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Sam113097
2016-03-10, 08:56 PM
Traps are the most under-appreciated part of dungeon design in RPGs. I always have trouble creating unique and interesting traps. Players are ready for things like spike pits or poison needles on treasure chest locks. I want to be able to surprise them with memorable traps, so I created this thread as a place to share advice and ideas about traps.

solidork
2016-03-10, 11:27 PM
Your classic rolling boulder trap, except that the trap turns whoever triggers the trap into the boulder.

Honestly though, I hate traps how they are usually handled. Specifically the traps where the way you overcome them is by successfully searching for them and then disabling them with a skill roll. The way you have to play to not get killed by those kinds of traps is not fun.

JAL_1138
2016-03-11, 12:04 AM
* A section of the floor swings open, dropping the character down a 50-foot 10ft-wide chute with sheer walls. The bottom 10 feet is entirely filled with a Gelatinous Cube. A few seconds later, the section of ceiling above the pit opens and drops a second Gelatinous Cube down the pit, sandwiching the character between them.

* A lever which, when pulled, Polymorphs the user into a mouse, allowing them to pass through a narrow tunnel EDIT: which is the only other exit to the room other than the way they came in, and apparently the only way farther into the dungeon. Halfway through the 20' long tunnel, a section of the tunnel floor drops away and deposits the character into a 6"x6" square pit, 15ft deep. Characters are undamaged from the fall, due to mouse shape not having enough mass to be seriously harmed. The sides of the pit are completely sheer and unclimbable metal, with solid dense rock behind it. Polymorph wears off in 1 hour.

PallentisLunam
2016-03-11, 11:05 AM
There are tons of articles out there about building fun traps that are more than just hit point taxes.

Some of my favorites come from old video games such as the Might and Magic series.

There's one where you have a room with what appears to be a normal floor but unless you follow the path on the ceiling you fall through it into a room full of monsters below. Or another where you enter a room and both doors lock as the floor starts to open up to a spiked pit. To turn the trap off you have to run around the room and hit the 8 glowing sigils on the walls.

Sgt. Cookie
2016-03-11, 11:09 AM
"As (Rogue Character) unlocks the door, it swings open to reveal a large rectangular room. The room looks to be about 20ft by 30ft and the ceiling looks to be about 20ft up. As light pours into the room, you see something on the back wall, it looks to go from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. As you get closer, the light brightens the wall and you can see it much clearer. It appears to be the word "Overthinking" written in Common. There appears to be nothing else in the room."

OldTrees1
2016-03-11, 11:25 AM
There was a nice trap in Silverthorn (Riftwar Saga book):
There is a building/dungeon/area. The floor is a mix of stone tiles. Near each doorway and intersection there are a couple Search DC 10 poison dart traps. In the final room there is a lone pedestal with the desired item on it. No traps under DC 30 can be found in this room. In the book the Rogue "nopes" it out of there expecting a DC 30+ magical trap on the pedestal. Presumably there was.

In combat traps are also a nice move. The PCs enter the room, a monster triggers a wall to rise up splitting the party lengthwise.

PallentisLunam
2016-03-11, 11:29 AM
Also lots of creatures *cough**kobolds**cough* are known for trapping their lairs.

Once again avoid flat hit point traps that you just spring on players. And maybe go for the occasional entirely underwhelming trap, like a tripwire that does nothing but trip the party. No cave-in, no ambush, no pit trap, just knocks them prone in the middle of a tunnel.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-13, 12:09 PM
A really long, straight hallway. Like, 100 feet of just hallway.

Every 25 feet, there are holes in the walls.

There are no traps. Watch your party crumble under the stress.

Enjoy.

Concrete
2016-03-13, 12:23 PM
Anything that splits the party while at the same point introducing another threat might be good. Just make sure that the split of character/s still has a means to return before the fight eands either way, without this being too hard/easy.

denthor
2016-03-13, 05:20 PM
It depends on what you are really looking for.

1.) Standard trap small alcove 10 feet to back wall five feet wide just wide enough to stand in. When you walk to the very far end 10 feet bars swing down and trap you noise echos (Sounds like dinner bell) monster come. takes two str 8 characters to reset trap with step stool.

2.) Trap that is not a true trap but does the job. Start of the dungeon or anyplace you want to let someone know someone is coming. Long corridor forty feet or more dark. Characters light up a torch. There is door that is not quite on as it should letting light shine through the to and bottom big two inches gaps. On the other side of the door about 10 feet from the door are alcoves on either side of the hallway. Guards see light go through one way secret doors to warn who ever they are guarding for.

3.) trail of copper pieces on the floor leads to a trap that drops you into a pool of water very cold you drop equipment and can not get it out of 20 feet of near freezing water welcome to dungeon we have fun and games you have no equipment or armor.

daremetoidareyo
2016-03-13, 06:27 PM
A room that is 20 X 20 X 100. The ceiling is 50 feet above and the floor is 50 feet below. Spiked on both the ceiling and floor. Every tile on the bottom floor is trapped with a pressure plate with self resetting anti gravity. Every tile on the ceiling is pressure plate trapped with a dispel magic on the anti gravity spell.

The mage who invented that called it the "bloody maracas"

TurboGhast
2016-03-13, 08:30 PM
Ceiling door that, when the trap is triggered by whatever method you choose, opens up and drops caltrops on whomever's below, dealing some damage.
The falling caltrops stay until manually reset, doing whatever they normally do in the system you're using.

TheFamilarRaven
2016-03-14, 01:52 PM
I also have trouble designing interesting traps. But there are a few of which I'm proud of.

1) Have a statue holding a . When a character grabs the item, the illusion is dispelled and the wall rotates around, bringing the unfortunate treasure-hunter with it. Easily countered by wary adventurers, but you'll be surprised how greed can make people stupid :smallamused:

2) in a 10x35 foot room, there is a [treasure dispenser], (I used a sarcophagus), against the far wall. Between the [treasure dispenser] and the adventurer is a 10x10x10 foot spiked pit, masked by an illusion. Players have room to get a running start to jump the pit from the entrance side, but not when they're over on the [treasure dispenser] side. The [treasure dispenser] is also trapped with a cloud kill spell. (This one actually killed one of the PCs in the game I was running).

Though I would like to say that there's nothing particularly wrong with throwing the occasional tripwire poison arrow trap at a party. As these kinds of standard traps give the party trapfinder a chance to shine.

The best traps I find are multifaceted. Where by tripping one part of the traps causes a kind of chain reaction, or that by disabling one part of the trap you do not fully foil the whole trap.

Edit:


Ceiling door that, when the trap is triggered by whatever method you choose, opens up and drops caltrops on whomever's below, dealing some damage.
The falling caltrops stay until manually reset, doing whatever they normally do in the system you're using.

Or better yet, have a [I]trapdoor that triggers caltrops to fall from above... No one expects that ****.

Silus
2016-03-14, 09:22 PM
Honestly, anything from Grimtooth's Traps.

goto124
2016-03-15, 12:00 AM
1) Have a statue holding a [Insert valuable item]. When a character grabs the item, the illusion is dispelled and the wall rotates around, bringing the unfortunate treasure-hunter with it. Easily countered by wary adventurers, but you'll be surprised how greed can make people stupid :smallamused:

Shouldn't you just open a trapdoor beneath the item-grabber? Seems that in the time it takes for a heavy wall to rotate around, the character can just run away.

Sam113097
2016-03-15, 12:04 AM
Thanks for all the ideas, I hope they were helpful to others!


Honestly, anything from Grimtooth's Traps.

What's that?

goto124
2016-03-15, 12:08 AM
Google it. You should get this (http://annarchive.com/files/Grimtooth's%20Traps.pdf).

Essentially, it's The DM's Guide to Designing Traps.

Silus
2016-03-15, 12:14 AM
What's that?

A short series of books on making fiendishly unfair traps.

Aspiration
2016-03-15, 12:48 AM
Instead of putting traps on your treasure, why not put treasure in your traps? Stick a corpse or two of past adventurers, complete with loot, at the bottom of that pit trap. At which point you've given your players reason to wonder if there might be bodies to loot in future traps, trolling them still further. :smallamused:

Bohandas
2016-03-15, 02:43 AM
-Stone to Flesh trap. The floor is made of what was once infectiously diseased meat. Triggering the trap turns it back into said rotten meat, exposing them to disease and dropping them through the floor which now cannot support their weight.

-Room bursts into flames

JAL_1138
2016-03-15, 08:04 AM
The Room of Gygax:

The floor has three Trappers on it, a patch of brown mold, and a puddle of water with a Crystal Ooze in it.

Two walls have two Living Walls each; the others have two Grey Oozes each.

One of the two statues of screaming demon faces on the wall near the exit has a Sphere of Annihilation in its mouth. The lever to open the exit is in the other. The sphere of annihilation is unique--it does not destroy inanimate objects, such as 10ft poles, polearms, iron spikes tied to a rope, etc.; only creatures are harmed. Unseen Servants, Mage Hand spells, Telekinesis, summoned creatures, and animated objects cannot interact with either statue; it is as if each was protected by an impenetrable, invisible dome extending about a foot in front of the statues.

