D&D General Is this a fair trap?

[Ruin Explorer]

I really don't think the fire would be significant enough to kill the Yellow Mold. GC isn't flammable, so this 50 ton block of stone plunges into the pit, spraying GC everywhere (and there's enough volume in the pit to fill a 30x30 room 1' deep wall-to-wall, so there's going to be PLENTY of it going all over the place, though exactly what the shape and size of the splash will be is impossible to say without actually building the thing...

So, even a HUGE fire is going to go out, and the burning end of a rope IMHO is not significant enough flames to do anything to a yellow mold as it passes by, even at 10MPH (which is a fast run for most people). Just being pulled through a hole in a rock would probably put it out anyway.

I still say, with sufficiently careful engineering and craftsmanship the basic trap mechanism doesn't actually seem THAT far-fetched. It is clearly ridiculous in a Rube Goldberg sort of way, but we're already deep into ridiculous when we are exploring underground mazes full of monsters and treasure, so what?

The block weighs at most 8000lb, not 50 tons, as I've established. The positioning of the Yellow Mold given the arrangement of ropes described to hold up the block means it is necessarily in direct contact with the "flammable ropes". It's their choice to describe the block being hung the way it was.

Plus the 10x10x10 basis for the size of the falling block is not only not going to work mechanically, but it's simply not textual. It's a number made up by another poster with no basis for doing so.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is the right answer and the one I would expect the players to think. Then I would expect them to ignore the treasure and try and figure out how to keep the unbreakable rope. And then I would have to make rules and lore regarding unbreakable rope. And then they would go on a 7 session side quest just to get more.

Gawd I love players.

Yup, if you have a rope with those characteristics I would definitely expect players to obsess about that rather than anything else here.

 

[iserith]

One of my favorite clips of all times and it's evergreen when it comes to some D&D players:

 

[iserith]

Did a little rendition how I think it might work…

That's really cool! I'm going to download and save this for later.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Totally fair. And would never work with my group. Here's how it would play out...

DM: "You see [description]"
Players: "Trap. We all step to the side. Bearkiller, toss a torch into that pit"
DM: "It lands on...something, about a foot down from the lip of the pit. The torch is...moving around, kinda 'floating'"
Players: "Ha! Gelatinous Cube in a pit. Classic! I hold the door mostly closed, maybe two inches open. Then the thief will hold a mirror up so the wizard can see the rope. Wizard, do your thing..."
Player (Wizard): "I cast my Flame cantrip at the rope, using the mirror to see the target, but standing fully away from the opening in the doorway".
DM: "Ok. SIZZLE! SNAP! SPLAT!"
Player: "Problem solved...next!"

Seriously, this trap is SUPER obvious. So yeah, it's totally fair as no group with any sort of intelligence about them would fall for it. Absolute worse case would be "Huh? I don't like the look of that room...probably a trap. We close the door and keep going down the hallway...". Either that or everyone waits outside, the Barbarian Rages, walks in alone and slices the rope in half...takes the damage, then gets healing from the Cleric.

PS: The trap creator is being nice; if he was REALLY trying to kill interlopers, he'd have made the rope invisible as well, and probably put an illusion of the stone floor over the pit.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Lanefan]

Yes they will be. The density of a stone block is a bit different from a human being. And I said I was ignoring air resistance - your chart is for sky divers!

Over a mere ten-foot drop for something that heavy air resistance is going to be negligible.

Re yellow mould (from the AD&D MM):

deadly spores shoot out in an asphyxiating cloud, 1" by 1" by 1", originating from the center of impact. Any creature which is within this cloud will die, its lungs filled with yellow mold growth, unless it makes a saving throw versus poison. A cure disease and a resurrection are necessary within 24 hours to save such victims.​

​

Yellow mold is affected only by fire based attacks - flaming oil, a fire elemental, etc.​

So it depends on where the centre of impact is taken to occur.

The YM is on top of the falling rock, right? The burning rope is all beneath the falling rock, right? Therefore, how can the YM catch fire in this scenario without the PCs causing it?

 

[Lanefan]

Where are we get 10x10x10 for the dimensions of the falling block? None are specified AFAICT.

As @Crimson Longinus notes, it's obviously not even remotely possible that it's a 10x10x10 block because it's held up by a single rope, which is not going to hold 50 tons. I read that a 1" rope of the type usually found in D&D can probably hold somewhere up to maybe 8000lbs on a very good day. You're proposing it holds up 112,000lbs, which is, what 14x that? So we can figure that, at most, the block is 1/14th of 10x10x10, so 71 cubic feet. So 4.1x4.1x4.1 maybe? Unless that's not how cube roots work. That's a hell of a lot smaller and 14x lighter - what is going to happen is it will displace some of the goo as it rapidly sinks.

You might claim that could cause splatter, but wait, we've established the pit is 11' deep

Note that the trap description in the OP specifically mentions that the pit is a 10' cube. The one-foot lip is a later invention, out of discussion in this thread; and its presence takes away any real hope of the splatter effect working.

 

[Charlaquin]

The YM is on top of the falling rock, right? The burning rope is all beneath the falling rock, right? Therefore, how can the YM catch fire in this scenario without the PCs causing it?

From the OP:

the rope is in fact supporting a large stone block that sits in the ceiling above the pit (by passing through a hole in the middle of the block, over a hook/pulley that hangs from the true ceiling above the block, and then splits or is knotted into four strands which run to each corner of the block, thereby suspending it).

That means the rope would have to pass through the yellow mold on top of the block, as well as the block itself.

 

[Nefermandias]

From the OP:

the rope is in fact supporting a large stone block that sits in the ceiling above the pit (by passing through a hole in the middle of the block, over a hook/pulley that hangs from the true ceiling above the block, and then splits or is knotted into four strands which run to each corner of the block, thereby suspending it).

That means the rope would have to pass through the yellow mold on top of the block, as well as the block itself.

The top of the block has an area of 10 ft square. The mold doesn't have to be necesarily touching the rope passing through the hole, right?

 

[Sithlord]

No, it is a stupidly implausible and convoluted nonsense trap.

My group in the 80s and 90s would have seen this as an obvious trap. Um.. well they saw everything as a trap