep coming back until it gives us a number we know the answer to.

While this might seem like a viable solution, the nature of numbers means that you could spend an elven lifetime walking up to the door and never hear the same number twice. As was mentioned in the above post, this problem would be a lot more realistic (and harder to math out) if the number presented by the door had at least 7 digits, rather than two at most like all of these examples.

Socksy
2016-02-20, 12:57 PM
The entire exercise has a measure of "suspension of disbelief" to it, since the trick is dependent on English rather than Common. It's possible the common alphabet and language has been more detailed elsewhere, particularly in regards to numbers, but I don't bother tracking that down when using this IRL, because it'd be like presenting the puzzle with the numbers in (for example) Welsh, which I have no reason to believe my IRL gaming buddies have any experience with. Actually, that's not a fair comparison: it's feasible that they could understand the puzzle if it was presented in Welsh, because Welsh is a real language where Common is not.

As was mentioned above, the suspension of disbelief also applies to the archmage who set the password; you think a wizard this powerful would have a password cypher that's a bit more complicated than this.

What I was trying to say is, if I was a character there, I would use a language spell to get it into a language with more than one word for each number :smallbiggrin:
Although the wizard would probably have magic proofed his plot device.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 01:07 PM
Although the wizard would probably have magic proofed his plot device.

Every atom within 1000 ft of the tower is actually a magic item of continuous Antimagic Field that's been altered to not affect the tower or any of its intended inhabitants. :smalltongue:

But yeah, in a real game, there'd be way more solutions...although attempting to get the door to present the number in a different language poses the problem of "why would the wizard make a puzzle door that can present the puzzle in a language that makes it easier for outsiders to figure out the trick?"

Dragonfan
2016-02-20, 01:15 PM
My guess is 14.

12=6=3
1+2=3
14=8=5
1+4=5
1+7=8
Therefore 17=14=8

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 01:21 PM
My guess is 14.

12=6=3
1+2=3
14=8=5
1+4=5
1+7=8
Therefore 17=14=8

This is by far my favorite wrong answer so far; not because it's hilariously wrong, but because it points out a rather simple way to math this puzzle that I hadn't considered. Note to self: use more varied data points...and more data points in general.

ace rooster
2016-02-20, 01:40 PM
As was pointed out immediately after your post, sometimes adventurers aren't super-capable, particularly in the face of powerful magic...and sometimes, the story exists to justify the puzzle, rather than the other way around.


Sure, and there are story constructs that introduce puzzles like this, but this is not one of them.



While I agree that Plactus' answer cannot necessarily be rejected until some combination comes up that disproves it, the problem I have with solutions like that is that it fitting all points of data to a graph and figuring out the equation is something that not everybody could do...which is the point of the puzzle. I could list another thousand data points, and could continue this little game forever...but there would always be some equation that perfectly fits the existing data, and since including every solution would take infinite time...well, you see the problem. More abritrary solutions (like the look-up table you suggested) are also viable ideas, but that ruins the point of making it a puzzle; no clever trick, no mental gymnastics, just a random cypher that could never be puzzled out because there's nothing to puzzle out. Granted, the biggest problem with the presented scenario is that no wizard capable of building an indestructible, teleport-proof, gate-proof tower is going to have the only entrance into his home guarded by such a simple trick; if nothing else, all of the doors numbers would be somewhere in the millions, to make any attempts at "mathing things out" far more difficult to the point of leading people on a wild goose chase.

As was mentioned above, the suspension of disbelief also applies to the archmage who set the password; you think a wizard this powerful would have a password cypher that's a bit more complicated than this.[/spoiler]

No matter how powerful the wizard the cypher has to be simple enough that a drunk apprentice can reasonably be expected to manage it, which is the answer to both points. A degree 100 polynomial would be pretty secure, but unusable, so could be rejected.


I think this puzzle works better on the trade entrance. The wizard does not want to waste time on time wasters, so to get in you must pass the test. Bronze dragons use riddles by RAW, so they are great for this sort of thing.

ComaVision
2016-02-20, 01:51 PM
I'll explain my reasoning since you've confirmed I'm wrong.

Take the given number and divide it by 5, rounding down and then multiply by 3. Subtract the result from the given number for the answer.

On mobile but I'm pretty sure that works for all the examples.

I guess I got pretty stuck on the differences being all multiples of three.

