So I am currently being GM of a PF party, and I want to throw some thinking challenges, besides the "splat the monster and grab the moneybag" challenge.
Any recommendation of where I could find some intel? I don't want to think, I want a book that shows me cute puzzles to put them into my campaign
Here's my advice for running puzzles: Always have multiple solutions. Moreover, prepare to accept a solution that sounds correct, even if it's not the one you thought of. Logic puzzles have a bad habit of going bad, really quick, if the DM only has one solution that the party has to try to guess.
As a DM, I'm sure you've had plenty of times where you throw a line, offhandedly, to try to give a little flavor to the environment, and the party just latches on to it for 30 minutes. This happens even more so with puzzles, and the like, since the party knows they're supposed to be looking for something, and chances are what they latch onto won't be what you thought.
Another idea would be to not even have a solution planned out, but instead just give them a ton of resources, and rely on the party to come up with something that sounds good, with those resources. This is a bit more difficult, since if they get stuck, there's no direction to nudge them, and it's more of a hassle for PF, than for other games, since it's more difficult to give them resources for a single 'puzzle' that don't have the potential for issues latter on (like if you have a chest of scrolls as part of the 'resources', there's nothing stopping the wizard from hanging on to the rest of them, and screwing up a plan you have later, by having the exact right scroll for the job). It requires you know your party a lot more, but can come off really well, if you know your party can handle it, and you can handle it as a DM.
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Let's start with a good example of players coming up with an alternate solution to logic puzzles: Test of the Mind
Accepting alternate solutions is good. Sometimes players will decide that rather than solving the puzzle to open the lock, they'll use Stone Shape to detach the door from the wall. That's valid; it probably cost them more resources than solving the puzzle would've costed.
In a way, logic puzzles can be a "reward": if you can solve the puzzle you can complete this part of the dungeon for a discount because you didn't have to tunnel through walls or spent lots of healing to recover from a trap. It can be faster to solve the puzzle than to use brute force, which may be important if you're not alone in the dungeon.
Edit: make sure your players are aware that this is a tabletop game, not a CRPG, and that you're more flexible in these things than a computer running a scripted dungeon.
"How do we open the door?"
"Anyone have an adamantine weapon?"
At least thats how most challenges of this kind go in my group. You'll need to set up a situation where it incentivizes them not to choose the brute force approach.
"How do we open the door?"
"Anyone have an adamantine weapon?"
At least thats how most challenges of this kind go in my group.
I can back this up.
My Barbarian has forgotten how doorknobs work.
I'm just waiting for the moment when I scare the s%~! out of someone waiting on the other end.
"How do we open the door?"
"Anyone have an adamantine weapon?"
At least thats how most challenges of this kind go in my group. You'll need to set up a situation where it incentivizes them not to choose the brute force approach.
Adamantine weapons don't ignore adamantine's hardness, and you can simply rule that certain attack types are flat-out ineffective against doors, like piercing or slashing. There's also magically hardened doors, which have double the hardness, as I recall.
Alternatively: Give your door regeneration that can only be bypassed by the solution of the puzzle. Regeneration makes all damage nonlethal unless it's bypassed. Objects are immune to nonlethal damage.
EDIT: Not that I check, you need a Con score to regenerate, which can be solved by DM fiat, and I can't find where I read that reneration converts all damage to nonlethal except when bypassed.
Oh, I can't break through the door?
What's the wall made of around it?
Some classics that I've used at various times...
I like puzzles, but not all players do. If the players stumble on my puzzles I generally give them Int or Wis checks for access to clues or suggestions that their characters might know about. Good luck!
Oh, I can't break through the door?
What's the wall made of around it?
Maximized explosive runes that are immune to force damage and as such don't destroy each other when they're set off.
So they explode when your players look at them? Which has nothing to do with destroying the wall. Also, that helps destroy the wall.
A good way to handle this sort of thing is to place lots of creatures in earshot where actively destroying things will attract their attention. Trying to forcibly restrict your players means you will either kill them by setting up an unavoidable trap, or strain believability by making everything adamantine or permanent walls of force.
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I love logic puzzles, and use them in several of my home campaigns. I've found that some of the "activities for kids" books for long road trips can have challenges that flummox a party of grown gamers. They whimper when I pull out the Department of Agriculture's Kids Page printouts. :)
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Try using traps that if triggered will collapse ceilings, set fire to treasure and otherwise destroy the dungeon, making the expedition a failure. Then key them to puzzles to get past them.
As for a source of puzzles: it doesn't have to come from the RPG world. Just google for puzzles and riddles until you find some nice ones, then invent a story around them to make it fit into the world.
As to people just smashing their way through the door or wall.
I usually just DM fiat that "all your attacks don't even scratch the door."
Here's a logic puzzle I've used before:
Another:
I've also come up with a puzzle that uses a tiled surface like a chess board, but where the edge of each square teleports a character crossing the threshold to another square on the board. Each edge has its own destination, and players may enter squares facing a different direction than they were when they started their movement.
For example:
ABCDE
12345
FGHIJ
67890
If you step down off of A, you may end up entering J from the right side. Stepping up off of A may have you enter from the bottom of 6.
Add some dangers, that have to be dealt with, or a time limit for getting across.
I agree with Tholomyes, you need to be prepared for if the party does something out of left field but would work.
Like have you ever seen the anime or manga called HunterxHunter? I admit the situation is not a puzzle, but rather a binary choice, but bear with me.
There is a scene, where they cast is trapped and on a timer. They have to get to the end of the maze in under something like 30 minutes.
They are trapped in a room with two doors out that are right next to each other in a room full of weapons and a cage. They have two options.
One, abandon one of them in the cage and get a door that leads them to the end in ten minutes.
Two, don't and take the door that will take hours.
They go for three, they pick two and use the weapons provided to hack into the wall between doors as the the passages are right next to each other.
They make it just under the clock.
Like "Pick the Truthful One", there might be off book ways around that depending on the context.
Like if it's in a building, what's stopping them from going through the ceiling or the floor if they have the ability to do so?