The exit is set into a 10x10 recess with a Gelatinous Cube in it.

The ceiling has four Lurkers Above, four Piercers, and a patch of green slime.

In the entry hall before the room proper, paralytic gas will take effect after 3 rounds (no save). Characters will detect their movements feeling sluggish before escape is impossible. On the 4th round, characters fall prone, completely paralyzed but conscious. On the 5th round, a large stone oliphaunt statue on large stone rollers will flatten anything in the entry hall, reducing anything in it to chunky salsa. If the edition uses death saves, the characters fail them automatically. (Note: Polymorph and Wild Shape in certain editions will not help. The character will revert to their natural form upon the initial squashing, still be paralyzed, and then be squashed again by the statue's second roller).

There is a false door on one wall of the entrance hall which, when opened, will fire a spear like a crossbow bolt. Dex save to avoid. The spear travels to the other side of the room in a straight line and vanishes if it does not impact a character or creature. If the spear hits, the character must pass a Con save (or Fort save, or save vs. poison, depending on edition) or die. The trap resets when the door is closed again.

The room has five chests in it. One contains a poison dart trap (cannot be disarmed from the outside of the chest), save vs. poison (or Con or Fort save depending on edition) or die. Another contains twenty venomous snakes. Another contains twenty Crawling Claws. Another summons a scimitar-wielding skeleton which attacks the party. The final chest is a Mimic.

The hallway past the exit has four Rust Monsters and a Carrion Crawler in it.

Bohandas
2016-03-15, 02:01 PM
Your classic rolling boulder trap, except that the trap turns whoever triggers the trap into the boulder.

Honestly though, I hate traps how they are usually handled. Specifically the traps where the way you overcome them is by successfully searching for them and then disabling them with a skill roll. The way you have to play to not get killed by those kinds of traps is not fun.
Yes. I agree. The way dealing with traps works in D&D is overly simplistic, arbitrary, and unsatisfying, and the rules for setting traps are even worse, being often implausibly overpriced and yet at the same time (in the case of helpful "traps") either potentially overpowered or full of arbitrary restrictions, depending on how the DM wishes to handle it.

MrStabby
2016-03-15, 02:50 PM
Some things I like to do:

"Traps" that are not traps - just a floor giving way or something like that. A skill check to avoid environmental effects.

A trap then a more fiendish trap set up to catch a person getting into position to disarm the first trap

Traps as part of combat. A hitpoint tax is dull, a hold person spell going off in the middle of a fight can be critical - and there is a tradeoff between going slow and looking for traps and going fast to close with an enemy slinging spells at you.

Traps that may use skills that are otherwise underused in the campaign. Maneating pot plants that can be bypassed with a good knowledge nature check, stone snakes that will strike at anyone passing by but can be lulled by a well performed song.

Traps that are specific and show forethought - maybe casting a spell on hearing voices, possibly the target spellcasters. On a related note...

Traps that are just funny. A trapdoor 80 ft up on the ceiling with walls with no handholds and an unsteady floor. It is opened by pulling on a heavy lever by the door. On the lever is a glyph of warding with dispel magic on it.

turbo164
2016-03-15, 03:29 PM
Combine traps with encounters; those boring tripwires and pressure plates get a bit less boring if they shoot lightning that empowers the Shambling Mounds in the room, or if they spray poison gas that the skeletons are immune to. Now you're not just avoiding the traps, but trying to keep the monsters from triggering them! (alternatively, have very powerful enemies that players can soften up by leading them through a few dozen dart traps before swinging their swords). You can also have traps that don't trigger for the monsters: for the aforementioned skeletons, maybe some of the traps detect body heat or the sound of breathing; or the classic Kobolds whose pressure plates require at least 60 pounds to trigger, so they can sprint safely across a hallway while the 100+ pound Medium Humanoid pursuers get blasted.

Combine obvious traps with less obvious ones; a classic I've seen mentioned on this board and others is the pit trap/pressure plate that's easy to Spot...but before and/or after that trap is a much tougher illusion-floor-covering-pit-trap or something, so people that try to jump over one land in the other. (or have an invisible wall halfway across for them to smack into and slide down!)

Traps with multiple solutions are good. "Oh, another trap, yawn, wake me when the Rogue's done rolling skill checks." Compare to, "Uh, we're kinda getting chased here, rogue go ahead and roll, in the meantime Jim you fly over and tie this rope off so we can climb across...or should we try to hide, then wait for our pursuers to get here to shove them in?" Also depending on the dungeon, the people who live there would probably have some kind of backdoor/safe path/password etc to avoid getting poisoned twice every time they take a trip to the kitchen, after all! So have clues scratched on the walls, cheat sheets looted from evil interns, knowledge checks to remember that obscure orcish poem that the floor tiles seem patterned after, scuffs and stains that show areas frequently used or avoided, etc.

Hallway/staircase/room/etc full of already spent traps, probably with a few perished adventurers impaled here and there. At the other end is the key/loot/lever they need...which also re-arms all the traps they just passed. (I think this one was in The Book of Challenges)

TheFamilarRaven
2016-03-15, 04:13 PM
Shouldn't you just open a trapdoor beneath the item-grabber? Seems that in the time it takes for a heavy wall to rotate around, the character can just run away.

Yeah but then you don't get the classic scooby-do effect :smalltongue:. Point taken though. It'd be a reflex save either way, unless the item also cast Hold Monster on the grabber.

MrZJunior
2016-03-15, 04:39 PM
The party is climbing the keep on a tall castle. Suddenly one of the steps clicks under the feet of the person in front. The cistern on the top of the tower flushes, pouring water down the stairs and washing them back down into the Great Hall which begins filling with water. Secret doors pop open, filling the hall with aquatic baddies of your choice.

Bohandas
2016-03-15, 06:32 PM
-Lighting fixture, a torch or candle, contains substance that gives off toxic fumes if lit

Bohandas
2016-03-15, 10:48 PM
escher-esque endless staircase with central pillar blocking view so they dob't realize it's endless. Wastes intruders' time

goto124
2016-03-15, 11:59 PM
The cistern on the top of the tower flushes, pouring water down the stairs and washing them back down into the Great Hall which begins filling with water.

Best to do this when one of the players is in the toilet and just flushed the toilet, because sound effects are great :smallbiggrin:

MrZJunior
2016-03-16, 07:27 AM
A homing rolling boulder: it tracks the party through the dungeon. Even when they think they lost it it is probably just hiding behind a tapestry waiting to jump them when they least expect it.

Bohandas
2016-03-16, 02:17 PM
The large lever that opens the gate or deactivates another trap is actually covered in spikes or made out of a razor sharp sword blade but is disguised by an illusion to look like a normal lever.

Bohandas
2016-03-16, 02:42 PM
Reverse Gravity effect in room flings adventurers into spiked pit in ceiling

JAL_1138
2016-03-16, 08:10 PM
A homing rolling boulder: it tracks the party through the dungeon. Even when they think they lost it it is probably just hiding behind a tapestry waiting to jump them when they least expect it.

They're called Bowlers. Been around since 1e, I think. Monster Manual 2.

Mothman
2016-03-16, 08:24 PM
i am always a fan of traps that are really brutal, like REALLY brutal. something like a scythe that swings out from the side of the wall around knee height and if the PCs fail their Reflex saves by a certain amount they not only take damage but lose a leg in the process.

most systems stat prosthetic limbs so why not give the players a reason to read up?

Mothman
2016-03-16, 08:28 PM
A homing rolling boulder: it tracks the party through the dungeon. Even when they think they lost it it is probably just hiding behind a tapestry waiting to jump them when they least expect it.

then have the boulder track them out of the dungeon and into town, and no matter how much they run the boulder is always a day behind them. then if the game runs long enough the boulder could be a re-occurring villain.

JAL_1138
2016-03-16, 09:16 PM
i am always a fan of traps that are really brutal, like REALLY brutal. something like a scythe that swings out from the side of the wall around knee height and if the PCs fail their Reflex saves by a certain amount they not only take damage but lose a leg in the process.

most systems stat prosthetic limbs so why not give the players a reason to read up?

I dunno about "most" systems. Sci-fi, some modern day, some post-apocalyptic, it's usually non-fantasy systems that are going to have stats for them. But in Shadowrun or Cyberpunk or GURPS Cyperpunk, you could go nuts with these. Complete with the whole "cybernetics eat your soul" trope to put a decidedly literal spin on "going nuts" with these...

