How do you handle physical puzzles in your game?

[Thrasher92]

I like to incorporate puzzles as an optional challenge in my dungeons, they are often a "Riddle Door" or something I can just describe.

All of my players have mentioned that they aren't good with riddles, so I am looking to add better puzzles that have more of a physical solution. They have said they like the idea of a more "mental challenge" instead of just more monsters, they are just tired of my typical solution of throwing a riddle at them.

They used Skyrim and Oblivion (Elder Scrolls Video Games) as a reference and said it would be really cool to have stuff like that in a dungeon.

How would you go about adding physical puzzles to a dungeon? Is there a list somewhere of already made ones that would be easy to add to a dungeon?

[Segev]

I had a puzzle dungeon in its own demiplane once that had wheels that rotated entire sections of it on-end, changing orientations and relative gravity for those outside it vs those inside when it shifted. My players found it...confusing. I'm not sure I'd do it again.


A simpler version of it would be a room or entire dungeon that could switch its gravity direction from up to down and back with specific switches being activated, allowing re-use of rooms. Or a dungeon with water-flow control that floods different areas depending on the switches thrown. (See: Legend of Zelda.)

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the chess room is a possible example: PCs must take the place of particular pieces on the board, and can only move "legally" for their piece, and only one of them per turn, and the goal is to get to particular parts of the board to do particular things. Watch out for the enemy pieces!

If you have an HTC Vive, or can find a Let's Play, I recommend The Fisherman's Tale as an interesting design on how to do a game centered around a big puzzle.

The basic gameplay mechanic is that you're in a lighthouse, and have a model of the lighthouse in the main room. When you take the roof off of it, the roof of your lighthouse comes off, and you can see you're looking up and down into infinitely-recurring self-nested light houses. So you can take tiny model-things out of your model, and the giant-you takes life-sized equivalents out of the lighthouse. If you put things into the model, giant-you puts huge versions into your lighthouse.

A physical recreation of the old "missionaries and cannibals" puzzle where you need creatures of various sorts in different numbers to activate things for you on two sides of a divide (a river, a chasm, whatever), and different numbers of them doing their thing (maybe shooting an elemental beam at crystals?) will cause the pathway that is open to lead to different things. Different parts of the dungeon, or different portal destinations, or something. Having to balance the creatures so they never feel too threatened to do their thing (or never wipe out the other "side") while getting the right numbers on the right sides would be the puzzle.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I did a "laser chess" game, except with walls of force emanating from statues. First they had to figure out the pattern, then move them in the right order to pass through this room. I did absolutely provide a map and update it as they moved things.

I also (later in that same dungeon) have a room with a bunch of pillars and a long drop. It was basically a teleport puzzle--get from one side to the other without getting dropped in a hole. Each directional portal would push them X squares in the given direction...but there were multiple values of X (2, 4, and 6 IIRC).

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As a comic relief break I did a door puzzle--it was a set of puns based on the konami code, rebus style. It was even laid out like a Nintendo controller. But that was more a mental puzzle than anything.

[Sorinth]

Some puzzles you can rip right from games. I did one straight out of the Path of Exile.

8 Skulls are in a circle, all but one skull have glowing red eyes.

Touching any skulls flips the state of itself plus the adjacent skulls. So touching the one skull without glowing eyes will cause it's eyes to glow, but the skulls on either side with have their eyes extinguish.

You are trying to either turn them all on (Or off if you want).You can pretty much choose any amount to be on/off to start with, it just changes which skulls you have to touch and possibly in what order.

[SirGraystone]

With each puzzle prepare some hints, then ask an Intelligence check from the players to get those hint. DC12 get 1 hint, DC 15 get 2 hints, DC 18 get the answer of the riddle.

[Tetrasodium]

I like to incorporate puzzles as an optional challenge in my dungeons, they are often a "Riddle Door" or something I can just describe.

All of my players have mentioned that they aren't good with riddles, so I am looking to add better puzzles that have more of a physical solution. They have said they like the idea of a more "mental challenge" instead of just more monsters, they are just tired of my typical solution of throwing a riddle at them.

