Good uses of traps

[Yora]

Specifically mechanical ones, not ambushes.

Traps sound like fun, but in an actual game, they are more anoying.
Either you don't notice the trap and get automatic damage of some sort without being able to do anything about it. The moment you notice that something is there, the chance to interact with or react to its presence has already passed.
Or the players start searching for traps all the time, which in most games means one character is checking every floor tile, door, and crate, with the other players doing nothing.

[Rorrik]

I've had good experiences with traps that rather than dealing damage are a nuisance. Spring loaded stone walls that move into place behind you. Doors that when opened magically teleport the last man in the party into a nearby sarcophagus, putting him is a coma. Illusory floors that hide steeply sloping, slippery slides into lower levels of the dungeon. Alarms that alert the lazy guards to your intrusion. Many of these have been good traps that added color to the dungeon and made it harder to solve without forcing us to search every stone or simply ignore them. With the stone walls especially there was a mechanism behind them that could be used to move them out of place, so provided you were on the right side they didn't cause a problem and we sometimes tripped them on purpose.

I've never had as much success as the DM who used the above in using traps in my dungeons. How does one go about presenting a trap to make it enjoyable to the party?

[NikitaDarkstar]

I'd take some inspiration from some of the Indiana Jones movies. Gives them audiable ques that something is a miss (they didn't notice stepping on something, but now a low rumbling is heard in the distance), visual ques (intricate designs in an otherwise plain corridor), and traps that aren't traps so much as bonuses. (instead of a deathtrap it opened a safe passegway or gave a message.)

[Cookiemobsta]

Don't add traps willy-nilly. Make sure that the only things that are trapped look like they should be trapped--treasure chests, ornate doors, etc. If you start trapping random passageways, expect the PCs to search every passageway for traps.

[Lochiel]

As anyone used a collection of traps as an encounter? Layout the room with a collection of traps, make it clear that the goal is to get to the other side of the room, or recover the McGuffin. Have the PC's roll Init so they know they are in an encounter, and let them spend the encounter doing whatever they want to discover and disable (or ignore and trigger) as they see fit? Allow detection skillchecks to work on entire sections to speed things up.

And if someone has tried it, did it work?

[Gunpowder]

I used to hate traps, but I've recently come across the perfect way to make a trap interesting, rather than just an extra bundle of damage if they fail a spot check. Here's how it goes:

DM: Make a notice roll.
Player: Rats - I failed.
DM: You hear a click. Slowly, you look down at the pressure pad beneath your feet.
Player: Well, damn.
DM: So, what are you all going to do? {Evil grin}

It doesn't necessarily have to be a pressure pad that'll trigger as soon as the front player moves off it, of course. You might set off a boulder that rolls towards them from the distance, or a pump that very slowly fills a room with neurotoxin. You might even activate a defense grid, which subsequently needs to be deactivated (works just as well in an ancient temple as a futuristic facility).

The point is, you want to make a trap that escalates a scene, meaning the party have some new obstacle to overcome (with immediate or far reaching consequences), rather than just doing their thing and then being forgotten.

Also! These work brilliantly in the middle of a battle. Having to deal with both the rigours of battle and the consequences of whatever trap you've thrown at the players tends to make a battle much more interesting than the normal routine of choosing how to hit who. Whom? Hmm.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I like using traps that force the PCs to take some sort of action. Rorrik's examples of a trap that simply sounds an alarm, alerting NPC guards to the PCs presence or doors that can teleport people who pass through them are good ones.

Another I like is a pit trap with some kind of monster at the bottom. This forces the PC who fell in into a fight with very little space to maneuver while the PCs above try to help with ranged weapons and magic. (You can even be a sneaky DM and change the monster in the trap based on who falls in.) I especially like springing one of these during a fight, as it often leaves the players outside the trap with the choice of helping their friend or dealing with the more immediate threats to themselves (and it makes bull rushing enemies into the pit an interesting option.

I had a similar one once where the players needed to solve a very simple riddle to light 8 candles in the right order around a magic circle. The problem was that the riddle didn't say whether the order went clockwise or counter-clockwise. The PCs guessed wrong and the first one into the circle was switched with a mephit from the elemental plane of water and the other players had to force the mephit back into the circle to get their friend back. Meanwhile, the PC who got transported has to fight off a a shark that "happened" to be nearby on the other side of the circle. It was memorable enough that even 3 or 4 levels later the wizard's still wondering if she should learn Water Breathing, just in case.