Templarkommando
2016-03-16, 11:36 PM
One that my party hit recently was in a dungeon designed as a trial for what is basically a corps of mercenary/adventurers. To pass the test, we needed to complete the whole adventure within a given in-game time. One of the rooms had a whole slew of 5x5 foot tiles extending across a 100 ft long room. Every tile was trapped, but when you would step on one it would activate an illusion that caused a number that appeared on the floor. So, basically we played minesweeper until we were able to reach the other side of the room. Since it was just a test, if you hit one of the "mines" it would hit the person that stepped on it with a few minutes of paralysis.

Doorhandle
2016-03-18, 05:04 AM
Your classic rolling boulder trap, except that the trap turns whoever triggers the trap into the boulder.

Honestly though, I hate traps how they are usually handled. Specifically the traps where the way you overcome them is by successfully searching for them and then disabling them with a skill roll. The way you have to play to not get killed by those kinds of traps is not fun.

I agree. To make traps fun, you really have to handle them in a way that's contrary to how a trap should be made in real life: They should be very visible.

The players may not be able to see the full workings of a trap, but they should be able to guess there's one nearby, such as smears of gore on the walls, or the smell of oil for fire traps. This gets them into problem solving, and figure out how they can avoid the worst of the trap: while at the same time, preventing them from paranoidly jumping at shadows and looking at absolutely every inch of wall to avoid traps.

I would also advise against leaving a true bypass, like a "disable device and it stops" sort of thing: Instead, have a variety of ways they can reduce the impact of the trap, or at least slow it's activation. This is in the interest of making it fun for you, the DM: it's just boring if the trap is just thwarted outright.

Finally, make it so the players actually want to try to bypass or trigger the trap: such as putting it between them and their goal, or leaving some treasure for them there.

In effect, traps should be less of a practical joke with added murder, and be more of a puzzle... with added murder.

I would recommend Grimtooth's traps, and from that book their room or corridor traps: these follow most of the guidelines above, while the door and item traps are mostly just rude "gotcha!" traps.
Most fourthcore books have similarly grandiose "puzzle" traps.

If all else fails, you can try to make a "wipeout" or "american gladiator" course a trap room...


i am always a fan of traps that are really brutal, like REALLY brutal. something like a scythe that swings out from the side of the wall around knee height and if the PCs fail their Reflex saves by a certain amount they not only take damage but lose a leg in the process.

Again, you'd love grimtooth and fourthcore, as the traps there combine brutality with gonzo awesomeness. Although the former is system-neutral and so can be padded...if you really insist.

Bohandas
2016-03-19, 03:29 PM
Floor of dungeon inhabited by monsters wih damage reduction is covered completely in spikes, rusty nails, broken glass, and/or razor blades

EDIT:
Floor of dungeon of fire resistant creatures heats up like a frying pan

Bohandas
2016-03-19, 10:53 PM
the spiked pit trap area is also the cess pit. save vs filth fever

Reltzik
2016-03-20, 12:16 AM
I don't like traps that do damage or apply penalties. Those are... pretty boring and random.

What I like are traps that completely reshape an encounter or a dungeon experience.

Imagine a bunch of goblins with one of their traps protecting their flank. They know it's there, and so they can use it to their advantage. The party doesn't know it's there, so they'll either charge in or wonder why the goblins are avoiding that half of the hall.

Or your classic chute trap. It doesn't kill anyone, but it splits the party. Have the entrance seal shut after it claims its first victim, requiring several rounds to bust it open.

One of my favorites was a stargate-in-DnD adventure that I ran. The party arrived with the circular gate on a weird spot -- atop a steep slope ending in a fragile plaster wall, with no light. They broke through into the interior corridors of a pyramid, thought it was weird, and started exploring. Some time later and a ways downhill they trip a trap... and it's pretty obviously a rolling bolder trap from the sounds. They find a cubby to hide in and wait for the bolder to roll buy. Only it isn't the bolder -- it's the Gate. The dungeon designers just tried to kill them with the exit, and now their way out has rolled away from them. (And, as it turned out, landed underwater.)

Try traps that relocate the players in the dungeon or reshape the dungeons by shutting off the easy routes. Have traps snatch away the MacGuffin to a safe room just as the players are about to snatch it, or which let the BBEG escape. Traps shouldn't be "all the damage of an encounter in one skill check for the rogue". That's the worst intersection of boring, frustrating, and unoriginal. They should reshape and redefine the arena in which the PCs operate.

Doorhandle
2016-03-20, 01:29 AM
A tower with the macguffin (or another valuable item) atop it. Periodically, barrels roll down the paths that lead to the mountain's top: bonus points if each path is different. (ex. long but safe path, dangerous but short path, path that you have to climb up, ect.) The barrels will do bludgeoning damage and trip any player they hit.

What makes this different from a typical rolling object trap is that the barrels can be filled with whatever twisted object you want!

1. Barrel of monkeys: Releases a monkey swarm. Other variants could include snake or insect swarms.
2. Barrel of Tanglefoot bag fluid: bursts on contact: those hit are entangled.
3. Barrel of filth: Nauseates the player hit, and makes them sicken anyone within 5 ft until it's washed off.
4. Barrel of oil: Cover players in oil, and will trip up anyone who enters the area covered as a grease spell. Mostly harmless, but-
5. Flaming barrel: Self explanatory. Will ignite any player covered in oil.
6. Barrel of honey: Attracts swarms to the offending player.
7. Inevitable explosive barrel: If hit by this, you explode. Resolve as a fireball of an appropriate level.
8. Barrel of caltrops: Ouch. Leaves a field of caltrops where it hits, and does piercing instead of bludgeoning damage on hit.
9. Barrel of grog: Confuses the player on hit. If the players can catch it, they can drink it of their own liation should they feel it fit.
10. Barrel of potion: Filled with a potion of whatever negative/positive effect you want.
11. Very large barrel: it's empty, but it doesn't shatter on hit and keeps rolling over players after the first hit.
12. Bonus: as very large barrel, but closer investigation will reveal it's actually an apparatus of Kwalish/the crab. Reroll further results of 12.

Bonus point for having a (dire/awakened/seasoned to taste)gorilla, (with or without a tie), to throw the barrels at various targets... particularly those who are flying, have ranged attacks, or otherwise refuse to climb the tower. Feel free to let the players attempt to catch the barrels or otherwise use them to their own twisted ends.

AtlasSniperman
2016-03-20, 01:37 AM
In a hallway 10ft' by 10ft and long, an obvious, open pit 10ft wide, 20ft long and 15ft deep before angling back toward the direction the party comes from. This pit has an antilife shell creating a walkable but invisible barrier, and the walls are coated (lightly) with a contact CON poison. Due to pit length and hall height, only creatures less than 5ft tall can jump it...
Or they could walk.

Another I love are detachable spear launchers that denizens can move about the dungeon. They attach into the wall around a door, witg a tripwire across the bottom of the door. All on one door use the same attack roll and deal 1d8 damage each. Good fun.

Another fun one is an easy spotted pit, with a hidden tripping wire before it, attempting to jump the pit gives the wire a trip attemp, success and the victim falls in.

Some loose floorboards that break wheb stepped on, dropping victims feet into a set of gears that make a grapple check to hold them. Very effective when combined witg monsters, in particular oozes.

A scimitar attached underside a desk that swings out when the weight on the desk is changed without a lever bein downed. Particularly gory, but nice and efficient when dealing with a general or snarty kobold.

Knaight
2016-03-20, 02:18 AM
Illusory Alarm
The setup: There's a fair amount of area with active patrols to be avoided, that are clearly dangerous. There are, however, no traps in this area.
The room: Then, somewhere deep in the dungeon/fortress/whatever, there's an alarm. It makes a very loud noise, followed by the faked sound of encroaching footsteps from the entrance. The obvious way to leave is to run deeper.
The twist: Deeper is a system of corridors positively loaded with the sorts of traps that are not really a problem unless you have to move fast (spear traps that protrude from obvious walls, spiked pits just around corners, etc.). If you're at a dead run because you know you're being tailed though...

MrZJunior
2016-03-20, 05:55 AM
1. Barrel of monkeys: Releases a monkey swarm. Other variants could include snake or insect swarms.
2. Barrel of Tanglefoot bag fluid: bursts on contact: those hit are entangled.
3. Barrel of filth: Nauseates the player hit, and makes them sicken anyone within 5 ft until it's washed off.
4. Barrel of oil: Cover players in oil, and will trip up anyone who enters the area covered as a grease spell. Mostly harmless, but-
5. Flaming barrel: Self explanatory. Will ignite any player covered in oil.
6. Barrel of honey: Attracts swarms to the offending player.
7. Inevitable explosive barrel: If hit by this, you explode. Resolve as a fireball of an appropriate level.
8. Barrel of caltrops: Ouch. Leaves a field of caltrops where it hits, and does piercing instead of bludgeoning damage on hit.
9. Barrel of grog: Confuses the player on hit. If the players can catch it, they can drink it of their own liation should they feel it fit.
10. Barrel of potion: Filled with a potion of whatever negative/positive effect you want.
11. Very large barrel: it's empty, but it doesn't shatter on hit and keeps rolling over players after the first hit.
12. Bonus: as very large barrel, but closer investigation will reveal it's actually an apparatus of Kwalish/the crab. Reroll further results of 12.


