Your favorite traps, puzzles, and/or riddles

[Odessa333]

Hey all!

So I'm working on making a trap filled tower for my players, and intend to include all sorts of fun stuff, from puzzles to death traps to riddles to....who knows what else? Still, whenever I design such places, it makes me think of how could I have done it better? On that note, I put it to you: what have been some of your favorite riddles? What puzzles really made you step back and think? What traps stand out to you?


I think the trap my players give me the most credit for is called the fool's fall. It basically is a dangerously steep slope, smooth all the way down, and slick with oil or grease. At the bottom is a set of spikes, clearly visible to the players. Among the spikes though will be decayed bodies and few clearly magical items that have not dented/rusted with age.

The players tend to repel down the slope with a rope, intending to grab the magical loot. The trap that gets them is about half way down, is a magical trigger. When the player reaches it, a sharp blade falls from the ceiling, not aimed at the player but at cutting the rope. The rope snaps, and the player slides down into the spikes.

For extra 'oomph' factor, I sometimes have the oil get ignited by sparks from the armor/swords grating against stone at high speeds (this works well if the players tries to stop their descent by using a sword or spiked climbing boots). I usually do this to low level groups so they don't have fly spells. I've had great reactions to it.


Ok, your turn! ;)

[TopCheese]

Hey all!

So I'm working on making a trap filled tower for my players, and intend to include all sorts of fun stuff, from puzzles to death traps to riddles to....who knows what else? Still, whenever I design such places, it makes me think of how could I have done it better? On that note, I put it to you: what have been some of your favorite riddles? What puzzles really made you step back and think? What traps stand out to you?


I think the trap my players give me the most credit for is called the fool's fall. It basically is a dangerously steep slope, smooth all the way down, and slick with oil or grease. At the bottom is a set of spikes, clearly visible to the players. Among the spikes though will be decayed bodies and few clearly magical items that have not dented/rusted with age.

The players tend to repel down the slope with a rope, intending to grab the magical loot. The trap that gets them is about half way down, is a magical trigger. When the player reaches it, a sharp blade falls from the ceiling, not aimed at the player but at cutting the rope. The rope snaps, and the player slides down into the spikes.

For extra 'oomph' factor, I sometimes have the oil get ignited by sparks from the armor/swords grating against stone at high speeds (this works well if the players tries to stop their descent by using a sword or spiked climbing boots). I usually do this to low level groups so they don't have fly spells. I've had great reactions to it.


Ok, your turn! ;)

A hallway that has nothing in it as it spirals down to a room with a treasure chest. No matter what they can't find any traps on the way down.. However after they open the chest (or come within 5 feet of it) the traps in the hall way activate... Most PC's will just walk right up the stairs... ;)

Have a room with collapsible tiles and a door on the other side of the room. They fall at the end of a turn that someone stands on them (DC to jump to another one as that one falls lol). When they look under the tiles they see a vat of acid and a key 10 feet down. The PC's will try to get the key and such when the door is really open... Though if the PC's walk the wrong way then every tile will fall (like that old children game...don't break the ice?).

[Zahhak]

My favorite one (the PCs hated it to no end) was that I kept putting big piles of loot on top of pressure plates, that when lifted activated some delayed spell, that would cause the loot to explode. The whole area (basically a dungeon that took them two or three sessions to get through) was enough GP to be a level ahead of where they should have been. But they kept blowing it up (I may have made the trap DC too high).

It was funny actually, because the player who kept doing this was a Druid who was always shape shifted into a tiger and we had a kobold barbarian sitting on top of him. The Druid/tiger would activate the trap (which I called an "IED"), and then make a reflex save to get out of the way. The kobold never did, and we decided you couldn't make an evasion while mounted. The tank (who wasn't the barbarian) did not appreciate that we kept blowing up big piles of gold, which tended to dent his nice new armor.

[Surrealistik]

Circular meeting room.

Walls and doors are warded against teleportation.

