Dungeons Fans, Unite For Ideas!

[Jogi]

So, I've been around in the boards for a small time, but haven't seen many topics talking about what is, for me, one of the best scenarios in D&D: dungeons. I do love the flavor of a classical dungeon, with low level adventurers getting through dangerous traps and solving puzzles.

Then, I decided to make this topic, which purpose is to be a place where dungeon lovers dump their ideas for:

- Traps
- Puzzles
- Encounters
- Rooms in general
- Dungeon flavors

^^!

[Harperfan7]

Excerpts from my last adventure.... (which was 1st level)

- Traps ...The center of the floor of the room is covered in a 20ft. diameter simple circular rug, which has a bed mat, a pillow, an oil lamp (empty), a small book (blank), and a small wooden coffer (empty). The rug conceals a 10ft. wide 30ft. deep pit (it has thin weak wooden supports under the rug, which snap as soon as anything as heavy as a small or larger character steps on it). The bottom of the pit contains three handless human skeletons, one of which is missing its skull.

...The chest is trapped with a Ray of Enfeeblement (DC 26, Reflex DC 11, 1d6+1 Str damage) and contains 6 crawling claws which attack anyone who opens the chest.


- Puzzles ...The well is 50ft. Deep. The bottom of the well is missing part of its side wall, which leads into an ancient temple. The bottom of the well is several inches of powdery dirt. Through the hole in the well wall, there is a 10’x10’ room with a similar floor and masonry walls. There is a stone door with no visible way of opening it on the opposite wall. The door is covered in a design of a complex tentacled alien form dominated by a circular striated eye. There is a black-robed human skeleton half buried in the dirt on the left side of the room. With a search check (DC 5), the pcs find a scroll case with a single scroll inside. The scroll is written in Draconic, and reads…
“Threats Hang Over Sisters Ever With Intention To Harm Whilst Internal Turmoil Deepens Inside Secret Ceremonies Every Runner Needs To Rule Under The High Imperial Negotiator Commonly Omitted Moments Prior Lessening Entire Xerically Illuminated Terrestrial Yestermen”
Saying the phrase “Those with wit discern truth in complexity” out loud in Draconic makes the door dissolve into a cloud of black smoke and disappear.

...The door to this room is stone and has no visible means of opening. It has a circle in the middle, which looks like the moon, while the rest of the door is covered in stars with the bottom showing land. The moon and stars glow and touching one of the stars either makes it glow brighter or shocks the toucher. If someone touches all the right stars to form the Beholder constellation, the door opens. If they touch any of the others, they are affected by the Shocking Grasp spell (Caster Level 1st). Solving the puzzle awards them 300xp.


- Encounters ...This 30ft. diameter room contains a large bed, a dresser (which hides a Vargouille and contains a couple robes), a writing desk which has Nymonor’s Journal, 10 sheets of paper, a quill, a vial of ink, a skull, an everlasting torch, and a few rugs.