The barrels should, of course, be color coded for your convenience.

goto124
2016-03-20, 06:52 AM
Floor of dungeon of fire resistant creatures heats up like a frying pan

And the obvious way out leads to the fire itself.

I hate myself.

Jormengand
2016-03-20, 07:13 AM
My personal favourite is the tesseract trap, (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?78915-Piratecat-s-dungeon-design-fun-with-tesseracts!) also teleportation circle mazes also work wonders.

Bohandas
2016-03-27, 09:34 PM
Doors slam shut, generic whole room trap (crushing ceiling, poison gas, etc) goes off, BUT while everyone is occupied with that the room ALSO rotates slightly so the exits now lead to different rooms than they did before (but which nevertheless look the same to the unobservant)


My personal favourite is the tesseract trap, (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?78915-Piratecat-s-dungeon-design-fun-with-tesseracts!) also teleportation circle mazes also work wonders.

Non-euclidean and.or multiply connected space in general is cool

This can also be combined with the idea above. The alternate corridors become more insidious if built in such a way that in normal space they would overlap with the primary corridors.

Deophaun
2016-03-27, 11:41 PM
The Not-So Deadly Floor:

The party is in pursuit of a villain and have come to a long hallway. There is an acrid stench in the air and the floor drops off into a large pool of suspicious green liquid that covers the distance. There does not seem to be a quick way around, but the walls are close enough and there is a slight lip and plentiful handholds that they should be able to "climb" across it by bracing against both sides without too much trouble (DC 10).

Except, the floor isn't dangerous at all. The stench comes from either a hidden barrel of vinegar or an acid vial the villain dropped as he ran through, and the liquid is just an illusion. The whole point of the room is for the party to waste their time trying to climb the distance (at 1/4 speed) while the villain just ran (4x).

Bohandas
2016-03-28, 12:37 AM
Displaced Pit: Conspicuous pit registers illusion magic. The pit is very much real, but is about 5 feet away from where it appears to be

Doorhandle
2016-03-28, 04:21 AM
The barrels should, of course, be color coded for your convenience.
For sure.

Not quite a trap so much as an encounter, but:

Smashing renovation: Have the players fight some sort of big, burly monster (large at a minimum, but feel free to go for broke) Whenever the monster attacks a player, it cleaves into the floor, damaging it. If a square of floor takes too much damage, it breaks, revealing a pit filled with some sort of nastiness (Lava, acid, acid lava, etc.). as the fight continues, more and more of the floor is broken into nothingness, giving less and less ground to stand on...

Difficulty is brought via a stronger monster, a weaker floor, and a more lethal substance under the floor. Most lethal possible would be a flying tarrasque, a very thin glass floor, and a massive sphere of annihilation, as well as downdraft traps to force flying creatures to the floor.

Also, as another encounter
Big fish, small pond: another large bruiser or other creature with ludicrous reach and a lot of opportunity attacks. However, it's in the center of a smallish room... which is exactly as big as it's reach. As a result, there is no way for players to avoid opportunity attacks from the monster, particularly pesky casters!
Dwarfbonus: Make the room 1 square bigger than the bruiser's reach... and fill those squares with fire traps or other nastiness. Out of the frying pan...
Megadwarf bonus: Combine it with smashing renovation, above.

Grappling hook pit trap:
Every optimizer and their mom can fly, so pit traps aren't as threatening as they should be. However, if you replace the spikes with harpoons and put additional triggers on the walls, you have a pit-trap that harpoons anyone flying above them, forcing them downwards. Higher level versions could involve (again) spheres of annihilation and vacuum-suction to force players in. Alternate, you could have the Eversion route and have a massive dark hand grasp at them, pulling them to an awful fate...

goto124
2016-03-28, 07:22 AM
What sort of video games have you been designing?

Jormengand
2016-03-28, 07:32 AM
Also, paranoia traps can be fun:


Pit trap before level 5 (or later with no wizard; bear in mind druids with SNAII will ruin your day from level 3). Jumping into the pit is harmless and the only way to progress. Alternatively, if it's after level 5, make actually traversing the pit harmful.
There are some pressure plates with arrow-slits on each side of each pressure plate. There are no arrow traps whatsoever; you must step on all pressure plates to pass. Alternatively, stepping on the pressure plate disarms the motion-sensitive trap.
Ominous statue does nothing unless attacked; otherwise attacks back in kind. Combine with situation where attacking the statue seems reasonable.
Pressing button in room makes all doors slam shut and timer appear. There's lots to interact with in the room, but all of it is harmful except the button, which re-sets the timer. Letting the timer hit zero opens the door.

Amphetryon
2016-03-28, 07:57 AM
There was a nice trap in Silverthorn (Riftwar Saga book):
There is a building/dungeon/area. The floor is a mix of stone tiles. Near each doorway and intersection there are a couple Search DC 10 poison dart traps. In the final room there is a lone pedestal with the desired item on it. No traps under DC 30 can be found in this room. In the book the Rogue "nopes" it out of there expecting a DC 30+ magical trap on the pedestal. Presumably there was.

In combat traps are also a nice move. The PCs enter the room, a monster triggers a wall to rise up splitting the party lengthwise.

Not the trap I thought you were going to reference from Silverthorn :smallsmile:.

OldTrees1
2016-03-28, 08:37 AM
Not the trap I thought you were going to reference from Silverthorn :smallsmile:.

:smallredface: I have forgotten the other trap of note. Would you refresh my memory?

Beelzebub1111
2016-03-28, 08:47 AM
I'm a fan of swarms in enclosed spaces.

A pit trap with a centepede swarm. A water filling room trap that releases wasps.

Makes it hard to use AOE spells and players tend to prefer magic to torches. And if they do use torches, there's the old "grain silo" trap.

Typewriter
2016-03-28, 08:57 AM
I had a room in my campaign recently that I referred to as the 'Dungeon Run'.

The 'run' was a long (200 foot approximately) hallway that was about 20 feet wide.
It was broken earth all over the place so the entire thing counted as difficult terrain.
The walls running parallel were magnetic and the dungeon was full of weapons and armor from fallen adventurers, as well as scrap metal and other hazards. Only one wall was magnetic at a time and it switched every round causing everything to fly back and forth every round.
The run was full of different obstacles including traps, pits, and monsters that showed up once the players reached a 'key' in the middle of the run. There were also mushrooms that, when hit by the debris, would let out spores to anyone using them for cover.

I have some pictures that I took at the time, I'll see if I can't find them later and post them (at work right now).

Amphetryon
2016-03-28, 09:31 AM
:smallredface: I have forgotten the other trap of note. Would you refresh my memory?

Spoiler if there are folks who don't want to know:

As I recall, an entire building which Arutha and company explore is described as one giant decoy/trap. I will grant that it has been several years since I last read it closely.

OldTrees1
2016-03-28, 09:53 AM
Spoiler if there are folks who don't want to know:

As I recall, an entire building which Arutha and company explore is described as one giant decoy/trap. I will grant that it has been several years since I last read it closely.

Yeah
That was the example I used. Jimmy scouted out the building. He found lots of easy to detect, for a thief, traps. Then in the final room surrounding the single item Arutha is looking for, ... Jimmy detected nothing. So he hightailed it out of there since it was clearly a giant trap. Jimmy theorized the final trap, the one Jimmy knew must exist from but could not detect, would seal all the doors and summon a bunch of animated warriors.

Lycanthrope13
2016-03-28, 11:06 AM
I'm a big fan of deadfall traps. People usually assume the tripwire is the trigger, but with deadfalls it can be the safety. Release tension on the rope and the trap triggers automatically, so there's really no way to disarm it. Even if you avoid being crushed, the noise alerts everyone to your presence.

Another good one is a spring loaded bar that swings across the hallway at shin height. Reflex save to dodge the trap entirely. Fail that and roll Fortitude save to resist having your legs broken. Added bonus, the bar stays in place and can present a trip hazard when the party has to flee the way they came.

Or a crumbling tile that leads to a small hole lined with spikes angled down. Makes it almost impossible to pull your leg out.

My grandpa was a fur trapper, so I actually know a lot about constructing primitive traps. Works great thematically around an orc camp.

Bohandas
2016-03-28, 11:38 AM
fire creature's magic flaming sword has the usual safeties disabled, that is to say the flame does damage the wielder

RazorChain
2016-03-28, 06:10 PM
A pit with a teleport gate at the bottom. The teleport gate teleports you to the ceiling above the pit, leaving you in a infinite free fall. Not to mention after 10-15 seconds of falling you reach terminal velocity.

