Help Me Trap This Temple

[Rechan]

For my next session, I plan on running my PCs through a trapped temple, to definitely engage them a little more than I have been thusfar. They've merely been having slugfests with monsters, so I want to toss a little variance at them.

I want traps. More importantly, I want some clever trap suggestions/designs.

The current story is this: The site is an ancient temple/palace of amazons that were cursed, and turned into the first harpies. They sought help from Demogorgon, who in turn made them the carriers of a possession-based disease, and made demons revere the harpies, as his twisted version of their request.

So the temple/palace is 1) is an aztec/jungle type theme, 2) old, containing undead harpies, and 3) filled with demons and likely infused with abyssal energy.

The area that will be trapped is the bottom level of a ziggeraut, which now constitutes the "Treasure Vaults" and whathaveyou. (For the curious, I had the PCs enter into the middle level of a 3 level building. The top level houses the Queen, the bottom level has the vaults).

[sblock=4th Edition mechanics specific information]My party is comprised of a Warlord, Paladin, Ranger (TWF) and a wizard (eladrin). All level 2. So ranged capability is a little limited, and no thievery; thus the traps' countermeasures should be via Arcana/Acrobatics or Athletics/Heal or religion/Nature or Dungeoneering.

I am dead set on using two enemies: a flying zombie, and a corruption corpse. Nothing else is necessary. Disease based effects, however, are a plus.[/sblock]
You don't need to give specific stats, or even existing traps. I am just looking for ideas and inspiration for exciting stuff. Free reign of design, and the layout of the dungeon level, location of treasure, etc.

Just keep in mind it must be contained to the dungeon level (or go into sub-levels dug into the earth), be engaging in an encounter sense, work with my party's dynamics, and be thematically appropriate (centuries old, thus not depending on living monsters, fit in an Indiana-Jones style adventure site, etc).

 

[Jeremy757]

Well I don't know about specific traps, but I would suggest making sure most of the monsters they are going to fight can fly and then place a lot of ground based traps around and a lot of difficult terrain. Make the PC's look for higher ground to survive, keep it so they can't stand in one place and fight for long.

 

[newmath120]

Well I don't know about specific traps, but I would suggest making sure most of the monsters they are going to fight can fly and then place a lot of ground based traps around and a lot of difficult terrain. Make the PC's look for higher ground to survive, keep it so they can't stand in one place and fight for long.

Nice idea, but what the author thinks about it

 

[Rechan]

I would add that I won't be using too many of the flying zombies. One or two in an area just to make it interesting. The corruption corpse won't be flying - the wings will be so decayed and nasty that it can't get off the ground.

Also would like to offer the Pcs the opportunity of pushing their foes into damaging effects, but they don't have any real pushing capacity right now.

Thinking about it, I haven't decided on what kind of treasure is in the treasure chambers. So, a magical item that is powering one of the traps would be a nice little twist, especially if they can yank it out to stop the trap.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Haha. From the thread title I thought you looking for help to keep a temple from getting away

Since this place is inhabited by undead harpies it seems like the best types of traps would be those that channel and confine combined with alarms that alert the evil creatures when thier trap has been sprung.

Imagine a sliding chute that drops a character into room filled with the remains of past victims. The rest of the party has a limited amount of time to get the trapped PC out before a one way secret door opens and harpies (or some other nasty thing) enters to devour the unlucky PC.

Getting the character out, and sealing off the trap trigger area in a very limited amount of time is a good place for a harrowing skill challenge. There is no time to take 10 and solutions must be thought of quickly. If a solution is not found in time perhaps the nasties and the trapped PC begin to battle while the others frantically try to finish the skill challenge.

This type of trap is more interesting than the standard damage/ death trap when you have unliving inhabitants to spice things up.

 

[fba827]

I preface by saying I'm not the greatest at these so sorry for crappy formatting or execution -- feel free to strip out whatever you want.


1) Vine trap (to go with your jungle environment)
"As you enter the large room, there are 3 pillars on each side guiding your path forward and vines covering the backwall and pillars themselves. At the other end of the room is the only other door you can see. (Don't draw the vines on the map as it will draw too much attention to it, only add it to the map once they realize something is "up")

Room (don't know how well this will show up on here)
|----[d]----|
| |
| p p |
| |
| p p |
| |
| p p |
| |
----[d]-----
d=door
x=stone pillar
pillar and far back wall are covered with the vine trap

Obviously, feel free to alter the room,m the traps, and its contents as you see fit.