They used Skyrim and Oblivion (Elder Scrolls Video Games) as a reference and said it would be really cool to have stuff like that in a dungeon.

How would you go about adding physical puzzles to a dungeon? Is there a list somewhere of already made ones that would be easy to add to a dungeon?
I take a page from computer coding (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTB0EiLXUC8), experience with pentesting/security (http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=21194&sid=19794f08e1b22aff3bbab71b1d776c60) and how keith baker describes
wards & other magical traps/alerts being disabled in his novels (which sadly hasn't been translated to mechanics or put in a writeup sourcebook). This is an example of a trap(I'll get to the puzzle after) my players might have come in contact with.

GM: Alice(has decent enough passive perception), you approach the safe and can already feel the arcane energies pouring off it from a couple feet away. It's definitely warded.
Alice: Bob, this has some pretty heavy enchantments. can you figure them out?
Bob: I want to use my artificer's tools to analyze the warding on & around the safe& see what we are up against
GM: -Fast forward a bit- With that roll you can tell that there is some pretty heavy wards built into the safe. You see that there is:
1 A detection divination component that checks to make sure the person trying to open the safe has a specific arcane marked token on them
A freaking massive payload, you aren't sure what exactly the trap will do if you dont have that token, but disintegrate or worse is possible. That level of energy is bound up in the payload
A failsafe tamper resistant enchantment that monitors the payload & triggers the payload if it detects attempts at altering the payload
A fourth enchantment that monitors the keyway on the safe & makes sure that any key or tools inserted into the lock have a valid arcane mark on them & prevents the tumblers from moving if it does not
Alice: Can bob get the keyway mark & let me see it well enough with my minor illusion duplicator in order to use the rest of my thieve's tools to duplicate the mark onto my tools?
GM: Bob, with that new roll you are able to get a representation of an arcane mark, but you aren't sure how accurate it is or needs to be. You still have the main ward itself though
Bob: We were pretty sure that the token we got off the guard was not a valid one for the safe based on previous checks I'm not typing out... Can I build a new divination component that looks for the token we have so we don't all blow up if I muck things up trying to change the existing divination component?
GM: Based on your int(arcana), yes you think you can; However in order for it to work, it needs to be built in the path of the original divination enchantment & that energy needs to go somewhere. It's going to destroy your token if it works, so if it fails, you are going to need to find something else to use if there is a next time. It's going to require an X level spell slot to build though
Bob: OK lets do this. I'm going to pour that slot in through my tools to build the divination component we discussed & ground it to the token we have like you mentioned
Alice: I'm going t o use my thieves tools to put the arcane mark bob showed me onto my picks, probes, jumpers, & other tools I think I might need
GM ok you get a pretty good representation of the original mark bob got you with that roll & with that other roll you manage to turn the lock but the safe is still closed
Cor: This sounds like a job for me, bob how sure are you about that divination ward
Bob: I think it will work... buuut.. not so sure I want us to be in the room with whoever turns the latch on the safe.
Cor:eff, give me the token & everyone get back
GM: get everyone's position, find out most are back down the hall except for Cernug
Cor:F.M.L!... I rage &immediately after turn the handle while carrying the token like bob told me to
GM: Cerug you turn the latch and... *turn to everyone else, you hear a massive boom followed by a crash & the sound of things crumbling in Cernug's direction & a greenish light coming from the room
everyone: What about Cernug!
evilgm grin: would you like to go check with that green glow?
everyone: umm.... I...
Cernug: Can I check since I'm there with the green glow?
GM: Are you?... but sure if you want to go in the other room
everyone: He's not going to ruin the suspense for us tll we check it out, Cernug might need our help. Lets rush up to check on Cernug insteasd of waiting for it to be safe
GM: Get mart hing order sorted ... You rush back up the hallway to the sounds of cracking plaster & some kind of arcane hum when... Bob.. what's your con save dc?... Cernug, when you turn the handle on the safe, you narrowly avoid most of theexplosion radiating out from the safe in a cone as the original divinaion ward overloads Bob's, you still take half of $rolldice & drop the token because you can feel it starting top vibrate in very unpleasant ways as the payload starts pouring energy into what was just a minor enchantment to keep the token from getting tarnished & an arcane mark.
Everyone comes running around the corner just in time to see the token explode into a thousand pieces of molten silver. Some of you get hit by fragments, but they are all too small to do any damage.... Inside the safe is....



