Using traps in 4e

[Truename]

I just recently discovered that I do not know of good 4e encounters that use these kind of traps within the contex of an encounter.

It's a bit non-traditional, but the final encounter of Siege of Bordrin's Watch (SoW #2) has a very nice trap built in to it. I killed two of my players' characters with that one. There were some nicely tense moments as the monsters menaced the thief, at the controls of the trap, while the rest of the PCs tried to hold them off.

The twist here is that

Spoiler

the PCs use the trap against the monsters. But it's equally deadly to them

, which is how my PCs died.

It's probably my favorite encounter in the whole Scales of War heroic tier.

 

[Jools]

I recently used the walls coming in trap from DMG2 with some undead (as suggested in the description) and it was AWESOME.

 

[Prism]

As a player I really enjoyed the statue/blood room in Thunderspire Labyrinth. I felt it was a good example of 4e's trap and combat encounters. We managed to get the prize without disarming the traps or defeating all the monsters - although we did take a good kicking along the way

I have just used a trap haunt (ghost) in one of my own traps. I allowed the players to start a skill challenge to disarm the trap but on the 3rd roll have a trap haunt surprise the rogue and dominate him. The next disarm was not as easy and the trap activated with the party in the middle of the room. The party has to decide to either carry on the skill challenge, defeat the ghost (once the rogue stops attacking them), or escape the trap area

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As a player I really enjoyed the statue/blood room in Thunderspire Labyrinth. I felt it was a good example of 4e's trap and combat encounters. We managed to get the prize without disarming the traps or defeating all the monsters - although we did take a good kicking along the way

The mirror room was interesting, though I am not sure it worked as the designers intended. My players went in blind once they knew what was going on - it was a little dangerous, but better than being trapped or otherwise molested by the traps.

 

[Dausuul]

I found the trap room in Keep on the Shadowfell to be pretty poor - a lot of extremely obviously trapped statues with very limited range, and a magic javelin, and that was the end of that. The players just stood off and shot them all to bits. I can't believe the playtesters never caught that.

Unless I completely missed something somewhere.

And once again, D&D fails to come up with a good system for handling damage to objects. Shooting nonmagical arrows at a statue to destroy it = fail, or should. (Of course, that can have dire implications for adventurers facing golems...)

Not that this is specific to 4E. Has any edition found a good way to handle damage to objects?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I was not looking to find rules for using traps like in previous editions, that never felt cool. I just recently discovered that I do not know of good 4e encounters that use these kind of traps within the contex of an encounter.

Unless a trap is part of a prepared ambush site it really doesn't serve much purpose as far as encounters are concerned.

The most important questions for trap placement are who made the trap, and why was it placed there? Once you have an answer to these basic questions and also have a good idea about who/what is currently in the trapped area, possible encounters start to suggest themselves.

Another important thing to know is who is aware of the trap?

Example: The courtyard of a ruined ancient temple.

The courtyard is trapped with pressure plates hidden in the paving stones. The pressure plates release skewering spear traps from underground.
The trap was created long ago by priests of the temple to discourage non-believers from entering. Following the path of wisdom avoids the trap.
Since the trap is old and not well maintained, a pressure plate may trigger when stepped on or not. Markings for the path have been eradicated long ago.

The situation: The PC's are explorers seeking treasure at the temple. A rival group of hunters arrives at the scene at the same time and a showdown in the courtyard will determine who survives to enter the temple.

In this case neither group knows about the trap so the pressure plates will be a hazard to all combatants equally. No one knows what spaces are safe merely by standing there. Is it safe or were they just lucky?

The whole dynamic of the area changes if the PC's are fighting an enemy that is aware of the traps and can take advantage of them. What if the party faced ancient priests (now ghoul-like monsters) who know exactly where the traps are and are possessed of forced movement abilities?

The trap didn't change, but the threat level did.

 

[Obergnom]

I like that idea. Basically thats what I was looking for, but asides from monsters that are either able to force movement (not that many) or to avoid traps (flying creatures for example) I still would have a hard time pulling such an encounter of.

hmm, maybe the new Tomb of Horrors will be of help once it arrives

 

[Badwe]

the trap encounter in H2 worked much better than the aforementioned H1's. in H2 there is a room filled with poisonous blood and 2 large minotaur statues on either side, along with carnage demons swimming in the blood. The statues have massive range and can hit an entire half of the room as well as push the players into the blood (which itself was poisonous and difficult to travel around).

Of course, once the PCs eliminated all the carnage demons and the near statue, they stood from a distance and pelted the far statue. i simply hand-waived the fight over, and while that might seem anti-climactic it was actually one of the deadliest encounters in that segment of the module.

 

[Stoat]

Also consider monsters that are immune to or resist a particular type of damage. Then use traps that deal that kind of damage.

I ran an encounter a few weeks ago using 2 Canoloths, 1 Naldrezu and 2 Acid Sprayer traps. The demons used their variable resistance to move in and out of the traps' area of effect without harm. The PC's couldn't do that.