To notice
Nature (DC difficult) - within 2 squares of vines on either pillar or backwall. Notice that the vines seem unnatural
Perception (DC medium) - within 5 squares of the vines ini bright light or within 2 squares of dim light to notice that for a blink of an eye, one of the vines seemed to move.
Arcana (DC difficult?) - within 2 squares of the vines to notice that there is a magic aura on the vines

Trigger:
If you step in any square adjacent to the vines (thus, if they step in any square adjacent to a pillar or any square adjacent to the backwall)

Reset:
The trap continuously resets on its own as the vines just seem to keep growing(regenerating) to grab more people near it

Effect:
The vines grab the victim (+? to attack vs reflex; also minor damage from squeezing). Every round it continues to grab, it does an additional minor damage.

Escape:
athletics to escape grab
acrobatics to escape grab

Possible ways to bypass:
Avoidance (though the square by the exit door will be hard to bypass)
Nature (DC medium): to know the vines must have a root source
Perception (DC difficult): shrowded in the shadows of the ceiling is the root source
Non-fire Attack on vines: No real effect, The vines seem to regrow as quickly as you hack away at them
Fire attack on vines: The vines regrow after one round (thus, disabled for 1 round)
Non-fire attack on the root source: No real effect, the roots seem to regrow as quickly as you hack away at them
Fire attack on the root source: the roots burn away, disabled for 1 day per hp of fire damage dealt


Variation 1: Perhaps the doors are shut after you enter so they _have_ to stay and search for a way to open the doors (thus, allowing more time to get caught in the vine trap)

Variation 2: Some sort of poison or disease effect could come from the thorns on the vines, requring the appropriate save or heal checks.

Variation 3: there are monsters in the room (works good with variation 1) and the vines will grab at any _creature_ thus allowing the possibility to trap the nemies in the vines with careful manuevering

Variation 4: the vines could be a monster on their own, but the trap angle would offer you more variety

(Personally, i would probably use variation 1 and 3.... maybe 2 if it wouldn't kill the party and i set the DCs for the poisons/disease very low.)

------------------------------------------------
I have a couple other incomplete ideas. If I can figure out how to complete them I'll add them later on. But hope something is at least usable from the above vine idea (if for no other reason than to spark a better idea).

 

[Rechan]

I might go the vine route. The problem is that they're alive, and this place is pretty much desolate and dead, so something keeping the vines alive would seem very suspicious. They also recently fought an assassin vine, so they might be overly suspicious.

I do like the chute + pit idea. Maybe the timer should be an hour glass, or other sand-based thing, to increase the tension.

 

[Zsig]

I'll try to throw in some ideas that might help you... or not.

Maybe you could use some pillars that looks like some totem thingies with some scary faces on it. They'd throw in blasts of poison gas through their mouths (Close blast 3; +X vs. Fort; dealing poison damage and possibly ongoing poison damage).

Then, to make things interesting use the regular version of the zombie (along with the ones you pointed).

The trick here is that they try to grab the PCs in front of the traps, making them pretty dangerous. (Hint: undead are immune to poison).

The coruption corpse will weaken the PCs as they try to get rid of the zombies grapping them.

You could use a row or two of such pillars (similar to one of the suggestions above), making them throw gas each turn in some random pattern, making it hard to predict which is gonna activate in which turn, maybe activating 2 or 3 each round, on the trap's initiative count.

Anyway, just a couple ideas for you to think about.

EDIT:

 

[Rechan]

Yeah, I've been thinking about the poison emission trap. My only concern there is the "Wait, this place is old, how did that poison stay in there/where'd the stuff come to reload it?" given that those inside are sorta confined to their current space.

Zsig - it's interesting you posted that. Surrounding the actual temple (well, 100 feet from it) are totem poles, magic meant to seal and confine the harpies/demons in place. (For the curious, I'm thinking they were set in place by the fey/eladrin who have abandoned the area).

 

[DarkKestral]

Give 'em a classic gas trap. However, make the gas apparent on first notice.. no DC to notice... basically it should just fill a portion of the room and obscure sight.. and do a bit of damage per round if they don't get down on the ground. Then use a couple of pit traps that require getting up into the gas-filled area in order to disable. So they can either choose to take some a point or two of damage per round and not risk any extra, or choose not to take that damage and risk having huge chunks of their health taken out if they trigger a pit trap. However this might be for a bit higher level group than you have. If they're lucky and have the right stuff on hand, (like one of those amulets in 1st-3rd eds that let you live in environments that would otherwise kill you, or a ritual with similar effects) they can pretty much bypass it entirely.)

Another area would be to have some of the items in the lower levels be on disease-carrying corpses. This way, they can choose to not take the item, if so, they don't get the sweet item.. but if they do, then they've got to make rolls to see if they get the disease.

Another thought: water... on the lower levels you could have some areas that are basically filled with dark, muddy water that you can't easily see into. Not only would this water be stagnant and probably pretty disgusting, but water that had sat like that for so long would probably be pretty prone to having lots of diseases.

Rechan: I'd think of adding some plant-like monsters... plants are surprisingly hardy, and a lot of them can survive where animals can't. Plus, everyone loves old jungle temples that are covered in plant life...