Water Puzzle Help

[Vox Silentii]

So i'm creating a dungeon that involves the players falling into a huge room that's about half-way filled with water.

The job is to empty the room of water so they can find the door that leads to the room where the BBEG is.

Think about a room as big as a great hall, with water filling up about 2/3 of it.

What would be a fun puzzle that would make them empty the room when successful

[Lapak]

Find Thor and convince him to take a few more tries at emptying the drinking horn of the giants?

(Sorry, the association came immediately to mind when I realized the room was 1/3 empty.)

[jayem]

So i'm creating a dungeon that involves the players falling into a huge room that's about half-way filled with water.

The job is to empty the room of water so they can find the door that leads to the room where the BBEG is.

Think about a room as big as a great hall, with water filling up about 2/3 of it.

What would be a fun puzzle that would make them empty the room when successful

Well pipe puzzles have a long history and are thematically appropriate, but getting sensible mechanics of that when you are in the water

[Segev]

How is the party at swimming and acting underwater? What is the boss?


One way to do this would be to have the boss be in a less-dangerous but harder-to-hurt form that takes advantage of an aquatic nature to hide in the water and harass the party. They need to turn the valve-controls on three underwater valves scattered about the room to start the draining process, while preventing the boss from closing them and opening another that starts the room filling back up, until the water gets low enough that the boss retreats to the final boss room for his normal-form fight.


Another would be, if the boss isn't aquatic, to use the same valve set, but have a set of kobolds or goblins other similar creatures piloting a Siege Crab (a magically altered giant crab that has a submarine-like enclosure in its underbelly and a magic crown that lets it be controlled by the wearer, who can see through its eyes), and who are serving as a guardian fight for the valves.

[Pleh]

This puzzle usually is answered in the form of "pull the drain plug," "activate the pumps," or "magic."

In each case, it usually involves manipulating a large mechanism (which commonly requires moving across the room and diving to the bottom).

Now, a big part of puzzles is what tools the players have to help them. Just putting a boulder against the drain seems like a way to have the party make combined strength checks while holding their breath, until you remember the caster can turn the boulder to mud or make the barbarian giant sized (thus making the boulder easy to lift).

So what game/heroes is this for?

[TheStranger]

I'm envisioning one of those elaborate Dwarf Fortress constructions that uses water levels, pressure plates, and spare cats to make a functioning computer. Not sure how to work that into a game, exactly. Maybe instead of a large room, have a series of small rooms connected by pumps and locks controlled by poorly labeled levers, and the goal is to raise/lower the water level in the correct rooms to trigger pressure plates in the floor. For added fun, forgotten beasts roam the flooded dungeon, making certain crucial levers hard to get to.

Of course, one of the poorly labeled levers should open the circus and release the clowns. This could double as a brute-force solution to the puzzle - if your players can't figure out the actual solution, they can fight their way through the "circus" to move on to the next area.

[Black Jester]

To empty the room, you have to fill it with more water. That doesn't even require that much of a complicated pipe work or anything, can be implemented well enough and is just counter-intuitive to form a good challenge anyway.

[Yllin]

A typical logical puzzle(like wolves and sheep) would stall the game. If you use one, the momentum towards the boss fight will be lost while the players are trying to think. For example, the Balrog encounter in the Lord of the Rings would feel far less climactic would it have happened right after the Doors of Durin. So I would suggest to either build up the tension inside the BBEG's lair carefully, or make the puzzle dynamic and time-oriented.

Another question is what happens if the players fail to solve the puzzle in time or at all. My idea would be to still allow the players to fight the BBEG, but make the fight more difficult (maybe they take some damage, or the boss gets some kind of boost).

That being said, I don't know of a specific puzzle for now(maybe I'll suggest one later).

[Vox Silentii]

To empty the room, you have to fill it with more water. That doesn't even require that much of a complicated pipe work or anything, can be implemented well enough and is just counter-intuitive to form a good challenge anyway.

This is a good idea!

I love the concept.

[Lord Torath]

This is a good idea!

I love the concept.

Just remember to give at least three clues the party can find that hint at the solution if you don't want a frustrated party.

[Segev]

To empty the room, you have to fill it with more water. That doesn't even require that much of a complicated pipe work or anything, can be implemented well enough and is just counter-intuitive to form a good challenge anyway.

This is a good idea!

I love the concept.

To build on this idea, then, the chamber could be designed to have nail-head-shaped platforms elevated above the water below, at various heights.

One of them is the siphon; there should be several higher up than it.

The room itself should have either flying, swimming, or climbing/jumping guards/combatants. Possibly a combination of these. A set of valves, at heights that put some underwater on the wall and some on the floor and some above the water line (depending how full it is) control water level by opening drains in the wall that let water sluice out. Which height of valve controls which drain is not necessarily intuitive, but easily obvious by experimentation. There is a master valve for the water-inflow pipe at the top of the room.

There is no "bottom" drain.

One of the stems for the nail-head platforms is hollow, and has a hole in the bottom for the Pythagoras Cup design. Fill the room to level with the top of that platform, and the whole room starts to drain. This can only be done if all the drain-valves are sealed.

[NRSASD]

To empty the room, you have to fill it with more water. That doesn't even require that much of a complicated pipe work or anything, can be implemented well enough and is just counter-intuitive to form a good challenge anyway.

Brilliant! Stealing that one wholesale.

[Pleh]

There is no "bottom" drain.

OR the Bottom Drain is a deliberate Red Herring/Trap that makes things harder for the party rather than helping them.

"Oh, turns out that was the door to the Shark Tank, not a blockage on the Drain Pipe."

[Segev]

OR the Bottom Drain is a deliberate Red Herring/Trap that makes things harder for the party rather than helping them.

"Oh, turns out that was the door to the Shark Tank, not a blockage on the Drain Pipe."

Maybe. The absence of a bottom drain is meant to prevent the water from draining out completely via the obvious drains. If this were done, it woudl need to be just a door to a lower chamber, also filled with water. Which the shark tank could be. But really, you want the sharks already swimming in the water to impede the heroes' work with the valves.