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HamsterKun
2019-04-30, 09:05 AM
I need help making a schmuck bait for a dungeon in my campaign. You know, the trap that’s left in plain sight, but is hard to resist. I want to have one as a setup to an ambush.

Segev
2019-04-30, 09:31 AM
I think we'll need more detail about the dungeon, the ambushers, and the like to really help. Are these kobolds in a jungle? Fremen in a desert? Half-elven bandits lurking in the corners of their lair after being followed back to it by adventurers avenging a caravan they've robbed? Goblin wererats in a musty sewer?

The most generic schmuck bait is anything valuable - a chest of coins, a bejeweled chalice, a glowing sword or other weapon - sitting on a plinth in the middle of a pit, with a rickety bridge or similar leading up to it. Or just sitting amidst out-of-place straw strewn over the floor in a 20 ft. radius around it (poorly concealing a pit trap).

Making the "treasure" a mimic would let the ambushers trap any schmucks who get to the treasure in that precarious, open position.

If you're in a medieval castle-like dungeon, you can make it less obvious but still pretty suspicious by having the whole dungeon use strewn rushes as the standard flooring, but this room has, beneath the rushes, a honeycomb of pits and narrow paths. Works especially well if the dwellers have tremorsense, so they can feel where the pits are when walking. The chest or other loot is in the middle of this large room, and ambushers can traipse all over the floor because they know where to stand safely, while anybody who doesn't will fall through into the pit traps when they step on the wrong rushes.

Telok
2019-04-30, 11:17 AM
A lever with a sign saying "Trap lever, do not pull".

It worked with my players.

HamsterKun
2019-04-30, 11:40 AM
Making the "treasure" a mimic would let the ambushers trap any schmucks who get to the treasure in that precarious, open position.

What I thought of is where there’s a lever that says “DO NOT PULL THIS SWITCH” in Draconic. Pulling the switch drops a treasure chest, which everyone fears is a trap, but ultimately isn’t.

...Only for a gelatinous cube to ambush the group.

Resileaf
2019-04-30, 12:10 PM
What I thought of is where there’s a lever that says “DO NOT PULL THIS SWITCH” in Draconic. Pulling the switch drops a treasure chest, which everyone fears is a trap, but ultimately isn’t.

...Only for a gelatinous cube to ambush the group.

Have the gelatinous cube drop in thirty seconds or a minute after the lever is first pulled. The players will probably wait a couple of rounds when the treasure drops to see if there's something up with it, while the rogue checks the chest for traps, at which point they'll probably lower their guard and start searching the chest for valuables, and then the cube lands on top of them.

Keltest
2019-04-30, 02:06 PM
Just have a big red button with a skull on it in the middle of the room with nothing else. It doesn't actually do anything in this room, but it arms a whole bunch of other traps in the next room, and re-arms anything they already triggered or disabled that could plausibly be rearmed by it.

Segev
2019-04-30, 03:10 PM
Just have a big red button with a skull on it in the middle of the room with nothing else. It doesn't actually do anything in this room, but it arms a whole bunch of other traps in the next room, and re-arms anything they already triggered or disabled that could plausibly be rearmed by it.

Better still, make it a big red wheel with spokes that has to be turned manually and with great effort. The mechanisms don't have a magically-refilling power source: you have to provide the elbow-grease yourself by turning the wheel to reset/arm them all. A satisfying set of clicks and clanks occur as you turn it, terminating with a definitive and resounding clunk when it is done.

HamsterKun
2019-04-30, 04:25 PM
Have the gelatinous cube drop in thirty seconds or a minute after the lever is first pulled. The players will probably wait a couple of rounds when the treasure drops to see if there's something up with it, while the rogue checks the chest for traps, at which point they'll probably lower their guard and start searching the chest for valuables, and then the cube lands on top of them.

“Um...guys...?”
“Hey, watchya waiting for?”
“If that thing can squeeze through that hole in the ceiling, ...let alone that door.”
“...Uh-oh...”

