Beyond Combat; It's a Trap!
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ValhallaGH
Explorer
Gulla
Adventurer
One trick I've been exposed to which turned the ordinary pit trap and arrow traps much more interesting was to turn them around. We thought we were going in (defeating the traps) but actually we were going out, so when the trap triggered, it target the rear of the party. The ones who looked for (and triggered 
) the trap were already past it, and the heavy infantry and mage fell into the pit.
Also cause for one of our longest living quotes: "Did you say 'click'?" (From one front-liner to the other as the paladin and sorcerer plummeted down the pit behind them.)
) the trap were already past it, and the heavy infantry and mage fell into the pit.Also cause for one of our longest living quotes: "Did you say 'click'?" (From one front-liner to the other as the paladin and sorcerer plummeted down the pit behind them.)
The Gas Tube - this is a simple hole in the roof of a room or hallway, with a latter leading up into darkness. What it does is captures methane gas, players start up and two things can happen; 1) if carrying a torch...BOOM, they just become a bullet back down the tube or 2) if not carring a torch...nighty-night, players blackout and then fall back down the tube.
The Convebelt Hall - Players enter a room that is a convebelt, moving at walking pace about 3 mph or less. The players have to move faster than the belt to move forward. Just stop it and see the players crash into each other or go running into the pit at the end. You can add to the fun by dropping things on to the convebelt, like balls of fire, slimes and cubes.
The Ground Hog Tavern, sometimes call the Hotel California - once you enter, you just can never leave.
The Convebelt Hall - Players enter a room that is a convebelt, moving at walking pace about 3 mph or less. The players have to move faster than the belt to move forward. Just stop it and see the players crash into each other or go running into the pit at the end. You can add to the fun by dropping things on to the convebelt, like balls of fire, slimes and cubes.
The Ground Hog Tavern, sometimes call the Hotel California - once you enter, you just can never leave.
Celebrim
Legend
Before I get into the core of this discussion, there are two rules to trap design that are absolutely essential.
1) Mark your traps: As a DM, you have to pretty much put up a neon sign that says, "There is a trap around here somewhere.", any time that the PC's entire into a region containing traps. Your traps have to make logical sense. It has to be believable that someone took the time and effort to build a death trap here, and that the trap exists in a place where the inhabitants of the dungeon can live with the trap. Contact poison on a door knob might seem cute, but it raises the serious question of how anyone opens the door. Which brings me to the next point...
2) Traps as challenges: Simply put, your traps should be poorly designed. As a DM, you have unlimited resources. It's quite easy to design undetectable and unavoidable death traps. But this is wholly uninteresting and to be avoided. Whenever you as a DM get invested in the notion of the trap going off, and are very disappointed when it doesn't, you are on the dark side of the screen. That the PC's defeat the trap using the tools provided to them should be the expected and desired outcome. No matter how clever the PC's are, you'll get them eventually, so don't sweat it at all if they disarm or avoid 75% or 90% of your traps (depending on their skill as players). The goal therefore is both to make the trap fun, and the process of avoiding the traps fun. If the process of avoiding the traps isn't fun, then you are either over using traps or not spending enough time designing the challenge of avoiding them.
Ok, good traps in the sense of traps that are both threatening and exciting do the following:
a) Isolate their victims, forcing the rest of the party to try to rescue them. How much isolation is necessary depends on the level of the party, but the goal is to keep them able to interact (hear or see each other) but make actual rescue difficult given the character's current resources. At low levels, the simple pit trap can do this. At higher levels you'll need porticulli, harpoon traps, water traps, walls of force, antigravity traps, wind traps, vacuum traps and so forth.
As an aside, Ravenloft (I6) doesn't get the same level of fame as Tomb of Horrors (S1) for trap induced death, but it is filled with traps that serve this purpose. The I6 traps are actually in many ways just as deadly as those in S1 despite the fact that none of them are 'death traps', because they are all 'split the party' traps under conditions where splitting the party often means a TPK when facing a DM willing to use Strahd's full resources against the PC's. Try to avoid this degree of isolation in most of your trap design because split parties are difficult to run, but do take inspiration from it. The trap doesn't have to do alot of damage to be interesting.
b) Kill their victims somewhat slowly. Instant death traps don't provide alot of drama. You want traps that do damage over time. This doesn't necessarily just mean the familiar room with slowly closing walls or that fills up with water or some more lethal fluid (sand, acid, poisonous insects) although it can. For example, a barrage of arrows is fun. A barrage of arrows that continues for several rounds however is a better distribution of your trap resources. (Remeber, good traps are badly designed!). At low levels this can just be a 'get out of the corridor' challenge which you can make as easy as taking cover behind some dungeon feature and as hard as a long corridor with door that has to be forced or unlocked. At high levels, this should drive the party from one challenge to another and include the risk of adding new traps to the fun. Likewise, have fun with projectiles that imbed themselves in the target (doing damage when removed without a heal check), jaws that grapple the party members and do damage over time, sticky flammable substances, acid, smoke, and so forth which are lethal only provided that damage accumulates unchecked. Good traps don't necessarily do alot of damage, but they just keep going and going with each new iteration just making the problem worse.
