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A trap on a book
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7232423" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Every player you have already knows their whole family tree? The longer ago this wizard was alive, the easier it is to pull that. </p><p></p><p>I'm not a huge fan of poison gas as a timer mechanism. I suggest 'hallucination poison' for the gas, that acts as 'confusion gas' (new save every round you breathe the stuff, failure see something weird and take a random action) with 5 spiked pit traps around the edge of the (12 sided) room, with a flee result having a high chance of sending someone into a pit. Release 6 bugbear skeletons into the room through panels between the pits, then treat them as the 'caster/enemy' for purposes of confusion. Now everyone has something to do. Devise a couple of different likely ways to turn off the gas (possibly there is a fan control in a hidden panel that reverses and sucks the gas out of the room, or you can plug up the holes with clay, chewed tobacco or beef jerky, wet bandages, etc. but the holes are high up in the ceiling, and so forth). If the gas holes are plugged up, the heavier than air gas eventually pools 1d4 rounds later in bottom of the pit traps.</p><p></p><p>If your party is particularly experienced and capable of solving complex puzzles, the book on the table in the center of the room is fake. The five pit traps have beautifully painted plaster frescos on the far wall above them, each telling the story of the wizard and the room in pictures and displaying his heraldic shield - a blue field with wizard hats, crescent moons and stars flanked by djinn (or whatever is appropriate to your wizard). On the one opposite the door is a painting of the heir taking the book the book from the pedestal. Very close observation (PC asks for the book in the fresco to be fully described, or a secretly rolled DC 24 intelligence check otherwise) notes that the book in the fresco is painted subtly different than the book on the pedestal, with the hint of a blue cover rather than the red cover of the book on the pedestal. The real book is behind the plaster on the wall above the spiked pit, exactly where it is painted in the fresco. It is in a lead box and is hidden by a permanent nondetection spell. The book on the pedestal appears to be the real book and is actually a spell book containing many low level spells. But the inside cover has a symbol of fear which sends any viewer in a panic into one of the pit traps, whereas the real book is locked closed but untrapped. The next 20 pages of the fake book appear to be the information that the party is seeking, but are in fact a clever fake that gives misinformation. Another clue (but don't tell them this is a clue) is that there is no provision in the chains to remove the book from the pedestal, and if it is to be removed the chains must be struck off from the loops that hold the book to the pedestal.</p><p></p><p>The six panels/sides of the room that are not alcoves containing pit traps appear to be a library, complete with various tomes of arcane lore of comparatively minor value (360 3lb books worth 2d20 gp each). A sliding panel reveals an animated bugbear skeleton behind each. As is a typical decoration of such libraries, there is a metal ladder that can rotate around the room to allow access to the shelves (or if the player is clever, to get up to block up the holes that send the confusion gas into the room). The ladder can also be lifted off its track, and if it is it will be found by anyone that experiments with the idea that the bottom can be perfectly lined up with the lip of one of the pit traps, allowing the ladder to lean against the far wall at an angle and serve as a stable 'bridge'. If placed over the correct pit, the top of the ladder on the far wall lines up perfectly with the bottom of the book painted on the fresco.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7232423, member: 4937"] Every player you have already knows their whole family tree? The longer ago this wizard was alive, the easier it is to pull that. I'm not a huge fan of poison gas as a timer mechanism. I suggest 'hallucination poison' for the gas, that acts as 'confusion gas' (new save every round you breathe the stuff, failure see something weird and take a random action) with 5 spiked pit traps around the edge of the (12 sided) room, with a flee result having a high chance of sending someone into a pit. Release 6 bugbear skeletons into the room through panels between the pits, then treat them as the 'caster/enemy' for purposes of confusion. Now everyone has something to do. Devise a couple of different likely ways to turn off the gas (possibly there is a fan control in a hidden panel that reverses and sucks the gas out of the room, or you can plug up the holes with clay, chewed tobacco or beef jerky, wet bandages, etc. but the holes are high up in the ceiling, and so forth). If the gas holes are plugged up, the heavier than air gas eventually pools 1d4 rounds later in bottom of the pit traps. If your party is particularly experienced and capable of solving complex puzzles, the book on the table in the center of the room is fake. The five pit traps have beautifully painted plaster frescos on the far wall above them, each telling the story of the wizard and the room in pictures and displaying his heraldic shield - a blue field with wizard hats, crescent moons and stars flanked by djinn (or whatever is appropriate to your wizard). On the one opposite the door is a painting of the heir taking the book the book from the pedestal. Very close observation (PC asks for the book in the fresco to be fully described, or a secretly rolled DC 24 intelligence check otherwise) notes that the book in the fresco is painted subtly different than the book on the pedestal, with the hint of a blue cover rather than the red cover of the book on the pedestal. The real book is behind the plaster on the wall above the spiked pit, exactly where it is painted in the fresco. It is in a lead box and is hidden by a permanent nondetection spell. The book on the pedestal appears to be the real book and is actually a spell book containing many low level spells. But the inside cover has a symbol of fear which sends any viewer in a panic into one of the pit traps, whereas the real book is locked closed but untrapped. The next 20 pages of the fake book appear to be the information that the party is seeking, but are in fact a clever fake that gives misinformation. Another clue (but don't tell them this is a clue) is that there is no provision in the chains to remove the book from the pedestal, and if it is to be removed the chains must be struck off from the loops that hold the book to the pedestal. The six panels/sides of the room that are not alcoves containing pit traps appear to be a library, complete with various tomes of arcane lore of comparatively minor value (360 3lb books worth 2d20 gp each). A sliding panel reveals an animated bugbear skeleton behind each. As is a typical decoration of such libraries, there is a metal ladder that can rotate around the room to allow access to the shelves (or if the player is clever, to get up to block up the holes that send the confusion gas into the room). The ladder can also be lifted off its track, and if it is it will be found by anyone that experiments with the idea that the bottom can be perfectly lined up with the lip of one of the pit traps, allowing the ladder to lean against the far wall at an angle and serve as a stable 'bridge'. If placed over the correct pit, the top of the ladder on the far wall lines up perfectly with the bottom of the book painted on the fresco. [/QUOTE]
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