Many heavy chairs are set about the perimeter of the room facing inward to a golden dias, along with ornate statues and furniture, with one throne-like chair to the north.

There is a hidden, trapped compartment in the throne chair concealing a button.

Each of the tables in front of the chairs lining the room are trapped (minor traps meant as decoys; use whatever), concealing some fake gems.

There are two doors; one to the right of the throne chair, another at the diametric opposite side. Tampering with the door to the right of the chair triggers the trap. Pressing the hidden button triggers the trap (it teleports one attuned individual on the throne to the room beyond).

When triggered, all doors to the room close and seal, and are warded with an invisible wall of force (wall can be disabled with 2 very hard Arcana checks, or 300 damage, door can be opened with 2 very hard Thievery checks or 100 damage). Four force bolt turrets rise from the floor out of concealed hatches NE/NW/SE/SW (area burst 1 + force damage + push the target 1 square). A heavily armoured electrified gravity sphere rises from the golden dias.

Each round, the sphere makes a Fortitude attack to pull creatures and objects 6 squares adjacent (3 when bloodied; all attacks at -2 when bloodied). This results in an initial Reflex attack as all the fine furnishings/statues surge towards the sphere, bludgeoning the PCs, pushing them towards the sphere and knocking them prone on a hit. Creatures that would be pulled into the sphere's space are restrained and take ongoing 10 lightning damage (escape ends both, athletics only, -2 penalty to the DC when bloodied). The first time the sphere is attacked each turn it attacks everyone with a discharge of lightning in a close burst 1 as no action. Moving into squares further from the sphere costs +2 squares of movement (+1 squares when it's 'bloodied').

Both the turrets and the sphere are subject to a Arcana or Thievery check as a Standard action against a very hard DC. Two checks disable a turret, four checks disable the sphere (failure by 5 or more triggers an electric discharge attack as no action). The turrets take a -2 penalty to attacks for each successful Thievery check, and each successful check beyond the first penalizes the sphere's attacks and escape DC by 2.

[Crasical]

[WizardDidIt]

Trap #1

There is a long hallway with a door at the end of it, the floor of the hall is built of large square tiles, each spanning the width of the hall. PCs can make a perception check to notice that the tiles shift ever so slightly when weight is applied to the edge of one.

When players reach the door at the end of the hall they discover the door is sealed, and their proximity to the door triggers the trap. PCs hear the faint whir of machinery and a slight vibration runs through the floor. At the far end of the hall two metal prongs descend from the ceiling and begin crackling with electricity. PCs can act during this round without anything happening yet, the following round the floor is fully active and the prongs begin firing attacks at the PCs.

Should the party attempt to charge back down the hall and disable the prongs, the floor tiles begin springing upwards attempting to pin players against the ceiling, reflex save to jump clear or acrobatics if trained. Anybody following behind now has a gap to jump, and should a player fail their reflex and get pinned they can make a thievery or acrobatics check to wriggle free, or an athletics check to push against the ceiling and give themselves room to escape.

The best way to handle this trap is to remain on the tile by the door and work as a group. The athletic PC's can hold against the ceiling to keep the party from getting crushed while a combination of thievery and arcana disable the sealed door.

If the PCs reach the prongs and destroy them, this can either A. short out the tiles mechanism, or B. if you really want this to be difficult, the PCs now have to recross the tiles, and because there is no longer a power drain from the prongs the tiles now hit that much harder and faster. For added challenge, have the tiles push with more force the longer somebody is standing on it. Another easy way change the DC of this trap is making the hall longer or shorter.

Trap#2

PCs enter a large circular room with a concave floor, nothing too steep. The center of the room is 50 feet deeper than the sides. At each of the four compass points at the edges of the room there is a small well 40 feet deep, completely dry. A larger well set flush with the floor is in the center of the room filled to the brim with water, when PCs approach the central well they notice something gleaming deep within.