Man_Over_Game
2019-04-30, 05:12 PM
Two large, wooden signs next to each other on a red rug. The area is well lit by the various torches in the room.

One says: "That sign is a mimic".
The other says: "Nuh uh! He is!"

They're both signs. The rug underneath them is a mimic.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-04-30, 06:41 PM
I got my party once (nearly, stupid mage hand legerdemain) with a obvious, poorly guarded vault door. Behind it, a wall with the words "I prepared explosive runes" written on it.

King of Nowhere
2019-04-30, 07:13 PM
there is an obscure artifact in the shape of a crown; if you put it on someone else, you dominate person on them. if you put it on yourself, you die and the artifact is destroied.

we got that crown without an instruction manual. guess what we tried to do to figure out what it does?

jjordan
2019-04-30, 09:55 PM
Sword in a stone?

HamsterKun
2019-04-30, 10:25 PM
sword in a stone?

(insert relevant soul eater reference here)

Xuc Xac
2019-04-30, 10:41 PM
Lou Zocchi once told me about a trap that might fit. There's a lit wall sconce with a sign next to it that says "Whoever touches the lamp dies". That's it.

Touch it? Dead.
Poke it with a stick? Dead.
Hit it with your sword? Dead.

There's no trick to it. There's nothing to figure out. It's not solvable. Just leave it alone because you die if you mess with it.

That stupid thing has a huge pile of corpses in front of it.

Zhorn
2019-04-30, 10:45 PM
A room at the end of a hallway, with the entrance being the only way in or out. Inscriptions of various languages are etched into the walls all around the room, all saying the same thing.

"Overthink"

The room doesn't do anything. It's just a dead end. See how long it takes your players to give up of trying to find the room's 'trick' or secret answer.

If their in there long enough, it can be used as the site for a wandering encounter, but otherwise the room has NOTHING.

Kaptin Keen
2019-05-01, 01:19 AM
Sword in a stone?

My players were once searching for a particular sword - had been asking all the sages and all the tavern keepers. So at one point, in some random cave, they turn a corner and enter a large chamber.

In this chamber, a marble pedestal sits right in the center, and suspended above it is a sword matching the description they've given - in a ray of brilliant light from on high. There might have been a chorus of angels too.

It triggered ready actions and perception checks all around the table, I'm happy to say =)

DrKerosene
2019-05-02, 02:48 PM
The magic items dropped by the bad guys were cursed and did not harm undead (the dominant enemy type).

Multiple different PCs in a row on the same dungeon level promptly picked-up magic items that were just dropped when a mini-boss died. Paralysis curses, effectively.

The Kool
2019-05-02, 02:55 PM
Oh I just remembered one. Has to be my friend who ran a session for his group, and they encountered a 'discount magic item merchant'. They checked out a few things, picked out what they liked... then killed the guy and stole everything. Only things is, as you probably guessed, there was a reason said items were on discount. Every single one was cursed, some dramatically. The DM expected they'd buy one or two, so he had some variety prepared, but noooooo, they had to be murderhobos. Serves them right I guess.

Telonius
2019-05-02, 02:58 PM
https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/7/71/TombOfHorrors_icecream.jpg/300px-TombOfHorrors_icecream.jpg


A plain table; on the table is a clearly-labeled Deck of Many Things.

Henro
2019-05-02, 03:27 PM
A cavern full of cursed rubies, who haunt anyone who remove them until they bring them back to the cavern.

Galithar
2019-05-02, 05:37 PM
https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/7/71/TombOfHorrors_icecream.jpg/300px-TombOfHorrors_icecream.jpg


A plain table; on the table is a clearly-labeled Deck of Many Things.

To top it off it's a partial deck and almost all of the benign cards have been drawn!

JNAProductions
2019-05-02, 08:03 PM
Lou Zocchi once told me about a trap that might fit. There's a lit wall sconce with a sign next to it that says "Whoever touches the lamp dies". That's it.

