Steal My Best Trap: The Exploding Rolling Boulder Trap

I wrote up the best trap I’ve ever created for a Dungeons and Dragons game: The Exploding Rolling Boulder Trap.

The article has a diagram and detailed description on how to run the trap, which is appropriate for PCs of any level (though higher level PCs are more likely to get around it).

Summary: Not Your Ordinary Rolling Boulder Trap

• This trap plays on the traditional rolling boulder trap made famous by Indiana Jones.
• The “boulder” that rolls down a hallway threatening to crush the PCs in this scenario is in fact a large pinata-like balloon of explosive gas shaped like a boulder.
• The Kobolds’ goal is to shoot the boulder using their fire arrows when the maximum number of PCs are within the blast radius of the fireball this creates.
• To prevent PCs from simply running away, the Kobolds have devised another devious trick--alcoves carved into the sides of the hallway that trick unwary PCs into thinking they can dodge out of the way of the boulder’s path.
• But the alcoves are not merely mechanisms to corral the maximum number of PCs into the radius of an exploding fireball--they are pit traps lined with poisoned spikes!

C'mon. Some players are already afraid of doors and paneled floors. You're going to add graduated hallways to that, too?

I like the trapped alcove/recess idea, but I'd go with a simple lever: putting weight on the "floor" of the recess pushes a lever behind the wall, which has a spike on it that pops through the mysterious hole in the recess design...at just about heart level.

My best trap was a large, open hole in the floor, with the word "Trap" scrawled on an adjacent wall over it.

What are the odds that someone will walk over to it and look down?

Now, what would you like to have happen when they do? Pressure plate for something unrelated? A swinging weight to knock them in?

Originally there was a giant spider hiding over head and a Neo-Otyugh in the pit. The spider dropped a web to entangle them, the N-O grabbed it to pull them down, and the pair split the meal 50/50.

But it just tickled me to actually tell the party there was a trap, and where it was, and still have them fall for it. (Literally!)

Note: I was kind of a passive-aggressive b--tard when I came up with that one.