Fun With Deadly Traps

[Olethros]

Ok, so I LOVE traps, not your run of the mill 60'deep pit of spike things, but the really creative fun/crazy ones.

Share with the class a favorite crazy trap that you have either designed or come-up against, Ill start off with an old favorite of mine.

Preasure point triger on the floor caused a spring loaded tile to smash the victim into the cielling, just after spickes slid out of wholes. The tile then fell back into the floor, where more spikes emerged, so the victem fell into them on the floor, all spikes were covered in acid. It was elegwnt in its simplicity, and did enough damage to be a cr2trap without a big deep pit.

Also a clasic, A 10' cube pit trap that once trigered, dumps a gilatinous cube from a matching 10'cube space above it.

Whatcha got?

[Runolfr]

A half sunk cargo ship. Stairs lead down to the hold, but there's a trip-line rigged on the stairs. That's the "trap" part; you can rig up something else to topple people down the stairs if you want to raise the trap's difficulty class.

The hold is mostly flooded, but there's a rope net rigged across it holding up crates and barrels of loot. The gaps in the net are easily big enough to put a foot or arm through, so lots of balance checks and other difficulties for anyone trying to move around on the net.

Underneath the net, aquatic monsters armed with reach weapons (I had aquatic ogres with spears). They get to fill you full of holes while you're in an extremely precarious and unstable position.

[martyboy74]

A hallway that dead-ends but with a fake door on the other side. The final 10' square area is under the effect of a Reverse Gravity spell. At the top of the chamber is a gelatinous cube, and the path to continue along the hallway.

[goat]

Simple classics like collapsing floors, expanded into cruelty.

The room has a fake door on the opposite side, so the party thinks they just have to cross over without falling and then make their way back later, but the "safe region" on the other side is a floor switch that triggers an anti-magic field that stops magical flying, but clears some false ceilings for naturally flying creatures.

So, they're trapped in a tight floor space with limited movement, attacked from the air by creatures without the limitation.

And there's an antimagic field.

[blacksabre]

I guess this could be considered a trap..and my most deadly for high level characters who get to cocky

Background..party of 6 level 14-15 characters
They have been given the task to go assasinate the red Dragon mount of one of the evil Warlords

the dragons lairs is deep inside an old burial ground complex of an ancient civilization etc etc..

Over the course of dungeon crawling, the group on a number of occasions completey fail the need for silence, either comabt , or just making a ruckess in the wrong place...in which inevitably the dragon is made aware of their presence...and has a trap for such an occasion

On your mark...
Long tunneled stairway going down at a steep 65 degree angle for about 150 feet.

About halfway down,
The Magic weapons stop glowing, and the mage looks un-easy--"anti-magic shell"
In the ceiling are about a dozen holes you can put you arm in, but after about a foot, you can see and feel nothing
20 feet further down..The rogue detects 10 consecutive steps with pressure plates..but can't figure out what the trap does..


Get Set
Unless the party is being extremmly quite and virtually whispering about the situation, the Dragon will hear them below

If they are quite, the steps will still have to be stepped on, which does nothing more then ring a bell below

Go...
The Dragon, in human form, pulls a lever,
1: Collaspses the stairs...
2: Up the stairs,oil is poured out through the holes, washing the crew down the tunnel
3: They slide down to the end of the tunnel, that opens out into ..nothing..they begin falling...Weapons, items going everywhere..

They land in a large pile straw or hay..their items strewn all over, and they are soaked in oil. as is the straw and hay now..

Looking around they notice 4-5 barrels (full of oil of course) illuminated by a torch about 50 feet away..

They look towards the torch..."Hey, Thats not a torch..that looks like a huge ballista with a flaming bolt, and a red scaled armored man behind it at the trigger...Click..

INITIATIVE!!

[Turcano]

My favorite is actually one on the Wizards site ("How'd He Do It?"). Best. Trap. Ever.

[Saint George]

My personal favorite is a easily found pit (covered with straw or sticks or something equally obvious) in the middle of a hall. It should only be about 4 or 5 feet across and easily jumpable. Then, for the kicker put a wall of force on the other side. Watch the first players face as he tries to jump it.

