The Trap Dungeon

Hey y'all. For an upcoming Pathfinder Eberron campaign I'm planning (although the setting and system aren't terribly important for this thread's purpose), I'm going to try something I'll call a Trap Dungeon: a location with as few monsters as possible, instead filled with traps, hazards, puzzles, etc. Specifically, it's an ancient Giant ruin in Xen'drik, somewhat populated by a few Yuan-Ti and Constructs, but mostly just guarded against intrusion with magic and unknown technology. So I'm looking for traps. Really any kind of traps at all (I can adapt them to the location as needed, of course), as well as just general good dungeon design tips. But there are a few caveats:

1. They have to involve the entire party. I don't want a dungeon where the party just gets to watch the rogue make a bunch of Disable Device checks; they have to use their wits and abilities to get out of some kind of situation. Bonus points if they trigger the trap not out of bad luck but because of conscious decisions on their part, motivated by greed, anger, or the like.

2. In fact, it might be even better if the traps don't have Disable checks at all, making them more like hazards. Otherwise I'd go through all this trouble to get great entertaining traps, only to have them all shut off before they're triggered. Also, since characters haven't been created yet, the party might not end up even having anyone who has Disable Device as a skill (there are only 3 PCs).

3. It's going to be a big dungeon with multiple layers, so the more unique, the better. If it's just a bunch of Summon Monster traps in a row I might as well just have a normal dungeon, you know? And not many of them should be overly deadly for the same reason - I don't want a TPK on the first floor (or at all, really).

The party of three should be around 10th level by the time they get there, and have access to roughly expected wealth levels. I've been looking through this thread for ideas and found a few, but it's way too long to go through the entire thing. So, Playground, I turn to you to help me make a memorable, exciting, and unique dungeon. Show me what you've got!

1. Avoid zap-traps: once that either go off instantly or don't, and are hidden.
Rather, make the trap VERY obvious, but difficult to circumvents, I.E a hallway filled with spinning saw blades and very obvious groves/gore where they pass, or an obvious (but cavernous) pit trap. You mentioned this sort of thing already though so you probably have a good handle on it.

2. Cocinder using monsters that are part of the traps, I.E, animate obejcts, minics, glelatious pits that are at the bottom of slidng ramps, Or using the drathtrap ooze, an ooze that makes itself LOOK like a trap.

3. Research traps other people have used. Use the most devious ones possible.

Try perusing these, the first is a thread that describes a room in which everything will attack you. Unfortunately some of the monsters are from 1st edition, and will have to be updated. The second and third are about riddles.

Create an empty room with multiple doors(ideally, this room will be designed in such a way that it has no directional frame of reference - it should be impossible to distinguish directions if, for example, you close your eyes and spin around randomly). These doors will automatically swing shut if they are not held open.

Once in the room, any door(including the one they entered from) opens to a corridor 20-30 feet in length, with a door at the opposite side. Each of these corridors is identical to one another, and the door at the opposite end opens into the room.

The trap here is a portal trap - when armed(by someone/something opening a door leading into the room), all of the doorways except one become portals leading to the same 20-30 foot corridor. The remaining door opens into that actual corridor, on the opposite end, and can only be opened from within the corridor - so players can't enter the corridor from the normal door, but only from the portals. This means that players will be going through the same corridor no matter which way they go. When I ran this, I designed it so that it would be impossible to open more than one door at once, though depending on how difficult you want the solution to be, you could just make it so that opening more than one door at a time disables the trap.

The solution that I designed for the trap was this: find some way to prop the door that leads directly into the corridor open. While that door is open, the portals are disabled, and another door can be opened to progress through the dungeon. It's a fun trap, not reliant on any specific skill(though there are several that could be used to help decipher the nature of the trap) and not simply bypassable by lucky die rolls - all without being directly harmful at all. Players who are smart could even figure out some way to block the exit end of the portal door from inside the corridor and use it as a safe place to rest if needed.

Hope this helps you!

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Originally Posted by BluesEclipse

Create an empty room with multiple doors(ideally, this room will be designed in such a way that it has no directional frame of reference - it should be impossible to distinguish directions if, for example, you close your eyes and spin around randomly). These doors will automatically swing shut if they are not held open.