- Rooms in general ...1. The first room is the entrance hall, which is a 30ft. diameter circle with a domed ceiling and a large stone statue of a striated eye painted red and black in the center. There are three locked (DC 20) strong wooden doors which lead into slightly smaller circular rooms. There are two purple and black tapestries in the room that depict a striated eye inside an 8 armed star. Behind the tapestries are two secret doors (DC 20).
Entering one of the smaller circular rooms triggers a Summon Monster I spell which summons Fiendish Vermin or Vipers. Entering one of the secret rooms triggers a Wood Portcullis trap in the doorway (Search DC 20, Disable Device DC 20, +8 Attack, 2d6 damage, CR 1) and activates two skeletons who are in turn hidden in alcoves behind two similar tapestries.
2. This room is also circular, but is 25ft. diameter. Much of the stone in this room is blackened and melted as if from intense fire. An unburned wooden dresser is smashed up against the wall as if thrown with great force. The door on the other side of the room is untouched. The door is trapped with a Light Crossbow (CR 1), and it leads nowhere.
4. This room is just like #2, but the stone is cracked and chipped (as if from cold/sonic). One wall is melted in three spots, as if from intense heat. The door on the other side of the room is also cracked. The door is trapped with a Light Crossbow (CR 1), and it leads nowhere.
6. This room is just like #2, but the stone is pitted and melted (as if from strong acid). A flat iron wall bisects the room, but has a roughly 10ft. wide and tall opening in the center, and does not look to be affected by whatever happened to the stone. The door on the other side of the room has been slightly affected by whatever affected the stone. The door is trapped with a Light crossbow (CR 1), and it leads nowhere.
3-5. Both of these rooms are identical. They are simple circular rooms 25ft. in diameter. The only things in the rooms are two tapestries on either side of the room, opposite the two doors. The tapestries hide alcoves that both contain skeletons. Entering the room triggers the portcullis trap and makes the skeletons come out and attack. The doors opposite the portcullises are locked, but not trapped.

...This 30ft. diameter room is similar to the last in quality, but contains nothing but an Arched Stone Door engraved with magic runes that has two blue flames burning in two torch sconces on either side of the door. The door has a large hairless expressive male face protruding from its center. The room contains four skeletons which attack as soon as anyone enters the room. The Face, upon seeing one of the pcs, booms, “FINALLY! AHAHAHAHA!!! FLESH! FLESH!!! CRUSH THESE OLD BONES!” Throughout the battle, it cheers the pcs on and congratulates them for landing blows and dropping foes. When the battle is over, it says, “EXCELLENT! Those guys lost their last fight too! …AHAHAHAHAHA!!! …eh, heh, I crack me up. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a living creature?” -waits for a reply with an expectant look- “Oh, well, I was hoping you would.”
What does Pernicious mean? “(confused look)…you know I’m a door, …right?”
It will gladly tell them anything it knows, except how the portal functions or to where it leads.
If the pcs find themselves trapped in the temple, they can say this to the door and convince it to let them use it with a Diplomacy Check (DC 15). If successful, it opens to the Shrine Ruins.

...Opening the doors to this room trigger the iron portcullis trap at the start of the hallway. This 70ft. diameter room has a gigantic solid stone statue of Xanathar which stares at the entrance of the room with a large glowing red glass or crystal striated eye, a crescent shaped altar whose ends are pedestals topped with blue fire, six large cylindrical pillars - the two closest to the door are the largest and the two farthest are the smallest. The statue and altar stand upon two upraised diases - the inner of which is smaller. Upon the altar lies an Embroidered Silk and Velvet (Black/Purple) Altar Cloth with numerous Moonstones (1,425 gp), an engraved silver bowl (100gp) containing holy water (75gp). Two Large Well Done Wool Tapestries (200 gp each) hang facing each other on the first two pillars. Standing just in front of the tapestries are two Xanathite Dread Guards (CR 1 - Scimitars) - their helmets are shaped like Xanathar, their striated eyehole glows purple, their shields have an eye inside an 8-pointed star.

- Dungeon flavors Ok, so the only real flavor my dungeon had was that all the rooms were circular and it required some perception to get through. It was a temple to an ancient god (who looked something like a beholder) of "perception, chaos, madness, the moon, and alteration." Looking back, I should have made all the door circular too.


Another Idea I had that I want to mention.

The treasure horde

This room, which is longer than it is wide, is full of old junk, such as chests, trunks, rolled up rugs and bolts of cloth, coathangers, what have you. At the end is a large chest (which contains something the pcs want). Along the way, there are mimics which attack the pcs. The chest itself is trapped with a widened animate objects spell.

Have fun.

[Szilard]

Traps...
I stole that thing from Dr. McNinja that shoots lasers at anyone who says something loudly.

Puzzles.
Not too much, more of a riddle person really.