Anything other than inanimate objects that come into contact with the water triggers a water elemental to spawn out of the central well. Magically enchanted weapons or armor also trigger an elemental. One person dipping both hands into the water together would spawn one elemental, but putting one hand in then the other a second later would spawn two. The PCs deciding to all jump into the central well together would be very bad, spawning one elemental for each player. Each elemental that spawns gets a surprise round until PCs succeed a check to realize what is triggering the attack. CR should be a very hard fight 1v1 but fairly easy for the group to dispatch together.

If PCs choose to start scooping water out of the central well and putting it in the side wells, they get a perception check to notice that the side wells seem to be filling faster than the transferred water from the central well can account for. As soon as water is placed within the side wells, they begin generating additional water of their own. Regardless of how efficiently the PCs can move the water from the central water to the sides, they will be unable to lower the water level more than 10 feet before the side wells begin overflowing.

If the players take the time to climb into each of the side wells they can use a thievery check to find a switch in each one of them. The trick here is all four need to be activated together to lower the water in the central well, as soon as one is activated each side well begins generating water. The PCs can succeed activating them one at a time, but the DC to notice a switch in a well full of water is going to be higher than a dry one and they now have a limited time before each of the side wells fill and begin flooding the room.

The correct solution is to first inspect each side well and notice that each one has a switch, then have one PC go into each and activate the switches simultaneously. The other much more difficult solution would have a single party member enter the central well and swim down while also fighting a water elemental that is trying to stop them reaching the bottom.

The gleaming object in the depths of the central well is a lever that will open a previously hidden door in the well room. A guardian emerges and the PCs go into battle. Depending on how the room was solved changes the DC of the fight: if the side wells were activated one at a time the room is pretty flooded at this point limiting maneuverability but drains as the fight progresses and elementals no longer spawn from contacting the water; if the side wells were never activated before the central lever was tripped your likely strongest PC is now beat to hell and needs to swim up before he can join the fight, and there will still be water elementals to worry about; if the well was drained before the central level is pulled the floor of the central well becomes an elevator and carries PCs up quickly and safely.

The worst scenario of all would be PCs only inspect and activate one side well, then freak out from rising water and decide to make a swim for the central lever. Not only do they trigger the guardian fight while the elementals can still spawn, the water keeps rising until the guardian is defeated. At that point the water level stops however elementals can still spawn. If you really wanted to punish PCs for not taking the time to properly inspect the whole room, the water could keep going and eventually flood the lower levels of whichever dungeon you choose to put this in. Another possible feature would be that the floor becomes slippery when wet, greatly increasing the likelihood of spawning more elementals from losing footing and falling into the water.

[WizardDidIt]

Forgot to mention, if you have a general theme in mind Odessa I'm happy to come up with more ideas for you.

[Silverfang]

Not too long ago, i read about a trap where the room completely closed the PCs in and all that was in the room was a countdown timer and a red button. The red button reset the countdown timer back to whatever it started at. After the timer went all the way down, the doors reopened.

If I remember correctly, the PCs ended up spending a day or two's worth of in game time and a few hours in real time trying to figure out how to get out. Eventually, they just prepared for the worst and let the counter tick down. I really want to try this myself sometime.

[Adoendithas]

One of my favorites?

Trap the PC's in an unlocked cell with a bunch of useless supplies. They never think to try the door, for some reason.

[GreenSerpent]

Airtight barrels. Filled with Orange Dragon (Dragon Compendium) saliva. HIGHLY explosive on contact with air or water.

Basically a 12-second time bomb. Harmless as long as it's not in contact with air or water... but otherwise, BOOM.

EDIT: Ooops, wrong version of D&D. Ah well. There's a 3.5 contribution for you!

[Crasical]

How would they get the saliva into the barrels without setting it off?

[Adoendithas]

Store it in a vacuum, perhaps? Although I'm not sure how you would get it from the dragon safely.

