D&D General [+] TRAPS! a positive thread

[CleverNickName]

My favorite trap was (and still is) a classic Fireball trap. I use it all the time, and it still pays off.

Most recently, it took the form of a stone chest, sitting in the middle of a room. Soot and charred bones were scattered all around it, and the lid was slightly ajar...obviously, it was dangerous, and obviously it had been looted.

But my players, having heard the phrase "chest in the center of the room," immediately stopped listening to me. They ignored my careful description of how the chest had already been opened, and how it was surrounded by charred bones and ashes. They all rushed into the room and stood in a circle around the blackened chest as the rogue opened it without so much as a Perception roll.

I watched them, dumbfounded. "Seriously?" I asked.

"Yes, tell us what we found already!" they said, each in their own words.

"Well, the last thing you see before the flames engulf you, is the empty bottom of the chest. It has already been looted." I paused for a moment. "So I need everyone within 20 feet to roll a Dexterity save..."

 

[kenada]

One of my favorite traps is in the second module of the Shattered Star AP for Pathfinder 1e: Curse of the Lady’s Light. When you first enter the dungeon, there is a sarcophagus containing a spare clone of one of the Runelords, Sorshen. If you disturb it the body or its treasure, the trap casts phantasmal killer. However, if it kills you, you wake up in the clone’s body instead of dying outright. Even if you succeed at the saving throw, you can still wake up in the clone’s body should you die later (which should be appropriately amusing).

From what I remember, the PC made his saving throw, but we never got far enough for him to be revived in the body later. We stopped playing that AP in the middle of the third module because the dungeoncrawling got kind of bad.

 

[Reynard]

Never used it or gotten to play it, but I'll never forget this one from Dragon Magazine 83...

View attachment 137371

This is one of those old school traps that I don't like. There's no warning, no save, no tension -- just disintegration. Traps should encourage interaction and exploration, not discourage or punish them, IMO.

 

[Asisreo]

1. Telegraph the presence of traps. Players can’t interact with traps if you don’t give them the opportunity to do so, so make sure players can determine that a trap is present from the description of the environment alone. Don’t gate this description behind a passive perception DC or make the players declare they’re looking for traps and roll to find it, just describe clues to the presence of the trap. Ideally, you want the players to catch on so they can interact with the trap. Failing that, you want them to feel like they at least could have caught on,

My favorite telegraph for traps are basically silver platter-type rooms.

"We need to find this super rare, super important McGuffin...hey, look! Its in this otherwise empty room under this giant spotlight! Let's go take it without checking" -soon to be dead adventurer

 

[Reynard]

One of my favorite things about Earthdawn -- and there was a lot to love about that game -- was that one of the Horrors was a being that created complicated death traps in lost kaers (dungeons) to torture explorers. They wouldn't just kill you, they would terrify you and inflict pain first, so as to feed the Horror with your anguish.

 

[Charlaquin]

My favorite telegraph for traps are basically silver platter-type rooms.

"We need to find this super rare, super important McGuffin...hey, look! Its in this otherwise empty room under this giant spotlight! Let's go take it without checking" -soon to be dead adventurer

This is an obvious trap, but it doesn’t really give the players any hint as to what to do about it. As such, this is a technique I would only use deep in a dungeon, after establishing a trend of what sort of traps are to be expected there. Or with players who are really into hardcore “skilled play” and want the challenge of knowing there’s a trap and having no clue as to what it is or what to do about it.

 

[Seramus]

My favorite was a Grimtooth trap. You walk into a room full of glass statues standing between you and the obvious door on the far side. The statues are razor sharp, and requite a nimble body to move around, or just smashing them up and walking carefully over a ton of glass.

HOWEVER! When the majority of the party is past the 50% point, their weight causes the entire room to tip sideways, dropping the party, all the statues, and any shattered glass into a pile at the bottom. It becomes a giant pit full of glass ouchiness.

Further insult to injury, there are several small diamonds the party can find among the glass (they were inside a few of the statues). They can always ignore the diamonds, but it encourages them to spend more time digging through sharp sharp glass. The door at the far side does work just fine, but it also dumps most of the glass into the next room (whatever that may be).

This feels like such an ideal trap to me because it 1) Is cool as heck. 2) Can be circumvented. 3) Has a reward if the party wants it, and 4) Doesn't really stop the party from progressing after the trap goes off.

 

[Reynard]

This is an obvious trap, but it doesn’t really give the players any hint as to what to do about it. As such, this is a technique I would only use deep in a dungeon, after establishing a trend of what sort of traps are to be expected there. Or with players who are really into hardcore “skilled play” and want the challenge of knowing there’s a trap and having no clue as to what it is or what to do about it.

Yeah, the "silver platter" approach is a great starting point.

"Huh -- that looks weird. I cast detect magic." And forward from there. Each new investigation reveals a little information but potentially sets the thing off (I am myself a big fan of wards being set off by detect magic).

 

[MarkB]

This is one of those old school traps that I don't like. There's no warning, no save, no tension -- just disintegration. Traps should encourage interaction and exploration, not discourage or punish them, IMO.

That reminds me of one I saw on Youtube awhile back which definitely encouraged interaction and exploration.

 

[CleverNickName]

My favorite was a Grimtooth trap. You walk into a room full of glass statues standing between you and the obvious door on the far side. The statues are razor sharp, and requite a nimble body to move around, or just smashing them up and walking carefully over a ton of glass...

This reminds me of another trap that I had put together a while ago. There was a 60' long room full of metal sculptures, all of them twisted with lots of sharp and jagged edges. The characters could make their way safely through the room, if they took their time to carefully maneuver around the sculptures (move at half their movement rate). If they moved their normal speed, they took piercing and slashing damage (1d6 per 5' traveled, no save). If they dashed or ran, they took double damage.

At the far end of the room was a door, marked with a Sigil of Fear. When triggered, it would cause everyone within range (who failed a save throw) to panic and run away from it as fast as they could--back through the room full of sharp metal sculptures.

Insult to injury: at the very front of the chamber, adjacent to the entrance where the party arrived on the scene, was a wooden cage with three rust monsters in it. To bypass the trap safely, the party needed only to release them and let them eat all the metal sculptures over a long rest. But alas, bloodthirst trumps logic every time. Those rust monsters were dead before I could finish describing the chamber.