What are your favorite traps?

[tvknight415]

I'll recommend...

60' deep pit, filled halfway with green slime. The pit is covered with anti-magic runes so no feather fall or fly spells work. The pit trap is a secret door, covered by the illusion of the floor. The pit is in a hallway, with a door on each end. If both doors are closed, the pit lid is locked and can be crossed without notice. If one or both of the doors are open, the pit lid is unlocked and characters can fall through.

(hey, who said the bad guys should make traps that incapacitate? If I were an evil wizard, I'd make my traps so they killed stone cold dead any character who set them off).

Other traps:

-An inward opening door into a circluar room. The room is actually a summoning circle for a demon. As the door opens inward, it breaks the summoning circle keeping the demon confined, and he's really really really annoyed at being stuck in the summoning circle for years and years, and lookie here, some mortals to take his frustration out on...

-A teleporting arch that the PC's must wear the evil cleric's robes to go through. If they go through wearing the robes, no problem. If they don't, they get teleported someplace naughty (like the top of a 60' deep pit filled halfway with green slime, and ant-magic runes).

-Succubi damsels in distress are always fun. Especially for party members who are motivated by baser desires. She runs up and kisses the hero, then wants to thank him in other ways for rescuing her.

-Mirror of life trapping (full to capacity of evil nasties) is in a dungeon. The mirror isn't currently active, but if a PC lingers in front of it for more than a few seconds, a magic mouth spell goes off activating it. When the captured PC goes in, something nasty comes out. Extra fun in a hall of mirrors.

 

[lukelightning]

-Succubi damsels in distress are always fun. Especially for party members who are motivated by baser desires. She runs up and kisses the hero, then wants to thank him in other ways for rescuing her.

Plus the succubus kiss thing never works like that. What would you do if you found some strange woman in a dungeon who ran up to you and wanted to kiss you? Yeah, she might be hot and all but that's just weird, particularly in a world in which there are many "seductress" type monsters. If the DM said "the fair maiden gives you a kiss for your reward" I'd say "hold on there, bucko, roll initiative first since I'm gonna sock her in the gut!"

I have never had a player fall for a "damsel in distress." Even my secret werewolf chick didn't work. They rescue her and the first thing they do is say "we've been fighting the forces of evil; nothing personal but we can't really trust you so we can either shackle you with these manacles until we can cast detect evil or leave you here and come back later..."

 

[Kafkonia]

I have never had a player fall for a "damsel in distress."

The problem, as with most misdirection tricks in actual play, is that the situation only ever occurs when it is a trick.

If you've been sprinkling in real damsels in distress on a semi-regular basis, they're more likely to fall for the trick. Have the occasional beasty abduct the princess/fair maiden/farmer's daughter for real before bringing out the succubus or whathaveyou. Misdirection only works when you're subverting expectations, and you have to set those expectations up first -- especially when players are naturally going to be skeptical about the situation.

Of course, there are two ways of establishing this sort of expectation -- Pavlovian and Skinnerian. For many DMs, myself included, the first thought is always the Skinnerian response: "The players will learn if they're punished for the wrong action." But from what I've learned, studies show that Pavlovian "reward the right action" approaches work better (now, mind you, those studies weren't in DnD contexts...)

Here's an idea I'll throw out off the cuff: The monster abducts the farmer's daughter. The heroes, who happened to be passing by the farm, are called on to rescue her. The track the monster to its lair, fight some minor beasties, and rescue the daughter -- but the monster escapes, perhaps after a short battle.

As they come to the village just past the farm, they hear tell of a monster abducting young women. They track the monster again to a similar hideout (or the same one, depending on the monster's mindest.) They do battle, and again the baddie escapes, but they're getting an idea of his favoured prey now.

They either stake out the town, or move on to somewhere where a landed noble lives (whichever makes more sense for the party and adventuring world.) There's another abduction, they track him again but this time it takes a bit longer. They find the lady in question, she's in shock or unconscious. They go to help her, and something falls out of a small alcove -- the half-eaten body of the real young lady. The "unconscious" victim then reveals herself as the monster and attempts to eat the adventurers, effectively having used the young woman as bait (much as a fisherman would use a worm or smaller fish to lure in the bigger ones.)

 

[Voadam]

Doom of Odin had one of the best trap sequences I've seen.

It was a hall with glowing runes on the floor with riddles attached to each of them. Answer the riddles and the trap does not go off. Do not answer the riddle and the trap blasts you if you step on that area of floor.

The owner knows the answers and can get to his protected area easily.

So player's could figure out the riddles and succeed. Rogues could disarm the traps. Fighters could barrel through and suck it up (not auto death from the traps just significant damage). Rogues and monks could use evasion on some. Buffing protections would help on some of the rune attacks. Jumping or climbing to skip some was an option. Dispelling was an option. Move through one then heal then move on to the next was a valid tactic for weaker characters.

Options not single solutions.

If everybody had flying it would be easy to bypass though.