[NotScaryBats]

I had a puzzle that was basically the "Mastermind" game.
IE
Five Shapes: ABCDE
Some codes:
ABCD - two white dots
ABEE - no dots
ABDC - two red dots
CCAB - two red dots
BAAB - no dots

What is the correct code?
(The white dots mean there is a correct letter but wrong place. Red means correct letter, correct place)

The room was filled with steam that slowly began to do fire damage to the 'codebreaker' and I started a stopwatch, saying every x time he would take y damage. It got pretty intense as he second winded and stuff to try to stay alive while cracking the code.

[INDYSTAR188]

I found these on the internet and used them to various levels of success.

Evil Alter Fight

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Every creature that died in an area made a necromantic alter more powerful.

The alter started out doing something tiny like 5 ongoing damage while you started your turn, but every creature that died increased the ongoing damage by 5. Now, throw 30 minions into the room. The party has to accomplish whatever the goal of the room is or figure out how to deactivate the alter while trying to kill as few creatures as possible, because if you use some of the awesome area attacks, you could easily kill 10 minions and suddenly your entire party is taking ongoing 50 damage.

Indy trap... not!

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So there is this long corridor that is slightly rounded and has scratch marks at the bottom and the sides, "yes exactly as if a really heavy ball did roll down this tunnel" (if your players ask).

At the end of course is a door and a lever, when the level is pushed the door slooowly glides open and they hear rumbling from both sides of the door.
Then they see two billiard sized balls coming at them from both sides of the door... (the sound was just an illusion).

depending on how vindictive you feel, both billiard sized balls have delayed fireball blasts inside of them.

Hourglass

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The party enters a room and gets sealed in. An hourglass lowers from the ceiling, behind some impenetrable barrier. It has two minutes worth of sand, and it was suggested you bring an egg timer to enforce this on your players IRL. There's also a red button that, when pressed, resets the timer to the original two minutes. It also deals one damage (or some other trivial amount) to whoever pushes it. The room unlocks when the timer expires.

Spikey Fall ‘UP’

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The final approach towards the BBEG had a series of twisting hallways with one trap per hallway. The best one by far was the pit trap.

A well lit hallway, 20 feet wide, with a pit trap 20 feet across, 20 feet wide, 30 feet deep. The monk and barbarian both decided to jump across at the same time. Into a reverse gravity spell, so they instead "fell" through the paper ceiling, up 70 feet into a spiked pit. Then the party wizard dispelled the reverse gravity spell, so they fell the 70 feet again, plus the 20 feet of the hallway, and the 30 feet of the original pit.

Trap Haunt:

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The players enter a dungeon renown for its treasure. Upon entry into the first room, they find a scene of carnage; death of many adventurers is strewn all through the room. Bodies sliced in half, individual impaled on walls, victims fallen to pit-traps full of scything blades. All dead by traps, yet all these traps are already sprung, making them an easy task to bypass.

Continuing through, they encounter more grisly but sprung traps, each having claimed its own victim. Yet no two traps are the same, this place is laid with such a varied an array of traps as to make a kobold blush. Yet never do they find a guardian or unsprung trap.

Finally, after roaming countless rooms, they come at last to the final chamber. There lies a dead man, his corpse reaching for the prize, but his body in tatters from the final trap.

And there sits the prize, an incandescent small statue chiselled out of raw emerald, rubies as eyes and fine silk as it's clothes. It is a treasure worth many fortunes. And it sits there waiting, the traps all sprung, completely unguarded.

After the players have pondered this, debated it, and finally given into greed, the fun begins.

As the statue leaves its home, the pedestal lowers into the floor in an audible resounding click. Very soon, the sounds of gears whirring and creaking to life echo out in cacophonous ruin as all throughout the dungeon, every single damn trap resets.

Then you turn to your players and ask, how much attention to detail did you pay? I described every trap for you, so you should be able to get through them no problem, right? Then lean back and smile. The games have begun.

[Adoendithas]

What is the correct code?

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CCDC?

SNIP

Those sound awesome! Methinks the players are going to fight leveled-up kobolds sometime soon...

[NotScaryBats]

Yes, that's right. The combo of pressure and not knowing the rules combined with the info on a handout made it fun in game.

Handouts are important for puzzles.