Great puzzles/traps that you've used/been fried by...

[Gort]

My players are getting bored of "make a search check - you fluffed it? Boom! Take a grillion damage!" so, give me some cool puzzles or traps for me to hit them with. Riddles are great, too, I'm a great fan of those.

For my part, here's a little anecdote of my own...

I used to use a dungeon generator program to create my dungeons, and this one was the lair of an evil cleric, complete with undead, trapped doors and so forth. My party were fifth level. It generated a trap that, when triggered, sent the player to the elemental plane of fire. At fifth level. So, I decided that one should be left off. So the players are moving through the dungeon, searching for clues, fighting monsters, all good. By the time they reach the final door, I've realised that I've forgotten to put in any of the traps in my dungeon plan. So, in a snap decision, I decide to put them ALL on the last door. The paladin raises a hefty boot and crashes it into the door.

The paladin gets electrified by a lightning bolt, fried by a flame blast, and the floor opens up and dumps him 100 feet down... Bringing him to a nice round -4 hitpoints.

And of course, the door is open, and the evil cleric is advancing on the party.

 

[Hypersmurf]

-Hyp.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I was once running a random dungeon (using the DMG random dungeon rules) with my players as a "break" from our regular campaign. While exploring the dungeon, the fighter in the group fell into a spiked pit trap (20 feet deep) because the rogue failed to detect it. It was amusing because the situation basically went like this...

Me: "You have fallen down into the spiked pit trap, taking... *rolls* 12 damage."

Fighter: "Son of a whore!"

Rogue: "I walk over to the trap and say 'Look out for that hole', then I lower a rope down to the fighter."

Fighter: "I want to... nah, I'll resist the urge to pull him down into the hole with me."

It may not seem funny to you guys, but the deadpan way the rogue's player said "look out for that hole" had everyone at the table giggling.

 

[nameless]

Ancient temple of ineffable but forgotten evil-type situation. I was rolling up treasure for each encounter, when I got 70,000 cp for the Flesh Golem encounter. So I decided to have fun with it.

In the big "congregation room" was a central circular area, depressed several steps from the previous hallway. The floor was completely covered in viper swarms, but there were 3 large chests sitting among the writhing mass. In the center of the room is an inactive Flesh Golem on a pedestal.

The PCs went through hell and high water summoning minions, using sanctuary spells, and other such fun to drag the multi-hundred pound chests back to the edge of the swarms where they could open them. Weren't they excited when there was 70,000 copper inside? Out of spite, one of the PCs grabbed a handful of copper, "just so he didn't walk away empty-handed."

They went on to the next chamber and the rest of the dungeon, and on the way back, wouldn't you know it, an angry and active Flesh Golem is in their way. It made a beeline for the character who took the handful of coppers, and the party barely destroyed the Golem before it smashed him into pulp.

When they got back to the big room, the chests were all back where they began, and all of the spilled copper was back inside them. It turns out that the Golem was programmed to collect the copper donations from the congregation and put it in the chests. But also to do it unobtrusively after they had all left. If the one PC hadn't grabbed those 7 or so coins, it wouldn't have been an issue at all. *grin*

The moral of the story: Never underestimate the greed of an adventurer.

 

[BlackMoria]

This is a ugly trap (in fact, it is my signature trap) that has claimed numerous adventurers in my campaigns over the years. My players affectionally call it the 'carnival of carnage' trap.

The trap is a linked series of traps that operate together.

The trigger is an area of floor that activates a reverse gravity spell on the area. Above this area is a false ceiling (illusion) which conceals a 'upside down' pit trap usually 50 feet in depth, complete with a spiked bottom (actually top if you understand the geometry) complete with either a greater glyph of warding or a symbol of death. Penetrating the illusionary 'ceiling' triggers a blade barrier.

Function - the victim(s) are affected by the reverse gravity and 'fall' upwards, penetrating the illusionary ceiling (activating the blade barrier) and 'falling' through the blade barrier (15d6 damage) and strike the 'floor' of the pit trap (assuming a 20 ft ceiling and a 50 ft 'pit') taking 7d6 falling damage + 1d6 spikes (1d6 each) and triggering the glyph of warding (usually 10d6 elemental damage of some sort) or the symbol of death.

Then the unfortuate(s) falls back down through the blade barrier (another 15d6 damage) and strike the ground (7d6 falling damage).

