Need Abjuration Trap/Puzzle/challenges

[Vogie]

My players are going through a series of microdungeons or challenges, one for each school...

But, I'm really pulling blanks when it comes to Abjuration. Circles of Power and Guards and Wards give some ideas, but not enough.

Throw me some ideas here. Puzzles, traps, creatures, I need something more to build off of.

If it matters, they are currently level 9.

[OldTrees1]

Okay, so Abjuration is the protection and warding school. With that said, some ideas:

1) The first thing that springs to my mind is a Lock. Something that requires the party to split up in order to activate. Since I like quirky dungeons I would consider a room that acts like a rubix cube. There are 4 control stations in the room, as long as they are all simultaneously activated the rubix room starts to solve itself. The room keeps changing and unleashing constructs to fight the now scattered party. Platforms become walls and then ceilings, PCs fall or are walled off from the rest of the party. These changes only happen when the PCs are progressing the unlock mechanism.

2) An Earth Elemental or Construct named Aegis in a room full of protective wards tuned to protect Aegis. Have the encounter be a bit too high, because the point is not to slay Aegis, the point is to defeat Aegis by bypassing Aegis. A locked door does not matter if a window is open.

3) A room of people frozen in stasis (maybe encased in something?). When the PCs enter the room a trap springs to try to preserve and protect the invading PCs.

[Chugger]

Put a bunch of glyphs in a room and draw them. Maybe the secret is that any glyph with a certain shape in it shoots a fire spell. Another shape does a cold spell. Another shape does lightning. There are some fire resistance potions. The only way across the room is to trigger 4 glyphs. Each shoots a "fireball" that can't be avoided - or a "cold ball" (a cold damage fireball) - or a lightning ball, a lightning based sphere of lightning damage.

Maybe they know the first glyphs are babies, then the next ones are bigger. The secret is to trigger the baby glyphs to see what they do and then notice that the other glyphs have some sort of shape similarity or theme related to the baby glyphs, so you can path across triggering only fire glyphs and take half the damage and make it, hurt but alive. If not you have to burn a crapton of resources healing before triggering the next random glyph.

[supercereal]

My players are going through a series of microdungeons or challenges, one for each school...

But, I'm really pulling blanks when it comes to Abjuration. Circles of Power and Guards and Wards give some ideas, but not enough.

Throw me some ideas here. Puzzles, traps, creatures, I need something more to build off of.

If it matters, they are currently level 9.

A while ago I was thinking about an archmage tower as a dungeon. The tower would have an entry point for each school of magic and nine levels (one for each spell level), so each level would have been based on an apporopriate wizard spell of that school and level.

This is what i wrote down for the Abjuration school (these are only wizard spell, so maybe you can spice things up by looking at different spell lists):

Level 1: Snare -> a room with several snare spell already casted on the floor and flying enemies that attack the party when someone steps on one

Level 2: Arcane lock -> a closed door that can be opened only entering the correc answer to a riddle

Level 3: Glyph of warding -> "explosive search", have the party find something to like a key in a room full of hidden glyph of warding - fireball

Level 4: Stoneskin -> buff to an encounter

Level 5: Planar binding -> have an encounter with an unusual assortment of enemy (e.g. an angel, a demon a fey and an elemental fighting together)

Level 6: Guards and wards -> mini dungeon inside the doungeon

Level 7: Symbol -> explosive search but worse

Level 8: Antimagic field -> buff to an encounter

Level 9: Prismatic wall -> just get to the other side of the wall :smallamused:

[MrStabby]

The dungeon is a lock. A huge lock. To "pass" the PCs need to push the right walls together at the right time.

To work out where to push, they need the key, or a map.

The dungeon itself is not uninhabited and to push the right parts simulatniously may require splitting the party or getting creative. Being split up may mean that PCs cannot rely on others to fill their usual roles.

[Bohandas]

Dispel Magic and Antimagic Field to disrupt the party's magic