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TheZin
2007-12-24, 05:48 AM
Every now and again you throw in a thinking-puzzle. I mean besides the adrenaline-pumping ogre and dragon fights. Besides walking around the local town looking for quests, wenches and valuables as a DM you throw in a riddle or puzzle (my friend made me and a few mates play a game of minesweeper in a star wars session). So have you ever had puzzles that are just mean?

Answers that were so depressingly mean but easy so you just hated the DM. I just thought of one that would be kind of annoying.

The Mage's Tower

As legend goes, the old tower outside the town has remained untouched for centuries. Anyone who had dared to challenge its secrets was lost to the ages as the dark forest around it has grown with relentless certainty and ever since it was degreed that no one may enter it. This tower has been as desolate as the abandoned mines in the mountains. - or something to that extent.

The party would be, because of disaster / incident A, forced to go to the old wizard's / mage's tower [can be magical so it appears to only be a cottage but in fact has C stories] to retrieve item B.

The idea would be that the party enters the windowless tower by the door open to the outside [a very old, magical, heavy, resistant, strong door] that would slam shut with an echoing thump. After which a series of mechanical sounds would echo out in the tower, torches are lit etc.

The DM would describe how C # of pillars arise in front of the door / out of the wall with different symbols / keyholes on / in each of them.

For each of the pillars there is a floor in the tower that holds within it a riddle or puzzle that, in case of a correct solution, gives you a key / stone / symbol / whatever to use on the pillars at the main door.

Solution / Point: The trick here is that the door slams shut from the outside and it's very important to say this in a manner that sticks in the PC's heads but doesn't seem important. The PC's will hopefully say "I push on the door" or "we push the door". The PC's then spend time figuring out different puzzles only to find that in the end the keys / symbols reveal a message that the door had always been open, all you had to do was pull on it. The mechanical sounds simply changed the way the door opened - now opening to the inside.

I know it's probably just a very elaborate and stupid way to waste some time but the PC's could also be teleported back / forward in time or age faster inside the tower or something to give it more of a meaning.

There may be some mean DMs who feel like messing with PCs heads and pissing them off. Ah well, maybe it's a stupid idea.

Xefas
2007-12-24, 06:15 AM
I've posted it several times on these boards, but the most memorable puzzle I've ever put forth to the players was this:

You open the wooden door before you to reveal a large stone room in the shape of a cube; 25ft on each side. In the center of the room is a small raised section upon which a pedestal is placed. Sitting on top of the pedestal is an enormous ruby.

On the ceiling, walls, and most of the floor are variously shaped mirrors. It appears that the ruby does not show in the reflection of every third mirror. Furthermore, you and your comrades are also invisible in every seventh mirror.

...or something to that effect. It has been a while.

The puzzle is, of course, that there is no puzzle. There's absolutely nothing special about the room except the mildly enchanted mirrors. They're welcome to walk in, grab the ruby, and leave, and nothing will happen to them.

What my group did was spend an outlandish amount of time both in-game and out-of-game trying to figure out how to bypass the "puzzle" without dieing horribly. When they couldn't do it, they decided they'd outsmart me by simply backtracking and going a different way.

EDIT: What made it the "most memorable" was the sheer amount of effort and insane ideas put forth during the "solving". The PCs had a lot of fun, and so did I.

Kurald Galain
2007-12-24, 06:17 AM
This is unfair, because it takes advantage of the fact that the players will not state out loud every single thing the characters are doing.

In real life, if you push on a door and it doesn't open, you will likely pull it in reflex, possibly without even realizing it. Thus, unless the characters have really low Wis scores, it is only fair to assume that if they try to open the door, they will try to both push and pull.

There was a post in the "stupid arguments" thread about a DM who assumed that if the player characters look around, they aren't looking up unless the players specifically stated they were. There is also a famous bad story about the PCs suddenly taking lots of damage, and the DM eventually explaining that this was starvation, because they hadn't explicitly specified their characters were eating (despite carrying rations and so forth). All of this boils down to the DM being intentionally nasty and unfair, and this puzzle is no different.