SMACK
THUMP

[Saint George]

My personal favorite is a easily found pit (covered with straw or sticks or something equally obvious) in the middle of a hall. It should only be about 4 or 5 feet across and easily jumpable. Then, for the kicker put a wall of force on the other side. Watch the first players face as he tries to jump it.

SMACK
THUMP

[Orak]

You start off with a pit trap at the start of a new hallway that leads off from a room the party is already in. The party is high level (14-15) so a 60ft deep pit trap is not a big deal. The hallway is on a gentle upward slope and leads on until it comes to a pressure plate and a corner. Around the corner is a wall of force that holds back 60 ft of hallway filled with green slime. The pressure plate dispells the wall of force letting a wave of green slime wash forth. Party members who pass a listen check can hear the rush of slime. Those who fail have to see it coming. Then the party has to outrun a wave of green slime. Those who heard it have the chance of getting a headstart. Those who didn't will have a harder time outrunning the green slime. And remember that 60 ft deep pit trap? The slime will wash the slowest members to the bottom of the pit, where they will have to swim to the top before they turn into more green slime. mmmm, fun.

The barbarian failed his listen check but luckily his swimming abilities and high stamina allowed him to avoid becoming a green puddle.

[Falconsflight]

I prefer "traps" to the above booby traps. (The difference is in the setting. booby traps are ones that are unexpected. A floor tile pressed, a door rigged, etc. A trap is the kind of thing in indiana jones where he has to go through the 3 things and has hints on how to do it without dieing.)

My favorite one, of my own creation, is where you enter a room, It's a large sized room theres a plaque outside of it, where the players are going through. It tells them not to light anything within the room, or face the consequences. aNd that the door is on the opposite wall. The room is as if it's under the darkness spell. Except NOTHING can see through it. The only way to remove it is to use the light spell. If a light spell is used, the entire room lights up. as if it was day. And then the tarrasque wakes up...

Yeah, I'm nto a nice Dm when it comes to traps.

[RandomNPC]

i've been waiting a long time to use this one from a pre-gen adventure, and now that i hit the party with it i've been bragging. but it was from a pre made game, not made by me.

a 30 foot deep pit, as wide as the hallway, 20 feet across. no spikes, no acid, nothing. so the monk and fighter decide to leap across, right into the reverse gravity. they rip through the fake ceiling and fall up 50 feet to the top of the spiked pit. the wizard disspells magic, and the monk slowfalls, the fighter falls the fifty he already fell and the thirty he was trying to jump, plus the ten foot height of the hallway to begin with. it was great.

but my faveorate was the magical aura at the end of a series of traps, just to make them paranoid.

[Ninja Chocobo]

The never ending hallway!
Make a long hallway, the end of which is affected by a Darkness spell, or similar.
Then, place a Teleportation Circle about 2/3 of the way down, teleporting them back 1/3 of the way.

[Tiberian]

In the first adventure of my current campaign, I came up with an ingenius trap inspired by Tucker's Kobolds. (That alone should cause worry) The adventures were exploring an abandoned monastery that had become a war zone to Kobolds and Goblins. After wandering through the desolate battlefield, the halfling scout-type saw a solitary Kobold standing guard in one of the hallways. He himself was hiding, so he decided to sneak around and found a smaller tunnel to crawl through.
However, when the half-orc barbarian saw the same Kobold he led a charge with the Elven Wizard and the Dwarven Cleric. They all ran at the Kobold, which had begun screeching. The barbarian skidded around the corner and found the room of kobolds. However the elf and wizard weren't so lucky, they slipped on the Grease spell that the barbarian skidded on and slid through the Kobold (illusion) and into a 10' spiked (a single spike) pit...that had a growth of brown mold. The cold damage immediately subdued the spellcasters. The party was 1st level.

The trap was intended as a defense against goblin incursions. The goblin sliding to their death and kept refridgerated for the kobolds to eat later. Dangerous AND utilitarian.

[Realms of Chaos]

I like traps that exist as a fluke of architecture.

The Most Insidious Trap Ever:
In a recently excavated room, suspend a single balance beam over a pit (30-feet deep) room to a platform on the other side. For fun, some wood shavings sit on the balance beam (balance dc 12)

That is the entire trap. Them failing a balance check trying to get to the completely empty platform and falling down.