Once in the room, any door(including the one they entered from) opens to a corridor 20-30 feet in length, with a door at the opposite side. Each of these corridors is identical to one another, and the door at the opposite end opens into the room.

The trap here is a portal trap - when armed(by someone/something opening a door leading into the room), all of the doorways except one become portals leading to the same 20-30 foot corridor. The remaining door opens into that actual corridor, on the opposite end, and can only be opened from within the corridor - so players can't enter the corridor from the normal door, but only from the portals. This means that players will be going through the same corridor no matter which way they go. When I ran this, I designed it so that it would be impossible to open more than one door at once, though depending on how difficult you want the solution to be, you could just make it so that opening more than one door at a time disables the trap.

The solution that I designed for the trap was this: find some way to prop the door that leads directly into the corridor open. While that door is open, the portals are disabled, and another door can be opened to progress through the dungeon. It's a fun trap, not reliant on any specific skill(though there are several that could be used to help decipher the nature of the trap) and not simply bypassable by lucky die rolls - all without being directly harmful at all. Players who are smart could even figure out some way to block the exit end of the portal door from inside the corridor and use it as a safe place to rest if needed.

Hope this helps you!

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OOH! Make it vertical! Allows for hilarious portal-style constant freefall!

Although, let them make acrobatics/climb checks to use the walls to stabilize/slow themselves. If they close the door again, 10d6 falling damage will hurt.

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Originally Posted by Doorhandle

OOH! Make it vertical! Allows for hilarious portal-style constant freefall!

Although, let them make acrobatics/climb checks to use the walls to stabilize/slow themselves. If they close the door again, 10d6 falling damage will hurt.

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I believe fall damage caps at 20d6.

A note on traps that deal damage:

Unless there is a time element between traps, PCs can make use of healing very cheaply. A wand of CLW heals an average of 275 hp and costs 750gp. So unless you feel like you can toss around hundreds or even thousands of damage between the players, I would suggest either adding a sense of urgency between each trap, or doing other things to the PCs instead of direct damage (plane shifting is always fun!). Otherwise, the entire thing becomes a war of attrition (that can be stacked in the PC's favor easily) instead of a cinematic action sequence.

Another distasteful option I've gotten from my players on this kind of thing is a character buying an adamantine weapon and going to town on any structural obstacles (like walls and doors) you put in the party's way. If they don't need to worry about attracting attention or caving in the complex, there's no reason they won't smash all of your best laid architectural plans to bits. Again, time elements are your friend. And consider putting in reasons for the party to be at least somewhat stealthy.

There's one I've been wanting to use for quite some time, but unfortunately it's much more suitable for lower-level parties. It runs thusly.

The party enters into a large (50x50x20) room, opening a door accompanied by the smell of stale air. Inside they see a sarcophagus and a pedestal, which has a sword in it sword-in-the-stone style. This sword is obviously magical, and to any tests, is magical. Beneficially so.

In reality, it's just a regular magical sword. Preferably, it should be a rather valuable or powerful item in order to make it nigh-irresistible to the players. The sarcophagus is totally legit, untrapped and certainly not mummy infested, but the trap goes off when the characters pull the sword.

The sword is holding down a pressure catch in the pedestal. When it's removed, the single door seals shut, made of 5 solid feet of stone. The only way to open the door (which the designers counted upon, of course), would be to activate 4 easily-locatable switches simultaneously, whilst having a sword in the pedestal. Any sword of the same make would do. Until this happens, the door remains sealed.

From what I've calculated, 4 characters would use up the oxygen in that room after 131 days - they would probably die of oxygen deprivation after about 80. Assuming they have means of creating food and water, a la the cleric spells, they have that long to finally figure out the trap. No clues. No deadly poison. Just slow, eventual suffocation.

Against higher level characters with adamantine weapons or passwall magic, these plans will almost certainly fail. But it's a good, thinking, low-lethality low-level trap. I hope.

