D&D 5E Traps for Against the Giants

[lesbiasparrow]

My players have just defeated the hill giants, but have decided to delay their journey to the frost giants' glacial rift by days or weeks. Accordingly, the frost giants will know to expect company! I'm looking for ideas for the sorts of traps, ambushes, etc. they should lay for the characters. I'm also considering doubling (at least!) the number of guards in the guardrooms.

Thanks!

 

[jasper]

Traps DC Hard 20 perception. Traps should either be dangerous 10d10 (51 hit pts) or deadly 18d10 (92 hit pts).
Wandering monsters. 1 on a d6 per hour instead 1 on a d12. Double the number of critters encountered.
Boulders have been iced so dc increases to 25.
Add alert bells, drums in almost every room.
Bump some of the servants up to full giants. Ex Instead using 3 ogres in room 24 bump it to 3 hill giants and 2 hill giant servants (ogre) but only do one or two upgrades.
Social checks, if the giants do there got them there wanted posters of the murder hobos, either up the dc by 5 or disadvantage.
I am starting the hill giants tonight.

 

[lesbiasparrow]

Traps are hard with this group because we have a rogue (now lvl 12) who literally can't get under like 26 on perception (thanks, Reliable Talent!). It feels kind of cheap to up the DC enough that she can't automatically see the traps, but it also makes traps less useful.

If you're running the giants, this may interest you:

I set the game in c. 800 AD in the lands bordering the North Sea, and had the players enlisted by a variety of historical medieval kings. (The rogue, for instance, is Charlemagne's spymistress for her day job.) I also turned the rebelling orc slaves into human slaves (we're doing humans only, low-ish magic), and the party rescued them all! Except for the ones they used as meatshields to help in their fight against the massed giants...

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Traps are hard with this group because we have a rogue (now lvl 12) who literally can't get under like 26 on perception (thanks, Reliable Talent!). It feels kind of cheap to up the DC enough that she can't automatically see the traps, but it also makes traps less useful.

Seeing the trap doesn't necessarily help you overcome them. Does the Rogue also have 26 on INT\Investigation, INT\Thief's Tools and DEX\Thief's Tools (all of which might be involved in removing a trap)?

GM: With you amazing perception you notice hundreds of small holes in the ceiling of the tunnel ahead. What do you do?
Player: I disarm the trap.
GM: What trap? All you see is lots of holes. What do you do?

Remember that Perception doesn't allow you to spot a trap — it only allows you to spot the signs of a trap. If we compare it to medicine, perception allows you to spot the symptoms of a disease but you still have to determine the actual disease and then treat it.

Or to put it another way, INT is not a dump stat for Rogues.

 

[hastur_nz]

If you have Volo's Guide,I'd recommend you read the piece on Frost Giants for inspiration. Basically, Frost Giants are all about Strength, not Industry nor Magic. So I'd say the level of preparations they would employ, would be mostly limited to making sure they are alert, and prepared to respond to a potential attack, with brute force. Traps could be employed, like simple pit-traps with spikes or similar, but you'd want to be realistic in terms of how that might affect others' ability to come and go (basically, all of the Giant Strongholds have visitors coming and going from time to time).

BTW I ran these adventures, converting them to 3.5, and I think the 5e versions have been trimmed somewhat, which I had to do for 3.5 as well. Even so, in particular, I found G2 (Frost Giant lair) to be quite a grind, as most encounters were just a bunch of Frost Giants which got stale pretty quickly. The highlights of the lair were the twin White Dragons, then the boss-fight at the end, and some of the exploration pieces; otherwise, it was pretty dull even after I trimmed it a lot. So I'd just say be careful you don't over-stock the lair - maybe just re-arrange the existing forces, to make them better prepared for an assault by the PC's.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

My main thought is that Frost Giants are not likely to set up a bunch of traps. I would expect a race as aggressive as Frost Giants would be proactive and would sent out a well equipped war party to hunt down and attack the characters while they are traveling.

Sent from my SM-T820 using EN World mobile app

 

[Voort]

For flavor, have at least one trap that would be absolutely deadly...to someone bigger than the PCs. A huge blade that swings across a corridor ten feet above the floor, for example.