TRAPS, TRICKS, AND ENCOUNTERS
During the course of an adventure, you will undoubtedly come across
various forms of traps and tricks, as well as encounter monsters of one sort
or another. While your DM will spend considerable time and effort to
make all such occurrences effective, you and your fellow players must do
everything within your collective power to make them harmless,
unsuccessful or profitable. On the other hand, you must never allow
preparedness and caution to slow your party and make it ineffective in
adventuring. By dealing with each category here, the best approach to
negating the threat of a trap, trick, or encounter can be developed.
Traps: Traps are aimed at confining, channeling, injuring, or killing
characters. Confining traps are typified by areas which are closed by bars
or stone blocks, although some might be pits with valves which close and
can then only be opened by weight above. Most confinement areas will
have another entrance by which o capturing or killing creature(s) will
enter later. It is usually impossible to avoid such areas, as continual minute
scrutiny makes exploration impossible and assures encounters with
wandering/patrolling monsters. When confined, prepare for attack, search
for ways out, and beware of being channeled. Channeling traps are often
related to confining ones. Walls that shift and doors which allow entry but
not egress are typical. While they cannot be avoided, such traps can be
reacted to much as a confining trap is. However, they also pose the
problem of finding a way back. Careful mapping is a good remedy.
Injuring traps, traps which wear the strength of the party away prior to the
attaining of their goal, are serious. Typical injuring traps are blades which
scythe across a corridor when a stone in the floor is stepped on, arrows
which fire when a trip rope is yanked, or spears released when a door is
opened. Use of a pole or spear as a prod ahead might help with these, and
likewise such a prod could discover pits in the floor. The safest remedy is to
have some healing at hand - potions or spells - so os to arrive relatively
undamaged. Killing traps are typical of important areas or deep dungeon
levels. Deep pits with spikes, poisoned missiles, poisoned spikes, chutes to
fire pits, floors which tilt to deposit the party into a pool of acid or before
an angry red dragon, ten ton blocks which fall from the ceiling, or locked
rooms which flood are examples of killing areas. Again, observation and
safety measures (poles, spikes thrown ahead, rope, etc.) will be of some
help, and luck will have to serve as well.
In summation, any trap can be bad and many can mean a character's or
the entire party's demise. Having proper equipment with the party, a cleric
for healing, a dwarf for trap detection, and a magic-user to knock open
doors and locks go a long way towards reducing the hazard. Observation
and clever deduction, as well as proper caution, should negate a
significant portion of traps.
Tricks: So many tricks can be used that it is quite impossible to thoroughly
detail any reasonable cross-section here. As imagination is the only
boundary for what sort of tricks can be placed in a dungeon, it is
incumbent upon the players to use their own guile. Many tricks are
irksome only; others are irksome and misleading. Assume that there are
several rooms with a buzzing sound discernible to those who listen at the
doors and/or enter them. Does this cause the party to prepare for battle
only to find nothing? Or is there some trick of acoustics which allows sound
from a nearby hive of giant wasps to permeate the rooms? If the lotter, the
party might grow careless and enter yet another "buzzing" room
unprepared so as to be surprised by angry wasps. Illusions can annoy,
delay, mislead or kill a party. There can be illusionary creatures, pits, fires,
walls and so on. But consider an illusion of a pile of gold cast upon a pit of
vipers. Slanting (or sloping) passages, space distortion areas, and
teleporters are meant to confuse or strond the party. They foul maps, take
the group to areas they do not wish to enter, and so on. The same is true of
sinking/rising (elevator) rooms, sliding rooms, and chutes. As an example
of the latter, consider a chute at the bottom of a pit, or one at the end of a
corridor which slopes upwards - so that the effect is to deposit the party
on the original level but seemingly on one deeper. Rooms can turn so OS to
make directions wrong, secret doors can open into two areas if they are
properly manipulated, and seemingly harmless things can spell death.
Tricks are best countered by forethought and discernment. They can be
dealt with by the prepared and careful party, but rashness can lead to real
trouble. Your DM will be using his imagination and wit to trick you, and
you must use your faculties to see through or at least partially counter such
tricks.