• If they had made a spot check, they could tell that nothing was on the other side.
• If they just climbed down the pit and climbed up the other side, the trap would be nullified.
• If they bothered acting their intelligence, they could tell that a recently excavated room with no immediately obvious features probably does not contain any loot in it.
• If they bothered asking, they could ascertain any of the above information.

Players naturally assume that if something exists, it is there just for them. Furthermore, they believe that everything must be done the hard way. Exposing these falacies makes for painfully obvious traps and more game verismilitude (unless players consider it more likely that the world would rotate around them).

[Lord Nyax]

Putting in random elements just to make the important pieces blend in is bad form, not verisimilitude. The reason players naturally assume that if you specifically go out of the way to mention something, it's important, is because that's the only way it should be. For a notable example, see Chekhov's Gun.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Start with your classic collapsable floor that falls down into a huge pit of spikes. Now, up the ante by placing several repeating crossbows into the ceiling that will rain down extra pointy death.

The finale- there's another trap exactly like this one right behind it. And the player thought he was so smart jumping over the first.

[Tehnar]

This trap is great when the party has same fire AoE (like fireball). The setup is this:

A well lit downwards sloping 10ft wide tunnel (150 ft long). At about 100 ft down the tunnel there is a proximity trigger to activate the illusion of a giant boulder dropping from the start of the tunnel. Hopefully it is behind most of the party. The illusionary boulder moves 10ft in the first round, 20 ft in the second etc, and it is unlikely the party will do anything to interact with the boulder so they shouldnt get a disbelief saving throw. To get them to run forward at the end of the tunnel place a T intersection. At the end of the tunnel there is a also proximity trigger that sets of a heightened web spell hopefully trapping most of the party. The players will remember that web burns and proceed to burn themselves out of the web. (in the session I was running the wizard fireballed the stuck party members to "save" them).

this trap is best used when the PCs are fresh on spells and never encountered illusions in this dungeon before. Also the search DC for the initial proximity trigger should be high enough so casual searching (take 10) shouldnt detect the trap.

[Bayushi Koji]

Realms of Chaos... I love your trap... I could see how I could fit that into an adventure with my mates with out any real effort.... Just pointing out it's their and the rest is upto them.... Love it.
As for traps... my personal favourite are items with personality. Grimtooth's Traps gave us the lovely 'Derrick the Wonder sword'. A wonderfull, powerfull magic sword, just the kinda thing to make your party sword swinger think about getting it a SPECIAL sheath.... but after you've used it in a couple of fights it wakes up.... choose an offencive, crude sterotype of any group who like to get drunk and rowdy.... and its like their purest avatar trapped in the sword. Its always great to see the look on PC's faces when they are trying to sneak past a big gribbly and one of their swords calls it a great big nancy wuss and offers to put it out of its misery.

The other one I loved, from a Shadowrun game... a staff that couldn't comunicate verbally but could summon and attract zombies. No matter where you hide... the swarm is after you!!!

[Realms of Chaos]

Putting in random elements just to make the important pieces blend in is bad form, not verisimilitude. The reason players naturally assume that if you specifically go out of the way to mention something, it's important, is because that's the only way it should be. For a notable example, see Chekhov's Gun.

In a kobold's lair, it makes complete sense. why would creatures best known for their mining suddenly stop the moment that the PCs get a job to kill them. There are probably several such rooms in a kobold lair, where they have only begun to expand their warrens. The pit can even be justified as future living quarters. My point is that there are many dead ends in a dungeon and if it is a bit tricky to reach a dead end, that dead end is as good as a trap.

[Olethros]

Putting in random elements just to make the important pieces blend in is bad form, not verisimilitude. The reason players naturally assume that if you specifically go out of the way to mention something, it's important, is because that's the only way it should be. For a notable example, see Chekhov's Gun.

I disagree. Chekhov's gun only applies to classic litterary technique, and at best is applied when the writer can guarrentee a homogenous detail level throught the story. In a novel, the writer will determine a detail level appropriate to his style and story, and yes, the random break form this pre-set system to describe details of an un-imortant object would be bad form. But is a storytelling venue like D&D, where the actors are expected to react independent of the narrator, punctuaton of detail may be important.