LadyFoxfire
2016-03-28, 06:51 PM
The White Plume Mountain module (and its sequel) have some great traps. The aquarium with collapsing walls and dangerous sea creatures; the hallway of Heat Metal with hungry ghouls hiding at the far end, waiting for the party to remove their armor; the rotating hallway smeared with lamp oil, with a hidden archer waiting for the party to start slipping and sliding their way across before he lights it up with a fire arrow... We outsmarted the last trap by setting it on fire ourselves, and having lunch a safe distance away while it burned itself out.

Mister Tom
2016-03-28, 07:34 PM
Was going to suggest several of these! Here's another idea or two... The party comes across a 40 by 40' room or so divided into 5' black and white squares. At the sides of the room are six large humanoid statues wearing elaborate plate mail the colour of obsidian and carrying swords. To enter the room they had to pull on. A lever; doing so blocks the exit the way they came. The square in front of them is white.

The party will probably spot the chess motif and either figure white squares are safe ( IIRC that's in at least one commercially available module) or that they need to move via knights moves- jumping across. Either way, jumping on the last square at the edge of the other room triggers a pit trap, because dungeon designers are just like that.

Alternatively, and potentially lethal - a narrow corridor slopes gently downwards and is partially submerged under turgid impenetrable water. Which suddenly becomes deeper. Wearing chain mail and fail to spot this? Hope you can swim really well...

RUTRIGGERED?
2016-03-28, 07:46 PM
Punji steak pits would be fairly unique.
Technically, these are just shallow spike pits, but they're usually covered with leaves or a net covered in mud. Have a leaf pile or something, and if your unlucky adventurer rolls a very low perception roll, or just has low perception, you could have them in a world of pain.
BONUS: Many Punji pit spikes are coated with fecal matter to cause infection, so you could hinder one of your party members unless for a small window of time.

Amphetryon
2016-03-28, 08:28 PM
Monsters herd the PCs up a long staircase, but do not climb, themselves. The landing at the top of the staircase is a teleportation trigger, sending the PCs back to the bottom of the stairs.

The Great Wyrm
2016-03-28, 11:14 PM
A room, with silent images of caltrops in some squares. Other squares have real caltrops. For extra fun, add invisible caltrops into the mix.

Bohandas
2016-03-28, 11:37 PM
-stairs turn into ramp (each stair rotates downward to 45 degrees) tumbling party downward

-Door leads different places depending on what key it's opened with. If it's forced or the lock is picked it leads somewhere with something hostile that spills out

goto124
2016-03-29, 04:11 AM
A pit with a teleport gate at the bottom. The teleport gate teleports you to the ceiling above the pit, leaving you in a infinite free fall. Not to mention after 10-15 seconds of falling you reach terminal velocity.

And after a while the gates shut off, letting you smash straight into the floor. Hard.

Thinking with portals!

Dire Moose
2016-03-29, 05:59 AM
I had an elaborate one in my campaign that included multiple traps built into one. First, the razor tripwire that deals slashing damage to the victim, who then trips, falling onto the floor in front of him and causing it to give way, dropping him into a spiked pit. Attempting to climb up the opposite side triggers the last element, a heavy iron gate which drops down to block the other side and crush the character.

Another favorite is the infamous Big Red Button labeled "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!" Any elaborate trap or method of dealing damage can be connected to this one; in any given adventuring party, someone is going to be curious enough about what happens to push it. A good idea would be to put it into a room that cannot be escaped except through some well-hidden trick, leading players to attempt to find the way out, fail initially, and then think "maybe it's a double bluff and we need to push the button to escape." Which of course, they don't and it's just a way to increase the odds that they'll trigger the trap.

GameOfChampions
2016-03-29, 07:36 PM
I have not read through this page so I may be saying something that someone else has already...

Anyway a fun trap a friend of mine did once was kind of reverse trap logic. There was a room with three rooms that constantly had monsters walking in in waves and attacking them and there was a button in the middle of the room that would magically count down while slowly rising from the floor. So the party rushed to stand on it and it reset the timer but the doors wouldn't close so they had to balance moving onto the button for a round every little bit and fighting the monsters. The trick was that the party really had to let the button completely raise out of the ground and let the countdown finish. So ya kind of reverse trap logic there.

0evil_overlord0
2016-03-30, 05:42 PM
The dungeon was built to guard a vital mechanism that the PCs need to activate for plot reasons. Upon finally reaching the end of the dungeon, they activate the mechanism. The doors of the room slam shut, and loud rumbling is heard. A minute later, the doors reopen again, revealing that the whole dungeon has been tilted 90 degrees! Hallways are now pits, decorations are now obstacles to be avoided, nasty monsters that were in the bottom of that pit trap earlier are on the loose, ect.

Bohandas
2016-03-31, 03:49 PM
The entire (empty) room is suspended over a pit of lava by a chain attached to the center of the floor. Anyone stepping into the room will cause the floor to tip and pitch them into the lava pit while the floor comes back to rest above them

JAL_1138
2016-04-01, 12:50 PM
A fountain or small natual spring, the water in which is a water weird or crystal ooze. Drinking any of may result in a scene straight out of Alien as the fragment of the monster the character has consumed bursts out of the character's torso. (I lost a character to this trap; credit for it goes to my former DM)

A section of broken flooring with a puddle of murky water, which is much deeper than it looks (there's a hollowed-out pool underneath the room, about 15ftx15ftx15ft). The floor around it may crumble. The pool contains a water weird, crystal ooze, or any other nasty aquatic critter(s).

Brown Mold (cold harms it, and it feeds on heat; do not use fire on it under any circumstances) has been disguised by an illusion to look like Green Slime (kill it with fire).

A sunken chest full of old coins. Several coins in it are Lock Lurkers. Getting paralyzed by one likely results in drowning. (A character of mine fell victim to a version of this too, although to add insult to injury the water wasn't even very deep, just enough that it was over my head when I fell down. Once more, this one gets credited to my old DM).

Bohandas
2016-04-02, 12:41 AM
Section of floor is spring-loaded and attached to massive hinge. It springs back like the bar of a mousetrap and crushes intruders between itself and the preceeding section of floor

EDIT:
speaking of mousetraps...

-Treasure chest is set atop actual gigantic mousetrap

goto124
2016-04-02, 04:07 AM
A fountain or small natual spring, the water in which is a water weird or crystal ooze. Drinking any of may result in a scene straight out of Alien as the fragment of the monster the character has consumed bursts out of the character's torso. (I lost a character to this trap; credit for it goes to my former DM)

Related. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4e/7c/d2/4e7cd27ea00bf596bfe1169d9453cbff.jpg)

BWR
2016-04-02, 07:54 AM
The Room of Gygax:

The floor has three Trappers on it, a patch of brown mold, and a puddle of water with a Crystal Ooze in it.

Two walls have two Living Walls each; the others have two Grey Oozes each.

One of the two statues of screaming demon faces on the wall near the exit has a Sphere of Annihilation in its mouth. The lever to open the exit is in the other. The sphere of annihilation is unique--it does not destroy inanimate objects, such as 10ft poles, polearms, iron spikes tied to a rope, etc.; only creatures are harmed. Unseen Servants, Mage Hand spells, Telekinesis, summoned creatures, and animated objects cannot interact with either statue; it is as if each was protected by an impenetrable, invisible dome extending about a foot in front of the statues.

The exit is set into a 10x10 recess with a Gelatinous Cube in it.

The ceiling has four Lurkers Above, four Piercers, and a patch of green slime.

In the entry hall before the room proper, paralytic gas will take effect after 3 rounds (no save). Characters will detect their movements feeling sluggish before escape is impossible. On the 4th round, characters fall prone, completely paralyzed but conscious. On the 5th round, a large stone oliphaunt statue on large stone rollers will flatten anything in the entry hall, reducing anything in it to chunky salsa. If the edition uses death saves, the characters fail them automatically. (Note: Polymorph and Wild Shape in certain editions will not help. The character will revert to their natural form upon the initial squashing, still be paralyzed, and then be squashed again by the statue's second roller).

There is a false door on one wall of the entrance hall which, when opened, will fire a spear like a crossbow bolt. Dex save to avoid. The spear travels to the other side of the room in a straight line and vanishes if it does not impact a character or creature. If the spear hits, the character must pass a Con save (or Fort save, or save vs. poison, depending on edition) or die. The trap resets when the door is closed again.

The room has five chests in it. One contains a poison dart trap (cannot be disarmed from the outside of the chest), save vs. poison (or Con or Fort save depending on edition) or die. Another contains twenty venomous snakes. Another contains twenty Crawling Claws. Another summons a scimitar-wielding skeleton which attacks the party. The final chest is a Mimic.

The hallway past the exit has four Rust Monsters and a Carrion Crawler in it.



That's beautiful.
*sniff*

Reltzik
2016-04-03, 12:58 PM
Section of floor is spring-loaded and attached to massive hinge. It springs back like the bar of a mousetrap and crushes intruders between itself and the preceeding section of floor

EDIT:
speaking of mousetraps...

-Treasure chest is set atop actual gigantic mousetrap

You mean like this?