The Glyphstone
2007-12-24, 08:00 AM
The PC's walk into a room, and the door suddenly shuts and locks behind them, as does the exit door. On one wall is a massive clock or timer, set for 5-10 minutes and ticking down, and a large red button nearby. If the players push the button, the timer resets to its maximum.

The room must have something obviously dangerous in it - hundreds of bottles of acid/alchemist's fire hanging from above, tiny holes in the wall that smell funny, spikes lining the (unmoving) sides of the room.

When the timer expires, the doors open.

This works even better with a kitchen timer, or similar device, so the players can really 'get into it'.

ThunderEagle
2007-12-24, 08:04 AM
This is unfair, because it takes advantage of the fact that the players will not state out loud every single thing the characters are doing.

In real life, if you push on a door and it doesn't open, you will likely pull it in reflex, possibly without even realizing it. Thus, unless the characters have really low Wis scores, it is only fair to assume that if they try to open the door, they will try to both push and pull.

There was a post in the "stupid arguments" thread about a DM who assumed that if the player characters look around, they aren't looking up unless the players specifically stated they were. There is also a famous bad story about the PCs suddenly taking lots of damage, and the DM eventually explaining that this was starvation, because they hadn't explicitly specified their characters were eating (despite carrying rations and so forth). All of this boils down to the DM being intentionally nasty and unfair, and this puzzle is no different.

actually, I have tried pushing a door to open it then assuming it's locked when it actually is pulled open. so there is a real life basis for that. or maybe I just have a really low wisdom score

Emperor Demonking
2007-12-24, 08:06 AM
The PC's walk into a room, and the door suddenly shuts and locks behind them, as does the exit door. On one wall is a massive clock or timer, set for 5-10 minutes and ticking down, and a large red button nearby. If the players push the button, the timer resets to its maximum.

The room must have something obviously dangerous in it - hundreds of bottles of acid/alchemist's fire hanging from above, tiny holes in the wall that smell funny, spikes lining the (unmoving) sides of the room.

When the timer expires, the doors open.

This works even better with a kitchen timer, or similar device, so the players can really 'get into it'.


That ones nice, its cruel but you can't argue that its unfair.

Sebastian
2007-12-24, 08:42 AM
This is unfair, because it takes advantage of the fact that the players will not state out loud every single thing the characters are doing.

In real life, if you push on a door and it doesn't open, you will likely pull it in reflex, possibly without even realizing it. Thus, unless the characters have really low Wis scores, it is only fair to assume that if they try to open the door, they will try to both push and pull.

There was a post in the "stupid arguments" thread about a DM who assumed that if the player characters look around, they aren't looking up unless the players specifically stated they were.

I don't think this is a stupid argument, when you look around you usually don't look up, it is just not natural, that is why in comic, movies, etc, hiding/hanging from the ceiling is usually so effective, at the least characters that hide that way should get a nice bonus to their checks, but by the RAW they don't IIRC.

Kurald Galain
2007-12-24, 09:12 AM
I don't think this is a stupid argument, when you look around you usually don't look up,

No, but the rule should be "characters remember to look up if they have a high enough perception score or good roll on their spot check", not "characters remember to look up if the player explicitly states they do".

Why? Because in the latter case, after being hosed by the nasty DM once, players will get into a habit of explicitly stating every single boring thing every time (not "I search the room" but "I look behind the closet, and under the closet, and in the closet, and on the closet, and in front of the clost, then I look in front of the bed, and under the bed, and between the sheets, and inside the pillow and and and"), and you've in effect changed the roleplaying into a out-thinking contest between player and DM ("ha ha, you didn't mention you were looking under the LEG of the closet").

