I'm DM-ing a party through Jzadirune right now, and they've managed to avoid the Tilt-a-Pit traps so far, but I figure eventually they'll run into one (and given how their dice have been rolling, fall into it and roll around a while.) I've read the description of the trap several times, but I still have a hard time visualizing how it's supposed to work, and I thought I'd ask how you all have handled it. Questions: it's 10' deep, yes? But when it tilts, is it the whole 10' that tilt? The schematic of the trap that is in the online supplement to the original Dungeon issue makes it look like it's only the bottom 5' of the trap that tilts, but then should I be worrying about tall characters smacking their heads as the thing tilts? The description also makes it sound like the lid on the thing automatically seals again after one round, which presumably seals the person trapped inside in, probably without a light source. Yes? And does this keep the people above from seeing the exposed gears unless they somehow get the lid removed? And how many times did you have the thing tilt back and forth before you had it stop? And how did your characters deal with it?
I'm writing this without the SCAP text in front of me, so I hope I didn't forget something obvious, but these are the questions I remember having.
Any advice/stories people want to give would be appreciated!
1. It is 20' deep. The tilting part is 10' of it, so there is no problem with tall characters unless they are more than 10' tall.
2. It tilts one time to the left, back upright, one time to the right and finally upright again. The pit stops tilting at this point until the trap is sprung again. If the pit’s lid is held or wedged closed, the
tilting continues.
3. On the first round, the lid of the pit springs shut. So the lid remains closed and the person is - surprising - trapped. Probably without light.
The lid can be pushed open with a successful
Strength check (DC 10) and wedged open with a
successful Disable Device or Intelligence check (DC 17).
The gear mechanisms that cause the wooden half of the
pit to tilt back and forth lie 30 feet below the lip of the pit.
When the pit is tilted to the north or south, these gears are
clearly visible from the top of the pit. Dropping a dagger,
rope, rock, or similar item into the gears requires a successful
ranged attack (against AC 15) and has a 20% chance of
jamming the tilting mechanisms. Conversely, a rogue lowered
down to the gear mechanisms can jam them with a
successful Disable Device check (DC 17). Once the gears
are jammed, the pit stops tilting.
|
Imagine a metal box, immediately below the separate pit lid.
The pit lid is not attached to the top of the box.
This box is attached by girders to a fulcrum point below, the whole thing sitting in a far larger hollow space, which allows the whole box to swing back and forth, like a metronome, from one side of the large pit to the other.
If the pit lid is up, viewers from above will see the interior of the box appearing and disappearing from view below them.
To deactivate the trap, someone has to be in the larger pit, on the outside of the box, and jam the fulcrum of the swinging box, preferably at the point it is directly under the lid.
The person in the box can then climb out, then the box must be allowed to swing to its extreme position (box top pointing at pit ceiling), to let out the disarming PC, who climbs out the lid, up the outside of the box.
It may help to show the trap from my PC's point of view (oh, my, this takes me back); it is worth pointing out here, that the unfortunate Badvock 'Trapspringer' was the party rogue, being rescued, once again, by my own PC, the wizard....
21st of Hawkmonth continued....
The door in the stairwell led to a dark winding passage that led down and round two corners. Badvock took the lead, as his eyes were used to the dark; Coda and the elves went next, but a stone’s throw behind, as they were not as quiet. I took the opportunity to light a lantern, for the benefit of the elves and me, but with a hood that could be shuttered if needed.
Badvock (hereafter referred to as “Bad.”) disappeared from view, into a larger room. After a minute, we heard the sounds of struggle, and rushed to help. Bad. was standing inside a breach in the wall, fighting two of the skulks, one of whom ran at Valas, hoping to catch him unaware, but he was not about to be caught twice, and swung his blade into the creature’s neck before it reached him. My ears detected the sound of footsteps, and I used my lantern beam to light up the other, who froze before being cut down by Bad.With the skulks defeated, we were free to examine the chamber, which was 40’ square, with an exit in the far wall. Another exit had been dug or smashed through the southern wall into a smaller chamber, where the skulks had lain in wait.
All around the walls were copper masks, which whispered and giggled, presumably in Gnomish, while music played softly in the background; too soft to be heard over the recent combat. Bad. examined these carefully, suspecting a trap of some kind, but all he triggered was a disembodied message of welcome, in several languages.
I deduced the masks were of little value, being of mere copper, and average craftsmanship. They also appeared to be fixed to the walls securely, and I was unwilling to tarry in case an alarm had been raised. One mask, however, was hinged to reveal a handle, which Bad. pulled to open a corridor behind a false section of the northern wall.He crept inside while the rest of us watched the other exits; we heard a slamming sound, and looked inside to see an empty passage. Suspecting foul play, we crept along, soon hearing Bad’s muffled cries, along with a grinding sound. Lia spotted the outline of a trapdoor, and Valas cleared the debris from the frame. My trusty tools came out, and with the aid of the warriors, who leaned over the fulcrum point with their greatswords as makeshift counterweights, I was able to introduce the point of a piton under the lid. Once this was achieved, it was a simple matter to increase the gap.
Looking down, it was clear why Bad. had been making such a commotion. Rather than the simple pit I expected to see, there was some form of hollow iron box with spiked sides, onto which he was clinging grimly with bloodied hands, seven yards below. Before a rope could be lowered, the box tilted to the side, sending him out of view, and presumably dashing him against the spikes once more.