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/schmuck_bait.jpg

Bohandas
2016-04-04, 07:13 AM
Marketing gimmick to some, debilitating trap to others, a restaurant in the Abyss draws in customers by pumping out "mustard-garlic scent" into the surrounding area to whet people's appetites. Unfortunately for mortal patrons he "mustard-garlic scent" they pump out comes from the debilitating toxin Sulfur Mustard, better known as Mustard Gas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard)



You mean like this?

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/schmuck_bait.jpg

It's not showing up for me

EDIT:
Nevermind, it's showing up now

goto124
2016-04-04, 08:44 AM
Why not mustard elementals.

ATHATH
2016-04-04, 10:50 AM
I got this one from the first Yogquest (with a few modifications).

In the center of a room is three pillars. The center pillar has a lever on it, which is required to open the door to the rest of the dungeon. When the lever is pulled, the room is suddenly plunged into darkness. A few seconds later, the room becomes bright again. Two copies of whatever pulled the lever are now in front of the left and right pillars (one copy each). The PC's will probably deduce which version is the "real" one, and kill the other one, which will reveal itself to be a doppelgänger or an illusion, and continue on with the dungeon.

What they don't know is that BOTH of the copies are illusions/doppelgängers, and whatever pulled the lever was Planeshifted or Teleported to an oven, where he is incinerated (or escapes, resolve this with the teleported player or object). The rest of the PC's later encounter a kindly, old Kobold woman, who offers them some recently cooked meat (she may or may not know what it actually is)...

If the object or creature that pulled the lever makes his saving throw to avoid being teleported, just resolve this as an encounter with two Doppelgängers. If the object or creature manages to avoid being incinerated, have the old Kobold lady be a legitimately kind/fearful of the combat gods that just slaughtered her neighbors person.

Geordnet
2016-04-04, 12:03 PM
Two different designs here, one for a trap, one for a trigger mechanism.

The trigger mechanism is a complex system where the entire floor of the hallway is one big pressure plate. It's balanced so that the party has to be in the center of hallway (lengthwise) in order to trigger the trap. Imagine it as a board balanced on two levers: the trick here is that both levers have to be pushed with roughly the same force, or one will jam the other. Also, the force required is high enough that just one person wouldn't be enough to cause it to trigger. Add some smaller fake pressure plates, and the party Rogue can sweep the hall without triggering anything. (If he checks the ends of the hallway, though, he might notice the odd cracks. The wall-edge cracks can be disguised by making it seem like the walls are designed to move.)

Okay, using that trigger mechanism, make a hallway with spikes on the walls. Add a skeleton or two for good measure. This should be a pretty obvious "wall crush" trap, and examining the base of the walls should "confirm" that. Examining the tiles of the ceiling may reveal odd cracks, but if those get covered in plaster when the trap is reset, they'll be very hard to detect.

So, when the PCs trigger the trap, at first nothing will happen except for an obvious "clunk" sound, the floor suddenly dropping an inch, and the doors slamming shut. There should be creaking for a round or two, letting the PCs get away from the walls and such. But then, when they least expect it, the ceiling drops down on them.

The only way to dodge the ceiling is to jump into the spikes.

After the party gets on the spikes, they're kind of stuck, so make sure they have a way out! The ceiling falls in 5x5 blocks, which will latch in place if a party member is strong enough to lift one. A high DC Escape Artist checks could be used to move through the spikes, but failure would injure the PC (however, taking 10/20 should be allowed).

Or, they could wait for the dungeon's denizens to reset the trap: it should take two to four men about 10-15 minutes to lift a single block using a crank, or about half an hour using an automatic water-wheel. Encourage your players to role-play some conversation during this period.

Once the trap is fully reset, the players will have a couple minutes at most to leave before the trigger resets as well.

There are three main ways to circumvent the trap:

Cross the hall one at a time
Levitate
Climb the spikes across

Sucessfully "solving" the trap in a creative manner (levitation isn't creative) should be rewarded with an xp bonus.

Jormengand
2016-04-04, 12:23 PM
There's a hallway full of pressure plates, with arrow slits to the side of each of the pressure plates, and a door at the end. Stepping on each of the pressure plates in order will open the door; attempting to open the door using the handle will result in a trap being activated, possibly from the room being flooded through the arrow-slits (or poison gas through them?).

Bohandas
2016-04-20, 06:10 PM
Complimenting a conventional trap a room us enchanted to animate anyone who dies there as a zombie

Bohandas
2016-04-23, 12:42 PM
-Transmute Rock To Lava on floor; if it doesn't burn 'em to death it'll trap 'em when the rock inevitably rehardens

-Net covered in razor blades

-Lots of one-way mirrors; enemies see you before you see them

Starbuck_II
2016-04-26, 05:01 PM
An encounter trap:
An example would be ochre jellies moving into dungeon full of swinging blade and spike traps, exploiting their immunity to move throughout the complex with impunity and even reproduce.

I like the Flour bomb trap in Keep on Shadowfell
CR 1 Flour bomb: Several bags of flour hung from ceiling by rope, interior of bags lined with wire connected to a ripcord and trip wire on ground. DC 15 Perception. Fills 40 ft of room. First two rounds, 20 % miss. 3rd and 4th round, 10% miss. Cloud gone at 5th round. Can be lit on fire. 1st and 2nd rd: deal 1d6 fire and set on fire. After that: just 1d4 fire.

Dead Bodies: all trapped. Couple dead bodies few days old (dead adventurers A, B,C). A chest lies in center. Three dead kobold skeletons sitting there as well.
A’s trap is Brand DC 11, DC 25/25 (carries 1d4 gp, studded leather). B’s trap is covered in contact poison (Violet Venom DC 13, onset 1 min for 6 min, Str/Con 1d2) DC 15 Perception (1d10 sp, studded leather, tower shield). C’s trap is Brand DC 11 (a **** symbol) DC 25/25 (padded, 1d20 copper).
Kobolds trapped: A’s trap DC 25/25 Drench, B/C’s Trap DC 25/25 Widened Lullaby DC 11 will 20 ft area. (all empty)
Chest is only thing not trapped.

Scourge of Howling Horde trap I liked:
The trap is on the first step behind the curtain inside this priests room. Instead of a door, he hung a curtain, if you just made a leap of faith, you avoided the trap. But otherwise, you'd walk on the trap. You can't really search for it unless you had you/someone hold the curtain really. Curtain blocks line of effect after all.

The trap itself was just a weak inflict light wound trap (he favored undead), but the idea behind the trap was cool.

Jay R
2016-04-26, 07:35 PM
Every once in a great while, I like to use the second trap. A chest is trapped. The rogue detects the trap, disarms it, and opens the chest.

But did she detect for traps on the inside of the chest? This is a great place for a poisoned needle, or a poisonous snake, hiding amongst the gold pieces.

goto124
2016-04-27, 08:44 AM
"Finally, after all the trap-searching, you open the chest. Inside, you see another, smaller chest. Which bares its teeth and jumps to bite you in the face. Make a Dex save."

N810
2016-04-27, 01:12 PM
You enter a room, it has some small openings near the ceiling and there are spikes on the ceiling and no visible exit.
after triggering a large floor pressure plate, the door slams shut and the room starts filling with sand from the openings near the ceiling,
you can pass a dex save on your turn to get on top of the sand and a strength test to pull another adventurer out of the sand, investigation
reveals a possible lever hidden in the ceiling spikes, finding the right one opens a door near the ceiling to the next room and stops the sand.

Bohandas
2016-04-28, 08:19 PM
What if the trap was an intelligent item? Intelligent items are underused.

Reltzik
2016-04-28, 08:35 PM
After you've thrown a few of these at your players, start mixing in a few phantom trap spells.

After they get wise to that, throw a phantom trap spell on something with an actual trap on it. "Okay, the rogue thinks it's trapped, but the wizard detects another illusion school spell on it..."

Bohandas
2016-06-23, 01:02 AM
*Torches, candles, etc flare up in bursts of flame wide enough to ignite the approaching character when approached or touched

*Animate objects spell trap on PCs' weapons

*Room is filled with a dense unbreathable gas, creatures under a certain height and/or who crouch down begin to suffocate

*Instead of a descending ceiling, how about a rising floor

*Trapdoor in the ceiling drops [unpleasant item; dung, rats, acid, corpses, etc] on PCs' heads

Jay R
2016-06-23, 01:09 PM
I love the idea of a sequence of traps whose purpose is to make the last one more deadly.

In Sourcery, one of the Discworld books, there's a sequence of traps protecting a treasure vault:
1. A "Kick Me" sign placed on your back, followed by a large boot on a lever.
2. An extended hand connected to an electrode.
3. A feather duster that extended at armpit height.
4. A bucket of white wash dumped on you.
5. The entire roof, a huge block of stone four feet thick, dropped on you, with words carved into it. "Laugh This One Off."

Cl0001
2016-06-23, 05:46 PM
A really long, straight hallway. Like, 100 feet of just hallway.