TheLogman
2007-12-24, 09:59 AM
A door with a piece of paper on it. If the room is searched, the players find a slip of paper. Written on it are these words: The answer you seek to open the door is this on the next line have a bunch of weird symbols. They'll try all the Knowledge and Int checks they can. If a person gets a result of 5 or lower on a straight Int check, they figure the answer must be "this". The only answer the door will accept is in deed "this".

Riffington
2007-12-24, 10:23 AM
Right, so you want to let players use something in between their abilities and their characters' abilities.

Obviously D&D games should include puzzles, and obviously these puzzles should be solved with fun thinking, which means the players' intelligence gets used. Otherwise you'd have to say "your characters see a puzzle. Everyone roll Int", which would just be lame.

At the same time, the brilliant player who happens to be playing a dumb character will want to dumb down his thinking a bit to stay in character.

And characters with amazing skills should get little hints by the DM.
As Kurald points out, if the player forgets to say "I look up", the DM should take into account whether the character's Spot is way better than the player's. If so, the character still probably remembers.

Swordguy
2007-12-24, 11:05 AM
The meanest puzzle/trap I've ever seen was from the Lankhmar campaign setting. You step out of a stairwell (that auto-locks itself behind you) into a 10x10 room. In front of you, you get a 100' hallway, with a door at the far end. 50' down the hall in the floor is a 1" deep depression (Wis check at -15 to notice it from the 10x10 room). Cast upon the depression is a Detect Life that had a detection area equal to the entire width and height of the hallway, plus 10' in both directions. Upon the successful detection of said life, the hallway compacts in a 90-degree spiraling motion to a 1-square-inch size. Anything caught inside the hallway and more than 5' from the ends is killed instantly. Anything 5' or less from the ends of the hall gets a save vs...Rods, I think, to jump back out of the trap. If they hit the number of the save exactly, they lose a randomly-determined limb that's caught in the trap.

The best part? Lankhmar is a horrendously low-magic setting. There's no travel magic (Teleport, Dimension Door, etc.). There's also zero resurection magic.

The solution to the trap was to conjure or supply a small animal and throw it down the hall. The trap goes off, and it's got a 5-minute reset, during which you have to crawl 100' down the slowly-opening hallway to the other door.

Attilargh
2007-12-24, 11:25 AM
Just direct them to the Impossible Quiz, Notpr0n or Gimmickry. If you feel like being mean, give the a time limit.

Alternatively, lock the characters in a room with a big, red button labeled "Immediate and painful doom". If they bother to wait for a bit, the label shifts to "Open doors", whereupon they can exit the door by pressing the button. Don't bother making the doors unbreakable, just don't add handles.

Kaelik
2007-12-24, 01:16 PM
A door with a piece of paper on it. If the room is searched, the players find a slip of paper. Written on it are these words: The answer you seek to open the door is this on the next line have a bunch of weird symbols. They'll try all the Knowledge and Int checks they can. If a person gets a result of 5 or lower on a straight Int check, they figure the answer must be "this". The only answer the door will accept is in deed "this".

So in other words stupid people figure out the trick? That makes no sense. I would probably knife you for making failed Int checks only way forward. I'd also try "this" of course. I mean who hasn't read LotRs.

JMobius
2007-12-24, 02:01 PM
I had one GM give me a couple of puzzles in a row -- all of which had to be solved within a time limit, by the players themselves, or they'd face penalties.

One of them was basically a system of equations. Four equations, five unknowns, solve... in five minutes :P

Another two were very similar to the Three Advisors and the Ten Bags of Coins puzzles from this page (http://256.com/gray/teasers/).

Another was something akin to "Suppose you have 12 marbles, one with a weight distinct from all the others, and a balance scale that will break after three uses, find the odd marble"

Then one more I can't be bothered to remember.

