Helping PCs choose their own death

[Winds of Nagual]

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am looking into a one night adventure inspired by 'Cabin in the Woods.' Specifically, the PCs are trapped in a fortress and are drawn to choose an artifact that brings about their own demise. Looking for suggestions! I'll get the ball rolling

A snow globe that once shaken causes temps to drop in the fortress by 1 degree per five minutes

Kindeling the brazier causes temps to go up by 1 degree per five minutes

A candle that one lit causes other candles throughout the fortress to light - the unstable light hides shadows and shadowy creatures

A symbol on the floor that if altered releases it's inhabitant - an invisible stalker (or a different permanent invisible thing)

Sure - there are also the standards, a passage gets read, monsters show up - a toy soldier causes a death knight to stalk them, etc - but what do we have for creativity in the community?

Cheers!

[remetagross]

A magnifying lens they look through makes them shrink by one size category, but they don't stop to Fine size : they shrink up to be as small as dust particles. They end up carried away by the air and sucked into the hearth's fire.

If they look the other way round, they grow bigger and bigger until they get crushed by the ceiling and the walls.

A fan they flap makes the air thinner and thinner. The lack of oxygen slowly drives them hilarious, them blind, then mad, then unconscious, then dead.

A weighing scale they unbalance reverses gravity. As blood flows to their heads, they slowly fall unconscious.

An exchequer they play with turns the floor into giants exchequer tiles, and decorative armors all around the place animate and position themselves as exchequer pieces; just like in Harry Potter.

[Thealtruistorc]

A record player that grants bardic music to all monsters in the dungeon

A painting that a creature can teleport through

A handkerchief that transfers a random disease to you upon touching it

A tapestry that shows how the heroes will die, imposing a penalty on all saving throws

A sextant that secret signals outer entities to approach the PCs

A bucket of water that spills infinitely when tipped over, flooding the area

A fireplace which animates itself into a golem, using the tools as claws and the fire itself as a mouth

[Calthropstu]

An elevator that, when you pull the pulley, actually drops a large boulder. "It's not moving. It seems stuck..."

A giant "statue" of some giant beast with a door into the stomach. The area it opens into is dark and smells... weird. The door closes (and locks) behind them and they find they are in an actual stomach. The statue is actually a stone crusted monster with a door that opens into its stomach kept alive and well with special magic... and it is now digesting them. The lure? something behind the stone radiates as magic.

A programmed illusion of 5 minutes in length, tries to convince the party that they shouldn't go into a room. That the room has no valuable treasure. They open the door, and behold an immense (illusionary) treasure. Except one of the chests. Which is a mimic.

There are two paintings at a dead end. Each has a button. One is a drab painting of low quality depicting a farm. The other a quasi realistic painting of a dragon that is virtually leaping out of the painting. Both buttons drop a 5 foot thick rock wall behind them. It is really a dead end.

[Winds of Nagual]

That's what I'm talking about! Thanks much

[Jay R]

I am looking into a one night adventure inspired by 'Cabin in the Woods.'

Somehow, I first processed this as "Little House in the Big Woods." Needless to say, I was confused for a bit.

[Telonius]

A picture of an old man sleeping peacefully. The character immediately dies of old age.

A plate with several marshmallows. Any character that sees (or smells, or otherwise perceives) the marshmallows must make a Will save to avoid thinking about them. If they fail, they are affected as though by a Phantasmal Killer spell and die immediately.

[DirePorkChop]

A delicious smelling soup pot that causes anyone who fails a will save to eat and eat and eat until their innards burst from pressure.

There is a strange monochromatic room that contains nothing but a candle on the floor and a simple box of the same color in the center. Opening it releases the 13 shadows bound in the box flood out. After 3 rounds, a timed gust of wind trap blows out the candle.

In the basement, there is a massively long tunnel that has very limited red light that throbs like a heartbeat. They pass a certain point in the basement, and their heartbeat starts to speed up gradually, until the lighting and their heart reach a fever pitch. Fort or die.

A cursed doll is always a nightmarish thing. Perhaps there is a completely non-descript ragdoll with no features, but a random player sees the doll as themselves. They watch the doll pull out a needle, and slowly slip it into it's own throat as their throat slowly begins to close. The character suffocates as per the rules, but the others do not know what is wrong with him.

A large banquet laid out for everyone. The food is real, and fresh. The issue is that one of the chairs is a trap that activates when someone picks up their goblet of mulled wine. They fall down a chute that leads 100' down. They hit something (lever) on the way down, and release a boulder that seals them into their AMF enveloped death-pit.