Touch it? Dead.
Poke it with a stick? Dead.
Hit it with your sword? Dead.

There's no trick to it. There's nothing to figure out. It's not solvable. Just leave it alone because you die if you mess with it.

That stupid thing has a huge pile of corpses in front of it.

Chisel it out from the wall, use telekinesis to throw it at your enemies.

Xuc Xac
2019-05-02, 10:00 PM
Chisel it out from the wall, use telekinesis to throw it at your enemies.

You die! See how effective it is?

Phhase
2019-05-02, 11:56 PM
I pulled off a good one on my players. There was a camp of goblins who planted cursed swords in the ground outside the camp. The swords were glowy and screamed very loudly when removed from the earth. Perfect sentries for detecting greedy adventurers.

Kane0
2019-05-03, 01:47 AM
Piranha pool
Room marked ‘fungus garden’
Rust monster pen
Anything with instructions written in slaadi
Lever marked ‘gravity inverter’
Button marked ‘incinerator’ or ‘call janitor’
Magic mouth that plays simon says

Avista
2019-05-03, 04:48 AM
A free resurrection scroll in a pit of death. Be creative with what's in that pit of death.

Lord Raziere
2019-05-03, 05:45 AM
A weapon thats looks like a shiny legendary version of whatever is the favorite weapon of the beholder, and of course its appearance is an illusion. whoever holds it is enchanted to become increasingly paranoid that other people want it and try to kill others to prevent them from taking it.

A sign saying "THERE ARE NO MIMICS HERE" it is completely true. next to it is a treasure chest.

Label all the safe passages in the dungeon "COMPLETELY SAFE" in red letters and only put in traps for the paths that aren't labeled as such. Again, its completely truthful and actually has an internal logic to it make sure the dungeons minions don't die because they live there, but adventurers being paranoid as they are...
though if you want more plausibility to it, make sure you put it in a language that most wouldn't understand like goblin so that if you didn't know the language, the label would be useless, but give them checks to see if they translate it correctly. though if you really want to mess with heads, label them both differently and truthfully but give them checks to see if they translate them both correctly or not. with the red, it even messes up the usual logic of posting up a warning sign, because we're taught a certain logic of red meaning danger and signs as telling not to go places, so its a reversal of how we naturally think.

Make a statue that spews out an endless number of riddles for you to solve- but instead of opening a door, its at a dead end, and it doesn't do anything. its just for entertainment.

A statue that pulls out a magic item holds it out and says "here have this" while smiling. just straight up trying to give it to you. the magic item is cursed.

Segev
2019-05-03, 10:53 AM
A dragon, sleeping so soundly he's drooling out of his half-open maw, has a very valuable-looking gem-encrusted golden tooth near the back of said maw.

Lord Torath
2019-05-03, 11:34 AM
A dragon, sleeping so soundly he's drooling out of his half-open maw, has a very valuable-looking gem-encrusted golden tooth near the back of said maw.Can you say "Coup-de-grace"? Gonna need some additional elements to make it true Shmuck Bait.

A bright, red, threatening button labeled "self destruct" in multiple languages.

Segev
2019-05-03, 01:30 PM
Can you say "Coup-de-grace"? Gonna need some additional elements to make it true Shmuck Bait.

A bright, red, threatening button labeled "self destruct" in multiple languages.

Good luck, good sir! Coup de Grace is not a guaranteed kill.

Lord Torath
2019-05-03, 01:47 PM
Good luck, good sir! Coup de Grace is not a guaranteed kill.Ah. I'm not up on my 3.0 and later rulesets. Carry on!

