D&D General Gold Protected by Poisonous Creatures

[Hriston]

Hello everybody,

The situation is there are some ceramic lidded jars containing gold pieces and poisonous live insects or reptiles. How would you run this? I'm thinking of it as more of a trap than a combat but am open to ideas anyone has. Thanks!

 

[Count_Zero]

If they're normal sized insects, I'd agree to run it as a trap, with the player(s) having to describe how they're getting past or rid of the insects.

 

[Hriston]

Yep, they're normal size insects/reptiles, so not much of a threat outside of the situation of blindly opening a jar with them inside. That's why I'm thinking about how to handle things if a player does just that.

 

[MarkB]

They'll need air holes or they'll be full of formerly-venomous dead critters. Make noticing that part of how the players can detect the trap.

Depending upon how zany you like your campaign you could make the jars spring-loaded to work like snakes-in-a-can.

View attachment MV3D_Fozzie_snakes.webp

 

[Hriston]

They'll need air holes or they'll be full of formerly-venomous dead critters. Make noticing that part of how the players can detect the trap.

Depending upon how zany you like your campaign you could make the jars spring-loaded to work like snakes-in-a-can.

View attachment 379829

Ah, that's good. It brings it back to before the trap is triggered which is something I was missing to make it not a gotcha. I think I'll skip the spring loading, but thanks for the visual!

 

[Theory of Games]

What edition? I'd use Gold Bugs. The perfect hybrid trap-monster

Goldbug

Goldbugs were a parasitic species of beetles found in Zakhara, the Land of Fate.[1] The body of a goldbug was circular and flat. As their name implied, their outer carapace was golden in color. Their bodies usually measured between 1 to 3 inches (0.025 to 0.076 meters) in diameter, making them...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

 

[Hriston]

What edition?

It's for a 5.0E game, but I wanted responses to the thread to be open to all editions. The situation itself is coming from the 1E DMG, Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation, so I figured there might be a variety of approaches, possibly depending on edition,

I'd use Gold Bugs. The perfect hybrid trap-monster

Goldbug

Goldbugs were a parasitic species of beetles found in Zakhara, the Land of Fate.[1] The body of a goldbug was circular and flat. As their name implied, their outer carapace was golden in color. Their bodies usually measured between 1 to 3 inches (0.025 to 0.076 meters) in diameter, making them...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

Haha, those are practically made for this set up.

 

[Bohandas]

They'll need air holes or they'll be full of formerly-venomous dead critters. Make noticing that part of how the players can detect the trap.

Depending upon how zany you like your campaign you could make the jars spring-loaded to work like snakes-in-a-can.

View attachment 379829

"Did somebody say 'cheap 3D tricks'?"

 

[Lidgar]

Another approach is the treasure has a glyph placed on it. Looking inside the jar once opened triggers the glyph. The glyph summons a swarm of poisonous insects. Can use the swarm of insects stat block but add poison damage as well (dc 10 con save, 4d6 poison damage or half on save).

 

[Count_Zero]

They'll need air holes or they'll be full of formerly-venomous dead critters. Make noticing that part of how the players can detect the trap.

Depending upon how zany you like your campaign you could make the jars spring-loaded to work like snakes-in-a-can.

View attachment 379829

I'd go with having the jar not be particularly airtight (and also with small enough holes that the bugs can't get out of them - maybe including bugs that could crawl up to the underside of the lid - allowing a perception check to notice the bottom of the lid had some of the bugs on them.

If it's just coinage - having some goldbugs in there, in particular, would work.