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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5525625" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm with mneme on this.The last time I used a puzzle - a couple of session ago - it was a door with a password (from the Eden Odyssey &quot;Wonders Out of Time&quot; d20 scenarios collection). The door guarded the stronghold of a dead wizard. The PCs had a copy of the last letter written by that wizard to his king, asking the king to come to the stronghold to collect the wizard's last treasures that he had made to help defend the kingdom against attack.The players had their PCs try various strategies, from demanding entrance in the name of the king using Intimidate checks, to requesing entrance as a messenger from the king using Diplomacy checks, plus History checks to recall the old forms of words that might have been used, and the like. They also used Arcana checks to conform that the magic on the door was of the sort that needed a spoken password to open. In the end someone worked out that they hadn't yet tried speaking the name of the dead wizard to the door. When they did that, it opened (as per the encounter description in the module).There was also another way through - the door was bathed in near-blinding light, and (as per the module) if that light was dispelled then a question could be read on the door&nbsp; - &quot;What is my name?&quot; or something to that effect. The players canvassed having the drow PC use his cloud of darkness to see what he could see behind the light, but the player of the drow didn't want to, because he knew the door was magically warded and was scared of triggering any traps.So even though this was a puzzle, it never brought an end to the roleplaying. It had the players engaging the gameworld both in terms of the immediate situation, and also the history of the world that lay behind the situation in which the PCs found themselves.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5525625, member: 42582"] I'm with mneme on this. The last time I used a puzzle - a couple of session ago - it was a door with a password (from the Eden Odyssey "Wonders Out of Time" d20 scenarios collection). The door guarded the stronghold of a dead wizard. The PCs had a copy of the last letter written by that wizard to his king, asking the king to come to the stronghold to collect the wizard's last treasures that he had made to help defend the kingdom against attack. The players had their PCs try various strategies, from demanding entrance in the name of the king using Intimidate checks, to requesing entrance as a messenger from the king using Diplomacy checks, plus History checks to recall the old forms of words that might have been used, and the like. They also used Arcana checks to conform that the magic on the door was of the sort that needed a spoken password to open. In the end someone worked out that they hadn't yet tried speaking the name of the dead wizard to the door. When they did that, it opened (as per the encounter description in the module). There was also another way through - the door was bathed in near-blinding light, and (as per the module) if that light was dispelled then a question could be read on the door - "What is my name?" or something to that effect. The players canvassed having the drow PC use his cloud of darkness to see what he could see behind the light, but the player of the drow didn't want to, because he knew the door was magically warded and was scared of triggering any traps. So even though this was a puzzle, it never brought an end to the roleplaying. It had the players engaging the gameworld both in terms of the immediate situation, and also the history of the world that lay behind the situation in which the PCs found themselves. [/QUOTE]

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