JNAProductions
2016-02-20, 01:55 PM
It does indeed. But 10 is 3, which makes that false.

WrittenInBlood
2016-02-20, 02:09 PM
9, as a reward I'm claiming this riddle to use in one of my sessions soon :smallcool:. Nice one :smallwink:

Red Fel
2016-02-20, 02:32 PM
"7"

Or other any single digit number

I like this answer, because it is technically accurate.

Right now, we are shown no negative outcomes. That is, we are shown a list of "correct" outcomes for which entrance was granted, but no outcomes for which it was denied. As such, any number that satisfies any rule is potentially correct. Not necessarily actually correct, but there is no way to define the outer boundaries.

For example, the rule could be "any single digit number," "any positive integer," or even "any real number." We don't know.

When doing a riddle like this, I would advise you to have one of the apprentices screw up, get denied access, and try again. That way, you also have a hint of what the rule is not. A negative outcome helps to narrow the probabilities by excluding certain possible rules.

nedz
2016-02-20, 03:50 PM
I like this answer, because it is technically accurate.


Well apart from the fact that I got two of my words out of order :smallredface:

What Red Fel is talking about is the Envelope of the test, the boundaries if you prefer.

There is also another issue: if you promise certain death for a wrong answer then the player's are likely to freeze up and do nothing, possibly for hours. With puzzles you often have to encourage the players to experiment. Zapping them for 1d6 damage is probably fine, but killing them will just make them too cautious.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-20, 03:53 PM
Well apart from the fact that I got two of my words out of order :smallredface:

What Red Fel is talking about is the Envelope of the test, the boundaries if you prefer.

There is also another issue: if you promise certain death for a wrong answer then the player's are likely to freeze up and do nothing, possibly for hours. With puzzles you often have to encourage the players to experiment. Zapping them for 1d6 damage is probably fine, but killing them will just make them too cautious.

...why, when I use this in real games, there's other options for entry, and less certain death involved for failure.

Jenerix525
2016-02-20, 04:30 PM
My answer would be to run away. The best guess I could fathom was like a bank password, where it's asking for specific digits in a password. Obviously, that violated the idea of a solvable riddle, leaving me stuck with nothing.

There is a part of me that feels cheated by this answer.
That petty part that always wants to win; it just wants to throw a tantrum, and scream that it was promised a number riddle, but given a word one.

GAAD
2016-02-20, 05:08 PM
I haven't read the thread.
Has it been solved already?
IF it hasn't, my guess is that 17 = 9.
The second number in the pair is the number of letters in the English spelling of the first number. 1-S 2-E 3-V 4-E 5-N 6-T 7-E 8-E 9-N

DavidSh
2016-02-20, 07:47 PM
For the sake of seeing who can actually figure it out (as opposed to just copying the answers and reasoning of others), post your answer, but not your reasoning. I realize this isn't a perfect solution, but the only other option to reach these intended goals of figuring out who actually figured it out would be to have everybody PM me their answer, and that's not really a viable way to do things.

I mean, do what you want, don't let me stop you. That part's just for my personal curiosity.

I don't see how leaving out reasoning will help.
Without looking at the rest of the thread, I say
9.

daemonaetea
2016-02-21, 12:08 AM
I thought I'd share a variation a DM in our group used a couple months back, as it's a bit shorter and addresses one of the points Red Fel made.


A thief needs to get by the door, but there is a statue of a dragon over it which he realizes is magical. He waits until someone else walks up to the door.

"12" the dragon intones, to which the figure immediately responds "6". The door swings open.

The thief is still not sure, so he waits. Soon enough, another figure approaches.

"6" the dragon intones, to which the figure immediately responds "3". The door swings open.

The thief, now confident that he understands, strides forward to the door.

"10" the dragon intones, to which the thief immediately responds "5". To the thief's great, and final, surprise, he is instantly bathed in flames.

What should the thief have answered to open the door?

goto124
2016-02-21, 11:46 PM
I would try another way in, since answering wrongly means death :smalleek:

Pex
2016-02-22, 01:14 AM
9

The responding number is the number of letters spelling the given number.

Slipperychicken
2016-02-22, 01:15 AM
I would try another way in, since answering wrongly means death :smalleek:

I'd also wonder how this wizard keeps apprentices. It would be like if the work computer at your internship was rigged to explode every time you fumbled the password. Is this apprenticeship really worth risking your life every single day? When a single misspoken password or counting failure will surely incinerate you?