This session kind of turned me off to puzzles. :)

bugsysservant
2007-12-24, 02:47 PM
A bit off topic, but I was actually thinking of including a puzzle in the next session, and wouldn't mind input on whether it is too difficult. I don't think it is, but its always hard to tell with these things.
The Players are hunting around an abandoned temple of an extinct race. A low DC knowlege check nets the following speech: " The Auriell were a race driven to perfection. They saw patterns in nature, and believed them sacred, shaping their entire civilization around them. Central of these was their belief in the sanctity of the number eight, embodied in the eight schools of magic. They shaped their bodies and minds around this number, patterning their language, architecture, numbers, magic, and even themselves around it, severing their smallest fingers in a ritual ceremony when they came of age."
They enter a room, and hear a voice inside their heads in their native tongues: "only those who possess the mind of a true Auriell can enter through this door" The room is large, but not particularly note worthy except a ring of 24 bowls arranged in a perfect circle. These rest on a bronze disk, with the bowl nearest the opposite door labeled with a large "1." In front of the arrangement is a row of balls, eight in total, with the words (apearing in the character's native scripts) "place the balls each in a bowl, in the 1st, 4th, 7th, 12th, 15th, 20th, 23rd, and 26th."

That's the puzzle, and if they really don't get it, I can give more hints, or even the solution with int. checks. The problem is that going around the circle, starting at "1" and moving clockwise or counter clockwise, putting the balls in the prescribed order, won't open the door.

Solution: (please try and actually solve this. I really do need feedback)
you need to place the ball in every third bowl, starting at "1". Doing so forms an octogon, and the door opens. The numbers are wrong because they are written in base 8, whereas the characters were taught base 10 and so it appears as their native number system

JMobius
2007-12-24, 02:54 PM
bugsysservant:

I got the solution right away. Then again, my particular course of study had me dealing with unusual bases a lot, so the idea came pretty readily to me. :)

I think it depends on what sort of math background your players have. Bases other than 10 are a pretty alien idea to anyone who hasn't seen them before.

Leadfeathermcc
2007-12-24, 02:55 PM
I think it might be to easy. With eight highlighted so prominently in the description it was not hard to just figure on dividing 24 by 8 and putting one ball in every 3rd bowl.

Perhaps instead of reading the description you have a mural on the wall that shows all of this ancient race with only 3 fingers and a thumb on each hand.

Or perhaps you do not mention the number 8 at all, instead have a large pile of small bones sealed in clay jars. These are the remains of all of the pinkies that have been cut off.

Perhaps there are several crypts with the bones of these ancients, all of them missing the last digit on each hand.

edit I dont think it depends on what math background you have, I am an artist/graphic designer and have not taken math since high school ;)

bugsysservant
2007-12-24, 03:00 PM
Too easy, hmmm? Perhaps, since I really would prefer to keep the number eight central to the puzzle, I could have more than 24 bowls, a number not divisible by eight, but unevenly spaced so that when placed in a certain order they still form an octogon?

OverWilliam
2007-12-24, 03:02 PM
bugsysservant

They sever their littlest fingers on each hand, right? So they only have eight fingers. Counting on eight fingers (or in base 8) that equals out to bowls 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22. That was almost easy, but depending on the individual players you're working with it could be ok.

Leadfeathermcc
2007-12-24, 03:03 PM
Perhaps you just describe the room without any reference to the race or the number 8. The only difference would be to describe the room as being covered with thousands of small bones, each very similar to all the others. A skill check could reveal these as finger bones.

Now they are left with a puzzle with 8 balls (numbered as you described, the highest number being 26) 24 bowls, and thousands of finger bones being the only clues.

TheZin
2007-12-24, 03:21 PM
This is unfair, because it takes advantage of the fact that the players will not state out loud every single thing the characters are doing.

In real life, if you push on a door and it doesn't open, you will likely pull it in reflex, possibly without even realizing it. Thus, unless the characters have really low Wis scores, it is only fair to assume that if they try to open the door, they will try to both push and pull.