Every 25 feet, there are holes in the walls.

There are no traps. Watch your party crumble under the stress.

Enjoy.

Then as they walk down start rolling dice lol

Bohandas
2016-06-23, 05:55 PM
*Falling ceiling pushes characters through trapdoor or breakaway floor into pit. Possibly the pillar of stone that descends on them is tall enough that it fills the entire pit, forming a new floor.

*The floor doesn't just drop. The ceiling doesn;t just drop. The entire room drops

goto124
2016-06-24, 01:58 AM
I love the idea of a sequence of traps whose purpose is to make the last one more deadly.

In early OotS, the party was sprayed with BBQ sauce. In front of them was a pit filled with hungry monsters.

Jay R
2016-06-24, 07:18 AM
*Falling ceiling pushes characters through trapdoor or breakaway floor into pit. Possibly the pillar of stone that descends on them is tall enough that it fills the entire pit, forming a new floor.

*The floor doesn't just drop. The ceiling doesn't just drop. The entire room drops

I had a tunnel once with a wooden floor for 60 feet. But it wasn't attached; it just fit over the hole in the floor exactly. When the party was in the middle of it, the wood bent slightly, and fell through. Suddenly the party was in a lower tunnel, going downhill on a 60 foot long ski.

LadyFoxfire
2016-06-27, 12:00 AM
A pool of water, with either a mirror of life-trapping or a mirror of opposition in the bottom. Looking into the pool triggers the mirror.

Kami2awa
2016-07-04, 04:06 AM
Interesting one in the Slavelords module; a barrel with water from a leak in the ceiling dripping on it, creating a drumming sound that echoes through the tunnels around. Harmless if left alone, but the monsters have got used to the continuous drumming sound. If the party disturb the barrel, the sound will stop, alerting numerous enemies to the party's presence.

Jay R
2016-07-04, 12:00 PM
In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, they find a pool that transforms anything into gold. There is also a slow mind control element that makes people greedy. (It's a temptation in the book. In D&D, it would be mind control - a desire to not share this pool with the rest of party.)

snacksmoto
2016-07-05, 01:35 AM
Here's a misdirection pit trap.

In the corridors of a seemingly linear dungeon are pit traps covered by poorly disguised illusions. The pit walls, should the characters look inside, are very roughly hewn which has ample handholds and overhangs in which to climb. Most of these are simple pit traps, easily navigated around. Some may even have the skeleton of a careless adventurer. To give the adventurers a big hint, one of these pit traps has a magic mouth, on the side of the pit furthest away from the entrance, which is triggered by a creature that passes it in the corridor. It will whisper something along the lines of "go back...". By this time the adventurers should have come across many of these poorly disguised pit traps.

Beyond the magic mouth is effectively a dead end. Feel free to have it as large as you like, with as many rooms as you like but it shouldn't be too many. Feel free to fill it with critters and more poorly disguised pit traps. There should be the sense that they've missed something.

The way forward is "inside" the empty pit beside the magic mouth. On the pit wall opposite the magic mouth, about ten feet down, is an overhang that a character can stand on. The pit wall in front of the overhang is a seamless illusion of the rough hewn wall that they can walk through which leads further into the dungeon.

Beyond that pit there are more of these pit traps with poorly disguised illusions. It is likely that the characters will start poking their heads past the illusionary floors of the traps. Occasionally they'll find chunks of broken rock scattered on the pit floor. Inside one of these pits they might find the cozy nest for, say, a couple of basilisks.

Pugwampy
2016-07-05, 06:54 AM
Fat Angry Dire Rat in a treasure chest !!!



http://www.criver.com/CRL/media/Charles-River-Medias/20150122-RatInABox-236-169.jpg

Lemme at em !!!

Jay R
2016-07-05, 10:05 AM
Back in the seventies, I invented a trap. The center of a room in a dungeon is a ten foot high, six foot wide, jade pillar. A piece of Jade that big would of course be worth a huge amount.

As soon as anyone touches the pillar, all lights go out, and everyone swoons. (If you make your save, you recover instantly, but yes, your eyes shut for a brief moment.

When you can see again, the pillar has transformed into mere clay. Nothing else appears to have changed.

[Eventually, they will discover that in fact they were teleported one level down. The lower level is identical to the upper one except for the pillar - and of course they haven't killed any monsters on this level yet.]

Bohandas
2016-08-29, 10:57 PM
Has anybody mentioned a trap that casts stone to flesh on nearby "statues" that are actually dangerous petrified beasts?

Asmodean_
2016-08-31, 09:18 AM
tl;dr'd this thread, so not sure if it's been said, but: a pressure plate (or series of pressure plates) suspiciously close to arrow slits - in reality, the plates just open up the door to the next room and the slits are decorations.

The trap traps you into thinking it's a trap.

sorry jorm i stole your idea :3

Jormengand
2016-08-31, 10:04 AM
tl;dr'd this thread, so not sure if it's been said, but: a pressure plate (or series of pressure plates) suspiciously close to arrow slits - in reality, the plates just open up the door to the next room and the slits are decorations.

The trap traps you into thinking it's a trap.

sorry jorm i stole your idea :3

I posted a more advanced version of the same idea:


There's a hallway full of pressure plates, with arrow slits to the side of each of the pressure plates, and a door at the end. Stepping on each of the pressure plates in order will open the door; attempting to open the door using the handle will result in a trap being activated, possibly from the room being flooded through the arrow-slits (or poison gas through them?).

Braininthejar2
2016-08-31, 12:20 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vckik2id58

And now, with this out of the way, things I have seen in various stories:

1 The best bait is a door - even if they ignore anything else, adventurers will enter a room if there is another door on the other side.

2 A dungeon on a different plane that exploits the local gravity rules - it has a long corridor that becomes a long shaft half way through.

3 A large room filled with a number of 'reverse gravity' effects - aimed in various directions. The locals know the right way, but someone who tries to just walk (or fly) through will be smashed all around the room before landing on a wall in a broken heap.

3a - this could even be a plot point - a reculsive wizard/oracle hides his home inside a local magical anomaly - those who want to visit need to approach one at a time, and make a leap of faith - trusting him to guide them with his illusions rather than relying on their own senses.

4 A stairway leading to the underside of a large pond. No trap to detect, just a slightly cool and very solid door, with a lot of water behind it.

5 A tiny, but very tall room filled with acid, hidden behind a false door, which seem permanently shut. No trigger beyond gravity - trying to break the door equals piercing a very large container near the bottom.

6 A classic Conan example - a table that is a giant magnet, with an illusion of a monster suddenly appearing on top. Once the hero's sword gets stuck, a wrestler guard enters the room.

7 A magic mirror, with either a sinister reflection of the hero, or a panicked victim trapped inside. Trying to break the mirror reveals it to be an illusion - instead there's a gelatinous cube embedded in the wall.

8 A bear trap - drops an angry bear through the ceiling (auto-resetting with a modified horn of Valhalla)

9 undead and stinking cloud go great together.

10 an earth elemental sentry gliding through walls, ready to intercept any tunnelling smartasses.

11 a flooded tunnel (locals can swim) - wall of dispel magic set in murky water half way through.

12 slits in the walls that are actually eye slits - the trigger to the actual trap is operated manually by a skeleton buried in the wall.

13 a door with a shrieker mushroom behind it - the locals know not to open the door all the way when they walk in. It alerts the whole dungeon, scares the crap out of whoever activates it, and it's so simple even low level monsters can do it.

stewstew5
2016-09-01, 11:25 AM
Any ideas for magic tricks in dungeons? I'm looking for the kind you would find in Goblins

Doorhandle
2016-09-02, 07:12 PM
Not so much a trick as a secret area, but:
A fountain that has what looks like a tiny castle in the middle of it, and a miniature boat. Anyone who drinks the water of the fountain is shrunk. Assuming they can make it to the boat or find other methods of transport, they can enter the castle after being shrunk and find a new dungeon there.

One from Dungeon Menshi: The souls of the dead cannot escape from within the dungeon. This means that resurrection spells are a lot simpler and cheaper to cast, but it also means that the restless dead are abundant; the wretched souls who were;t found quickly enough to save, and have now been denied their afterlife.

The dungeon is made ff a jello-like substance, turning it into a medieval bouncy castle

Dr paradox
2016-09-03, 05:04 AM
My issue with traps are two-fold.

First, it's often hard to figure out a trap that's sensible for... anywhere. In tombs it makes more sense to just seal every wing with a 40 ton granite slab for security. In treasure vaults, it sometimes raises questions about how people are supposed to get their crap out of the vault.

Second, traps are often so binary. An effective trap sucks in gameplay terms. It's either a ton of damage that you take based on whether you happened to prepare detect magic, a trivial amount of damage that may as well have not happened, or something you detected, in which case it feels like wasted effort by the DM. If that all makes sense. It's easy to make a trap that can kill players, it's much harder to make a trap that's fun to play.