Encounters.
My favorite is probably troglodytes jumping out of barrels. :smallbiggrin: Or this one time, the answer to a riddle was "Fire at will" and all the dead people in the room rose as zombies and skeletons.

Rooms:
I like using rooms with floors that can turn around, and false walls. All that good stuff.

Flavors... I generally like underground deserty dungeons. With rivers.

[pleasekilltheto]

I haven't been able to spring anything particularly devious on my PC's because they're low level and because I'm not really imaginative, but I have come up with some stuff. The two below are stuff from the current adventure/campaign.

Message to my PC's: if you're reading this, don't click on the spoiler tag.

I'm currently having my PC's scout/raid a small duergar lair (consistency isn't one of my campaign's strong suits, humor tends to come before plot).
Puzzles:
I'm not sure if this is really a puzzle. A bit into the lair, the PC's come across a chasm with a river running through it and a generously wide log placed across it as a bridge. Next to the chasm is a statue of a red fish encrusted with fake glass rubies. Knowledge (Nature) check reveals it's a herring. I foisted the herring part off someone on either this forum or the WotC forums, but I don't remember.

Naturally, the PC's cross the bridge. If they decided to throw the bridge into the chasm to stop the duergars from crossing over (part of the campaign is that they're trying to stop some duergars from raiding a town. I don't know if duergars really do that, but I needed a hook, and they were the most convenient underground humanoid race.) I would tell them that there was a pile of logs on the other side. (Thankfully, they didn't).

When they get zerg rushed by duergars (see below), they're supposed to run back across the bridge and try to throw it into the chasm. It's light enough and it's not bolted down or anything, but it turns out that the chasm is actually solid ground with an illusion over it. Since nobody would fall off the bridge due to its generous width, they won't really have a chance to interact with it. The duergars continue in hot pursuit. I imagine that their faces will be priceless.

Encounter:
A bit more past the chasm, they come across a narrow (5 feet wide) hallway with a door at the end, opening toward the PC's, and leading into a duergar sleeping quarters or barracks, at which point they have to deal with about 15 angry duergars. The hallway makes for a narrow chokepoint, but when the duergars' invisibility comes into play...

[Jergmo]

First you have a pit that's behind a jammed, easily-broken wooden door. And you fill that pit with acid. Also, the floor in front of the door is triggered to collapse when enough pressure is applied to the door, and below it is a very sharply inclined slope. Also, the acid pit is filled with giant crocodiles with the Acid subtype. :xykon:

[Lord Loss]

A few sample traps/ encounters I'm using for my next adventure (in a church)

The Chamber of Cherished Memories:

The chamber is 30 feet wide and 50 feet long. At the end there is a pedestal, with a holy drawing, which has been recovered by a gigantic splotch of blood. A man sits at the pedestal onlooking the symbol, seemingly praying.

Any form of communication with the man fails.

If the PCs approach him:

You approach the man, and notice that he seems immobile... too immobile. Although you can't exactly put your finger on it, something about him is distinctly wrong. (Spot DC 25) What seemed to be a splotch of blood seems to squirm around, animated by some dark magic... or worse.

If they touch the priest:

The man falls off the pedestal. He is clearly dead, though his body is unmarked and his face shows no sign of trauma. A Large monstrosity made of teeth and claws, floating in all directions through a huge ball of red gas leaps from the picture, and you see the picture behind it. It is a angel, presumably a Solar.

1x Nishruu (With added 1d6 Damage to all within Nishruu)

Or a trap (From the Genius E. Ravenwood, of course...)


About halfway up a flight of steps is a false step. Its cover is made of brittle material, like disguised glass, and when stepped on with a certain weight shatters, and the PC's foot falls through. If he doesn't remove his foot carefully, and just pulls it on out, he'll relize his mistake, for there are spikes inside angled at about 45 degrees, so when his foot goes in, nothing happens, but when he tries to pull it out...have the PC take whatever damage you deem appropriate, but cut his base movement by half.