At this point, I could see the axle mechanism below, which was well out of reach from inside the box, even if one were not being shaken around. There was space enough, around the axle, for a person to move, so I jumped and slid inside this space, as the box once more returned to the upright position. I avoided being crushed by the box, as it tilted again, rolling through the supports to the other side. Bad. by this time had become quite frantic, as I imagined his grip was weakening, but I called for him not to fear. Once again, my pitons found their mark, halting the trap in an upright position, allowing him to climb out. I, however, was now grimly aware that I was trapped in the bowels of the infernal device, forced to sit with only the light of the guttering lamp for company, while the others tended to him.
However, I was not forced to wait long, as they called to me to be ready to jump. I dislodged the spike, dusted myself down, called that I was ready, and slung the lantern’s strap around my neck. There was then a scraping noise, followed by a dull thump (a dead skulk, I later found out), which set the device off again. As it lurched sideways, I saw the end of a rope sailing toward me. I hammered the spike into the gears once again, but I was unwilling to stay to admire my handiwork, since the protesting grind of metal on metal implied it was quite obviously a merely temporary solution. I crouched and leapt for the rope, grasping it at a point some ten feet from the floor, and was carried from the pit by the combined might of my four companions, as the spike gave way, below, and the trap swung back into place.
I lay on the floor of the corridor, covered in grease, oil and soot, not moving, as the wind had been knocked out of me on my landing. I looked up into their concerned faces, and smiled a broad grin (they told me later, all they could see was my eyes and teeth), and watched as their frowns turned to laughter. Despite the need for stealth, I could not help but join in; we had proved we could take all that was thrown at us, and beat it. I sensed this was the beginning of an exciting and lucrative partnership for us all…
Thanks folks, that's very helpful! Especially the detailed "you are there" account.
I was confused about these too, and I couldn't find any drawings of it in the hardcover. However, one of my players found this drawing of it online:
http://scap.teknohippy.com/images/tilta.jpg
The pit traps in Jzadirune did a lot of damage to my PCs and were definitely memorable!
That picture of the trap comes from a web enhancement to Dungeon 97 with some other useful stuff in it too. Much of its material ended up in the campaign book, but for some reason this picture didn't, and there's a couple other useful bits not included in the book too. It's at
http://paizo.com/dungeonissues/97/97WebEnhancement.pdf
I went back and checked all the versions of the trap, and it turns out that the trap gets three different descriptions:
Dungeon 97: The description of the trap in the original magazine just had it as a basic 20' trap with spikes at the bottom.
Dungeon 97 web enhancement: It becomes the tilt-a-pit we know and love, and it's still 20' deep.
The SCAP book: It gets shortened to 10' deep. (There's a thread James Jacobs started in this forum when he was editing the book, and he says there he thought the 20' trap was too nasty for low-level adventurers who might have this be their first encounter in the dungeon.)
So anyway, it turns out I wasn't crazy to remember it as 10' deep; in the version I've looked at most, it is. But then, to use the diagram from the web enhancement, you have to either imagine that the whole 10' tilts, in which case you have to revise the drawing so there's no stable part of the trap wall, or you have to imagine that only the bottom 5' of it tilt, in which case the person in the trap had better stay prone, unless he's short!
The party I DM finally stumbled into one of these traps last night, and it was worth the wait. I ended up using the 20' deep version, since the party is 3rd level by now and could handle the greater challenge. Anyway, the dextrous elf Scout blew his Reflex save and fell into the trap to start things off. He beat the trap on his initiative check, so he was able to start climbing out, and had managed to get a handhold on the stable wall above the spiked box when the trap then swung the box out from underneath him and slammed the lid above him, closing him in darkness. The human monk above managed to pry the lid open, while the half-drow druid lowered a longspear to help him climb up, and the human cleric held on to her to help with her Strength check. On his next turn, the Scout tried to climb the rest of the way out with the help of the lowered spear, but had a horrible roll, losing his grip and falling 20' down by the exposed gears of the trap. At which point the party discovered that NOBODY HAD ANY ROPE. (To be fair, it's a party of 9 players, I let them adventure 6 players at a time, and all the ropes were in the hands of people on the bench. But even so!!!) By this point the scout had taken two serious falls and was in pretty bad shape, and he had no light source. When the trap swung to expose the gears again, the half-elf wizard cast a spell to switch the positions of the scout and the monk, so now the monk was in the bottom of the trap with a sunrod and the scout was up where he could get healed. (Never mind that the scout and not the monk could disable the device...) Without a rope, it wasn't clear how they were going to get him out, so they came up with this scheme, which I allowed to work because I didn't want to be stuck in the trap forever. The monk readied an attack to jam his quarterstaff into the mechanism of the trap when it was halfway through one of its tilts, to lock it at a diagonal that could be climbed. This required a Dex check. The party's elf rogue stood at the lip and tried to help him time it, which gave him a bonus on the check. It took a couple tries, but he finally timed it right, and made the touch attack to jam the trap. I then let him make a few Jump checks to climb his way out of the trap, at which point they let the doors slam and the rogue wedged it shut.
The best part of all: during all of this drama the druid went back down a tunnel to throw the lever they had already found back into its original position. Basically, they had disabled another tilt-a-pit by throwing the lever, then reactivated it by throwing the lever again. And sure enough, they walked right into that trap a minute later! :-)
All in all, a very memorable encounter.