I came up with two that I was satisfied with. First was a room in the atrium of a tomb, with a set of four big statues in the center facing outward. Once they step on a pressure plate, portcullises drop over the doors and the statues start spraying fire. Each round, only one statue will spray fire, and it's up to them to spot the pattern, try to disarm the trap before it toasts them, or lift the portcullises to escape.

Second was a series of vault doors with four locks that needed to be turned simultaneously. Trying to turn any of them without turning all the others results in a gout of acid to start spraying from the seams of the door and a fire-bell to ring, which attracts monsters. A second lock is revealed, too big and heavy to be picked conventionally, the idea being that the security officer had an oversized key on a pole the he could use without getting sprayed with acid.

Does anyone have examples of traps that are not just smart, but fun to play?

SorenKnight
2016-09-03, 06:52 AM
I had a dungeon where each individual room was a different demiplane, which led to some interesting traps.

Most rooms had the minor negative energy dominant trait, healing the undead guardians and damaging the PCs every round.

There was also a two hundred foot long hallway with a fragile door at the end. The hallway had gravity at ninety degrees to the rest of the dungeon and the dead magic trait, meaning anyone who walked into it was hurled down it and through the doors, taking 20d6 falling damage in the process. The room past the door had normal gravity and magic, but it also had a dozen bodaks chained to the walls, virtually ensuring death by negative level to anyone who fell.

Mister Tom
2016-09-03, 08:32 AM
Why not leave a 90% correct map of the dungeon tucked into the haversack of a decaying corpse? Needless to say, the 10% incorrect bit refers to where all the lethal traps are.

Bohandas
2016-09-03, 10:24 AM
My issue with traps are two-fold.

First, it's often hard to figure out a trap that's sensible for... anywhere. In tombs it makes more sense to just seal every wing with a 40 ton granite slab for security. In treasure vaults, it sometimes raises questions about how people are supposed to get their crap out of the vault.

Well with a high-end vault and poison based traps everything could be carried between the entrance and the vault proper by golems who are immune to the sarin and sulfur mustard spraying everywhere.

Alternately there would have to be a disarm mechanism somewhere.

Bohandas
2016-09-04, 11:09 AM
The chamber is really a frozen lake and he "floor" is thin ice painted to look like a floor

Kitten Champion
2016-09-05, 06:54 AM
I rarely use traps - but I prefer non-deadly ones that anyone can be solved if you're astute. Simple ones like little sprites that appear out of the walls and start making noise which raises its volume incrementally into a shrill alarm - attracting attention to its location at first but becoming sufficiently powerful to incapacitate the listener in the end - that can be avoided by humming/whistling it's auditory pattern back to it. Under the assumption that anyone going through it legitimately would be unconcerned with stealth.

Another one was a dungeon composed of sand - something like the one from Aladdin - that would reconfigure itself as soon as the last grain in the giant hourglass at the entrance fell. As I didn't want to crush my players, the massive movement of shifting sand within the maze was something they could avoid if the were able to find an empty space in the new configuration quickly enough. I also brought an actual hourglass to the game and left it on the table to, ya'know... work into the gimmick as a real-time thing. That and we had a deal with our limited play-time that week. If, at the beginning, they'd put something with sufficient durability into the mechanism in order to retard the hourglass' progress, it would have bought them X amount of extra time relative to the blockage. Though destroying the hourglass would've collapsed every tunnel in the place entirely until it would magically restore itself at a later time. Basically it's about working quickly and taking risks - for my risks-adverse players this is an issue - to resolve the labyrinth without merely being lucky.

Speaking of time, another one I liked was a device that created an area of slowed time-space in escalating degrees depending on your proximity to it. It's a trap you could literally walk to and simply shut off or break assuming you notice what's going on, but you'll have just spent over a day in pseudo-stasis relative to the outside world to actually get to it. As the dilation is a gradual thing its difficult to perceive, by throwing an object from a significant distance and seeing it slow into near motionlessness nearer to the device's radius or following the guards who would know the pattern in which the devices are activated in the dungeon, you can get around them somewhat. Though you'll still probably lose quite a few extra minutes in the process.

We also re-purposed the idea from Legend of Zelda wherein there's a trap that turns PCs into two-dimensional beings. If a character is hit with a photo-like flash from this trap (which resemble the Pokemon Magnemite by way of a traffic light), they're relegated to being moving photo-realistic drawings on a wall. They can move along the surface area of the dungeon freely but can only regain full 3-dimensions by existing on a some other type of substance - the surefire method is to simply vacate the dungeon entirely - but they could also use a clean surface such as cloth, paper, or clear water of sufficient area to fit one's body through. There are, of course, monsters in the 2-D wall world - you can see them as odd art throughout the dungeon - including a rather nasty one drawn onto the floor near the exit. You can defeat the trap itself most efficiently by reflecting its flash back at it.

Those are the ones I can remember at least.

Jay R
2016-09-06, 09:58 AM
Why not leave a 90% correct map of the dungeon tucked into the haversack of a decaying corpse? Needless to say, the 10% incorrect bit refers to where all the lethal traps are.

That's half of it. The other half is to mark deadly traps where the treasure vault really is.

JAL_1138
2016-09-06, 10:38 AM
That's half of it. The other half is to mark deadly traps where the treasure vault really is.

Or a section marked "vault" that's filled with horrible deadly traps, while the treasure vault is actually located in a section marked something completely innocuous like "dry goods storage" or "cistern" on the map. (And is also filled with unmarked horrible deadly traps--anybody important enough to enter the vault should memorize where the traps are.)

MrStabby
2016-09-06, 11:29 AM
My issue with traps are two-fold.

First, it's often hard to figure out a trap that's sensible for... anywhere. In tombs it makes more sense to just seal every wing with a 40 ton granite slab for security. In treasure vaults, it sometimes raises questions about how people are supposed to get their crap out of the vault.

Second, traps are often so binary. An effective trap sucks in gameplay terms. It's either a ton of damage that you take based on whether you happened to prepare detect magic, a trivial amount of damage that may as well have not happened, or something you detected, in which case it feels like wasted effort by the DM. If that all makes sense. It's easy to make a trap that can kill players, it's much harder to make a trap that's fun to play.

I came up with two that I was satisfied with. First was a room in the atrium of a tomb, with a set of four big statues in the center facing outward. Once they step on a pressure plate, portcullises drop over the doors and the statues start spraying fire. Each round, only one statue will spray fire, and it's up to them to spot the pattern, try to disarm the trap before it toasts them, or lift the portcullises to escape.

Second was a series of vault doors with four locks that needed to be turned simultaneously. Trying to turn any of them without turning all the others results in a gout of acid to start spraying from the seams of the door and a fire-bell to ring, which attracts monsters. A second lock is revealed, too big and heavy to be picked conventionally, the idea being that the security officer had an oversized key on a pole the he could use without getting sprayed with acid.

Does anyone have examples of traps that are not just smart, but fun to play?

I am a big fan of tactical traps - ones intended to contribute to another encounter, not to be an encounter themselves.

Something as simple as archers behind a tripwire can work wonders. Some gylph spells to protect a wizard's flank can be fun and thematic.

Basically if movement or positioning is important then things that hinder it or provide a risk to it can be good. If HP are important then direct damage traps can be effective.

I agree that traps without pressure have to be massive to be significant; and therefore are not always going to be fun.

I think my favourite was a fireball trap. It was set as both a simple trap and a more pernicious trap. It was in a library and so the trigger put the library up in flames. A fire spreads, cutting off exits, filling rooms with choking smoke, hiding enemies and other hazards and putting the PCs on a clock to get out before they are burned to death.

JAL_1138
2016-09-06, 12:49 PM
I'm quite fond of a lot of the trap design in the Tomb of Horrors. It's infamous, yes, and for a reason, but a lot of the traps aren't the "roll to detect a trap, then roll to disarm" variety; they require a bit of roleplay--but at the same time aren't fiendishly complicated puzzles. And they give warnings. You start to feel yourself getting sleepy, or you start to feel the floor move, or you hear a rumbling sound, and you have time to dodge out of the way or step back, if you're sufficiently wary/paranoid to realize "hey, that's a bad sign" and amscray before something smashes you.

Edit:
And also, because this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hqQgvIBBM0Q/Vqu1OmdousI/AAAAAAAAEJw/eLAyzs0k2tg/s1600/Juggernaut%2BTrap.jpg

Because why just kill your PCs when you can kill them with something completely absurd.

Jay R
2016-09-06, 04:11 PM
Or a section marked "vault" that's filled with horrible deadly traps, while the treasure vault is actually located in a section marked something completely innocuous like "dry goods storage" or "cistern" on the map. (And is also filled with unmarked horrible deadly traps--anybody important enough to enter the vault should memorize where the traps are.)

A truly subtle DM marks increasing lethal traps as "Trap 1", "Trap 2", "Trap 3", and "Trap 4", and marks the treasure vault as "Trap 5".