c) Go off at the worst possible moment: You don't always want to put traps in a place where they become a part of a larger encounter, but its always something you should be thinking about. Adding alarm bells or ringing gongs to a trap can increase the fun, especially if you adhered to the ideas in 'a' and 'b'. Please do keep in mind the real challenge you are providing here. The monster that provides real challenge to the PC's at full strength is probably overly lethal if it arrives when the party is split, wounded, and partially incapacitated. More fun are monsters that would not represent any challenge in the best of circumstances arriving when the party is in the worst of circumstances. The utility of a horde of goblins or skeletons pouring into a room is extended into higher levels if this occurs when the party is trying to figure out how to get the cleric out of the pit with the locking iron grill that is filling with water while the rogue is dangling from the ceiling with his foot in a snare. More challenging still are monsters that are immune to the effects of the trap: the trap 'puts out lights' rendering it difficult or impossible to see but the monsters have tremorsense, the room fills with burning oil but the monsters are immune to fire, the room fills with poisonous gas but the skeletons don't have to breathe. This scales up almost infinitely, so that at high levels you have, "The trap sucks the air out of the room and creates a negative energy field while summoning incorporael undead out of the walls." This is just simple variation on the theme; once you know the theme its easy to create infinite variations.
d) Debuff the party. It's easy to miss this point, but the whole purpose of a trap beyond the short term thinking challenge it provides is to get the party to use resources. If you miss that point, you might think that the purpose of the trap is to damage the players, but hit point loss is only one type of resource. Forcing the party to use consumables or spells is equally 'useful' in your dungeon design. So, for example, you can have traps that shatter all glass in the room (everything fragile must save or break) covering the party in their own potions/burning oil/acid/whiskey/green slime/etc. One of the most common simple traps I utilize is a dispel magic trap either alone or in combination with some other hazard that playes would normally buff themselves for. You can also have traps that release 'harmless' pests that infest and eat food stuffs. Or the trap can directly debuff the party so that a normally easy fight is rendered more difficult. A 'goo trap' that makes movement hard and lowers dexterity, makes a fight with low level archers much more interesting. Again, this scales up almost infinitely. At higher levels, the floor might turn suddenly into quicksand and a number of mephits may fly into the room. A fight with low level brutes (ogres for example) is more interesting if the wizard has just been feebleminded, or everyone in the party has just been hit by a ray of enfeeblement. Be careful that you don't make the 'save or suck' suck too much, but generally, this can be a much better alternative than just knocking off chunks of hit points.
1) Mark your traps: As a DM, you have to pretty much put up a neon sign that says, "There is a trap around here somewhere.", any time that the PC's entire into a region containing traps. Your traps have to make logical sense. It has to be believable that someone took the time and effort to build a death trap here, and that the trap exists in a place where the inhabitants of the dungeon can live with the trap. Contact poison on a door knob might seem cute, but it raises the serious question of how anyone opens the door. Which brings me to the next point...
2) Traps as challenges: Simply put, your traps should be poorly designed. As a DM, you have unlimited resources. It's quite easy to design undetectable and unavoidable death traps. But this is wholly uninteresting and to be avoided. Whenever you as a DM get invested in the notion of the trap going off, and are very disappointed when it doesn't, you are on the dark side of the screen. That the PC's defeat the trap using the tools provided to them should be the expected and desired outcome. No matter how clever the PC's are, you'll get them eventually, so don't sweat it at all if they disarm or avoid 75% or 90% of your traps (depending on their skill as players). The goal therefore is both to make the trap fun, and the process of avoiding the traps fun. If the process of avoiding the traps isn't fun, then you are either over using traps or not spending enough time designing the challenge of avoiding them.
Ok, good traps in the sense of traps that are both threatening and exciting do the following:
a) Isolate their victims, forcing the rest of the party to try to rescue them. How much isolation is necessary depends on the level of the party, but the goal is to keep them able to interact (hear or see each other) but make actual rescue difficult given the character's current resources. At low levels, the simple pit trap can do this. At higher levels you'll need porticulli, harpoon traps, water traps, walls of force, antigravity traps, wind traps, vacuum traps and so forth.
As an aside, Ravenloft (I6) doesn't get the same level of fame as Tomb of Horrors (S1) for trap induced death, but it is filled with traps that serve this purpose. The I6 traps are actually in many ways just as deadly as those in S1 despite the fact that none of them are 'death traps', because they are all 'split the party' traps under conditions where splitting the party often means a TPK when facing a DM willing to use Strahd's full resources against the PC's. Try to avoid this degree of isolation in most of your trap design because split parties are difficult to run, but do take inspiration from it. The trap doesn't have to do alot of damage to be interesting.