I also sometimes use traps that don't have any particular harmful effect. Once my party was sneaking into a wizard's (long abandoned) hideout. Opening the front door set off a "trap" that summoned several elementals to act as servants and cast Silent Image to put illusory replicas of great paintings on the walls. It added a nice bit of flavor and helped establish the wizard's character a bit, while also providing a minor challenge as the PCs tried to loot the place without the elementals noticing.

[Rorrik]

It doesn't necessarily have to be a pressure pad that'll trigger as soon as the front player moves off it, of course. You might set off a boulder that rolls towards them from the distance, or a pump that very slowly fills a room with neurotoxin. You might even activate a defense grid, which subsequently needs to be deactivated (works just as well in an ancient temple as a futuristic facility).

The point is, you want to make a trap that escalates a scene, meaning the party have some new obstacle to overcome (with immediate or far reaching consequences), rather than just doing their thing and then being forgotten.

Definitely, traps that the players can make a decision of how to handle after they've set them off are a great way to make realistic traps a part of the scenery. Once traps are not an instantaneous and minor inconvenience, but rather a compelling force that integrates with the dungeon, the players will appreciate their influence more.

[Tyndmyr]

Specifically mechanical ones, not ambushes.

Traps sound like fun, but in an actual game, they are more anoying.
Either you don't notice the trap and get automatic damage of some sort without being able to do anything about it. The moment you notice that something is there, the chance to interact with or react to its presence has already passed.
Or the players start searching for traps all the time, which in most games means one character is checking every floor tile, door, and crate, with the other players doing nothing.

This is correct. Thus, only add those sorts of traps as flavor. Actual challenging traps should play out like an encounter. Multiple elements, time is a factor, might be mobs included, etc.

A mere "contact poison on the lock" is the boring sort of trap.

[kieza]

Here's an example of a trap that got an overwhelmingly positive response:

There's an empty room with two doors. The party comes through one door, and obviously wants to exit through the other. However, somewhere in the room is a concealed circle of runes. If someone steps into it, it starts to glow blue, and an Arcane Lock activates on both doors, making it difficult to leave. It also activates an Alarm effect in a nearby guardroom, telling the guards that someone has triggered the trap, but the party can't hear this. Finally, if the person who triggered the trap leaves the circle of runes after it's activated, it turns red and poison gas starts pumping into the (sealed) room until they step back in.

The party has to either:
A) Get one of the doors open without the character in the circle, then run for it.
B) Have the character in the circle open the door, while holding their breath.
C) Wait for the guards to open the door and fight them while the trapped character stays where he is
D) Fight the guards while holding their breath (and, of course, the guards have gas masks).

[Seharvepernfan]

I use traps all the time, and as long as they make sense, it's really not a porblem.

For instance, a few that I've used:
1. A large circular room with a wide circular carpet in the middle, on which is a bedroll, a small table, a wooden plate, and a book (any other little miscellaneous things like that. There was actually a 10ft. wide pit trap that the carpet (20ft. wide) covered (it had little weak wooden supports to make sure it didn't sag). Once a pc stepped on it, they were pretty much screwed because the carpet would slide with them, denying them any grip. If the pc was heavy enough, any other pcs on the carpet would be dragged in too, though a heavier pc could keep the first one from sliding in.
In the pit there were some clues to another trap later on: 3 human skeletons who were missing their hands.

2. Inside a hidden vault, there was a scary looking treasure chest (made to look like a beholder-monster). It wasn't locked, but it was trapped. The trap was a ray of enfeeblement, and inside the chest were 6 crawling claws with a weak poison on each. They would swarm out and attack the (possibly) weakened opener. I don't think there was anything (treasure) in the chest.

3. Connecting the pit trap room to another even larger room was a 10ft. square hallway, with double doors on the pit-trap-room entrance side. Inside the larger room (which was circular, had several pillars, and was made for the giant beholder-god idol in the middle), were two sets of armor holding shields and scimitars (dread guards). Once the pcs entered into the big room, a portcullis trap would slide down at the double doors. The way it ended up happening for my group, they were all on the dread guard side of it, so they couldn't run, and a few of them were blocked in behind their friends when the dread guards approached.

