Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 4108563" data-attributes="member: 29746">Grimtooth's TrapsMost of the best traps I placed in dungeons of mine came from the old series of Grimtooth's Traps books, by Flying Buffalo. AFAIK they're long out of print, but if you can get your hands on copies of them, then for my money there's no better source for trap inspiration. The quality of the individual traps (and note that some of the "traps" in each book were actually cursed or otherwise-undesirable items) could be hit-or-miss, and some of them are just downright silly, but the best stuff will make you cackle with glee and start dreaming up dungeons just so you can include them. They were designed to be rules-neutral, since they were published long before the OGL, but careful thought after reading each trap's description should lead you to come up with acceptable game stats. Also, the books were largely compilations of fan-submitted material, so in some ways they could be considered precursors of threads just like this one.There is a d20 book, released for 3.5E by Necromancer, called The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps. That collects several fan favorites into a single book, and updates all of them to use D&D 3.5E rules specifically (along with a few suggested variant rules to make traps in general more interesting and dangerous).One of my personal favorites, though, was not updated in the Necromancer book, so I'll describe it below (in the spoiler block). It illustrates some of the fiendish cleverness that's written into the best Grimtooth stuff, in particular the way it uses psychology to trap the victims rather than just being a straightforward thing like your average ceiling-crusher.[sblock]One that killed a PC the very first time it came up in a game of mine, was the "For a Case of Fire" trap from Traps Ate, the fourth book in the series. Page 33 for those who have the book- the author is listed as one Drew Dietz.Basically, what happens is the party activates the trap by standing/walking on a pressure plate in the floor, which activates the trap on a time delay of thirty seconds (5 rounds in 3.X D&D terms). Next to the pressure plate, on the wall, is a lever with a sign next to it that reads "For a Case of Fire, Don't Pull Lever." Now, if the lever is pulled, it disarms the trap- no muss, no fuss. But what adventurer in a dungeon known to have traps in it is going to do a silly thing like pulling a lever just because a sign says to? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" />Assuming the adventurers are "properly" paranoid, they won't pull the lever- and in that case steel walls slam down on each side of the area, trapping them inside it. Then nozzles open up and spray oil all over everything, following which flame jets roar to life from the ceiling. Result, crispy-fried adventurers (depending on how much damage you have the flames do of course- this could easily be varied by changing what effect powers the "flame jets" of the trap).[/sblock]There are numerous others, but that one's arguably my favorite. I don't recall any trap I ever came up with myself that's that devious and nasty.</blockquote>

Verification