Lord Raziere
2019-05-03, 04:28 PM
A button labeled "BUTTON TEMPORARILY DESTROYS REALITY. DO NOT PUSH." If they push it, reality is temporarily destroyed for a few seconds then pops back into existence again as if nothing happened. Only the pusher remembers the few moments the entirety of reality ending in a blaze of painful light then eternity of nothingness that followed before reality comes back, and thus rolls for sanity loss at knowing that they are all just copies of the previous reality that existed. If pressed again by a different person, all previous pressers of the button remember the newest press of the button and roll for sanity loss again. on the bright side, your now immune to all forms of memory erasing magic!

redwizard007
2019-05-03, 08:15 PM
Animated talking cave opening in the shape of a tiger's head. Eventually, the tunnel leads to a pool of lava with stepping stones to a magic lamp. If you rub the lamp, your hand gets dirty.

TeChameleon
2019-05-04, 01:31 AM
One I remember from these very boards a while back was an empty room that slams shut and locks once the players enter. The only things in the room are a large red button and a set of numbers counting down. Pressing the button resets the countdown. If the countdown reaches zero, the door unlocks.

I'd be curious to see if anybody managed to trigger a starvation-caused TPK with that :smallamused:

Other ways to mess with the players' heads... hmm.

* A cheerful, helpful humanoid of indeterminate species in the heart of a dungeon. S/he is entirely pleasant, polite, truthful and totally forthcoming to the very limits of their knowledge, but any attempts at using any kind of magic (arcane, divine or psionics) or even skill checks to determine their veracity come back basically 'answer unclear, try again later'. Oh, and any attempts to harm them rebounds on the user, exactly as if they had been the original target of the attack or whatever.

See how long it takes for the party to kill themselves out of sheer paranoia.

* The lair of Jyln Furfoot the Dickish. Jyln Furfoot was a halfling illusionist with a twisted sense of humour and some serious problems with bitterness. His lair features such delights as the inverted room- a room full of pit traps covered by illusions of solid floor, and solid floor covered by illusions of pit traps... along with illusions of pit traps over a paper-thin false floor over a pit trap and illusions of a solid floor over a solid glass floor above an apparent pit trap.

Or the fountain full of gold coins. The fountain is a mimic, the coins are a swarm of tiny disc-shaped golems, and the water is a water weird.

And the Jelly Sandwich traps- some stretches of hallway have a trapdoor that drops players into a trapped gelatinous cube. Once that trapdoor is triggered, one in the ceiling also opens, dropping a second cube on top of them (if the players survive and investigate the trap, they'd find that there were magical means feeding the trapped cubes, and a teleport trap that would zap the upper cube back into its ceiling cubby... which the players might find by accident with one of their number getting trapped up there).

The Maze Maze- a labyrinth with a bunch of traps that cast Maze on players that blunder in... the twist being that the casting of Maze drops the trap-ee into a maze that looks exactly like the maze on the material plane. Also, there are illusion traps that drop PCs into yet another visually-identical maze.

The Mirror Mess- a mirror maze full of illusions, dimension doors, doppelgangers, and various other portals.

DrKerosene
2019-05-06, 12:43 AM
(Snip)
Pressing the button resets the countdown. If the countdown reaches zero, the door unlocks.

I'd be curious to see if anybody managed to trigger a starvation-caused TPK with that :smallamused:

(Snip)

The Maze Maze- a labyrinth with a bunch of traps that cast Maze on players that blunder in... the twist being that the casting of Maze drops the trap-ee into a maze that looks exactly like the maze on the material plane. Also, there are illusion traps that drop PCs into yet another visually-identical maze..

I feel the first thing could be solved narratively by a Player saying their PC gives up from fatigue/exhaustion/despair, or simply falling asleep despite standing up, before starving to death would occur.

For the Maze-Maze, you should also have some Imprisonment spells included, if you wanted to be really cruel.

Frozen_Feet
2019-05-06, 03:42 AM
The cave of semantic ambiguity: a dungeon with a big sign outside reading "words inside this cave do not mean what you think they mean."

The first room inside is circular and has a pool in the middle, with text around it: "whoever drinks shall have the body of a god".

