Tell me about a cool room in your dungeon...

[Ibram]

The Windy Room
Found in a temple built by elemental wizards, the Windy room was a square room with 60 ft long walls. There was no roof or "floor" (the chamber went up out the top of the temple, and went down... well I never did decide what was at the bottom, but it was probably a REALY long drop). Howling winds rip through chaimber. there were 4 arches comming out of the walls that gave the impression of 4 about 25 feet from the wall. These were linked by an open square shaped series of walkways. a single walkway ran from the platforms to the entrance, while on the opposite side was another platform leading to a small stone balcony with a pedistal (insert quest item here).

The walkways are so narrow that two people cannot pass eachother without making a balance check. the howling winds give a -10 penalty to listen checks, and anyone using a fly spell within the chamber must make a Ref save each round (DC 20) or be smacked up against a wall (3d6 damage), Fly movement is also reduced to 10 feet per round, ranged weapons are treated as though they had a range of 5 feet.

Add Air Elementals (who are immune to the winds) and have fun.

Cavern of the Warriors
long cavern 80 ft by 20 ft. filled with terracotta warriors. as the party reaches the midpoint the terracotta warriors come alive (treat as constructs). though the terracotta warriors are individualy easy to kill each time one is smashed it creates a cloud of clay dust, this first hampers vision, but after the 15th is killed the PC's have to start making Fort saves or take penalties to their actions (cumulative -1s)

 

[DMH]

The carcass storage room (pit actually) is full of biological waste and bodies. It has so many flies and other flying insects that the buzzing can be heard from 750' away. The fungi produce enough spores that the air around the pit is toxic and anyone dying from the poison sprouts fungal growths from their nose and mouth. There are no dangerous creatures in it at all- that is what the diseases (several of the DM's choice) and fungi are for. And there are no valueables either, though the local tribe (orcs, gnolls, goblins, whatever) have placed a few dummy objects within sight on the side of the pit to attract the greedy.

I love Ecology of the Dungeon in Dragon 211 and Dungeons from AEG.

 

[shilsen]

A few I got ideas for from online sources and modified for an insane demigod's home:

A: Upsy-daisy
The room is 40 x 40 ft, with a 10 ft high ceiling. The floor is made up of sixteen 10x10 sections alternately painted black and white. Moments after the PCs enter the room, the doorways disappear, a quartet of hell-hounds appear on the far side of the room, and then the sections randomly jerk 6 feet up or down (all black go together, and so do all white). If the section one is on goes up, make a DC 10 Balance check or fall prone. If it goes down, make DC 5 or fall prone. If a block smashes against the ceiling, anyone on it is knocked prone and takes 5d6 pts damage. At the same time, the hell-hounds move in to attack. If the PCs kill all the hell-hounds, or 12 rds elapse, the sections stop moving. Process of the 12 rds goes as follows:

1) Black goes down (now 15 ft from ceiling), White goes up (now 5 ft from ceiling)
2) Black goes down (now 20 ft from ceiling), White goes down (now 10 ft from ceiling)
3) Black goes up (now 15 ft from ceiling), White goes up (now 5 ft from ceiling)
4) Black goes up (now 10 ft from ceiling), White goes up (smashes against ceiling)
5) Black goes up (now 5 ft from ceiling), White goes down (now 5 ft from ceiling)
6) Black goes down (now 10 ft from ceiling), White goes down (now 10 ft from ceiling)
7) Black goes up (now 5 ft from ceiling), White goes down (now 15 ft from ceiling)
8) Black goes up (smashes against ceiling), White goes down (now 20 ft from ceiling)
9) Black goes down (now 5 ft from ceiling), White goes up (now 15 ft from ceiling)
10) Black goes up (smashes against ceiling), White goes up (now 10 ft from ceiling)
11) Black goes down (now 5 ft from ceiling), White goes up (now 5 ft from ceiling)
12) Black goes down (now 10 ft from ceiling), White goes down (now 10 ft from ceiling)

Monkey business:
The PCs enter a long tunnel and at the end of it find two gnolls manning a catapult with three monkeys next to it. Each round, they load a monkey into the catapult and fire it down the corridor at them (+10 to hit). A monkey hits for 2d4 damage to PC and itself, and then expands into a Dire Ape and stands up and fights.

 

[RangerWickett]

This is a hallway, actually.

At the end of the hallway is something that looks like a door, but is actually just part of the wall. Ten feet away up the hallway is a stripe of black tiles circling the hallway, going across the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. Just beyond the red tiles is a strip of red tiles, then a strip of white tiles. Each strip is two inches deep, so it looks like:

===WRB==D

= is 5 ft. of hallway
D is false door
WRB is the three strips of tiles, which span a half foot.

Whenever anyone touches the door, three magical effects trigger. The black tiles create a dispelling screen, the red tiles create a wall of fire, and the white tiles create a wall of force. Some people might think, "Oh, wall of fire. We can just jump through it. Just to be safe, I'll cast protection from fire."

But when they try to jump through, their protection from fire might be dispelled, and they'll bump into the wall of force just beyond the wall of fire.

Soon they'll suffocate as the wall of fire consumes all the breathable air, or they'll be burnt to death. I think it makes for a good death trap.

