Non combat threats

[CrazyCarppy]

I am prepping for running dotmm. I will have 5 players level 15. Classes, builds and gear are unknown. As im not ready for a session zero yet

Now the upper levels will be a cake walk for a party of this level. And while I am not going to make anything straight up harder to fight, I will be adding random occurrences to make things more interesting.
One thing will be random monsters of a more challenging sort spread throughout. And any actual combat has a chance of drawing in some of these.

I am going to have Halaster pull some shenanigans like opening portals above them and dropping a few thousand spiders, or snakes on them. Basically a con save trap to poison them. Also considering ways to disease some of them, giving levels of exhaustion.

Anyone out there have any cool and fun tricks or traps that could easily be added that would help turn an easy floor into at least an interesting one?

I know a lot of this will be curable if they have the means, but it will use resources. And a long rest will be difficult to get since i dont want them to have many. Lol.


Thanks!

[MaxWilson]

Give them treasure, and then have Quicklings try to pickpocket them and run off with it before they can decipher what the magic items do.

[CrazyCarppy]

I like that! I'll add it to my list. Thanks!

[sithlordnergal]

Here are a few ideas:

1) Anti-Magic room filled with a poison that deals 1d6 or 2d6 every round you're in the room, save for half. Have the room be about 60 feet high, with only one exit. The exit door should be locked, and either can't be picked or has such a high DC that it'd take a Rogue with Expertise in Thieve's Tools and max Dex to roll a 16 or higher to beat. The only key is hanging from a chain in the middle of the ceiling. Finally, there can be a small glyph puzzle that can raise and lower the floor to make a stair way to the key, but it takes an action to press one of the glyphs.

It provides a nice trap/puzzle the party has to get through, with a few options to solve it. You can either solve the puzzle, or the party can try and skip the puzzle by either brute forcing their way through the door, finding their own way up to the key, or maybe even shooting the key down.


2) Anti-Friction room. Takes an acrobatics check to move, and if you succeed you can only move at half speed. If you fail the check, you end up sliding in a random direction 10 to 15 feet. Put a fan on one end of the room to shove the players around. Make sure the room is only 5 feet high, that way you can prevent most flying shenanigans. Have the edges of the room be surrounded by a pit trap, and falling into it will give you some kind of debilitating disease. Not enough to out right kill the players, but it should be debilitating enough that if the party catches it then they're going to regret it. Also, make sure the disease is difficult to cure, such as requiring a Greater Restoration or Heal spell. Or maybe have it give Exhaustion levels.


3) Create a minor puzzle that the party has to solve. It doesn't need to be anything huge, because the puzzle ultimately doesn't matter. When they solve the puzzle, they find an ornate, expensive looking item. It could be a gem, it could be something that looks magical. If the party is using Detect Magic have it give off an Enchantment aura. The first player to touch it must make a high DC saving throw, could be Wisdom, Charisma, or Intelligence. If they fail they gain a set amount of Temp HP, and are forced to attack the party as if the party were their greatest enemy.


4) A water based puzzle/encounter. Force them complete an underwater maze, potentially with shifting walls and such. Make sure vision is low via heavy obscurement, and toss some fights at them, like a Water Elemental or three. Just make sure they have to stay under water long enough that most PCs would drown without some way to breathe. That said, if no one prepares Water Breathing, make sure you allow them to create a sort of Diving Bell to bring their oxygen with them. And add a few spots where they can take a breath. Props if you make the water acidic, so they take minor acid damage the longer they swim in it.


5) Keeping up with mazes and limited vision, create a regular maze. If the party stays in the maze too long they must make an Int save or take some Psychic damage. The longer they stay in the maze, the more damage they take. I.E. they take 1d6 the first save, 2d6 the second, 3d6 the third, ect . Now, here's the insidious bit, the maze simply loops on itself. When the party reaches one "end" of the maze, they're simply teleported to the other side. Feel free to add in a few wandering undead or spirits as well. In fact, the Spirit Troll is particularly fitting for a maze like this. The only way to solve the maze is to smash through the main pillar in the middle. If the party is stuck for a long while, toss in a hint. Something like "you see a ghost float out of the pillar in the middle" or "when you knock on the pillar it sounds hollow".


6) Create an entire section of the dungeon that is heavily obscured. Force them to feel around in the dark, and make sure you hide some Gelatinous Cubes in the area. Also hide the proper routes with illusionary walls that the party has to interact with in order to find. And finally, make the heavy obscurement poisonous as well, that way the longer they stay in the area the worse it becomes. The poison could have a special disease attached to it.


