Need advice on traps [Tomb of Horrors] [NOT for my players]

[Celebrim]

I love dungeons where you stumble on a trap -- and it HAS long since broken, rusted, corroded, deteriorated, abraded, and decayed past usefulness. It gains my admiration every time. Cause y'know, if I can't get my garage door opener to work correctly every time, you KNOW that wacky mechanical trap is going to screw up dramatically the minute the dwarven engineer leaves.

Absolutely.

Another thing that gains my admiration in these sorts of dungeons are signs of past adventurer presence, particularly in the first (outermost) 'level' rooms. So, you start out finding sprung/disarmed traps, graffitti on the wall, arrows chalked on the floor, bones of dead monsters, broken doors and chests, and then at a certain point you find where the last best group TPKed and then you know that things are beginning in ernest. A really clever dungeon IMO has layers of this as different inhabitants or explorers add features to the original complex. (Of course, the ToH explicitly deals with the problem of broken doors and such, and in context, that's fine though I'd not want to use such a dramatic means except in the most legendary of dungeons.)

 

[Land Outcast]

Thank you for all the imput, this (inevitably) caused creative juices to start flowing, and for the time being I'm scaling up the original traps. I'll start working on new blueprints asap.