I'd agree that traps should be puzzels or challenges, not punishments for failing a random spot check.(I only put hidden traps in super obvious locations). Remember that traps are built for a reason, and there will always be a way to bypass them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BluesEclipse

Create an empty room with multiple doors(ideally, this room will be designed in such a way that it has no directional frame of reference - it should be impossible to distinguish directions if, for example, you close your eyes and spin around randomly). These doors will automatically swing shut if they are not held open.

Once in the room, any door(including the one they entered from) opens to a corridor 20-30 feet in length, with a door at the opposite side. Each of these corridors is identical to one another, and the door at the opposite end opens into the room.

The trap here is a portal trap - when armed(by someone/something opening a door leading into the room), all of the doorways except one become portals leading to the same 20-30 foot corridor. The remaining door opens into that actual corridor, on the opposite end, and can only be opened from within the corridor - so players can't enter the corridor from the normal door, but only from the portals. This means that players will be going through the same corridor no matter which way they go. When I ran this, I designed it so that it would be impossible to open more than one door at once, though depending on how difficult you want the solution to be, you could just make it so that opening more than one door at a time disables the trap.

The solution that I designed for the trap was this: find some way to prop the door that leads directly into the corridor open. While that door is open, the portals are disabled, and another door can be opened to progress through the dungeon. It's a fun trap, not reliant on any specific skill(though there are several that could be used to help decipher the nature of the trap) and not simply bypassable by lucky die rolls - all without being directly harmful at all. Players who are smart could even figure out some way to block the exit end of the portal door from inside the corridor and use it as a safe place to rest if needed.

Hope this helps you!

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That the physical door to the hallway only works from one side suggests another solution. Enter the hall, let the door close behind you, and turn around. It's the kind of thing a player will either do right away or somehow never think of.

Build it, have fun with it. Go create traps after a night of drinking(if you drink). Make them strange and wild. Use illusions. Use compulsions. If they sleep inside the dungeon the get affected by the nightmare spell. Detect magic is active, all the time(showing all the magical auras of everything - giving fights and the like a trip). Have water that ages. Feel free to bend the rules inside the dungeon. If you have the time and are willing, build the dungeon in 3d style with minecraft to get a feel for how it'll look and feel(so you can describe it better). But whatever you do, make sure to run through it as if you were a character!!!


Read up on grimtooth's traps. His are totally worth your time.

Again yes, use an element of time, and stealth. Making noise == brings the random monsters running. Also, for the love of goodness; don't let there be a magic mart. If you want them to have easy access to magic items, that's fine but make them wait the time it takes to make them. Have the merchant have to order it special. This still gives them the item; but forces a little more forethought on their part. Easy access to wands and other magic items makes the dungeon trivial to navigate and doesn't engage people.

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Originally Posted by TheOOB

Remember that traps are built for a reason, and there will always be a way to bypass them.

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No, not always. If you are sealing something inside and have no intent of ever retrieving, why would you leave a way to bypass them? Build the trap, put the item in, arm the trap and leave.

In my opinion, traps that take a right-turn from their appearance work great. Oatmeal-filling-a-sealed-corridor-trap that looks like a regular poison dart trap can throw your party off quite a bit. Especially if you're trying to make them be worried about the unpredicatability of your dungeon.

Turn their expectations against them.

Here is an example I stole against my own players with amusing results

Another example is the classic "obvious pit trap that is actually the safe path passed the next trap" bit.

Something I like to do in my trap-filled dungeons is occasionally have the party encounter a Broken trap. Something is mechanically wrong with it or a certain magical trigger is misaligned. Usually it messes with my players and breaks up the tension a little. For example:

• The pressure plate that clicks, but doesn't activate anything.
• A drop ceiling that only falls partway (now everyone has to crawl past it)
• A pit trap that doesn't open up (I had a party think it was a secret passage someplace. Boy were they disappointed when they got it open)

It might get a chuckle from some players, maybe make someone laugh. Overall, it should make the party feel at ease that this particular encounter didn't work and they can move on safely.

Which is exactly the state you want them in for the working trap down the hall... :smallcool:

I designed and ran one by my players two months ago. Let me see if I can finds it.