Turning that into a puzzle is pretty simple, just spread the wards over different areas & require some to be triggered/active before others are. Any plausible solution to a component of the trap has a reasonable chance to succeed given proper tools/components/skills. I certainly don't know a "correct" way of disarming it. Add in some man traps & ectra hidden wards that trigger other stuff like calling "security" closing& locking doors far enough back to cut off escape without being the door they just went though.

I build traps & puzzles by extension using fate style aspects on both the trap &the place they are in. A safe in Boromar's hidden subbasement beside the cells is going to be embedded in a huge slab of granite, the granite might be warded, the safe might be warded, the room might be part of the wards, another room might be part of the wards. As a mob boss's safe in an obviously less than legal subbasement, you can bet it's going to be lethal... if the safe were in a secure cannith facility instead... it might be built so as to be anchored directly to the foundation & probably not lethal, but suggestion, Gaes, wall of force or force cage, flesh to stone, trap the soul, & even mind rape are possible payloads. Also possible are things like a modified polymorph that marks your crime on your body to make for easy identification & easy legal reversal later... but what did you expect trying to break inyo the kundarak vault on Merrix's secret lab?

It takes a little bit for the players to realize that there is no "correct answer" to it & start trying to creatively leverage their skills towards the problem.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I was really excited about running a game with puzzles, then I ran the House of Man and Crocodile from Tomb of Annihilation. Now I think I'll probably never do anything similar again.

Puzzles are fun if players get them. If they don't, they're just a miserable gaming experience. Scratch this itch with a different game.

[Throne12]

Know your group first. Also use super easy puzzles. I know there is this little voice inside your head say. This is a puzzle for a 1st grader they'll solve it before I'm done describing it. Which in reality it will be just about right for you party and they get to walk away happy they solved it. Now if they complain or look like they are too easy just step them up a bit.


The main thing to keep in mine with using puzzles is start very simple then work to more complex ones. Because if you start with one really bad complex one it will turn them off of puzzles.

[Laserlight]

I gave my group a tesseract dungeon and they figured out what was going on within a couple of rooms, and had the layout essentially correct within a couple more.
I gave them a "how do you arrange eight queens on the chessboard" type of puzzle which would do damage every 20 seconds realtime until they succeeded. One of my players had it solved before I could turn on the timer.
On the other hand, I gave the same group something pretty simple, that they ran into several times during one arc, and they never figured it out. I told them at the end of the campaign and they were smacking their heads that they missed it.


The point of a puzzle lock should be to delay an intruder, rather than stop him; giving up means you have another encounter, or your next encounter gets harder, or the baddie you're chasing increases his lead, or something of that sort. It should not be something which stops the party cold if they can't solve it.

[NaughtyTiger]

The biggest thing about physical puzzles is that the players have something to touch and see.

I get a kick out of building something that they can physically set and spin dials... then i can tell them the result...

[Tetrasodium]

I gave my group a tesseract dungeon and they figured out what was going on within a couple of rooms, and had the layout essentially correct within a couple more.
I gave them a "how do you arrange eight queens on the chessboard" type of puzzle which would do damage every 20 seconds realtime until they succeeded. One of my players had it solved before I could turn on the timer.
On the other hand, I gave the same group something pretty simple, that they ran into several times during one arc, and they never figured it out. I told them at the end of the campaign and they were smacking their heads that they missed it.