I did actually mean the door not to have a handle on the inside. Just thick iron edges which you can just latch onto with the tips of your fingers but that would be enough to move the door as it now appears very light and lucid.

bugsysservant:
The eight in the puzzle does help a whole lot so I wouldn't remove that but the first time I read the text, I didn't link up the removing of the pinky with the logical answer that they counted on a system based on the number 8, although that became apparent from the earlier description.

That's the only thing that I didn't find logical. If you present this puzzle, I think a drawing would make it a lot easier to solve but if the PCs are intelligent enough maybe they can form the octagon in their heads, eh?

kamikasei
2007-12-24, 07:14 PM
bugsyservant:

Like others, I found the puzzle very easy. However, I studied computers, so bases 2, 8 and 16 and base-fiddling in general are fairly intuitive to me. It might be much less obvious if your players aren't technical/mathematical.

Tor the Fallen
2007-12-24, 07:42 PM
Re: pushing v pulling a door

The door to my apartment at school will only open after I swipe with a keycard, then push in, then pull out. The door relocks itself like ~15-20 sec after a swipe.

The door is clearly meant to open outwards- that's the only way it does open. But for some reason, it MUST be pushed in to open before it opens.

However, I didn't know this for awhile, so would get enormously frustrated trying to rop the door open, swiping my keycard multiple times, etc. The only way I found that it opens after pushing in and pulling out was me kicking the door.

My point?
Sometimes it isn't always obvious to push a door to get it to open.

AmberVael
2007-12-24, 08:10 PM
Personally, my favorite evil puzzle was this:
There is a long hallway with two doors. One door is on the far end of the hallway, on the right, and one door is on the near end of the hallway, on the left.
Halfway down the hall there is an invisible line. When you reach the line, you are teleported back to the first door. Magic will easily circumvent the line.
However, once you go through the door you were trying to get through, hey, guess what? You're back at the first door, looking down the same hallway. There's no magic to be detected, the rogue will discover no traps, and hacking through the door will do nothing- though they will see the first teleportation trap is still there.

The trick?
It was just the same type of hallway made 10 times in a row. :smalltongue:
They aren't being teleported back to the beginning by the door- the trap in the middle just made them think of teleportation, and so when they see next room, which looks exactly the same... they begin to trick themselves.

psychoticbarber
2007-12-24, 08:31 PM
@Bugsyservant
I think that for me, the biggest hint that the base needed to be fiddled with was that you were asked to put a ball in the 26th dish, and there only 24. I'm not saying you should change that, quite the contrary, I think it's an excellent hint that might enable you to give fewer hints in other areas.

Yami
2007-12-24, 08:53 PM
Okay, Veal, that one rocks.

Let see, It's been ages since I've had a DM give me puzzles, so I'm sorry to say I've forgotten my favorites. Not that they were mean.

I did have a riddle in one of my campaigns though that got my players for a bit.

The were travelling through a Lizardman temple to 'The Undying One' (Homebrew Blackdragon trying to acheive godhoos.) After getting through the outlying structures and in order to enter the temple proper, the pary had to bypass a Stone Golem, with a riddle being the key to getting by without a far too high CR encounter.

The courtyard infront of the place was littered with dead and fallen warriors, many of whom were lizardmen as well as outsiders. The golem stood next to the entrance, one hand covering the entryway whilest the other rested upon a covered altar. A plaque on the wall read, in draconic, something to the effect of 'Place in the guardian's hand, the greatest of weapons capable of destroying stone as well as mortals.'

The place of course was covered in weapons, mostly rusty in the rain soak jungle, as well as a few magical ones. If the wrong weapon was place on the guardian's hand, he would attack the person who did so, dealing a rather decent amount of damage considering the parties level.

The answer was water. The lizardmen lived in a swamp which protected them from humans as much as thier warriors did, and came to revere the water as a weeapon as much as a nessisity of life. Mentions where made previously that they had flooded a town or two in wars past to defeat thier foes.