The ceiling falls on the party. It hits them. Nothing. It's made out of foam (or whatever fantasy equivalent you want--illusory maybe). Unfortunately, there's some nasties hanging from the real ceiling... maybe something that specifically requires them to NOT look up? Can't think of anything like that...

A door appears to take them out on the roof, and it immediately vanishes. When your PCs look down, the world is apparently flooded. (If you had planned on a boss fight, maybe some sea serpent or whatever cliche sea monster could come out to play. Or maybe that would be stupid. IDK.) The actual puzzle is how to get out of the room. There's an arrow pointing into the water etched into the ground. If the PCs look downward, there's a lever on a ledge below. Pulling it once causes the floodwaters to rise. Pulling it again causes them to fall. On doing so, there's a humming noise, and another arrow appears on the opposite side of the roof. There's an open window on the ledge below. Inside? The waters are very clear, and connected to the outside. There's a door submerged underwater, deep enough that the lever won't uncover it but shallow enough to be seen. If they dive down to open the door, all they can see on the other side is darkness... which the water immediately starts flooding into, threatening to sweep the PC along. By draining a lot of water out, the door to the next room is revealed under the lever. If anyone was swept in by the floodwaters, they are inside, wet and confused.

I FOUND IT!
I uploaded it here, to Rapidshare. You should be able to download it without an account.
The maze was designed for something like a level 4 party. Note that more powerful/higher level casters will make most of the rooms trivial.

One thing that you might want to include is puzzle-traps that award player attentiveness throughout the dungeon. I'm thinking of one of the hazard-rooms from James Raggi's The Grinding Gear.

As I recall it, the setup there was that the players have an opportunity to answer a question about the dungeon thus far, 'how many icons of [Goddess X] are there in this dungeon'? Kind of thing. The right answer opens the door. The wrong answer delivers a powerful electric shock to everyone in the room. The icons in question are in several rooms up to that point, some of them obvious (in the initial room description) and some of them less so. Having a couple of these might work for you to keep players focused, particularly if one of them comes early in the layout.

It's not a bad adventure to mine for ideas in general, given that it's explicitly a low-level trap dungeon. Designed for OD&D play, mind you, but the ideas are still sound.

Here's a semi-classic:

Enter the large room. Door shuts behind them. In the center is a pedestal with an hourglass, which started running down as they entered. The opposite door is also locked.

All of the following effects can be reset by flipping the hourglass:

When the hourglass reaches three-quarters, grinding noises begin to be audible from the walls, growing as the time decreases.

When it reaches one-half, small holes open all along the walls.

When it reaches one-quarter, small plumes of dust start poofing out, clearing the tubes.

When it is empty, Dancing Lights pop out of the holes, and the door opens.


See how long you can keep them scared, resetting the hourglass to forestall the doom they think is coming.

I have a trap that is a potential TPK. So if you decide to use it, BEWARE. This trap should be used to get to an optional area of the dungeon, and if not optional, should only used on players that have some kind of glide/fly/feather fall ability.

Spoilered for length, and in case you are ever in one of my games and don't want the trap spoiled.

Spoiler

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Before you is a narrow but tall hallway. It is approximately 15 feet wide, but 150 feet from floor (molten lava) to ceiling. At both ends of the hallway are sheer cliffs with a landing on each side 120 feet above the ground floor of this room, with a wood and rope bridge between the the two landings. At the lowest level, the hallway opens up and is wider, and on hte outside edges there is rocks and a potential pathway to get back up to the main level. (Like many Skyrim dungeons where you climb a ramp up that takes you back to the beginning of the level, but it is too high and in an awkward place to get to from the start of the dungeon to effectively climb to. If the players do climb to this escape route, it leads them only to the level where the lava pit is located.

In the center of this wood-plank/robe bridge is a (Sonic) Glyph of Warding. Adjust caster level to be appropriate to the party level. The (Sonic) Glyph of Warding damages the players, and also triggers the hidden wall alcoves( DC to spot 25, stonecunning gets a +4 bonus so see, and elven perception gets a +2 bonus to discover these hidden alcoves. In these alcoves are an acid that will eat through the ropes in 1 round, as well as dealing acid damage to any players that fail a reflex save (suggested DC 15-20). Players that are still on the rope bridge at the end of the round fall into the lava.