Ideally, the DM would include these elements throughout the story, adding "realism" and ensuring natural reactions from the players. This take the game from a "first person strategy" type to an actual immersive environment. After all, if everything you need to pay attention to is highlighted in a white glow, you can ignore all other elements of the setting (think diablo I&II).

There are plenty of litterary examples where objects ore events described in detail bear no over-all importance to the plot, Look Homeward Angel by Tomas Wolf comes to mind.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Here's a fun little trap which I have used to the utter dismay of my party...

They finally get to the BBEG, which is a rogue/wizard (illusionist)/arcane trickster who has run them through a dangerous path through his abode in an island volcano, using illusions to hide traps, making illusionary traps, using Leomand's Trap spell, and occasionally just tossing in something that looks like a trap but really isn't. So right now, they're very focused on illusion based traps. The wizard of the party even went through the trouble to bust out a True Sight scroll.

They find the BBEG. He's using Mirror Image, which won't fool the Wizard, but will fool everyone else. First thing he does is drop a Quickened Dispel Magic on the Wizard to drop the True Sight, then down a Time Stop, and Overland Flight to take off through a nonmagically concealed door. By the time the Time Stop wears off, he's got a significant distance between them.

They curse and follow down the concealed corridor the BBEG didn't bother concealing... yea, that should have tipped 'em off...

There's an six-way intersection about 200' down the path. Straight ahead, they see the BBEG blowing his tongue at them, then taking off. Yea, it's an illusion. BBEG is way farther down the way. Emboldened, the party charges ahead!

As the first party member enters the corridor, I roll 1d6. As the next enters the corridor, I roll 1d6. This continues, the party starting to get a bit nervous. I grin as everyone landed on a different number.

"Well, it seems to each of you as though your party has vanished as they went through the corridor."

Actually, what happened was a bit more insidious. The hex in the middle of the intersection will randomly turn the PC into one of the halls, roll 1d6, with 1 being directly behind them, going clockwise. This goes off every time someone walks through it. The trap is activated when the BBEG goes through that hex.

They finally realized what was going on when they started shouting at each other and heard them 'behind' them, then experimenting by walking through the intersection singly. The big problem is... they didn't know which way the guy was supposed to be going anymore, because they're all turned around. 1 is back the way they came, 4 goes straight the way the BBEG went (who is long gone before the party can get all in the same corridor), but what about the rest of them? Let's just say there were previously unexplored sectors of these caverns that the party ended up exploring.

Does the trap do damage? Not at all. Does it inconvenience the party? Ohhhh yea.....

[TheOOB]

I had a villan once mix in some inflict potions with some healing potions in an easily accessable area. There is nothing quite like the look on a players face when that potion deals 3d8+5 instead of healing 3d8+5.

[Eldritch_Ent]

I like to call this one "Kurtulmak's Unsteady Arena"


Step 1- Take a large, circular room. Think the Colliseum in Rome.

Step 2- Raise the floor up so there are three floors- with the "arena" being naturally level with the floor of floor 2.

Step 3- Put the entrance to the room on the south side, on floor 2, the exit on the north side, also on floor 2. (For extra mean fun, put the "exit" on floor 3.)

Step 4- Alter the floor so it tilts downwards on whichever end is weighted more. (Make the entire arena, including the "underneath" part circular so the edge of the floor never leaves the side of the wall.)

Step 5- Surround the three floors with Steel bars so nobody can go through, or alternately you can just fill the lowest floor with trap doors/monster burrows containing monsters.

Step 6- Fill the lowest floor with either Dire Antlions, Spellgaunts, or other hole-dwelling "wait for prey to come close" type monsters, or surround the lowest floor with a moat of acid, or a ring of spear-wielding kobolds behind steel bars.

Step 7- The second floor should have Archer and Crossbow Kobolds shooting at the PC's.

Step 8- Fill the top floor with Kobolds throwing things- large round rocks, molotov cocktails, spiked rolling balls, boiling oil, green slimes, acid, anything like that.

Step 9- Cast a Metaspell'ed, Permanent Grease spell on the tilting floor of the arena.

Step 10- have the Axis of the tilting floor generate a Widened Antimagi c Field all around the circular area of the arena. (It's stops just after the steel bars, so the kobolds can still be healed and buffed, but the bars can't be disintegrated or something.)