Those three traps made sense, and the pcs enjoyed them, despite running headlong into each. However, in that same dungeon I had another trap that didn't make (much) sense. It killed them and I let them start over before the trap and avoid that room.

It was a hidden prison room that with three circular pits in the floor, covered with iron grates and swing doors. In one of the pits, at the bottom, a stone was missing from the wall, so the pcs opened that swing door, which triggered a summon swarm trap that summoned a swarm of spiders that climbed the wall and engulfed the pcs. That trap was largely pointless (the wizard who took over this dungeon had hidden a valuable statuette in that hole, and decided to guard it with a magic trap - he used this entire dungeon as a place to practice making traps/undead/casting spells and a backup hidden refuge where he could store excess valuables that he hasn't sold yet).


Anyway, it all depends on where the traps are placed, and the reasons for them being there, as well as what the trap does. I love traps, and I use them whenver appropriate, and treat each instance as a creative opportunity.

[Crow]

Good use of D&D-style "fire-and-you're-f***ed" traps, entails using them in locales where they would be expected to be used. This means Abandoned Dungeon of Doom, yes. Harbor Commissioner's Summer Getaway, no.

You don't need to tell the PC's the location of each trap, and nor should you. They should be as devious and unexpected as is appropriate for the locale. BUT there should be some cue to the PC's that tells them one way or the other;

"By stepping into the Abandoned Dungeon of Doom, you are accepting the risk that you may die, possibly quite unexpectedly. Turn around now, or proceed at your own peril."

How you convey the message is up to you (imagery, rumors, eyewitness accounts, whatever). But give them something. If it is not the type of thing they want to risk, they should have a choice.

On that note, throwing up a dungeon using this style of trap, that must be slogged through to advance the plot is a good way to get your PC's to decide on ignoring your epic plot. So generally, try to avoid it.

[Solaris]

I've always been fond of traps as puzzles, rather than just a collection of skill checks.

[Whybird]

I think traps work best as a complicating factor when something else has the PCs' attention, rather than a roadblock in and of themselves -- for example, if the players are fighting kobolds on their own turf, then the kobolds will know where all the hidden pit traps are and skirt around them while trying to lead players onto them (or be able to run safely under the human-height scything blades), but the players won't have the time to cautiously search every square of the room.

The same goes for -- for example -- crushing walls which add a timer to a fight or rearrange the battlefield. Players have to choose between expending time and effort on disabling the trap, or hoping they can finish the fight before the trap hinders them too much.

You can also have traps as a complicating factor when a party are trying to sneak through a mansion or steal an artefact or track an enemy through the woods -- all situations in which they don't have time to be cautious.

[Dimers]

As a PC, my favorite trap was an illusion spell. It created a cloud of obfuscating smoke, then covered each person in the area with a disguise spell that made them look like a monster. As it happens, my party had sent me and one other scout into that hallway, and when the trap went off, it was just in character for me to attack the other PC. "Crap! Guys! A lizardman snuck up on me in a cloud of smoke -- and I think he got James!" That was a good trap because it was interesting and different, and its effects could be mitigated or heightened based on the circumstances (including RPing and metagaming). I don't remember anything else from that campaign as well as I remember that trap.

Traps can be placed as treasure sometimes. If you can collect poison off of it, or salvage rare metals, or it has some sort of alchemical setup to justify how it resets itself, then the PCs generally feel good about having found the trap (whether by HP or by skill).

I also like traps that alter layout. If a battlemap is made more interesting because of placement of visible traps, that's fun. If traps actually make terrain change during a battle, that's great too. And traps that don't deal damage but do create obstacles or difficult terrain can make bland areas into challenges -- depending on the game system, they're frequently challenges that let people shine in different ways.

[Knaight]

I divide traps into three categories, all of which have uses. The basics:

Type I: Simple, Unknown
Example: If you step on a hidden pressure plate, a bolt comes out.
Use: Flavor. These don't actually threaten the characters mechanically, but serve to inform about a place. If I'm describing the characters walking through a hallway, at which point a bolt flies right in front of the face of the characters, something is now known about the area.

Type II: Simple, Known.
Example: When you break that trip wire these two magnets are able to connect, which pumps a stream of fire out of the ceiling at those points.
Use: Variable. These work best if there is also something else going on - perhaps there is something under the potential streams of fire that the PCs need, and there's a fight going on in which their opponents have no idea that the tripwire is there, so the PCs need to grab the item and get out before somebody stumbles into the trip wire. They can also get creative.