So, whoever drinks anything, from anything at all, after reading that text, shall immediately gain the body shape and body hair of Thor... from the Marvel's Avengers: Endgame movie. (Or any other deity with suitably humorous traits.)

hamishspence
2019-05-06, 03:50 AM
Or one of the Corpses of Dead Gods on the Astral plane suddenly gains a sign saying "Property of (the protagonist)" on it.

So - now you own "the body of a god" - but it's fairly useless.

Frozen_Feet
2019-05-06, 03:52 AM
Or the body of a god drops on you, crushing everyone around it. I'd make a whole random table out of all possible meanings I could think if I had the time.

OracleofWuffing
2019-05-06, 04:06 AM
A disposable minion crudely disguised as an innocent, tied to train tracks/to a log flume and saw setup/chained over a vat of acid. Could also just be a sack of straw instead of a live minion.

A trail of [low-value currency units]/candy leading to a crate that is held up by a stick tied to a string. The crate is much too small to capture anyone in the party.

Low-level, easy to detect as an illusion, illusion of a bottomless pit that separates a room. The illusion is covering a real pit of quicksand that separates the room.

Big bull's eye on the floor surrounded by 4 torches, 3 of which are unlit.

Keltest
2019-05-06, 07:21 AM
A bottle, sitting on a table, labeled "drink me". Its a shrinking potion, because what did they expect?

Segev
2019-05-06, 10:25 AM
The cave of semantic ambiguity: a dungeon with a big sign outside reading "words inside this cave do not mean what you think they mean."

The first room inside is circular and has a pool in the middle, with text around it: "whoever drinks shall have the body of a god".

So, whoever drinks anything, from anything at all, after reading that text, shall immediately gain the body shape and body hair of Thor... from the Marvel's Avengers: Endgame movie. (Or any other deity with suitably humorous traits.)

I know it's been out for a couple weeks, now, but still, that's a bit of a spoiler for a moment in Endgame. You might want to spoiler-tag it.

Aotrs Commander
2019-05-06, 12:24 PM
I literally had an empty room which had a lever marked "do not pull" in the campaign's common tongue.


13g The trap is this room is designed for dealing with the terminally stupid and/or curious. The room is empty, except for a simple lever in the floor. It is marked “Do Not Pull” in Vandorese. If the lever is ignored, the room is perfectly safe. If someone is so daft as to pull the lever, immediately portcullises drop over both doors (requiring bend bars/lift gates to move), and the north and south walls begin to roll inwards, at rate of 1’ round. If the anyone is left when the walls reach each other, they will be crushed flat. After which, the walls will recede.

Award 200XP for escaping the trap, and 400 for not setting it off the in first place.




One I ran into myself once was a room in which there was a single word inscribed in the tomb - if you spoke the word, it completed a summon spell. Which one of our palyers did, and bang, close to a TPK only averted because the thing couldn't leave the room and the cleric, I think finally managed to out it down with sling bullets before we all bled out (as it was a "save or be paralysed while it hits you" sort of monster0.

I then used it myslef as DM one quest, and then set up a second, slightly different trap for the party which activated the summoning if you DIDN'T say the word (or, optionally, if the PCs were too stupid to remember or thought they were being clever...)

Spore
2019-05-07, 05:19 AM
I love curses. I love cursing, I love magical curses, I just hecking do.

Have an immensely useful magical artifact lay on a pedestal, with the warning words written in at LEAST three common ancient languages (Celestial, Draconic and Elven would be my choices):

"Beware ye who take the [insert magical item] for it is cursed and not easily wielded. Take it up with caution for its magic does not leave you by simply discarding it."

Picking it up immediately attunes the toucher to it. It also sets up a group of spectral ambushers who constantly know where you are but are too weak to directly attack you. They just jump out on the next close encounter you have. Basically a "you thought you won that combat pretty closely? guess what!" Bonus points if you as DM can point out where the cursed magic item saved your asses.