 

[Turanil]

Could this thread made into a "d100-room" sort of thread? Just like the ones which links appear in my signature. I don't have the time to work on it, but would be glad to make the pdf when it is completed. (Just get a look at d100-city-blocks thread to get the idea.)

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Zuoken]

A couple from a long-dead game; these were traps designed by a dorky little traploving duergar.

1) A room with several faintly visible pressure-plates on the floor. They're actually not pressure plates: it's the area between them that's trapped. Step on the visible plates and there's no problem; step between them, and the trap triggers.

First, iron plates slam down over the entrances and exits to the room.

Second, magic mouths begin to speak. I handled this by passing out index cards to the players and having them read the cards in sequence as I pointed at the players. Each line is a new magic mouth spell being triggered by the previous spell:
You want to go home?
Then finish the poem
and maybe I'll open
the door.
Robin Hood's job
Was simply to rob
The rich, and give to the

At this point, of course, all the players shouted, "POOR!" Tragically, this completed the last stage of the trap.

See, the duergar had found a Decanter of Endless Water that could be activated by anyone saying the command word, even if they weren't holding it. So he'd put it in the ceiling of this room. The Decanter's three command words were Trickle, Dry, and Pour.

As soon as anyone finishes the poem, the room began to fill with water, and I started a stopwatch: they had half an hour to figure out how to disable the trap (easily, by saying "Dry!" or harder, by figuring out how to get to the well-protected Decanter and destroy it) before the room was completely flooded.

I had three other similar traps in this dungeon, in which acting in the obvious puzzle-solving fashion got you killed; I'll post them if anyone's interested.

Daniel

Sadistic.

I'll have to use that one sometime.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

One of my favorite rooms, one of my favorite hallways and one of my favorite doors.

The party enters a gatehouse with portcullises on either end. There are murder holes in the ceiling and guards in the room above the gatehouse. Once the PCs are in, two guards slam the portcullises. Then they tip over the large containers of greel slime which pours into the murder holes onto the PCs below.

My favorite hallway trap ended up being something like CR 11. The hallway is slanted at a pretty steep angle. A permanent Darkness (this was back when darkness was actually..y'know...darkness) is over the hallway. Razor sharp blades cover the ceilings, walls and floor of the hallway. The hallway has one other permanent enchantment....a grease spell. At the end of the hallway? A pit of acid.

My favorite door trap is not because of the trap itself, but because of the cleverness of one PC in overcoming it. The trap was built over the handle of the door; to open the door, a character basically had to put his hand inside of a box to reach the handle. The box was a scything blade trap. Our party wizard came up with something I didn't even think of. "I cast Mage Hand and open the door." I gave bonus XP.

 

[Sargon the Kassadian]

I created a whole dungeon filled with stuff like this, called the Chaos Maze. A sadistic wizard teleported you in, and you were in the entrance with three portals in front of you. Each one teleported you randomly to the rooms in the section (A,B, or C)

I had a 20-20-20' room with a cube floating in the center with gnolls on it and subjective gravity. There was a room with water floating in 5' wide streams in midair and locathahs. You could swim along in the rivers to get to the opponents and fall out of it or swim down to traverse the levels.

There was a room with many angled walls where arrows or anything richochet very effectively, the PCs can't see the human archers at the end when they come in, but they keep getting hit by arrows.

Another room was a long narrow bridge over spikes, with piercers and darkmantle (who cast darkness) ambushes, Balance DC 10 to stay on, and greased sections.

Another room (20-20-100) multiplied Jump checks times 3 and there were many platforms on the walls to jump to and 2 half-orc monks with +lots to Jump.

The final showdown with the wizard was in a room with a bunch of 5' squares that were either trapped, spelled, or trapped and spelled. All the traps/spells would be random. Every time you took a 5' step/moved 5' you got teleported to a random square (d12 for long, d6 for wide). The wizard sits there chuckling (bwahahah!) and flings spells at the PCs.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Here's one I used.

A round, domed chamber 30 ft. in diameter. Metal spikes (like the blades of polearms) protrude from the walls of the dome. The PCs enter from one side and on the opposite side is an exit. The floor is covered by a thick, knee-high layer of creepy fog. You can give easy Listen checks to hear a soft humming coming from the floor.

Under the fog, the floor is spinning at a ridiculous speed. Anyone trying to cross the room by traversing the room is thrown violently (in a random direction, use d12 and refer to a clock) into the spikes (use an appropriate CR spiked pit trap for damage rules). Clever PCs can try to climb around the walls using the spikes and hand-holds, but this should be a difficult climb check with the risk of taking damage from the spikes. Remember that any PC who fails a climb check by five or more falls to the floor only to be thrown back into the spikes.

Warning note for this one: if the floor is spinning that fast, in the real world it would actually move the fog into a vortex of its own that would make it fairly obvious that something is happening. Be prepared for an arguement from players about the fog not moving.

 

[Chaldfont]

Warning note for this one: if the floor is spinning that fast, in the real world it would actually move the fog into a vortex of its own that would make it fairly obvious that something is happening. Be prepared for an arguement from players about the fog not moving.

That's why its a magic trap. Any player making this kind of argument in my game would suffer the derision and thrown beer caps of the other players. As well as being forced by the DM to make an impromptu Balance check or fall onto the spinning floor.