Step 11- Have the entire arena floor Lockable so the main villain can escape through the other end with no difficulty, but have the trap automatically "unlock" Once the main villain escapes. (Have the PC's following shortly behind the villain so they reach the center of the room- where standing won't cause much tilt- just as he's going through the door on the opposite side)

Step 12- Have the kobolds feed the monsters.


This room is basically the enryway to a Kobol Fortress- It's the only way in without resorting to Teleporting or the like, and is more or less designed to prevent anyone from coming in. However, to be fair to the PC's, there are actually a few ways to get through this trap. The Party here is assumed to be able to easily deal with an entire fortress of level 1-3 kobolds (not counting the BBEG) without breaking a sweat-- IF they can get into actual combat with them.

1- The Antimagic field only covers that room. The mosnter tunnels below aren't magic proofed, so clever PC's can go down one of the Nrothern holes and dig their way up into the Kobold sanctuary with phase door, disintegrate, pass-through-whalls, becoming Ethereal, and things like that.

2: the bars are merely plain iron, and have seen a lot of use without magical repair. It'd probably be easy to break on through- though if you want to not have the party escape this way, a harder material might be substitued.

3- If the PC's can take a few up close hits from Kobolds, they can actually "stand" in or on the walls,g rabbing the bars and putting their feet in between them so their weight isn't on the tipping floor.

4- A goodly quantity of Soverign glue.

5- Having their hirelings and mounts and excess gear sit on one side of the floor while they go around to the other side.

6- Natural Flight, and grappling hooks on the ceiling.

7- Getting through before the floor is "unlocked" and starts a swingin'

[Lolzords]

Two pads that stretch over the entire hallway. First one causes the cieling to open and dump honey on you. The second one causes lots of nozzles to appear in the walls and spit out dozens of fire ants/wasps.

[blacksabre]

I like to call this one "Kurtulmak's Unsteady Arena"

I wouldn't necessarily call this a trap...unless the party members somehow got transported there by surprise..its more like a situation they have found themselves in..

You also mention that this is the entry way to the Kobold fortress, this scenerio seems a little much..If the kobolds are going to invest that expense and elaboration for secureing an entrance then consecutive doors down a long hallway lined with dead drops, arrow slit walls with archers and ceiling lined with hot oil holes would have been more effective..

I see this more as a Spectator event for the Kobolds then a trap..or a "near-the end-of a dungeon crawl" element
Be careful to make sure that elements of a trap do not exceed the capability of the Monters hosting it..and the expense of the "trap" reflectes the value of that which it is protecting
Spending 10k to protect 4k worth of goods doesn't make sense

Granted a lot of DM "fudging" is allowed, but to much fudging and players start feeling a cheesy factor...

Examples..
The leader level of Kobolds is 8. and with an Int average of 10, doubtful he'll be a caster..
Permanancy is a level 5 spell...Need to be level 9 Sor/Wiz to cast...
Antimagic Field..level 6 spell..Need to be level 11

The building of the complex is fine as the Kobolds are decent miners and trap makers..again, I see this as you put it, a Coliseum like event or entertainment,. Therefore I can see the "packs" coffers being used to purchase to pay for the spells on ..

I like the general room..replace the Kobolds with undead, and the big bad villian is a Lich...

[Vyker]

I like to call this one "Kurtulmak's Unsteady Arena"

Be careful to make sure that elements of a trap do not exceed the capability of the Monters hosting it..and the expense of the "trap" reflectes the value of that which it is protecting
Spending 10k to protect 4k worth of goods doesn't make sense

Agreed, but! never forget that a lot of monsters, villians, and even good guys have one very important factor on their side: time.

Maybe this is a trap that was built up over generations of kobolds. Maybe each chieftan added on a bit more, a little more there, until before they knew it they'd sunk an far more wealth into their defenses than the value of what they were defending.