8) Make an entire room based on using spells from the different schools of magic. You could have a puzzle where they need to cast a 1st level or higher spell into the glyphs to spell out a message or word. If the party knows about Halaster, you could use the message "Halaster Can't Die", and only leave in "H-L-S--R --N'- D--". They have to use one spell slot per missing letter, if they fail to get the right letter then they're forced to roll on the Wild Magic Table every time they cast a spell for a given period of time.


9) This one somehow stumped my party for a long time. Create a tapestry that describes a dragon with what looks like a door hidden behind its tail, and a gleaming emerald eye. Make sure to describe that it looks like the dragon is lifting its tail a bit with the open door behind said tail. Next, toss an emerald into the treasure of any previous room. Finally, put a fountain with a statue of a Dragon on it in the room next to the tapestry, make sure the dragon is missing one eye. If the party puts the emerald back into the eye slot, then they can move the tail like a lever to open a hidden door. However, make sure the fountain is, as always, spewing poisonous water that gives a disease or something. Or maybe just make the eye a red herring, replacing it causes them to take some poison damage and risk exhaustion levels while the tail can be moved as a lever.


---Disease Ideas---

- Super Tetanus, just...Super Tetanus. It can be found in White Plume Mountain from Tales of the Yawning Portal, and it can kill characters. You might wanna make the DC higher though.

look up "daemons and death rays diseases". They have a couple of fun homebrew diseases. I particularly like Combustion Cough, though you'll want to speed up its incubation, and probably want to let them use the resulting breath attack as much as the party likes.


EDIT: Oh! How could I forget!! A teleportation/word puzzle. Basically, the room is covered in floor tiles with letters engraved on them. When you step on a letter one of two things happen. You're either teleported to an adjacent room with a similar set up, or you get sent back to the beginning and must make a Con save versus something. It could be poison, exhaustion levels, whatever. The party has to step on the right letter tiles to spell out a word or phrase in order to get to the other side.

[Kessel]

don't know to what extent you and your party do roleplay, but if during a long rest an Intellect Devourer takes over one of the party (you and the PC are the only ones that know.) you text info to the PC and they get to try to play an ID impersonating the PC trying to guide them on a quest to their doom, before the party catches on.
I ran this with a lower level Lovecraftian game and they loved it, but it depends on the group.

[Rukelnikov]

Halaster is not only extremely powerful and intelligent, but he also lives in a dungeon and has vast experience with intruders, he knows throwing a couple monsters will likely mean nothing to the adventurers by the next day, so don't have his minions and traps target HP exclusively, have him fight with smart tactics, kind of like Tucker's Kobolds. And I don't mean just in combat, the whole dungeon is him fighting against would be thiefs.

For instance, food and water, a miasma that rots rations or makes water unsafe to drink could range from a minor nuisance to somewhat of a complication depending on the party's capabilities.

Do they carry pack mules? Do they take off armor when they rest? Those are targets.

[CrazyCarppy]

Lots of good ideas here. Thank you.

[Reach Weapon]

9) This one somehow stumped my party for a long time. Create a tapestry that describes a dragon with what looks like a door hidden behind its tail, and a gleaming emerald eye. Make sure to describe that it looks like the dragon is lifting its tail a bit with the open door behind said tail. Next, toss an emerald into the treasure of any previous room. Finally, put a fountain with a statue of a Dragon on it in the room next to the tapestry, make sure the dragon is missing one eye. If the party puts the emerald back into the eye slot, then they can move the tail like a lever to open a hidden door. However, make sure the fountain is, as always, spewing poisonous water that gives a disease or something. Or maybe just make the eye a red herring, replacing it causes them to take some poison damage and risk exhaustion levels while the tail can be moved as a lever.

Yeah, put something that looks enough like the Tower of Hanoi, the Fox, Chicken, Seeds and Rowboat or other stock puzzle in front of the party, and just try to stop them from jumping to the "solution" (of doom).

[DwarfFighter]

In an early room the PCs find a black gem that causes 1d6 Necrotic damage per round to anyone holding it, and creatures within 5 ft. of it cannot regain hit points. If not held in a living hand, the gem teleports back to the original room at the end of the round. In a later room there is a portal that can only be opened with the gem.

The PCs need to figure out how to transport the gem from the first room to the last. One solution is to simply try an go fast, handing it from one character to the next as they rush through the cleared (they presume!) level of the dungeon, or using teleportation spells to move more quickly, or force captive NPCs to carry it.

This puzzle isn't supposed to be unsolvable, nor is it intended to drain a minimum amount of resources. If the PCs can solve it in a one-go, great for them!

-DF