Traps Wanted : Originals clever traps
- Thread starter Azzy42xy
- Start date
megamania
Hero
A few I have done-
Wax celled door at the top of stairs. Behind door is a large and tall room filled with water. If the door or the wax is punctured, then the door breaks like a dam. PCs are washed down the stairs taking Non-lethal damage, Any torches are put out. Get separated if the hallway at end of stairs has a split in it. To make it more dangerous- Water elemental is with the water.
Typical tilting floor trap BUT this time have the ceiling coated in oil. One or two can enter at a time. Their weight makes it tip and sets off a trap that ignites the oil. Party separated and fire involved.
Wax celled door at the top of stairs. Behind door is a large and tall room filled with water. If the door or the wax is punctured, then the door breaks like a dam. PCs are washed down the stairs taking Non-lethal damage, Any torches are put out. Get separated if the hallway at end of stairs has a split in it. To make it more dangerous- Water elemental is with the water.
Typical tilting floor trap BUT this time have the ceiling coated in oil. One or two can enter at a time. Their weight makes it tip and sets off a trap that ignites the oil. Party separated and fire involved.
Celebrim
Legend
My usual advice to DMs that ask for traps is to tell them, "No. You don't actually want traps."
Traps are some of the most misused aspects of DMing. They've been used to promote pure adversarial DMing, and they tend to create improper DM fantasies in that it's almost impossible for most DMs to place a trap and not hope it goes off. The more awesome the trap, the more this is true which leads to all sorts of escalating bad DMing decisions.
You know a trap thread is going bad when someone mentions Grimtooth in an approving way. It's like a how to guide of how not to use traps.
I'll go ahead and push my reputation for arrogance further, by saying I'd go so far as to say I've not seen a single artistic use of traps described in this thread. It's all been pretty wretched advice.
The only one I like a little is breaking pipe trap depositing the players in a combat encounter, but that's more of "Trap as Scene Framing" sort of thing than it is using a trap as a scene or encounter itself. The poster that called it 'dramatic entrance' had the right of it. It's not a trap per se, just a way of heightening the tension of a combat. Ditto the "spray blood and release the beasts" sort of trap. There is nothing wrong with that sort of thing, and in fact, framing a scene tensely like that is a good thing.
But that's not really a scene built around navigating a trap itself.
Some questions should always be asked of any trap:
a) What maintains the trap in its finely balanced state? The more elaborate and fragile the trap, the more one wonders why it's not already broken.
b) Why did someone bother to build the trap, and in particular why did they bother to build it right where they did? Quite often you see these lethal death traps on hair triggers in the middle of the residential quarters of someone's lair. You might as well have a covered spiked pit trap in the middle of a busy city street.
c) Why is this trap fun for the players? Is the interest in the trap mainly an interest in showing off? Does the trap make the game more or less tedious?
d) How is the trap interactive? Do the players get to act on the trap, or does it just act on them?
e) How is the trap avoided? What signals should an observant player receive that the environment contains a trap? If you are trying to cover up these signals rather than create them, it's a good sign that you as a DM don't have the right motivation. It's trivially easy to create inescapable death traps, or at the least traps that act mainly as unavoidable hit points taxes. What's hard is creating a trap that is fun for everyone. Make sure that's your goal, and not playing gotcha with the players. Because if it is the later goal, what you are saying is that all the time and in all ways, you want players to spend 10 minutes tediously checking against traps before they do anything.
Some further reading:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?348572-What-s-your-favorite-trap
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?311219-Honoring-Pit-Traps
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...e-on-traps-Tomb-of-Horrors-NOT-for-my-players
Update more reading:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?403969-The-Awesome-Endurance-of-D-amp-D-s-First-Modules
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?251072-Two-Dozen-Nasty-DM-Tricks
Traps are some of the most misused aspects of DMing. They've been used to promote pure adversarial DMing, and they tend to create improper DM fantasies in that it's almost impossible for most DMs to place a trap and not hope it goes off. The more awesome the trap, the more this is true which leads to all sorts of escalating bad DMing decisions.
You know a trap thread is going bad when someone mentions Grimtooth in an approving way. It's like a how to guide of how not to use traps.
I'll go ahead and push my reputation for arrogance further, by saying I'd go so far as to say I've not seen a single artistic use of traps described in this thread. It's all been pretty wretched advice.
The only one I like a little is breaking pipe trap depositing the players in a combat encounter, but that's more of "Trap as Scene Framing" sort of thing than it is using a trap as a scene or encounter itself. The poster that called it 'dramatic entrance' had the right of it. It's not a trap per se, just a way of heightening the tension of a combat. Ditto the "spray blood and release the beasts" sort of trap. There is nothing wrong with that sort of thing, and in fact, framing a scene tensely like that is a good thing.
But that's not really a scene built around navigating a trap itself.
Some questions should always be asked of any trap:
a) What maintains the trap in its finely balanced state? The more elaborate and fragile the trap, the more one wonders why it's not already broken.
b) Why did someone bother to build the trap, and in particular why did they bother to build it right where they did? Quite often you see these lethal death traps on hair triggers in the middle of the residential quarters of someone's lair. You might as well have a covered spiked pit trap in the middle of a busy city street.
c) Why is this trap fun for the players? Is the interest in the trap mainly an interest in showing off? Does the trap make the game more or less tedious?
d) How is the trap interactive? Do the players get to act on the trap, or does it just act on them?
e) How is the trap avoided? What signals should an observant player receive that the environment contains a trap? If you are trying to cover up these signals rather than create them, it's a good sign that you as a DM don't have the right motivation. It's trivially easy to create inescapable death traps, or at the least traps that act mainly as unavoidable hit points taxes. What's hard is creating a trap that is fun for everyone. Make sure that's your goal, and not playing gotcha with the players. Because if it is the later goal, what you are saying is that all the time and in all ways, you want players to spend 10 minutes tediously checking against traps before they do anything.