Or, to use an example from a recent Pendragon game I was in, we were granted 100 Libra by our lord to build a castle. Well, a good castle costs about 132 or so Libra, so we had the tricky question of raising thirty more Libra on the spot. By this point, we were wealthy enough to do so, but it would have cut our reserves to the bone. Then we hit upon two facts: the land the castle was being built on raised twelve Libra a year, and it would take five years to construct the castle. So we just plonked down seventy of our original grant, saved thirty for expenses (equipping and furnishing the castle), and figured that the twelve per year would help pay for that particular year's construction. After all, you don't need to pay the guy who makes the roof until you have a place for the roof to go!

Hopefully, that illustrates my point. Since a vibrant world will have folks building over time rather than just springing out of the ground, places can be worth more than their immediate monetary value. If the kobolds kept sinking more and more wealth into this ultimate trap of theirs, it might very well grow to incredible proportions.

Of course, if that's the case, the DM should probably make that clear -- the rusted bars Mojotech mentioned, for example, imply that this trap isn't a trap for the PCs, but something the kobolds have had for a long, long time.

Also, even if the trap exceeds the value of the treasure-stash, it might not exceed the value of something else: a safe home. If the kobolds live there, after all, they might like to keep nasty folks out, and if that's expensive, well, it's better than being dinner!

[blacksabre]

I see your point..and agree ..in part :)
investment over time into something like an arena for sport and entertainment is fine..but that much investement to keep the Front door locked...no..as I said more effective cheaper ways for that..


From a players standpoint, risk should equal reward

In that scenerio, in which the players would be 4--6 level and goes through that elaborate of a "trap" facing high level spell elements, expect on the other side something more the a few +1 weapons..otherwise they start getting that "cheesy" feeling

But you can't give them very high value items that exceed their level..thats where DM's get in trouble with players having better equip then their level dictates

Just saying its a slippery slope and balance is required

Rewards=Level=Risk...get one of them out of whack and things start goin down hill

[Vyker]

I very much agree with that line of thought. The instant players feel like the rewards are vastly outweighed by the risks, they start dragging their feet. You can get by a little with a good adventure (at least in my groups, we're willing to sacrifice a little wealth for an awesome story, but I imagine that there's folks who aren't), but that only takes you so far. Gotta give 'em in-game rewards to make it worth their while. No DM likes hearing a player say, "Sorry, but this plot of yours, intricate though it may be, is suicide and I'm not getting paid enough to die."

In the kobold death arena, I might stagger it so that the kobolds had treasure equivalent to kobolds. Leave the players feeling a little miffed and all. But then, when they went even deeper into the place to chase down the BBEG who led them in there in the first place, I'd bump up his treasure horde so that it was more impressive, but balanced out so that the two treasures, taken together, were on par for the level. The players might get more "Wow!" factor over the sheer size of the shiny pile.

Edit: Oh, right, this is a thread about traps! My mistake.

Well, here's a few from a friend o' mine for lower levels:
- A pit. Just a pit. Which has magical darkness and teleports you just before you hit the bottom... back to the top. You fall forever!
- Another pit (he likes pits), but this one is very, very thin. It's also not very deep, and narrows the further down it goes. So before long, you get stuck and your pals toss in a rope to drag you out. But the walls are made of downward-sloping razor blades, so when they pull you up... sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

[random11]

With traps, I prefer simplicity and reason.
Many GMs build elaborated traps in dungeons, and forget some basic problems with traps:

1) A trap that drops spikes on your head is just as effective as dropping things like the gilatinous cube, but much easier to build and maintain.

2) No one will trap the only entrence to his labratory with traps like a giant pit unless he has an easy way to pass or avoid it.

3) Some traps needs to be rearmed, or covered again after being used. It makes little sense that an ancient passageway will still have all his traps ready after hundreds of years, and a lot less sense if the trap is complex.

[Hadamard]

Although this wasn't a trap, it was quite tricky:

I once transported my (low level at the time) PCs to an arctic climate. In an ice cave dungeon, they came across some "snowmen," which my psionic was pretty sure she could use matter agitation on. Except that they weren't snowmen, they were undead skeletons disguised as snowmen. This made for some very interesting play. After defeating the boss (the abominable snowman), the treasure was hidden behind a wall of ice (where, yet again, matter agitation was the feat of choice). While the "wall of ice" became agitated, the frozen gelatinous cube thawed, and the players had yet another monster to defeat before they could gain their much-earned treasure.

One of my favorite sessions ever.