D&D General Gold Protected by Poisonous Creatures

[pemerton]

The situation is there are some ceramic lidded jars containing gold pieces and poisonous live insects or reptiles. How would you run this? I'm thinking of it as more of a trap than a combat but am open to ideas anyone has. Thanks!

If I were to run this today, it would be in Torchbearer. Torchbearer uses a test against Health to test reflexes - so it would probably be an Ob 2 Health test to avoid poisonous insects, or an Ob 3 Health test to avoid a striking snake.

If one takes Health 4 as typical, that is a (roughly) 2/3 or 1/3 chance of success.

In 5e D&D this is presumably a DEX save - taking +2 as typical, that suggests a DC of 10 against insects or 15 against the striking snake. Failure exposes the character to the poison.

 

[cbwjm]

I get that when people say poisonous they really mean venomous, but this scenario has made me think of a situation where the bad guy is incompetent and he fills his jars up with harmless poisonous bugs.

PC opens up the jar "oh no, the jar was filled with bugs, are they poisonous?"
Party druid "yes, but they're otherwise harmless... what else is in the jar?"

 

[aco175]

Be careful that a 1st level burning hands doesn't ruin your best laid plans.

 

[pemerton]

Be careful that a 1st level burning hands doesn't ruin your best laid plans.

If you're meaning Burning Hands declared by a player to kill the bugs/reptiles, my guess is that would be exactly the sort of play that @Hriston is looking for.

 

[Hriston]

If I were to run this today, it would be in Torchbearer. Torchbearer uses a test against Health to test reflexes - so it would probably be an Ob 2 Health test to avoid poisonous insects, or an Ob 3 Health test to avoid a striking snake.

If one takes Health 4 as typical, that is a (roughly) 2/3 or 1/3 chance of success.

In 5e D&D this is presumably a DEX save - taking +2 as typical, that suggests a DC of 10 against insects or 15 against the striking snake. Failure exposes the character to the poison.

I'm assuming the difficulties you've mentioned of avoiding poisonous insects or striking snakes are predefined in Torchbearer with the idea being it's harder to avoid snakes than it is insects. I think that's interesting with reference to the entry I'm working with in DMG, Appendix A, "Poisonous insects or reptiles living inside container". Do you think the intent may have been an increase in difficulty between the two options?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I'd go with having the jar not be particularly airtight (and also with small enough holes that the bugs can't get out of them - maybe including bugs that could crawl up to the underside of the lid - allowing a perception check to notice the bottom of the lid had some of the bugs on them.

Alternately, make the holes plenty large enough to allow free passage for the bugs, and have a fantasy wasp/bee hive inside each of them, built on and around the coins. The "trap" stops being subtle - the PCs will almost certainly notice insects going in and out and buzzing around the area - and how to deal with them without getting an angry swarm in the face becomes the question. Less of a gotcha while still being a problem.

Depending on circumstances, these could be fairly normal insects or more fantastical. Mundane bugs would need access to food sources that probably aren't present in your average dungeon or cave, but an palace treasure room that has (bug-sized) access to the place's pleasure gardens could be fine - and observing the unusual number of bees harvesting pollen outside might lead wary looters to winder where their hives are. You could also just go full fantasy and have "cave wasps" that feed on fungi or mold or even have a symbiotic relationship with slimes.

Or maybe the jars are hosting hives of incorporeal ghost bees that sting your soul instead of your body. No air holes needed then, and Ghost Blossom Trees could certainly grow in ancient crypts and the lairs of undead.

 

[Hriston]

I decided to go with one large jar, sort of an amphora, containing the gold pieces along with a small venomous snake and to telegraph the presence of the snake by including the lid being punctured with tiny holes in describing the jar once the PCs were close enough to see them. I would call for a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check to deduce the purpose of the holes. Removing the lid would trigger the snake to bite the person doing so, delivering 1 hp of piercing damage and 1d8 poison damage, or half on a successful DC 11 Constitution saving throw.

As it turned out, the the PCs removed the lid safely from a distance with mage hand, and the snake just slithered away.

 

[pemerton]

I'm assuming the difficulties you've mentioned of avoiding poisonous insects or striking snakes are predefined in Torchbearer with the idea being it's harder to avoid snakes than it is insects.

Sort of. Torchbearer does have a lot of pre-defined difficulties for various actions, but not for these sorts of Health tests. But in the scenarios in both the core books (Dread Crypt of Skogenby) and the scenario supplement (Cartographer's Companion) there are a lot of examples, and I have compiled these into a list that I use in my own GMing to help ensure consistency in setting difficulties.

And it was by extrapolation from that list that I settled on my suggested difficulties. And in doing that, I did have in mind that snakes have a reach and speed that is different from insects (or scorpions).

I think that's interesting with reference to the entry I'm working with in DMG, Appendix A, "Poisonous insects or reptiles living inside container". Do you think the intent may have been an increase in difficulty between the two options?

I don't have any conjecture as to what Gygax et al may have had in mind. I'm just imposing my own "common sense". And the inverted commas are deliberate - I've had the good fortune to have only limited encounters with venomous creatures, and the one time I nearly put my hand on a black snake it was calmly curled up in a crevice between two rocks, and I withdrew my hand as quickly as I good and continued on my way!

But I guess I'm imagining two different scenarios: (i) the PC puts their hand into the jar and is stung by crawling bugs and scorpions, vs (ii) the PC opens the jar and goes to reach in and the coiled snake strikes them. The latter seems like it needs quicker reflexes to avoid.

 

[Hriston]

Sort of. Torchbearer does have a lot of pre-defined difficulties for various actions, but not for these sorts of Health tests. But in the scenarios in both the core books (Dread Crypt of Skogenby) and the scenario supplement (Cartographer's Companion) there are a lot of examples, and I have compiled these into a list that I use in my own GMing to help ensure consistency in setting difficulties.

And it was by extrapolation from that list that I settled on my suggested difficulties. And in doing that, I did have in mind that snakes have a reach and speed that is different from insects (or scorpions).

I don't have any conjecture as to what Gygax et al may have had in mind. I'm just imposing my own "common sense". And the inverted commas are deliberate - I've had the good fortune to have only limited encounters with venomous creatures, and the one time I nearly put my hand on a black snake it was calmly curled up in a crevice between two rocks, and I withdrew my hand as quickly as I good and continued on my way!

But I guess I'm imagining two different scenarios: (i) the PC puts their hand into the jar and is stung by crawling bugs and scorpions, vs (ii) the PC opens the jar and goes to reach in and the coiled snake strikes them. The latter seems like it needs quicker reflexes to avoid.

I had been thinking of the two options, insects vs reptiles, as a matter of color overlaying an identical set of mechanics, but I found the suggestion of an intensification of difficulty from insects to reptiles to be compelling enough to bump up the save DC when using reptiles (snakes) from 10 to 11, keeping it within the Basic Rules' suggested range for a trap intended to be a setback rather than dangerous or deadly. I also went with a Con save which I think is normally how 5E would oppose effects that deal poison damage. My thinking was to treat it like a poison needle trap that, once triggered by opening the jar, automatically deals 1 point of damage and delivers the poison. Then it's up to the poisoned character's Con save to resist the poison's worst effects. Of course, this also made the poison easy to avoid because all the PCs had to do was "trigger" the trap from a distance, which is what they did without even bothering to investigate the situation. I thought for a moment of having the snake stay coiled in the jar until someone approached, but it felt like that would be cheating and that I should just grant them their victory and move on.

 

[pemerton]

@Hriston, I don't know what you think, but I feel that at-will Mage Hand tends to reduce the play value of this sort of trick/trap.