Keeping the intended users alive and inconvenienced is why actual security systems have a range of responses between "please come in" and "we are going to shoot you on the spot". Usually this includes "you didn't pass, please go away before we hurt you", and "you didn't pass, but someone will come over to verify your authorization to enter".

ace rooster
2016-02-22, 02:33 PM
I'd also wonder how this wizard keeps apprentices. It would be like if the work computer at your internship was rigged to explode every time you fumbled the password. Is this apprenticeship really worth risking your life every single day? When a single misspoken password or counting failure will surely incinerate you?

Keeping the intended users alive and inconvenienced is why actual security systems have a range of responses between "please come in" and "we are going to shoot you on the spot". Usually this includes "you didn't pass, please go away before we hurt you", and "you didn't pass, but someone will come over to verify your authorization to enter".

Depends on how magic works I guess. If a similar misspoken syllable in a spell could incinerate everyone in the classroom, you probably want some selection somewhere else before that occurs. Disintegration is maybe a bit extreme, but keeps everyone on their toes, and may not be the most lethal test they face on a daily basis.

In RL anyone in a car could do tremendous damage, and a single mistake could incinerate you, but most people are practised enough to be confident that they will not get it wrong.

One reason that fairly sophisticated cyphers cannot be rejected is that the cypher may be already required for their training. If there is some occult formula that it is critical that trainees can work out quickly and reliably, this could make an effective 'cypher'. It has the side benefit that apprentices will make sure they know it.

AvatarVecna
2016-02-22, 02:42 PM
I'd also wonder how this wizard keeps apprentices. It would be like if the work computer at your internship was rigged to explode every time you fumbled the password. Is this apprenticeship really worth risking your life every single day? When a single misspoken password or counting failure will surely incinerate you?

Keeping the intended users alive and inconvenienced is why actual security systems have a range of responses between "please come in" and "we are going to shoot you on the spot". Usually this includes "you didn't pass, please go away before we hurt you", and "you didn't pass, but someone will come over to verify your authorization to enter".

Given that this is a wizard apprentice, who's day-in day-out task is memorizing obscure rules of magic and magical formulae, I imagine than any apprentice that can't correctly answer the door's question while knowing the trick (even when drunk and sleep-deprived) is an apprentice that wasn't long for this apprenticeship anyway. :smalltongue:

Keltest
2016-02-22, 02:53 PM
Given that this is a wizard apprentice, who's day-in day-out task is memorizing obscure rules of magic and magical formulae, I imagine than any apprentice that can't correctly answer the door's question while knowing the trick (even when drunk and sleep-deprived) is an apprentice that wasn't long for this apprenticeship anyway. :smalltongue:

I would challenge a drunken sleep deprived youngster to accurately communicate much of anything, even if they know what they want to say.

Having said that, that may be a feature, not a bug. What kind of wizard wants a drunk sleep deprived youngster in his tower?


Anyway, bad puzzle is bad because there are multiple potential answers with no way to distinguish which one is the correct pattern. But you knew that.

dascarletm
2016-02-22, 02:58 PM
(and no, it's in base-10, unlike the other number puzzle thread )

Ha!:smalltongue:

Well... 9

At first I looked to see if there was any simple adding/subtracting and dividing/multiplying. I didn't see a correlation.

I then remembered the riddle that I assume this is based on, and everything seems to work.

goto124
2016-02-23, 01:47 AM
Having said that, that may be a feature, not a bug. What kind of wizard wants a drunk sleep deprived youngster in his tower?

"Why do you think I'm sleep-deprived, then?"

enderlord99
2016-02-23, 05:36 PM
9.

The response to 9, incidentally, would be 4. And the response to 100 would be either 10 or 11.

I've seen a very similar puzzle before, and knew the answer before reading the 5 examples, which merely confirmed it.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-02-23, 05:44 PM
Yeah, I'd seen it before too. It's the riddle stored in my mind as "the one where you're supposed to think the answer is just half the question" (I heard it in Dutch, but it's pretty similar, twelve=twaalf, six=zes and eight=acht as a bonus) so it came to mind pretty quick.

It can be a cool feature of a dungeon though. See if you can trick anyone into trying their luck with the guard too soon.

