UniversalMonster
First Post
Illusion of damsels (and better yet, actual chained down damsels) is a D&D classic. Check out the original AD&D2 Haunted Halls of Eveningstar for a great version of this.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I've fallen victim to this. In Undermountain there was a room with a mermaid chained to a wall at the bottom of a pool. My monk jumped in to free her. The pool was acid and the mermaid was an illusion. In my defense, we had seen much stranger things in Undermountain and something about the way the DM presented it made me throw caution to the wind.
Damsel in distress traps are easy to detect with OOC knowledge (not that I promote that).
When you are in the middle of a dungeon crawl with no exit in sight, the last thing the DM will do is to have a NPC non combatant accompany you.