Better move quickly to recover the dead or dying, 'cause the reverse gravity field is designed to trigger again a round later, sending the victim or rescuers into the 'carnival of carnage' yet again.

Delicious mayhem. I've killed several 15+ level characters with this one.

 

[Meeki]

One evil annoying puzzle I use is the mimicking statue trap.. Its PC dependant because if there isnt enough PC's to get through the puzzle will never be solved hehe.. It goes like this: The first room they enter has a doorway and a magical statue filling it shaped into w/e form u want. The Pc's look around it and can see another room with 3 more statues.. THe basic jist is the Pc's need to get beyond this room so they try to move the statue with no avail and cast spells on it with no avail until one of them gets pissed and smacks it with an attack.. Now the statue will begin to mimick the person who hit it.. If he/she steps backwards so does the statue and if he steps forward so does the statue.. basically the guy who hit it is going to be stuck in that room behind this statue.. the next room has 3 more statues lined up forming a wall that can't be passed easily... say a diminuative creature can make an escape artist check to get through the small holes between the statues.. but anyways if the PC's found out why the statue moved then on of the PC's have to hit another one of these statues.. or multiple PC's hitting statues.. *snickers*.. this will trap another PC or up to 3 PC's if they aren't to .. bright.. in this room... the next room.. can either have another statue or can contain w/e treasure and monster you want.. the point is to limit the group so only one member can fight effectively.. usually the last room has a few winding corridors to prevent sight of the people behind statues from seeing in it... This puzzle really pisses PC's off sometimes hehe.. especially if the wizard gets through and finds himself face to face with a hydra skeleton

 

[BlackMoria]

This trap claimed the entire party except for me (I was a player and lucked out on the obscenely high Dex roll).

Disappearing steps trap on stairs sends everyone into a 'slide' down into a pit trap. The pit trap is 50ft deep with sides like glass (polished stone) which taper inwards towards the bottom. At the bottom, there was a sphere of annihilation.

Each of us had two chances to save oneself - once, when the slide was activated, there was a Dex roll and a Str roll to grab a part of the wall (it was brick with slight depressions at the mortar lines one could get the tips of fingers into). The other was another Dex and Str roll to grab the lip of the pit trap.

I made the first rolls and avoided being dislodged by the rest of the party was they slid past me. Another person made the second rolls and grab the lip of the pit trap. Unfortuately, he was the lowest person on the slide and two other party members slammed into him and dislodged him.

Needless to say, the sphere of annihilation worked flawlessly....leaving me the sole survivor.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

In a previous session, I had an evil wizard with an arcane lab in his basement. I wanted to put some traps on the basement to guard it, but at the same time, didn't think the wizard would care much for the possibility of accidentally setting off the traps himself every time he wanted to conduct some experiments.

So what I did was set up his lab with three smaller rooms leading to it (5' by 10'). So the progression went: cellar-->two doors to small room 1-->two doors to small room 2-->two doors to small room 3-->arcane lab. For each pair of doors, one had a poison trap, and one was perfectly safe. So the wizard (who knew which doors were trapped) could simply zip through to his lab without taking any chances of being poisoned, but intruders took a 50% chance at each pair of doors of encountering a trap.

It wound up working well. I think the party got hit by one or two traps, and best of all was the consternation on their faces each time they found another set of doors, and had to try and guess which one had the whammy.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Simple is fun

This one was (I think) from an adventure called Grakt's Crag from a very old issue of White Dwarf magazine (circa 1980).

The party comes upon a large iron door recessed to be flush with the stone wall around it. near the middle of the door is a ceramic handle. The trap is that the door is not attached to anything and is precariously balanced upright. When someone pulls on the handle, the huge door simply falls forward on them.

This trap just appeals to me for some reason, and I take great pleasure inflicting it on players at least once in every campaign I run. And they always fall for it. Even if they check and find no hinges on their side (the side with the pull handle), they still end up pulling it open.

Ahhh. Good times...

 

[Lu Wei Fong]

Well, I certainly have never come up with any traps as ingenious or evil as those mentioned before, so I will simply content myself with suggesting a few riddles. Enjoy.
"The more you take, the more you leave behind." - Footsteps
"It can be said: To be gold is to be good; To be stone is to be nothing; To be glass is to be fragile; To be cold is to be cruel. Unmetaphored, what am I?" - A heart
"The wealthy need it, the poor have it, and were either to eat it, surely they would perish." - Nothing