Trap with in a trap

[Guinea Anubis]

So based on the feedback I got from here I scrapped my idea for a puzzle based ruined city. I am now working on a more normal traps and monsters underground city.

One of the traps I thought of was a trap with in a trap. The idea is the is a trap that is kind of easy to find and disarm but when you disarm it that is the triger for the other trap or if you set off the first trap it would still triger the next one. I was thinking of making the first trap a normal run of the mill poison dart trap DC 17 to find and disarm. When its disarmed it will triger a almost room wide poision spike pit trap DC 27 to find and disarm.

This trap is ment to guard a vualt that will had a good amount of gold, so I was going to spend around 1300 exp on the trap. The real question is since this will be the only thing stopping the PCs from getting to and unlocking the vault what else could I add to this trap that will make it challenging but keep it fair.

[jiriku]

Trap-in-a-trap designs are the BEST! These are the things that will give you a reputation as an Evil Sadistic DM (that's a good thing).

The trap designer can't predict how the first trap might be disarmed, thus it's difficult for him to design a reliable way for the second trap to trigger off the disarming of the first, so I'd recommend against that.

Just give the second trap its own trigger. The fools your PCs will assume they've cleared the room after disarming the first trap and walk right into the second. Your enjoyment will be doubled as they realize they could have found and disarmed the second trap, if only they hadn't been so overconfident.

In general, you can use variations on this idea by combining a simple, obvious trap with a cunning, diabolical trap. For example, put a trigger for a pit trap that occupies half the room near the entrance to a room. Disabling the trap blocks the mechanism so the floor will not collapse. Put a false door at the back of the room, trapped to release a heavier-than air poison gas. The gas WOULD drift down into the pit, but since the players blocked that trap, it fills the room instead. For the piece de resistance, put the actual exit to the room at the bottom of the pit.

Alternately, if you think your suckers players will fall for it, switch the locations of the real and false doors. Anyone who falls in the pit will think he's found a way out, but attempting to open the false door at the bottom of the pit releases poison gas onto his comrades above, and the gas then floats down into the pit where he's at, delivering to him his just reward.

[Rhiannon87]

Trap-in-a-trap designs are the BEST! These are the things that will give you a reputation as an Evil Sadistic DM (that's a good thing).

The trap designer can't predict how the first trap might be disarmed, thus it's difficult for him to design a reliable way for the second trap to trigger off the disarming of the first, so I'd recommend against that.

Just give the second trap its own trigger. The fools your PCs will assume they've cleared the room after disarming the first trap and walk right into the second. Your enjoyment will be doubled as they realize they could have found and disarmed the second trap, if only they hadn't been so overconfident.

In general, you can use variations on this idea by combining a simple, obvious trap with a cunning, diabolical trap. For example, put a trigger for a pit trap that occupies half the room near the entrance to a room. Disabling the trap blocks the mechanism so the floor will not collapse. Put a false door at the back of the room, trapped to release a heavier-than air poison gas. The gas WOULD drift down into the pit, but since the players blocked that trap, it fills the room instead. For the piece de resistance, put the actual exit to the room at the bottom of the pit.

Alternately, if you think your suckers players will fall for it, switch the locations of the real and false doors. Anyone who falls in the pit will think he's found a way out, but attempting to open the false door at the bottom of the pit releases poison gas onto his comrades above, and the gas then floats down into the pit where he's at, delivering to him his just reward.

I am in awe of your diabolical-ness. Good thing I have time to adapt a trap in the dungeon my players are currently in; I've just got a run-of-the-mill spell effect trap now. (I don't use traps much, so I'm not as familiar with their workings.) Clearly there is much more potential here.

[Moriato]

Damn you 4chan, you made the title of this thread bring up all kinds of bad mental images that have nothing to do with D&D. But I digress

I think DMs like traps a lot more than players do, and not just because they're on the recieving end.

For a DM they're devious clever little devices he can place around and laugh when the party runs into them.

For the party, they're a waste of time. Either you have a rogue capable of finding and disabling them, in which case traps just make you stop the game and roll a die to find it, and another to disarm it, of you don't and your party is constantly losing hp, getting poisoned, or getting killed and there's really nothing they can do about it except roll up a rogue, which obviously no one wanted to play starting out, or they'd already have one.

In the worst cases, when a DM just can't get enough of traps, the game basically consists of "move 5 feet, check for traps, move 5 feet, check for traps, roll to find a trap, roll to disarm a trap, move 5 feet, check for traps etc etc etc." I've been in more than one game where the party had to resort to that to stay alive. Not a fun game.

[FMArthur]

Put a 15ft long, 50ft deep spike-filled pit immediately before it. They'll want to jump the gap given the relatively easy Jump DC, but the trap triggers when they land, making them unable to take the time necessary to actually disarm a trap unless they are hovering.

[Zeta Kai]

Not written by me (I don't recall who), but it's priceless, so here you go:

Leap of Faith
The party came to a 20’ pit, 30’ deep, as wide as the hallway. So the fighter talks about his grappling hook, & says he’s going to jump over the pit with a running leap and try to make it so he can hold the rope on one end & someone else can hold it on the other. The monk, who actually maxed out jump, says “I’m going to jump with him,” so they both got hit by the trap.

Seeing as they were leaping up, over the pit, when they leapt into the reverse gravity spell they shot up through the false ceiling UP a 50’ pit, with spikes at the TOP. Then the wizard dispelled the reverse gravity & watched them fall the 50 feet they originally fell up, as well as the 30 feet they were trying to not fall into to begin with. The monk saved himself some fall damage with slow-fall, but still hit the spikes, and the fighter had Slippers of Spider Climb, so I don’t know why he was even jumping, but he did.

[t_catt11]

Listen to the wisdom that is jiriku!

Don't overload your dungeons with traps - use them just often enough to keep your players paranoid about their existence.

[jiriku]

Moriato brings up a good point. Traps should make the game fun for players, by creating uncertainty and rewarding clever thinking. If the traps are auto-solvable by a paranoid rogue who checks for traps every five feet and can't be evaded through clever thinking, then they really don't contribute to gameplay.

It's on the DM's shoulders to not merely use traps, but use them in service of an enjoyable game.

I think 4e really brought a new level to the game through the idea of introducing traps as part of encounters. Again, DM cruelty is great here. Corpse-crafted zombies that explode in a negative energy burst are cool. A trap that, when triggered, sends jets of flame from the mouths of statuary placed randomly throughout the room is pretty neat. But put the two together, so the zombies occasionally trigger the trap by accident and the trap causes the zombies to burst when it burns them? That's inspired.

@ Rhiannon: Thank you! The best traps are like deviant little psychology experiments, attempting to predict likely behaviors and punish overconfidence or carelessness (sort of like a twisted fantasy version of the Home Alone movies). I'm also fond of traps that are a one-two punch, where solving the first trap in the most obvious way generally sets the stage for the second trap. And of course, there's no reason you have to stop with just two punches.