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View Full Version : little riddle/trap for my party (3.5)



Yeturs
2010-12-19, 06:47 PM
something i cooked up for the game im running. my level five party is in an undead castle dungeon, so i thought this would be kind of fitting.

is this too hard to figure out? try and figure out the riddle before you click the spoiler please.



fountain of spite


Here lies a clean and pure fountain of water. it is an oddity in this strange and dead place, but hey. who is to judge?

if someone drinks from the fountain, they are afflicted with a cause wounds spell, dealing 2d8+3 damage. the water causes extreme pain, but only 1d4 rounds after handling it. so, if cupped in your hands, it feels normal for 1d4 rounds. if it is dropped before that time, the pain still occurs and remains for as long as you did hold the water. the same goes for drinking it.

the damage happens immediately, but players do not know they are hurt. this makes it entirely possible to have a player kill themselves before they know they are taking damage.

on a sign near it reads (with great spacing between each word)

"this water is great
it will keep you safe from harm
and bring you spite"

this is a haiku, missing a syllable. the word "SPITE" should be inscribed with a "RE" turning the word into "RESPITE"

this transmutes the water into healing water. then, 1d10 potions of cure moderate wounds can be extracted, and the water here acts in reverse. so it heals.





this is positive and negative energy effects, so it affects undeads as such.

Pyromancer999
2010-12-19, 07:56 PM
I have no idea how your players would handle it, but if I gave something like this to my players, they'd probably punch me in the face. No kidding. You might want to go with a more traditional riddle style for this, as it's not even a riddle as it currently is, just a puzzling haiku. Maybe use a cryptic phrase.

Dvandemon
2010-12-19, 08:02 PM
You and your party must be pretty smart, if you think they can handle it.

mucat
2010-12-19, 08:15 PM
You and your party must be pretty smart, if you think they can handle it.

I disagree. Solving this "riddle" has nothing to do with being smart; it's too arbitrary and illogical.

If the players notice the haiku-like form (do haikus even exist in the game world?) they're likely to decide that it's not a haiku, based on the syllable miscount. (And it doesn't particularly sound like a haiku; "This water is great" really lacks the zen-like feel that haiku artists strive for.)

If they do somehow decide that it's a haiku missing a syllable -- which doesn't mean they're good logical thinkers, but rather that they jump to odd conclusions -- then there are lots of ways to fix it besides changing "spite" to "respite". "And not bring you spite", "And bring you no spite", "And bring you great spite", "And bring you all spite"...any of these would make just as much sense as the "right" one.

If they decide they know what the missing syllable is, why would it occur to them to physically scribe it on the plaque? Is there space in front of "spite" for a couple extra letters?

And perhaps most importantly, who the hell built this thing, and why? I can't think of any reason for anyone to enchant a fountain that harms people unless they proofread and modify its inscription, in which case it heal them. Which means that if the players are thinking about the internal logic of the game world, where this fountain must have had a builder, then they become less likely to solve the puzzle. You're penalizing a type of thinking that you ought to reward...

absolmorph
2010-12-19, 08:37 PM
This seems like it'd be very, very dangerous and it might make your players angry. It seems completely arbitrary, and it's a really big leap of logic to think "write 're' in front of 'spite'".
In order to make it easier to realize (and less of an absurd leap), have a printout with the haiku on it as the players would see it. Make sure there's equal space between each word and have "spite" pushed back enough that there would be the normal space and "re" (in the same font size).
Overall, it's not really a well put-together puzzle.
Anything that can basically just turn into "you're dead" after a few rounds of doing something that seems completely normal (they're drinking clean and pure water). At level 5, a fighter with 16 Constitution will have an average of 47 HP. On average, they can drink from the fountain 4 times before they're in the negatives (12 damage per drink). A wizard or sorcerer with 14 Constitution will be at 0 HP after 2 drinks (24 HP average).
Not only that, but they'll have no idea that they took damage, so the wizard could take a drink and get unlucky and take 16 damage, and they won't know that they're at 8 HP. So, they go in the next fight and there's a skeleton archer with a shortbow. Three average hits and the sorcerer is in the negatives.

Yeturs
2010-12-20, 01:09 AM
I see. Thank you all for responding, and you all raise good points. I really just made this up on the spot, so I had no idea how annoying it would be.

Herm. We play again in a few days, and I would like an annoying puzzle in there that is not really nessasary to solve.

So any suggestions to fix it? As of now I'm going to nerf the damage to a static number, like 4. That should make it a lot less deadly. It never occurred to me there could be multiple answers. But then, that's why I don't write (good) riddles.

I think the riddle is really the problem. It is a little... Random, to say the least. I would love to use something poetic that has to be changed (there BBG is a bard, and belives poems and music change the world. Literally.) and then alters reality to how it was changed.


About the party. There's an incarnate (alternate paladin) a rogue and a Druid who come regularly. Sometimes a fighter type homebrew and a duskblade come. Anyway, they enjoy tricky puzzling things in dungeons.

Currently, their travels take them to the elven kingdom. A few years ago,the elven queen(rogues mother) had been dominated by a vampire lord.(vampiried duskblades mother and made him halfvamp) as of now, the party are prisoners of the queen and need to escape. As they don't want to escape through the main enterance, because of the rather large guard force, so they should seek an exit through the forgotten and hidden underground dungeon of the castle. Through some journals and paperwork left behind, the party realizes this is the workspace of the vampire from ages past. Hence, it's full of forgotten undead and little playthings like this.

Vampire is the bard btw.

mucat
2010-12-20, 01:54 AM
Well, that deail about the bardic BBEG answers at least one of my questions -- the "who the hell would build this?" one.