The point of a puzzle lock should be to delay an intruder, rather than stop him; giving up means you have another encounter, or your next encounter gets harder, or the baddie you're chasing increases his lead, or something of that sort. It should not be something which stops the party cold if they can't solve it.

agreed completely. Also don't forget that the characters themselves have skills. Rainer Popp's puzzle locks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPGGn__t6nU) aren't made to be the most secure locks, there are much more secure locks. Thy are made to be a fun puzzle. I once had a gm throw an npc at us who would only interact with us if we spoke in riddles or rhyme & it was a disaster with us spending almost the entire session trying to communicate with him. The next session was everything he had expected to do the rest of the session after what was expected to be a couple minutes of rhyme/riddle. if your puzzle is intended to be a roadblock that must be completed, PC not player skills if thy don't quikly seem to get it & be moving in a useful direction

[Bjarkmundur]

Give them a thread and a needle.

Seriously, though. Every puzzle somehow becomes much more challenging than intended during the actual sessions. Every single time I include some sort of 'one answer only' obstacle I end up promising myself I 'll use a simpler puzzle next time. Every. Time.

Simple is fun, so sometimes it's better to use a simple puzzle and include visual aid instead of looking at it as a 'physical puzzle'. A riddle which references colors (https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/12995/five-coloured-doors-which-leads-to-freedom), and then give them the corresponding number of physical items in the same colors. It's not a physical puzzle per say, but the real-life representations of the objects in the riddle can be a lot of fun.

To simulate the 'blindfold' the doorsways are simply filled with a cloud of moving shadow; like a fog but pitch black that seems to spill out of the door.

Then, always include a back-door. That is, for this example, each door they walk through casts a spell on the target. This means the players can use trial and error (although they don't know that) .Even if the players get stumped, you simply say
.
PC1, roll a wisdom saving throw. You fail. You are compelled to walk through the yellow door. As you disappear into the light, a low rumble fills the area and you are teleported to the middle of the door. Expect, your feet are now hands! (Movespeed halved. Can use feet as an extra arm, but when occupied your movespeed is 0). You'll need an X-level Dispel Magic, cast once on each leg, during a long rest to re-arrange your bones, or during a short rest and gain two levels of exhaustion.

This gives you a way out; the players (not the characters) realize the 'wrong' door isn't lethal, just adds some extra steps. The players know if they get stumped they can always just guess without risking character death.

This puzzle might be a bit hard, depending on your player. You can add a second contingency where each hour the players all take psychic damage equal to their level (or two times their level or whathaveyou), and one of the doorways clears up, leaving a dead end and a spell rune. This helps them with the process of elimination, but at a cost.

[Imbalance]

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Puzzles - This is what they want? I honestly don't remember any puzzles in Oblivion beyond dungeon layout shenanigans and the meta-leveling nonsense.

Look to Legend of Zelda series games for inspiring interactive environmental puzzles, or even Metroid if you want to tie specific relics in to unlocking areas of expansion in dungeons. A lot of folks will point to the genius of Ocarina's Water Temple, but few will remember that it was The Adventure of Link that let the sub-titular character learn spells to advance. Simple things like having the party light torches simultaneously or rotate statues with mirrors to redirect sunlight onto a target are more team-involving than hacking a combination lock or solving a riddle.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One anecdote about things not being as easy as they seem to the DM--

I gave a party a very simple puzzle. There were 8 statues, each positioned like they're holding something. 8 objects were placed around the room. Place an object on the correct statue, and it lights up. Make a mistake and the puzzle resets. Make too many mistakes, and bad things start happening. Order is not important. Running this straight, History checks would give information (they were all famous figures). But I did it even easier. They started in a room with paintings of these same figures holding their correct objects. I even gave them a handout. My estimate: very easy. 2-3 minutes at most.

The party took nearly 20 minutes, because they didn't realize that they already had the key. They way overthought it, thinking there were particular symbolisms and only a few needed to be placed. Had fun, but it was way longer than I had planned.

In-universe, it was a meditation room that unlocked the chapel; they came in from the chapel side because the roof had fallen in. So it was supposed to be an exercise to remember the famous figures (since the cult worshiped them as divinities). So in-universe, it wasn't really that much of a puzzle--any member of the cult could do it effortlessly. But the cult had been dead for 800 years, so I gave them the key and they had to pass through the room to get out. Or they could have found the secret door in the chapel that led straight to the exit, but they didn't really even look.