Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8824854" data-attributes="member: 29398">Why would I want to do so, is the question?  If they look they might find it safely, if they don't look they almost certainly won't find it other than the hard way.  But I'm not about to tell them there's specifically a hazard there, though I hope I've long since managed to get across the idea that there's potential hazards everywhere when in the field.If I'm setting net snares in the woods I'll know where they are...and if they work as intended they'll be easy to find later because they'll be hanging from trees with game animals (or trespassers!) inside. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Allow me, please, an example from a module I just wrote and ran over the last few months.  It's long, so I'll s-block it if I can figure out how.[SPOILER="Interesting hallway"]Situation: Party have been asked to check out an abandoned villa, mostly to try to figure out what became of another adventuring group that went in there a few momths back and never returned.  They've just come through a secret door to get to this point, in the villa's carved-from-bedrock basement.Here's the narration - I'll give it all at once here, but it was given piecemeal at the time as the party's light sources allowed:"The 5-foot-wide hallway runs about 50 feet and ends in a door.  There is also a set of elaborate double doors about halfway along the right hand wall.  Even as non-trackers you can tell nobody has been in here in quite a while, as any tracks would be obvious in the dust." (they didn't have a tracker in the group)Seems simple, right.  So, here's the DM-side elements.1. The double doors on the right lead to the family crypt, and though they can't be opened by normal means the means to do so (a special key) are findable in more than one way as there are multiples of this key.2. Roughly across from the double doors is a secret door leading to a rough tunnel, the tunnel runs about 70 feet to a ladder that goes to an outbuilding; this being a bolthole for escape should the manor be attacked or invaded.3. The door at the end of the hall is a fake and leads only to a bedrock wall.  About ten feet short of that "door" is a 5x5 foot area of floor that isn't there, covered by a permanent illusion of the floor continuing.  Below this is what the original owner installed as a deep pit trap, to catch and hold invaders; since then and without anyone's knowledge it was converted into a chute trap with a built-in teleporter, leading to a prison cell far far away.3a.  Arriving in the prison cell at the end of the chute starts a whole other adventure, ready to rock as part of the same module if the PCs go down the chute and left for later if they don't (other elements found in the manor would ideally eventually lead them there anyway, and if not then so be it - I run something else).The only possible "tell" here is that the illusionary patch of floor wouldn't have any dust.  The owner didn't want the secret door found thus there's no reason to telegraph its existence.End results in play:The PCs never really bothered with the crypt doors, instead deciding to go straight for the door at the end.  They also never paid any attention to the floor.  I secretly rolled for the Elf's built-in chance of noticing the secret door on passing by it, no luck.  And the party's Thief, on blowing a few rolls, went down the chute, eventually followed by the rest of 'em in a more controlled manner once they realized the Thief was gone.  Once there they busted out of the prison, knocked off some Yuan-ti, rescued some other prisoners, and found the two surviving members of the original group they were looking for.[/SPOILER]So, a secret door and a very significant trap in the same hallway.  What do you make of that?</blockquote>

Verification