b) Kill their victims somewhat slowly. Instant death traps don't provide alot of drama. You want traps that do damage over time. This doesn't necessarily just mean the familiar room with slowly closing walls or that fills up with water or some more lethal fluid (sand, acid, poisonous insects) although it can. For example, a barrage of arrows is fun. A barrage of arrows that continues for several rounds however is a better distribution of your trap resources. (Remeber, good traps are badly designed!). At low levels this can just be a 'get out of the corridor' challenge which you can make as easy as taking cover behind some dungeon feature and as hard as a long corridor with door that has to be forced or unlocked. At high levels, this should drive the party from one challenge to another and include the risk of adding new traps to the fun. Likewise, have fun with projectiles that imbed themselves in the target (doing damage when removed without a heal check), jaws that grapple the party members and do damage over time, sticky flammable substances, acid, smoke, and so forth which are lethal only provided that damage accumulates unchecked. Good traps don't necessarily do alot of damage, but they just keep going and going with each new iteration just making the problem worse.
c) Go off at the worst possible moment: You don't always want to put traps in a place where they become a part of a larger encounter, but its always something you should be thinking about. Adding alarm bells or ringing gongs to a trap can increase the fun, especially if you adhered to the ideas in 'a' and 'b'. Please do keep in mind the real challenge you are providing here. The monster that provides real challenge to the PC's at full strength is probably overly lethal if it arrives when the party is split, wounded, and partially incapacitated. More fun are monsters that would not represent any challenge in the best of circumstances arriving when the party is in the worst of circumstances. The utility of a horde of goblins or skeletons pouring into a room is extended into higher levels if this occurs when the party is trying to figure out how to get the cleric out of the pit with the locking iron grill that is filling with water while the rogue is dangling from the ceiling with his foot in a snare. More challenging still are monsters that are immune to the effects of the trap: the trap 'puts out lights' rendering it difficult or impossible to see but the monsters have tremorsense, the room fills with burning oil but the monsters are immune to fire, the room fills with poisonous gas but the skeletons don't have to breathe. This scales up almost infinitely, so that at high levels you have, "The trap sucks the air out of the room and creates a negative energy field while summoning incorporael undead out of the walls." This is just simple variation on the theme; once you know the theme its easy to create infinite variations.
d) Debuff the party. It's easy to miss this point, but the whole purpose of a trap beyond the short term thinking challenge it provides is to get the party to use resources. If you miss that point, you might think that the purpose of the trap is to damage the players, but hit point loss is only one type of resource. Forcing the party to use consumables or spells is equally 'useful' in your dungeon design. So, for example, you can have traps that shatter all glass in the room (everything fragile must save or break) covering the party in their own potions/burning oil/acid/whiskey/green slime/etc. One of the most common simple traps I utilize is a dispel magic trap either alone or in combination with some other hazard that playes would normally buff themselves for. You can also have traps that release 'harmless' pests that infest and eat food stuffs. Or the trap can directly debuff the party so that a normally easy fight is rendered more difficult. A 'goo trap' that makes movement hard and lowers dexterity, makes a fight with low level archers much more interesting. Again, this scales up almost infinitely. At higher levels, the floor might turn suddenly into quicksand and a number of mephits may fly into the room. A fight with low level brutes (ogres for example) is more interesting if the wizard has just been feebleminded, or everyone in the party has just been hit by a ray of enfeeblement. Be careful that you don't make the 'save or suck' suck too much, but generally, this can be a much better alternative than just knocking off chunks of hit points.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Isn't that what PC's do for a living- avoid the unavoidable death trap?
" You BYPASSED my UNAVOIDABLE death trap!!! Inconceivable!!"
Celebrim
Legend
Isn't that what PC's do for a living- avoid the unavoidable death trap?
" You BYPASSED my UNAVOIDABLE death trap!!! Inconceivable!!"
There are essentially two sorts of villains.
The first sort is the type of monologuing megalomaniac your describe who thinks that the party who just made short work of his hordes of minions and unavoidable death traps has only earned the right to be painfully killed by the villain in person. These sorts can be fun.
But the other sort is the villain who realizes that the main point of having minions and death traps is not to kill the heroes (because it's probably not going to work), but to give the villain time to escape. These sorts are much more likely to garner long term player respect.
had to put that one in there...
But, it depends what you want to accomplish with the trap. Do you want a life or death type of trap, or maybe one that separates the party, or do you want something that will just use up their resources?
Think cinematic, though not the Admiral Ackbar trap. More like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, etc.
The rolling ball o' death is one, as are the arrows in the floor. A great one is the rope bridge from the end of Temple of Doom - have it rigged so if more than one PC crosses the bridge, it collapses. They can save to hang on to the remaining side, but still have to slowly shimmy over. Then, you can send other threats at the divided party.
Celebrim
Legend
Funny. But honestly, if you try either of those things with an experienced party you'll find that you've just given them a large amount of readily convertable wealth and a new transcollosal magical 'pet' to play with. I wouldn't recommend it to someone feeling that things are already out of control.
grodog
Hero
Some excellent traps and tricks advice/ideas are listed by Gary in the "Successful Adventures" section of the 1e PHB: as a DM, all you have to do is reverse-engineer the advice Gary is giving to the players and you're good-to-go!:
You can go read about the Encounters comments yourself, if you're still curious
Gary Gygax on page 103 of the PHB said:
You can go read about the Encounters comments yourself, if you're still curious
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