How about something like this:

Before they reach the fountain, they've already read/heard some of the bard's poems or songs. Maybe one of them was a song about lost love, using metaphors of water throughout. In the beginning, telling the story of better times with his love, he writes about clean mountain streams, draughts that cure any woe, and intoxicating ambrosia. Then, as their love goes sour, he writes about fetid swamp water, bitter poison, the acid tang of regret.

When the players find the fountain, there is a small slate chalkboard fixed in place near it, like an ornamental podium. A piece of chalk lies alongside it, and one line from the bard's poem is written on the slate. It'll be one of the later ones, about poison, acid, disease, or something similarly nasty. If they look carefully (Decipher script check or Search check) they can see faint traces of other writing on the board, also lines from the poem.

If they erase the board and write a new line from that poem, the effects of the fountain water change to match that line. So when they find it, the water is dangerous. If they change the line to one of the earlier, optimistic ones, then the water can heal, cure diseases, or whatever else the line says. Maybe one line makes the water an intoxicating drug -- a hallucinogen, perhaps, which gives them visions or dreams related to the evil bard and clues to his intentions.

This way they've got a clue what's going on -- the original writing on tne on the slate matches a line of poetry they've already heard -- and a hint that the bard sometimes changes the writing on the slate. And it would be best if they've got a copy of the complete poem, so they don't have to reproduce lines from memory...they just have to make the connection between the writing and the fountain's effects, and then try to decide what each line will do, and which ones they want to drink. (Some, like the vision-inducing intoxicant, may be simultaneously dangerous and useful.)

Of course, you'd have to write the poem, or crib one from the Net with lots of watery metaphors...but hey, it might be a fun challenge. :smallsmile:

sigurd
2010-12-20, 03:19 AM
the damage happens immediately, but players do not know they are hurt. this makes it entirely possible to have a player kill themselves before they know they are taking damage.


Personally I think this breaks the game. Players rely on you to tell them what's going on with their characters. I think my players would feel that I'd arbitrarily killed them if the damage gave no indicator and the reason was hidden.


S

Yeturs
2010-12-20, 02:57 PM
Sigurd, your right. That Is a bad move. I think evil dudes would logically make those, a it would be really good for killing adventurers, but I don't think I should use it for your reasons.

Mucat, that's a great idea! I think I'm going to use that, thank you! Now I have some writing to do...

Thank you all for your reply, I should have the stuff I'm going to use in this thread today.

Mordaenor
2010-12-20, 03:21 PM
I actually like the idea of the "haiku with a missing syllable" puzzle but in order to make that one work, you would need to drop some more hints. One possibility would be a few other haiku's, complete ones scribed in various parts of the castle, so they might start to see the pattern (this ought to fit with your Bard's MO). Also, as you've already agreed, damage and pain not happening together = BAD IDEA. Recommend that the water function as Poison, allowing a Fort save. This gives you a way of setting a time limit for solving the puzzle. They drink, realize its poison, and scramble to solve the riddle. And this way a succesful Fort save offers an tenuous safety net as well. And a successful Spot could not the extra spacing before "spite"

AugustNights
2010-12-20, 03:49 PM
Every goblin in this land has twenty nails Upon each hand five And twenty on hands and feet: All this is true without deceit

The capitalization make the poem make sense.
This riddile could be offered in a room with several broken goblin skeletons.
Assemble a normal hand and your good to go.


Every Goblin in this land has twenty nails
Upon each hand five
And twenty on hands and feet:
All this is true without deceit


Alternative easy riddle.

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?

This appears in Merchant of Venice, in a casket guessing game.
The options are silver, gold, and lead.
Lead, being the obvious answer, also rhymes with the last line in the first three verses of the song that the daughter of the man who is imposing the game sings. Her hand in marriage is the prize.
She wants the guy she sings this song for to win.
You could do something a bit more tricky with more than 3 types of metal, or 3 types of mundane metal (Seriously if I was told to choose between the three I'd note that lead was the only non-precious metal, and the obvious answer.)
I like to include this rhyme with a room with like 12 different materials of caskets, the lead one holding the key, and the others holding... surprises both fun for me, and sometimes fun for them.

Yeturs
2010-12-21, 05:53 PM
so here's what im going to be doing. im going to have, spread across varies rooms of this dungeon, pieces of the BBG's journal. the pieces, when put together, read

"1 I want to be your water
2 And splash against your face.
3 Make hair glisten bright
4 In your cupped palms I'll place.
5 I long to fill your restful tub
6 And lap against your skin,
7 Swirl counter at your fingertips
8 Then counter swirl again.
9 In liquid form I'll soothe you,
10 Seep sneaky past your limbs,
11 Leave droplet beads like lovenotes;
12 Baptize you from your sins.
13 I'll be there to massage you hot
14 When your poor muscles ache,
15 And I'll be cool upon your flesh
16 When summer dog days break.
17 And I will be your sustenance
18 And quench your every thirst
19 And I will be your last desire
20 Just as I was your first."

and when they find the fountain, they should have most or all of the poem.

near the fountain is a chalkboard, with a bit of chalk nearby, on it written

"my everflow bitter with remorse
as death did run its due course
but never again
and not to me
let this sludge bring
immortality."

the water in the fountain is a putrid dull brown and pings as moderate necromancy to a detect magic.

upon imbibing the water in this state, the imbiber looses one level temporarily, for 24 hours to be exact. if a creature is brought to zero levels by this water it is raised as a ghoul with no master.

erasing the board does not bring any immediate affect. but writing new words, as long as they run around water and rhyme, will change the fountain to replicate any effect the DM deems possible (sorry guys, no wishing wells)


any ideas? this is what im going to use in the game, but i would still like feedback and how i could improve it.

(poem shamelessly stolen and slightly rewritten. all credit goes to Wendy LaTulippe, and you can find this poem here)
http://www.netpoets.com/poems/love/0096001.htm