At this point, players could have taken Sonic, Acid, Falling, and Fire damage. There is also the potential to drown in the lava, depending on how things turn out, and how you determine lava reacts with swimming.

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Originally Posted by Qwertystop

Here's a semi-classic:

Enter the large room. Door shuts behind them. In the center is a pedestal with an hourglass, which started running down as they entered. The opposite door is also locked.

All of the following effects can be reset by flipping the hourglass:

When the hourglass reaches three-quarters, grinding noises begin to be audible from the walls, growing as the time decreases.

When it reaches one-half, small holes open all along the walls.

When it reaches one-quarter, small plumes of dust start poofing out, clearing the tubes.

When it is empty, Dancing Lights pop out of the holes, and the door opens.


See how long you can keep them scared, resetting the hourglass to forestall the doom they think is coming.

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The thing is, even though this is exactly the kind of trap that would work, it's so well-known that I'm sure at least one person in just about every gaming group has heard of it.

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Originally Posted by DoctorStandard

The thing is, even though this is exactly the kind of trap that would work, it's so well-known that I'm sure at least one person in just about every gaming group has heard of it.

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So just make sure the group doesn't metagame.

Anyway, I didn't hear about it til I came to these forums.


Secondary option: Intricately tiled floor. All the blue tiles are buttons. The buttons don't do anything but click.

Halfway across the room, the blue ones are the only safe ones. The rest trigger traps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Qwertystop

So just make sure the group doesn't metagame.

Anyway, I didn't hear about it til I came to these forums.


Secondary option: Intricately tiled floor. All the blue tiles are buttons. The buttons don't do anything but click.

Halfway across the room, the blue ones are the only safe ones. The rest trigger traps.

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I love this idea.
*Yoinks*

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Originally Posted by DoctorStandard

The thing is, even though this is exactly the kind of trap that would work, it's so well-known that I'm sure at least one person in just about every gaming group has heard of it.

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Perhaps, but when players are under the spotlight and have to think fast, they can forget the obvious. I had a party defeated by a magic door puzzle. All the PCs had to do was tell it a knock-knock joke (even a lame one would work). After an hour of actual play, they gave up and went down a different corridor. :smallsmile:

It wasn't a trap, technically, but I had a situation that really confused the party for some time.

They entered a room with only one feature - a floor-to-ceiling four foot wide pillar of jade. When somebody touched the pillar, a spell went off, and they were in complete darkness. When they dispelled the magic darkness, the only thing that had changed was the pillar - it was now made of dull, boring clay. No attempts on their part would change it back.

Some time later, on their way back, they got lost, since their map didn't match the corridors they found.

Spoiler

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In fact, the darkness spell was just there to disguise the real spell, which was Teleport. The pillar hadn't changed; they were just in a different room, two levels away, in a very different part of the dungeon. All passages are identical except for the pillar for several turns, so by the time they get to a place where their map was wrong, they didn't associate it it with the changing pillar.

Grimtooth's Dungeon of Doom.

/thread.

Not a trap per se but you said you wanted to get multiple people involved. I designed a dungeon with traps, monsters that could survive a long time (undead/demons) and the included a sliding wall puzzle throughout that required people in different spots pulling different levers to unlock the way through.

Also, change how they look at traps. Trapped door? Everyone hides in the room while the Rogue takes the risk. Turn it around and make the door way the safe zone and the rest of the room the deathzone.

My 4E Island Adventure included a Trap in a room that slowly flooded. The only way to unlock the passage to the lower parts of the temple was to flood the room which caused the logs holding down the portcullis to float up, thus allowing the portcullis to be raised allowing access to the chain that reset the room and opened up the passageway forward. The lizardmen who built the place could easily survive a flooded room waiting to let the logs concealed above the portcullis to rise. Well, I added swarms of piranha like fish that had been living in the water supply, room gets flooded and players are attacked by fish while trying to figure out how to proceed.