Besides fighting the golem, which the party was against, and before they managed to figured out the riddle, the rouge came up with the idea of tumbling into the doorway when the druid got smacked by the golem. All in all a good Idea so I gave him some reflex check to get in before the golom blocked the path with it's foot.

All in all, I don't think it was evil, but I had a player tell me otherwise.

Kaelik
2007-12-24, 10:15 PM
I personally would have put an hour glass in his hand. I think that such a challenge only works if the Golem is maybe CR=Party level + 2-3, hard, but not likely to kill them. (Raise it if your players are fairly powerful.)

bugsysservant
2007-12-24, 10:34 PM
@ Yami: I think I've been on the boards too long. I thought of water in about 10 seconds, but my first thought, in about one, was an epic level wizard.

TheZin
2007-12-24, 10:49 PM
If he attacked the person with the weapon in his hand I would most certainly put a fish there, just to get attacked with a fish.


But yeah, water was a pretty obvious answer there.

Still a cool trick.


How about this.

A large archway with a giant stone golem standing in front of it - covering the whole opening. The only way out / in is past the golem and the golem doesn't attack. However the golem does have a stone top-hat on (Think high-class gentlemen) and a monocle on his left/right eye, perhaps a stone tie would also be a good idea. It is resistant to all forms of magic and if you try to sneak past you are simply pushed back by a foot.

If you attack it with brute force the golem hits back and hard, perhaps with a glove.

The top hat hints that you simply have to ask or perhaps bow to the golem - point being politeness will get you further that brutality. The top hat might be too big of a hint, maybe have this happen if you want to enter a place where humbleness is important.

This one needs some work I think. In my opinion the surroundings should give the hints to the answer not the golem itself but how you would go about this is beyond me.

Kaelik
2007-12-25, 12:31 AM
This one needs some work I think. In my opinion the surroundings should give the hints to the answer not the golem itself but how you would go about this is beyond me.

My first attempt would be, "I'm on list." Followed by, "They're with me." pointing at the party.

Kurald Galain
2007-12-25, 06:09 AM
This one needs some work I think. In my opinion the surroundings should give the hints to the answer not the golem itself but how you would go about this is beyond me.

My first thought was to knock off his hat with a snowball :smallbiggrin:

Attilargh
2007-12-25, 06:18 AM
Vael, that reminds me of a puzzle I once read. In a computer game (Arx Fatalis? Ultima Underworld?) there is a hallway where you can walk as long as you like but can never progress past halfway. The end just doesn't get any closer. And then, if you turn back, you can't go that way either.

The solution? In the middle one must turn around and continue backwards.

Evil people will add a pit trap on the exit's doorstep.

Roderick_BR
2007-12-25, 12:12 PM
This is unfair, because it takes advantage of the fact that the players will not state out loud every single thing the characters are doing.

In real life, if you push on a door and it doesn't open, you will likely pull it in reflex, possibly without even realizing it. Thus, unless the characters have really low Wis scores, it is only fair to assume that if they try to open the door, they will try to both push and pull.

There was a post in the "stupid arguments" thread about a DM who assumed that if the player characters look around, they aren't looking up unless the players specifically stated they were. There is also a famous bad story about the PCs suddenly taking lots of damage, and the DM eventually explaining that this was starvation, because they hadn't explicitly specified their characters were eating (despite carrying rations and so forth). All of this boils down to the DM being intentionally nasty and unfair, and this puzzle is no different.
True. Pulling and pushing a door knob back and forth quickly when you find it locked, maybe trying to "loose" it, thinking that it's just stuck, is a very normal instinct.

I don't think I ever did a mean puzzle in my games. I did hear some nasty tricks from friends that did, though. Like sticking one's hand deep into a door's large keyhole, to push the key into the smaller keyhole deep into it.

Steelion
2007-12-25, 06:27 PM
On the golem/lizard one- my first thought was a hammer. Water never even entered my mind.