Pauly
2019-05-07, 08:08 AM
In twhe center of the room is a near naked human (or elf) tied to a frame. She has been very badly treated looks near death. When she sees the party she asks for help weakly.

If the party fiddle faddle about with detect illusion, scouting for traps etc. she dies before the party can assist her. She was the favored paladin of [insert diety]. Said diety manifests him or herself in front of the party and demands to know why they didn’t help the paladin. Since the diety is a good diety they won’t outright murder the party but they do get super creative with an appropriate punishment.

If the party helps her she can provide assistance in the form of information as to progress in the dungeon and her diety gives the party a blessing that helps them for the remainder of the dungeon.

Segev
2019-05-07, 08:40 AM
In twhe center of the room is a near naked human (or elf) tied to a frame. She has been very badly treated looks near death. When she sees the party she asks for help weakly.

If the party fiddle faddle about with detect illusion, scouting for traps etc. she dies before the party can assist her. She was the favored paladin of [insert diety]. Said diety manifests him or herself in front of the party and demands to know why they didn’t help the paladin. Since the diety is a good diety they won’t outright murder the party but they do get super creative with an appropriate punishment.

If the party helps her she can provide assistance in the form of information as to progress in the dungeon and her diety gives the party a blessing that helps them for the remainder of the dungeon.

The deity appearing and remonstrating them is heavy handed and feels hypocritical. Why didn’t the deity help her if he has the time to show up to criticize them for not doing so?

ExplodingRat
2019-05-07, 11:52 PM
Simple.
First, you make a single room with no features except a potted plant in the middle of it. That's all it is, a perfectly normal potted plant. Either your players will go crazy trying to figure out what's up with the room, or they don't care and move on. Regardless, after this you're going to need to keep on making rooms just like this, except from now on each room is some sort of intricate deathtrap that either kills or seriously maims whoever goes in there and activates it. Wait at least a dozen rooms or so before reusing any previous rooms, and do so sparingly. An exception to this is the original, perfectly normal room, which you're going to want to occasionally throw in there just to mess with them.

Malphegor
2019-05-08, 03:19 AM
Any prominent text in the room in a common language. Seriously, I used to think Sepia Snake Sigil was a dumb spell until I realised that normal psychology means that players want to find out what things read, and any adventurer probably wouldn't think much of 'Io starts with a J in the Agatean alphabet!" situations where they have to read strange inscriptions.

You get to be in stasis, you get to be in stasis, everyone gets to be magically put in stasis!

manyslayer
2019-05-08, 03:10 PM
Someone already answered with my favorite (the countdown that just opens the door, but the version I know did a single point of damage each time the button was pushed) so I'll go with Button, Button, Who's Got The Button from one of the Grimtooth Trap books.

Party enters room and doors shut, sealing them in. In the room is a table with X buttons on it (X = party members -1) and a sign saying Take One or some such. Once they are all picked up, the room is engulfed in magical darkness for a second and then when the lights come back on any character that didn't have a button is gone. On the table are now X daggers (X = # of characters left -1). Repeat until there is only one character left and the door opens. The other characters have been held in an extra-dimensional space and can see everything going on but can't communicate.

The Random NPC
2019-05-08, 05:10 PM
Someone already answered with my favorite (the countdown that just opens the door, but the version I know did a single point of damage each time the button was pushed) so I'll go with Button, Button, Who's Got The Button from one of the Grimtooth Trap books.


My GM also added a penalty to the button, it was randomly destroy 1 mundane item in the room, when mundane items run out, move on to magic items, when those run out, move on to limbs, when those run out, kill the character.

DrKerosene
2019-05-10, 08:26 AM
The deity appearing and remonstrating them is heavy handed and feels hypocritical. Why didn’t the deity help her if he has the time to show up to criticize them for not doing so?

I’d assume the Party are shmucks for not questioning what is probably an illusion.