Type III: Semi-random, Known
Example: This area is full of rusted pipes that have been exposed to significant amounts of temperature change, throughout which caustic agents are transported. There are valves throughout the area which can reroute the agents or cut off pipes, but all of them are on really open spots. Also, you're being shot at, and given the bullets flying around something is going to break soon.
Mechanics: Roll a d6 for every section. If a 1 is rolled, a pipe bursts.
Use: These can add tension to a scene. Chases, desperate climbs, whatever, it works for all of them. In combat they add a tactical dimension.

Type IV: Delayed, Unknown
Example: As a character is crawling through the ventilation shaft, a series of small rods jut out at high pressure, pinning them in place. A transistor is clearly charging from a nearby battery, and it will zap them at levels well over those needed to get right through the shield on their metal, conductive powered armor.
Use: These add tension, and work well for playing styles where creative problem solving by players is paramount. Moreover, they also add to the atmosphere, though in a different way than background mentions of Type I traps.

Obviously, there are others, and mixes between these categories.

[RandomNPC]

Best trap I've ever thrown at the party was from a 2E red box called Dragon Mountain, I made the rules update to 3.5 and ran with it, making things up as I had to.

20 foot wide hallway goes quite a way, with an open pit 20 foot wide, 20 foot across, fifty foot deep pit in the middle.

The Monk and Barbarian decided to leap it at the same time, so they leap up into the reverse gravity spell, fall up through the paper ceiling and "up" the 70 foot pit in the ceiling to the spikes in the roof. Then the party wizard hits it with a dispel magic, and the falling begins... it was great.

[JackQ]

One of my favorite trap as a DM was the use of shadow conjuration to make "illusionary" bridges. As the PCs cross the bridge they had to make will saves. Those making the save fall through, those failing actually walk on it normally. There was also a sign "only the true believers may pass". Eventually, they figured out the deliberately fail and passed the bridge.

[motoko's ghost]

One of my favourite traps is actually from a dragon magazine, it straps to the back and can shoot bolts at the people behind you, I don't know why I just like the concept of strapping a trap to your back

[W3bDragon]

The most fun I ever had with traps while DMing was in the following setup.

The corridor the PCs are in ends in an intersection and the PCs can go left, right, or straight. There are traps in all three directions of different kinds. Some damaging, some disabling, etc. At the end of each corridor is a locked door. In the intersection between the corridors, the PCs find a hidden door that leads to a control room. (Maybe they find it because the hidden door's edges are worn from use, making it very easy to spot).

This room has 7 levers. Three of them control the traps (on/off) and three of them control the doors (locked/unlocked). The last controls a lightning trap in the control room. The problem is, the levers are all unmarked. The PCs don't know which does what. Every time the PCs throw a switch, they get zapped by lightning, unless they first turn the 7th lever.

Make it so that some of the traps are armed and some are disarmed when the PCs show up. The PCs now need to figure out which lever does what. They have to deal with being zapped every time they operate a lever. They have to deal with the fact that they don't know what each lever is doing. In fact, they have to deal with the fact that they could be arming traps instead of disarming them. Add on top of all of that a few phase spiders roaming the corridors ethereal (or any other suitable ethereal creature), that prepare to attack the PCs whenever they get hit by one of the traps.

I can guarantee that the PCs will make things much worse for themselves than if they had not found that control room.

[Bagelson]

In my experience traps are pretty dull. You find them and you deal with them. It just takes up time and doesn't advance the story one bit. I ran a converted traditional dungeon using Strands of Fate last summer, and I there were a few traps involved. They were all pretty obvious, but using FATE made them a bit more entertaining.

"Yeah, if you touch any of the treasures on the platform the entire dungeon will collapse. But since you are an 'Elven Master Thief', spending a fate point will let you steal something from it."

I could see traps being used during a chase scene. I would resolve it as a regular contested attack or manoeuvre using Craft against Perception (or local system equivalent).

[GM.Casper]

Traps should be interactive.
If GM just rolls dice and tells either ‘You take 15 damage’ or ’You spot and disable the trap’, there is no player interaction.
It’s more interesting to think for ways to bypass a trap than looking for them. The presence of a trap can spice up combat as well.