Some further reading:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?348572-What-s-your-favorite-trap
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?311219-Honoring-Pit-Traps
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...e-on-traps-Tomb-of-Horrors-NOT-for-my-players
Update more reading:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?403969-The-Awesome-Endurance-of-D-amp-D-s-First-Modules
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?251072-Two-Dozen-Nasty-DM-Tricks
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Bagpuss
Legend
I agree with pretty much everything you've said above, but Grimtooth's is a fun read, and there are some traps in there that probably would work well in a campaign. They are normally the less than lethal ones, or ones that are "delayed death traps" that the heroes can escape from, or ones where you can see you could provide clues to their mechanism. Unfortunately the vast majority of Grimtooth's traps are gotcha instant death traps with no warning, or worse kill you for acting in an intelligent manner, and make no logical sense at all.
Bleys Icefalcon
First Post
They come up to a sealed door. There is a handle, but when they try the door, it is apparently locked. There is no clear locking mechanism. next to the handle is an ominous hole in the door - roughly finger sized. Above it, written in the common tongue are the words "Insert Finger Here to Open."
Yup, a blade will come down and clip off the finger (which WILL open the door). A DC 14 is required for the thief to notice the cleverly concealed blade mechanism.
A DC 17 will allow a thief to disable the blade mechanism (A natural 1, the thief will be convinced they've disabled it).
A DC 18 will allow a thief to determine that two needles will pierce the end of a finger placed in the hole.
A DC 23 will allow a thief to determine that the blood drawn will bathe a very tiny rune inside the locking mechanism, which seems to control the lock (and will open the door).
Yup, a blade will come down and clip off the finger (which WILL open the door). A DC 14 is required for the thief to notice the cleverly concealed blade mechanism.
A DC 17 will allow a thief to disable the blade mechanism (A natural 1, the thief will be convinced they've disabled it).
A DC 18 will allow a thief to determine that two needles will pierce the end of a finger placed in the hole.
A DC 23 will allow a thief to determine that the blood drawn will bathe a very tiny rune inside the locking mechanism, which seems to control the lock (and will open the door).
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If a finger is going to be cut off, why the need for the needles? Surely there'll be enough blood already, and if you want to open the door without risking triggering the trap you can simply prick your finger outside the hole.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I'm currently rarely using traps because my game is focusing on exploration of ruins that were left by a sudden apocalypse, not built to be death trap dungeons. But, the standout so far was a set of very nasty traps that were essentially immediately lethal. They were also extremely obvious, what with the 5' tall, inset metal hammers on either side of the hallway humming and spitting sparks. The trap was meant to be 1) obvious and only triggerable intentionally, and 2) scary as hell. There were, IIRC, four of these installations down a long hallway.
What the players didn't know was that the particular set of ruins they were investigating where once a high security experimentation lab on some rather nasty things. So the traps weren't there to keep players out, but to make sure that anything that broke containment in the lab would be incinerated trying to escape. The traps worked by essentially an object reducing the resistance between the hammers, causing a bolt of energy to erupt across the offending object (or person, or thing). The mechanism was hidden behind solid rock walls, and very well protected, so it wasn't easy to disable. Bypassing was similarly difficult, due to a lack of available insulating materials. However, since the facility wasn't designed as a screw you deathtrap, but by thinking creatures that lived and worked there, all of the traps had easy to find, if not immediately apparent, disable switches at a convenient location for someone on the correct side of the trap. So a brief examination of the area found the necessary 'off' switches, allowing the party to continue unimpeded.
However, the clues in the facility and the traps themselves led the party to realize the likely intent of the traps - to keep something in, not out - and they spent about 5 times longer discussing the wisdom of disabling the traps and/or trying to figure out if they could remotely deactivate the traps from the inside (they didn't come up with a workable plan that they liked and trusted) so that they didn't have to leave them off to continue. That made the trap, and it's ease of bypassing, far more valuable in game than something for them to solve and disable like a more conventionally built trap.
What the players didn't know was that the particular set of ruins they were investigating where once a high security experimentation lab on some rather nasty things. So the traps weren't there to keep players out, but to make sure that anything that broke containment in the lab would be incinerated trying to escape. The traps worked by essentially an object reducing the resistance between the hammers, causing a bolt of energy to erupt across the offending object (or person, or thing). The mechanism was hidden behind solid rock walls, and very well protected, so it wasn't easy to disable. Bypassing was similarly difficult, due to a lack of available insulating materials. However, since the facility wasn't designed as a screw you deathtrap, but by thinking creatures that lived and worked there, all of the traps had easy to find, if not immediately apparent, disable switches at a convenient location for someone on the correct side of the trap. So a brief examination of the area found the necessary 'off' switches, allowing the party to continue unimpeded.
However, the clues in the facility and the traps themselves led the party to realize the likely intent of the traps - to keep something in, not out - and they spent about 5 times longer discussing the wisdom of disabling the traps and/or trying to figure out if they could remotely deactivate the traps from the inside (they didn't come up with a workable plan that they liked and trusted) so that they didn't have to leave them off to continue. That made the trap, and it's ease of bypassing, far more valuable in game than something for them to solve and disable like a more conventionally built trap.
Bleys Icefalcon
First Post
It's a harassing/damaging trap - designed among other things to thin healing resources and slow the party down.
Bleys Icefalcon
First Post
Also, to the OP - find yourself a copy of the classic module: Tomb of Horrors. Enough traps in there to give even a master thief pause.
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