Designing a trap-filled tower

[Grymar]

I'm hoping to get some ideas to help fill out a lair that my PCs will be trying to get through on Friday. Here is the relevant background info:

Pathfinder system
5 PCs, all are 3rd level
Wizard, cleric, rogue, bard, druid (note no heavy fighters)
Location is Sharn in Eberron

These guys are devastating in social situations, charms, suggestions, diplomacy, bluffs...but are a weak in combat. What I am hoping to do is to give them a challenging battle as they go up the winding stairs in an old tower to the top where they are to rescue someone. Considering that their defenses are fairly weak, a lot of small effects are probably more interesting than large effects.

What I have in mind right now is a shadowdancer villian, expert 5/shadowdancer 2. He's going to use two daggers in combat and a poisoned blowgun. Again, small damage, hit and run tactics. I may give him a wand of Summon Monster I to harass the party with as they come up the stairs.

BUT I'm looking for fun trap ideas, or obstacles, or challenges for them to face as they go up the stairs.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Rude hand gestures?

 

[Gilladian]

This would be a great opportunity for the classic grease spell. Especially if the stairs have no railing or a weak one that could break under the weight of a falling PC.

Maybe a swarm of some sort of flying creature? Bats or even just birds. Maybe they nest in the tower. This works especially well if the tower is otherwise abandoned.

Rise of the Runelords has a great tower fight where the PCs can be hit by a bell falling from the top of the bell tower they are trying to climb. Very deadly fight, and very atmospheric, too. I always thought that if one bell could fall, so could others, or the beams, too.

And of course, the stairs could collapse. But that's kinda cliche, so you may want to avoid it.

 

[ArghMark]

Traps need to be done right. I'm not super sure of what your tower itself looks like, so I'll give some advice.


1. Ability to toss enemies down or off the tower.

2. Either traps that should be there or traps that are designed to drive away intruders from certain areas. Avoid Damodar's Porridge moments if possible (Kudos for getting that one!). What I mean is that if PC's have to jump from beam to beam to get past an area, a weak beam is a 'trap' - but give them a hint. Take the slow + safe way or the risky way. Add to it by having them being attacked by stirges, nastiest buggers about.

Second variant is the trap to drive people away who shouldn't be there. It doesn't make too much sense for a bad guy to trap the middle of his own room where he is going to trip over it when he stumbles to the chamber pot or what not. On the other hand, traps should be hidden in plain sight. If there is some leaves and camoflage about, have trapped alchemists flasks ready to go off if PC's trip them.

3. Seeing as you don't honestly want a trap to kill a PC, deliberately make traps to annoy, harrass, hamper, or distract them. A very basic trap is a tripwire attached to a door, which when trapped drops a net; basic, but add that to a shadowdancer who is oh-so-willing to jump in for a sneak attack and jump out, and you've got a freaked out party from the worst trap in the game .

Other basic traps -

Bags of flour to create obscuring vision effects, blind people, and so on.

Grease on a place on the floor that if fallen from causes great problems. (Bad guy does it another way, can find a way around.)

A trap designed to burn away areas of weakened floor, to deny further progress without great difficulty. (Trap is easy to detect.)



Basically when I do traps I try for traps that people won't set off accidentally, and that make sense for their function. Big magical traps are probably beyond the scope of the tower set up.


As for other things to do on a tower, its fun to be trapped inside with an angry enemy chasing you UP it. Nowhere to go, someone is trying to kill you on the inside, and there's a great big horde on the outside making you run to the top and work it out from there.

 

[Shoe]

falling rocks or barrels al-la traditional video games always work well on inclines, think donkey kong the original.

 

[Croesus]

This may not fit with your concept, but consider having the tower in a state of collapse.

Perhaps a trap went wrong, undermining the base. Or one of the summoned creatures does something. An explosion. Maybe the villain does it intentionally.

Whatever the cause, the base has been damaged, the tower is shaking, things are falling (books, fixtures, furniture, tapestries, weapons, and so on). At some point the tower falls against another structure, temporarily propped at a 30-40 degree angle. The tower isn't stable, and could collapse at any time. In the meantime, navigating stairs and hallways becomes much more interesting, given the angle. And if you have a large bell, this would be the perfect time to have it rolling down, as everyone tries to get out of the way.

This also presents some problems for the villain - unless he's completely suicidal, he's going to plotting how to get out, while also trying to stop the party. Depending on circumstances, the party might even have to rescue him, for example, if he has the key to the manacles and they can't free the prisoner otherwise.

Whether or not you use this idea, I would recommend preparing more ideas than you plan on using. You can give them each a percentage chance of occurring, or add/delete various challenges depending on how the dice are falling (it's fair to defeat the PC's if the players are dumb, but I hate it when a single bad roll does them in).

For example, as the tower begins to fall, the trapdoor leading to the room with the prisoner can become jammed, or smashed open. If he's manacled to the wall, the wall might be crumbling around him, which could threaten a fatal plummet to his death, or make it easier to pull him free.

 

[le grand fromage]

Put a moat around the tower, with a boat in a postion that's difficult but not impossible to get....place a ghoul under the water....stir and serve chilled...