Keltest
2016-02-23, 06:08 PM
Since were on the topic of riddle locked doors, how effective would such a riddle be where the answer is actually something like 'Any positive number"? On the one hand, its incredibly easy to guess, sure, but on the other hand anyone trying to figure out the key would be flummoxed. As a high level wizard, I certainly have other methods of guarding against Harold the farmer who felt like sneaking in, but Gaz-zor the equally high level wizard might be prone to overthink the riddle and eventually just resort to trying to blast his way in, no?

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-02-23, 06:20 PM
It's worth a shot.

A bard or a rogue will probably just try to bluff their way in, many others might think they found a pattern after 2 or 3 people entering and go for it, but a wizard (and quite a few players) can't stand a puzzle he's not smart enough to solve.

dascarletm
2016-02-23, 06:29 PM
Since were on the topic of riddle locked doors, how effective would such a riddle be where the answer is actually something like 'Any positive number"? On the one hand, its incredibly easy to guess, sure, but on the other hand anyone trying to figure out the key would be flummoxed. As a high level wizard, I certainly have other methods of guarding against Harold the farmer who felt like sneaking in, but Gaz-zor the equally high level wizard might be prone to overthink the riddle and eventually just resort to trying to blast his way in, no?

A actually like this, and will use it. Thank you.

veti
2016-02-23, 09:59 PM
A good part of my job is finding patterns in data, and this was driving me up the wall for hours. I guess was in the wrong frame of mind; In the applications I'm used to, the length of an integer's string notation is garbage.

Needless to say, I don't like this kind of puzzle.

I agree, and for much the same reason. I spend my days looking at numbers - hundreds upon thousands of the things. I find this kind of puzzle just plain irritating.

If I were the door, and I saw a stranger (as opposed to someone I knew) approaching - just to mess with them, I'd say something like "1027448".

LastCenturion
2016-02-24, 11:29 PM
Exactly what veti said. If you're a high-level wizard capable of making a door that can speak and hear to set up a password, I would just do that, but make it so that the answer doesn't matter. If you're wearing the special sigil that goes discreetly on one's front pocket, you get in. Otherwise, you die. I mean, you can make a talking/listening door. Why not one that can see too? Also, guess which door will defeat a player who thinks for a minute or two?

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-02-25, 03:00 AM
I like that too. Really rub their faces in it. "Two men approach, they're both wearing a sort of medal with a large cross on it on their chest, like it's some sort of symbol for the society gathered inside. They walk up to the door and announce their presence: "Hi ho, two for the party." The door itself comes alive and asks tells them "Riddle me this riddle me that, what is the answer to sixteen?" etc etc"

In the end it turns out only the symbol ever mattered. They might even get it by thinking ahead on how to keep all the people inside from catching them. If they knock out some visitors and disguise themselves as those visitors the door will accept them.

goto124
2016-02-25, 10:14 AM
So the riddle's a red herring! Gasp!

Segev
2016-02-25, 11:40 AM
Or even employ an artist or sculptor, and have the condition be that you have to have your face on the wall/in the line of statues in the hall just beyond the door. Within, say, the range needed for a magic mouth to detect the difference. Now you have a modifiable list of valid entrants. (Again, obviously, the PCs could cheat this by disguising themselves as a valid entrant, but still. red herring.)

Studoku
2016-02-25, 11:56 AM
I wait until an apprentice comes out, capture them, and compel them to tell me the secret.

nedz
2016-02-25, 01:10 PM
I wait until an apprentice comes out, capture them, and compel them to tell me the secret.

Ah, but he could lie - knowing you are about to get disintegrated.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-02-25, 06:40 PM
Ah, but he could lie - knowing you are about to get disintegrated.

I'm playing good cop bad cop with our barbarian. Bad cop stays with our captive while I go in.

That should at least compell him to only lie about the second and third layer of security...

tomandtish
2016-02-25, 09:45 PM
The answer is 9

The number of letters in the number the face said.

Incidentally, I believe this showed up in the D&D novel "Oath of Nerull"

Demidos
2016-02-29, 12:28 PM
I present the alternate, completely valid answer of 10.5

BECAUSE WHO SAID IT HAD TO BE AN INTEGER?


The number given is halved, and for every two people entering, the system increments by one.

12/2=6
6/2=3
14/2 +1=8
8/2 +1 = 5
4/2 +2 = 4
17/2 +2 = 10.5

Would work for an ultra-organized and paranoid wizard that demands everyone arrive exactly as expected.